Mixy's Art Blog

Shadow Monkeys (8/52 cont/d)

Week eight of 2015: a busy page that’s warranted 2 posts…

And that’s without any mention of the butterflies.

Or Steve Jobs. But that’s all for another day…

The thing I wanted to tell you about now is monkey related:
Since I spent a weekend in conversation with my daemons, they’ve been magicking themselves into apparency here, there & all over. This week they’ve manifested in a semi-Cubist, heavy handed biro scrawl, merged, their tribal Día de Muertos faces peering out from the recesses of the page.

We’ve been sharing the available space in this mind for a few decades. It’s refreshing to shift the power balance between ‘them’ and ‘us’ (for want of better terms).

So when I read the post from Danny Gregory this week, asking for tales from our Monkeys, another bunch of dots connected: Monkey minded me, the battles with my daemons, and all the reasons it took me so long to go to art school.

I dedicated a corner of a page to the Monkeys (they were chief trouser-wearers and direction-choosers in my life for way too long. They get a corner to play in now. I get the rest of the page. That is ALL) A place to start unscrambling some thoughts:

These are the bare bones of those thoughts:

My monkeys bewilder me with their faultlessly formed logic.

They have faith only in the opinions and the hard-hearted snipes of the the hardcore cynics. They know why I can’t and what I can’t and all the reasons why.

They will poke at me with pointy sticks if I turn my back on them for long. They stand in my way. They say: don’t show yourself, not your real self, cos then the haters aren’t hating the real you. You tricked the haters, the mean kids, the ones who know. You win. See?

The monkey’s logic is flawed at a level so deep I sometimes forget : Do not trust the monkeys.

It was the Monkey’s determination that as art isn’t a real job, and work isn’t supposed to be fun, and all the associated hooey, that defined my existence until quite recently. A large part of life (by my reckoning) is unpicking the knots that we spend the preceding years tying ourselves up in. Unattended monkeys will continue tying knots.

An Unintentional Mermaid (8/52)

Week 8 of the page a week looked like this:

And it must be the most colourful yet. It’s also the most full of subconscious tells – I’m only starting seeing now I look back from a few days later. Like the green mermaid/peacock – I didn’t draw her but she emerged from a funny little cross-leggedy figure and the phrase ‘move toward’ and some doodles.

I’ve got no idea at all what that means (yet).

There’s a lot of scribbly writing on this week, from an outpouring of encouraging words & phrases I was trying to sooth my brain with. You’ll catch glimpses of them here n there altho a lot are now buried under drawing.

She believed she could and she did.

Cos gosh darn it if that hasn’t been the case recently! And I’ve still riding that wave, so it goes down in the book as a marker of the time I’m in.

Move Toward. If I had a strategy for life, it would be that. As opposed to the alternates: running away from, or worse: sitting in stagnation. I’ve tried both of these approaches in the past. The results haven’t been so good.

Since I began this page-a-week game I’ve become aware how often the opportunity for another list of intentions comes up – it’s almost weekly!

Since forever it’s been a thing I do at the start of a month, and on a New Moon. The big ones are New Year (often I begin this at Winter Solstice), and there’s Chinese (Lunar) New Year which fell last week.

You see what I mean?

No wonder I’m so often listing the same things.

So for the record, here are my intentions for Year of the Goat/Sheep/Ram/Ovicaprid

Raise my vibration – belong
Use my time – spread my thoughts
Make more – share more
Love more – Read more – learn more
Collaborate – Assimilate – Consolidate
Stretch out – Drink in
Sleep well – Eat well
Trust the process
Find my tribe – Share stories

These flooded out in a sorta stream of consciousness so I can’t offer much by way of explanation for them. More I hope will become apparent in the course of time. Hey – they’ve got a year to puzzle themselves into fruition!

Odoodem

A project I began working on as college brief in September 2013 finally came to fruition recently. The task was to design a site specific artwork for the National Spinal Injury Centre.

I described earlier my design of a ‘Totem’ honouring and celebrating the spirit of the Spinal unit, the great work that is done there and the kinship that develops between patients, the therapists and staff, the patients’ friends and families – the community.

The perfect location turned out to be an eight-sided brick pillar in the centre of reception: the spine of the unit, and conveniently totem-esque in shape; so defining the design, and informing the scale.

I decided early on that the artwork would consist of a series of portraits of people who have shown a level of determination and spirit that can inspire others. The stories I read in the course of researching who to include were often beyond awe-inspiring. Testament to the strength of character that comes to the fore in times of crisis, and a need to share that sense of possibility with others.

A really strong sense of people are amazing. I’ve also had some really wonderful feedback from the folks whose portraits I used. Absolutely heartwarming, I’ve so loved this project.

I’d like to thank everyone involved in the project:

Aaron Baker, David Weir, Mike Nemesvary, Jared Duntan,
Mark Pollock, Melanie Reid, Catriona Williams, Pete Donnelly,
Erica Davis, Bonnie Lewkowicz, Trish Downing, Darius Glover,
Andy Walker, Suzanne Cowan, Barry West & Frank Gardner.

Wordful Week 7/52

Week 7 turned out to be a wordy week. And full of stuff : New (super) Moon, Valentines, I hit my weight lifting target that I set at the start of the year…. All in all, a week of giddying goodness. And…..

My Birthday, which involved coffee, cake and kitties at Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium in Bethnal Green. I am soppy in the extreme about cats and since my home has been empty of furry friends for a few years now… you can imagine this was like the ultimate in birthday fun for me!

When I saw this list I knew right away it had a place in the book of 2015 : these are the things that matter to me:

To Be An Explorer of the World:

Always be looking (notice the ground beneath your feet)
Consider Everything alive & animate
Everything is interesting – look closer
Observe for long durations and short ones
Alter your course often
Notice the stories going on around you
Notice patterns: Make Connections
Document your findings (field notes) in a variety of ways
Incorporate interdeterminancy
Observe movement
Create a personal dialogue with your environment: Talk to it
Trace all things back to their origins
Use all of the senses in your investigations.

It sits neatly alongside the list of new moon intentions (which tbh are not much different from the last few intention lists. Basic stuff I’m trying hard to hammer home in the subconscious).

Love is in the air: Love and Be Loved

I guess it’s fitting that my love of words and lists is really prominent this week! These things that bobbed up on my horizon this week (would love to credit where they came from, but only there long enough to scribble down before getting buried in a million tangential thoughts and surfs and immediately-pressing-need-to-knows that the www sends my way.) The second one is more mantra/affirmationy:

I’m neither doomed nor completely free
But I’m creating my future with every word, every action, every thought.
I find myself in a very dynamic situation with unimaginable potential,
I have all the support I need to simply relax and be with the transitional, in process quality of my life. I have all I need to engage in the process of awakening.

Thank you to whoever put those words together and sent them into the internet ether. I get where you’re coming from and I wish you happy adventures.

So that was last week… a scattering of butterflies (more next week – new project I’m about to launch into later today), and again with the eyefish. What’s with the eyefish? Srsly?! X

Happy New Year 😃

Week 6: Confusion sets in.

All that about loving weeks beginning on a thursday…. what was I on about?! I’m not embracing this self-imposed confusion right now! (I’d meant to type I’m NOW embracing, but clearly I’m not, that’s a subconscious truth leakage!)

SO quick before this week’s gone as welll … Week #6 of 2015 looked like this:

The week that my daemon manifested himself in glorious turquoise velvetty form.

See, he did look a bit more cat than dragon in the planning stages… His early plannings are nestled up with left over fabric (sorry, fur – feathers – scales??) snippets

Close you eyes, fall in love, stay there. (Rumi)

And the best advice I heard all week.

So to Sewing

Inspired by the enormously talented Morwenna Catt and her wonderful quirky stoles, I felt compelled to make something similar…

I have all this fabric and trimmings and whatnot, sitting around waiting to be purposed. And what better purpose than a mad turquoise friend.

I was aiming for a cat shaped face, but looks a little more doggish to me. Maybe some ear adjustment and whiskers will bring it round. Either way, I’m kinda fond of this new addition to the family.

What if….

Of all the things we cling to, I find expected outcomes are hard to drop. Some hope of sense of stability or control… That desire to know what’s next, where I’m steering towards and what it’ll look like when I get there. Which I know isn’t real.

Just imagine the possibilities that could show themselves.

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately.

Last night I was listening to Darryl Anka. He’s one of those people who has a wonderfully down-to-earth quality offsetting some totally out there ideas. Some of which I know are hard to entertain for a lot of folks… but I was particularly fascinated by this talk. (It’s a loooong talk, this bit is around 58 mins in if you wanna cut to the chase!)

He’s saying the same — the key to the magic in life:
Do what you love, what excites and enriches you
Do it to the absolute utmost of your ability
Do it with no attachment to the outcome.

So I’ll persevere …

Sometimes..

Sometimes you got to hold out your soul in both hands, offer it up to the world, and hope.

Behind the times 5/52

Last week was such a wild week, full speed ahead into the future. …. Big mental adventures, idea exploration, culmination and loose end tying. And then the massive full moon on Tuesday. Maybe that’s why it’s taken until now to post last night week’s page.

This is where it started out: a splurge of words came tumbling… so many they needed watering down. (Literally)

Edit/note to self: a daemon from a daemon (transformed)

I’d spent the weekend at Jamie Catto’s Transforming Shadows workshop. I’ll post more about that separately once it’s settled more in my head – suffice to say for now, transformation occurred! And it led me back to a bit of face drawing, I haven’t done this in a while…

The theme of the workshop was centred around befriending inner demons. As each day the page evolved the faces developed, coming more into their own. And the big full moon started to dominate.

Something tribal feeling began to show. I’ve had an increasing sense I need to find my Tribe. And the page seems to be reinforcing that. (Gotta love the way art unfolds answers to questions you didn’t know you were asking)

As a marker of time and achievement, the final additions: collaged left over bits of the project I completed this week, oh and a big ole FIFTY. Cos guess how many kilos I lifted at the gym this week? 😉 Gotta love a round number milestone!