Mixy's Art Blog

52/3 – Manifestery

manifesto ~ manifest ~ manifestation

What do I want to manifest this year? I forget now where the idea came from, but I was mulling over these words….Yes, I’m still inhabiting that whole new year, new, newy nonsense. Excuse me if it’s beginning to grate. It will wear off (perhaps) ………….. but y’know I started out 2015 with some fairly specific wants which (and this might be why I’m perpetuating the thing) are panning out pretty well so far.

Targetted, focussed, my most defined wish was to deadlift (at least) 60kg, I was doing 30kg at the end of December. This week I did 40kg. The goal posts are closer than I reckoned on. For context, at the start of October 2014 I laughed at the suggestion of doing weights. ‘I’m not sporty, I just want to be a bit stronger, and bit less, y’know… wobbly and pathetic, maybe tone up a little…’ whilst firmly fixed in my head was the knowledge that lifting weights is a thing that other people do.

And then I tried.

And then I switched over to being one of those other people.

Some amount of sweat, aches and grim determination later, I’ve progressed from someone who lifts the tiniest weights available, a bit more each time.

I’m just using this by way of illustration.

Doing something in one area of life can open the mind in all the others.

This is a lesson I learnt in art school: Separating not being able to do something from not having done that something before.

Or not being good at it, to being not good at it yet.

The same thing, but from a very slightly changed viewpoint, is not exactly the same. Subtle distinctions. Nuances.

I LOVE nuances.

So I set about listing (the power of the written word) the essence of my intentions and what I want to manifest.

My manifesto for 2015:

Follow the Signs.
Stay Focussed: One Thing at a Time.
Always Try New Things, Go New Places, Meet New People, Have New Fun.
Have Love, Be Love, Have Fun, Enjoy
Keep Questioning, Keep Learning, Keep Notes, Keep Ideas, Keep Going.
Reach Beyond, Reach Past, Carry on Beyond the Horizons.

Then as an aside……..

I read an article recently, it was along the lines of how the physical act of writing something embues it with a power, seeing those words written in your own handwriting reinforces something at a very primal level, it is exclusively connected to the writer. Darn it I wish I remebered where this was so I could link you. But, in the small search I made for it, I found this instead. If you have any interest in the whole manifestary musings, take a mo to see this.

So my manifesto is embedded in my psyche, and sits on the opposing page to my vision board/bagua map. As I close the book they smoosh up against each other, and can embue each other with magic as the book rests. Meanwhile, watch this space for future manifestations!

52/3, Bagua Map and Coloured Wordery

Welcome to part next of the weekly unfolding of my year…

I was reading this week about Vision Boards. As my MO in life is heavily weighted toward visual inputs I leapt at this new (to me) strategy. In the words of my inner kid: Squeee I wanna make me a Vision Board!

If you’re intrigued, this is where I started out, and I can’t imagine there’s a better place. Jean Van’t Hul’s Artful Parent site is just brimming with all you could want to set you off, and then a list of books and resources to take you on from there.

I especially liked the way Jean sets out her Vision Board as a bagua map. This is a 3 x 3 grid dividing a physical space into sections representing different aspects of life. It’s origin is in feng shui, but it’s been adopted as a tool in various fields of personal development, self care, life training, newage wishy-washery, right across the board to even include more down-to-earth folks like me (ha!).

So this is the layout, the skeleton of the Vision Board, on which to hang wishes, dreams, intentions, ideas, metaphors and so forth. Jean uses magazine snippings – images and text that inspire and illustrate.

Off on a tangent here – I really love the way an act of creativity shows up so many metaphors for life, cos right off my brain is spinning out: I don’t need all those categories… some just don’t apply and some can be lumped together. (Follow that to it’s natural conclusion and yes, my bagua is just one box with a confused, homogenised version of me sat in the middle, puzzled and pissed off with the whole business. Ok, so I’ll go with the boxes…. But I wouldn’t choose those colours. So, which colours would I choose? where do I find the pictures that are the right colours for each box? or do I find B&W pics that I can colour? or should I do it all in photoshop and fuck it, I can have a digital one as a screen saver instead… <some more time passes>. FFS, brain, take what you’ve got. You can’t afford to dwell on all this not-knowing when there’s a thing to be done. Get on with it!

Life lesson: Just get on and do it. I was pretty certain in the early stages I wouldn’t know what I wanted in each box, or how I was going to set about acheiving it. Also, as it was the thing I wanted in this week’s page, and that’s a fairly rigid time limit, if it spills beyond its alotted time the whole thing will unravel and fall down the rabbit-hole of what am I doing, where am I going and a great big enormous whole what’sthepointofitall. And that’s a place I avoid at all costs.

So I left that part of my brain running round with all the I don’t know what’s going to happen while the rest of me got down to drawing the boxes, writing the words, colouring the colours, and accepting it will probably turn into something, even if I don’t know what (yet).

And, as suspected, it did.

I’ve come to find, if you let go of the wanting to know, the what it is will show up. And often in a surprisingly pleasing fashion.

The words and phrases defining the grid were down: ‘Power, Abundance’, ‘Health, Well-being’, ‘Career, Work’

Curously, just the act of writing these out – and once I let them settle – they began to spawn new words and phrases. Ones I’d already been playing with in the quest to find my Word for the Year, words that encourage possibility. Some of them cropped up again and again (Relax, Nurture, Nourish, Enjoy, Strengthen, Develop…). And magically the crossing over of categories adjusted from the chaotic blur as I had previously seen it as, into a self-supporting web.

Integrity & Solidarity

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You may have seen this video, it’s been spinning about on the web this week, by an artist in distress.

As I watched it I felt the enormity of all it represents well up inside. I wanted to reactively repost and type angrily at the world. But instead I’m sharing it as a message of solidarity, from one artisan to another. From one who has tried, been dismayed, discouraged, ridiculed and dismissed, but been unable to stop. Like a river, creativity can be dammed up, but will always find a way through. The weight of the water being the support this video has garnered.

This darling soul is baring her heart, and it touched me so strongly. She creates beautiful, wearble art. She just wants to make a living. And most importantly, despite the unsolicited opinions of the ignorant masses who shout their unsolicited opinion and sour grape flavoured vitriol, will (I hope) continue to follow her passion. She speaks for many of us.

To everyone who’s living this pain – the anguish (too strong a word? no, I don’t think so) – of having to justify your burning urge to make and share and not defend and rationalise, but just to do. Keep doing, keep making, keep going. We love you, we respect you, we need you to keep going.

the midweek weekend

I love and hate time.

I don’t believe in time per se, not as a strictly regulated measured thing. I think of it more as a malleable substance that (with practice) can be manipulated. And with just the tiniest amount of neglect, can run away (forever).

Some years ago I worked an office job Tuesday to Friday. It worked out well. I did my own thing on the weekends and took Mondays off. Sometimes I took a 3 day break. I enjoyed that choice of freedoms.

Then things changed: I switched to just Thursday-Friday in the office.

And time went totally out of control.

Suddenly I had a 5-day stretch of not exactly weekend, and before I knew it I was beginning another ‘week’. The whole thing spiraled out of control and the weeks and months flew at a devastating rate. I didn’t enjoy this and only lasted it out less than a year (which felt like a lot less!)

Sure, I know many folks who wish their working weeks away, but that’s wishing away a lifetime bit by bit. If you hate your work, change it, don’t rush through in the hope that one day you’ll be on vacation, retired, dead, or whatever is lined up next.

Nowadays I work for myself. I have some regular routines, but they’re all flexible. I wake up early and have long days (thank you insomnia – some days are verrrry long!)

I think the key is to keep mixing it up.

My newest routine is the page-a-week art journal. Today starts week 3, which as the year began on a Thursday, so now do my weeks (in a sense).

It’s helped lift the pressure of the Monday to Friday VS Saturday/Sunday rut that’s so ingrained. One week ends on a Wednesday, Another begins the next, another ends the next. Perhaps it’s like I’m squeezing 2 weeks into every 7 days, but it’s really slowed it down to a manageable pace!

Energy- Tuesday Truths

Taking responsibility is the most liberating move we can make…

To Live Inspired

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2/52 Dream Big

One of the purposes of this weekly art journal is to offload some of the stuff I pick up through what I read and hear. Already I’m feeling the benefit of unburdening my busy head! I might never need to read these things again, but it’s a way of filtering them out of my internal monologue.

This week’s page has got a bit busier since last time I showed you. Curiously, the first words I wrote on this page asked “where are the words?” (on a day when I was unable to find the what I needed to say …) and since then there has been a steady flow of must write that down things.

Filling up the space with stuff that keeps showing up on my radar….

I have big dreams – by which I mean I have big plans and hopes for the future – but I also have big colorful episodes of imagination at night time. And I don’t distinguish much between them. Just the nocturnal machinations often want for some translation from the garbled jumble of metaphors my subconscious knits together out of the day’s happenings. It doesn’t always make sense, but often they are fun.

Sometimes the meaning shows up a long while later. sometimes it doesn’t!

These words come from Connie Solera of Dirty Footprints Studio. I love her style and she has a beautiful way of describing the creative process. She brings sunshine into my spirit.

A Sacred Space

I was pondering this thought: a sacred space doesn’t have to be a physical space.

It can be a space in my day, a number of minutes I hold back from everyday use.

A little bit of room in the day to release some thoughts into the ether.

And ask the rhetorical questions.

A few moments to flick water at a book and not care if you get ink splashes on your face.

Time to draw round the edges of that beige smeary paint. Because you like the sensation of pencil over grainy gesso. Also, just because.

These times the what and the why don’t matter. Only the doing matters. And the allowing the chance to do that matters most. This is a sacred space.

Color and Eye-Fish 2/52

My weeks now begin (as this year did) on a Thursday. I like this! It breaks up the week/weekend pattern in a refreshing fashion and in a way seems to make time stretch. I’m a busy person, this is enormously helpful! Week 2 of this year started out on a drainy-grainy grey day and I really needed to counteract that, so I did in the only way I know how: with colors.

I began with a wash over white gesso with Pebeo Colorex chartreuse ink I LOVE this color! This is my happy color! although it gets covered over through the week, little bits are still shining through.

The page already had a smeary something (acrylic paint? I forget already) on the right page which discolored to a nasty beige with the ink smears. But no matter, it’ll be obscured with stuff before long. To begin with, the same three strange eye-fish as last week. I can’t really explain them yet, I’ll come back to them later.

Swimming through the inks.

Slipping behind the doodled-on beige paint slick. The eye-fish do their thing…

Then it got some washes and splashes in Adirondack Stream. Close and open the book for a bitova Rorschach style ink spreading manoeuvre.

That puddly wet ink was just crying out for something a bit more lively and vibrant, so on with the Derwent Inktense

I love the variety of marks you can get scribbling on splashed paper, the wet and dry work well for doodling into with a fine paintbrush and water.

So that’s where my week began, It’s progressing a bit more each day so check back soon to see the next transitions 🙂

Pedantry and Pointlessness

Exercise for the soul:

I notice how I have to disagree so fundamentally with you.

What u say is so utterly wrong.

Your black is my white.

Your down is my up.

So utterly different, so poignantly opposed. Taken from one extreme limit to the other where they almost meet again.

Signs Everywhere

If I said you: look up from the screen, look about you for something blue. You’d look cast your gaze about and suddenly so many things in your field of vision are blue. You never noticed how many blue things there are about, right?

It’s not a blue thing thing, it’s a noticing thing.

Until you need to get a new carpet, you don’t notice how many carpet shops you pass on your journey to work everyday. Where they always there? Until you think you might be pregnant you don’t notice so many folk pushing buggies, then they are everywhere. When you’re hungry but can’t stop to eat, there are food smells, adverts for everything delicious and people eating whichever way you look.

It’s perception. It’s synchronicity. It’s coincidence. It’s whatever you want it to be. But it’s real and it happens all the while. I like to think of it as a sign, a nudge, the universe saying Yup, that’s where we’re going, you’re on track my friend.

Like many folk I’ve spent time recently considering what shape I’d like my 2015 to take, and this includes developing sides of my life that have gone a little wanting in the past. Personal stuff, and largely stuff that could be termed ambition. The put-off-able, for all the reasons.