Mixy's Art Blog

The Power of the Wish

I posted this image yesterday.

Ive read these words in a few memes lately and they really appeal to me.

But I posted this particular one as it’s one of my yoga wishes. As I said yesterday, if I could do this it would make me really happy

So this morning’s Yoga with Adriene (don’t you love a bit of serendipity) gave me exactly the nudge I needed into really nearly doing it! As my strength and balance improve, today for the first time I managed a brief hover with all tippy-toes off the mat!
I have been grinning on the inside ever since 😀

I wish you all a really lovely weekend, guys, I hope it brings you all you wish for! X

More Focus & Trust 1/52

So last night I polished off the first week of my 2015 week by week art journal. Little tweaks and changes…. more emphasis on Trust – I gotta trust in this process,

and more focus on the word Focus. Got me thinking about focusing on what this week has meant to me.

The big silvery full moon (which kept me awake Sunday & Monday nights) is now shining from the top of the page. Full moons symbolise the stage of a cycle which is full on, full volume: intensity. As the peak of night brightness passes and the moon wanes the power subsides but I feel like it’s added strength to my convictions and spirited up my wishes.

Y’know I told you about my goals for 2015… I’ve been working on weight training and this week I upped my eek-I-can-just-about-lift-it weight by another 5kg. Little by little I’m realising that dream! The incentive behind my desire to get stronger is to improve my yoga practice. I’d so love to be able to do this. (and so much more… but this would make me happy for a start!)

Thanks to the darling Adriene, of ‘Yoga with Adriene‘, from this week I’ve been practicing with a new found daily discipline. I love her gentle, easy going style, she’s doing this wonderful 30 day program on YouTube. If you’re even a little bit interested in yoga, go check this out, it’s so lovely!

So that’s where I’m at for now; Now onto week 2/52!

week by week 1/52

There’s something so deliciously enlivening about the start of a new thing

…a new year

…a new book

…a new project

In past years I’ve played with different art journaling projects, from page a day to a page a month. This time around it’s a page a week.

So, 2015, here we go!

Week 1 has been a painty brain-dump.

The only thing I had in mind to start was colour: I’m in a big ole red/magenta/turquoise vibe this week. Look at them ZING!

I primed the pages with gesso and began with some dollopy finger-painting. This process was fun but produced a textured surface so crunchy it really precluded writing with anything finer than a big soft marker. So the words are big n few.

I found some phrases through the week which stuck in my head:

Focus (my word for the year)

Let down your guard and Trust (I’ve read this in more than one place. So it’s a sign, right?)

Stand in your Light (I’ve heard myself say I’ve been standing in my own way a few times, this is a better place for me to be!)

Speak your Truth (it doesn’t have a meaning I can grasp at the moment, but I sense I might come back to this one later and see what I can’t see right now – ‘the woods for the trees’ maybe. What the hey, good solid advice.)

I wrote out the Holstee Manifesto. It’s mostly buried under layers of paint now. But I know it’s in there….the line “Some opportunities only come once, seize them” is just showing enough still to remind me: I want to compose a 2015 manifesto for myself.

Then there’s the three eye-fish. I’ll talk about them another day 😉

Meanwhile it’s day 7 of week1… I wanna get home and get my last bit of painting done for this page. I’ll post the finished version tomorrow.

Til then, g’night folks – sleep like kittens and dream of joyful things X

nen nen ju shin ki

Thought forms are the children of an earlier project, my final project in the first year of my art degree. Focussing on the idea of meditation: trying to still the crazed jabbering of monkey mind, find some spaces between the thoughts.

Thought following thought following thought – rattling by. That internal monologue of commentary, judgements, relentless parroting of worries… do you listen to the babble? Do you try to drown it out? Music, TV, incessant banter – some folk don’t keep it inside – they are a non-stop torrent of witterings.

It can be exhausting.

And fascinating.

This piece took shape as a 3 metre x 45 cm relief collage constructed from reclaimed bits and bobs, mostly painted paper, card, pins, tiny scraps of wood, wire, staples. These kinda things. The things and stuff that came to my mind as I was making it. Positioned in a corner it draws the viewer in so they become a part of the work, surrounded by the noise.

Complex trains of thought – interconnected and overlapping – are represented by the darkest and most detailed elements.

The process of meditation calming the mind from the persistent banter of thoughts by suspending this mental chatter from one moment to the next is represented by diminishing detail and lighter tones reducing to nothing in the centre.

I’d love to recreate this on an even bigger scale some day.

2015: Setting the Scene

Striding into January, this first Monday always has a first day back feel. Back to school, back to work, back to routine… and I love it. That fortnight of chaos just makes me relish the normal I’m all amped up and ready to run. Sure, I’ve got dull stuff to contrast with the fun, but it’s all in balance. The yin makes no sense without the yang, and flat-lining is no fun at all. And this week is so full of great intentions, which although they might not all last the course, I feel like if I run with them fast enough some will stick with me.

A little while back I was telling you about my Word for 2015 which at the time was Reach Beyond and the associated frustration that my word was in fact two words, and I was struggling to come up with a snappy substitute.

I pondered long n hard.

The Facebook group of some >1200 or so folk on a similar quest have been amazing – super supportive to each other’s stories and full of enlightening thoughts and amazing links off and about the internets to like-thoughted places. And helped me add a bunch of other contenders to the list of words.

I settled, finally, on Focus.
focus

My intention is to:

Focus on what I am doing at any one time – I am typing this post, I am mindful of my fingers on the keyboard. It’s all a little brighter and sharper when I’m just considering these words, nothing else. I’m not eating, not fretting, not rushing up to do the thing I forgot earlier because I was only part-minded on the thing I was doing then – part-minded on the previous part-minded task – and so on….

Focus on the bigger picture. Is what I am doing now contributing in a positive way – to my well-being, health, happiness, or is it a foolhardy shortcut, an excuse, another getting away with it? Does it matter? Can I be wiser? Can I act more in tune with this bigger picture I’m compiling, the picture I call my life?

I’m focussed on my path. I’m there in the now after now after now, footfall after footfall, mindfully aware. Moment to moment to moment. It’s all a bit Zen.

Of course it flickers in and flutters off – my concentration is a butterfly – but my intention for the year is to come back to the focus every time I remember.

Three Colour Challenge

Nuvofelt’s challenge was just what I needed this evening.

After a day of getting on with some long put off jobs about the nest, my reward for myself was an hour or so of de-rusting my painting skills.

The three colours I chose (without a lot of thought) were Magenta, Gold Ochre & Purple. Which for someone who has been in a rut of bluey greens for a loooong time, was probably a well balanced choice.

One at a time, on with the colour!

The artificial light doesn’t do the colour justice. It might be a work in progress or maybe a done thing, I’ll review it in the cold light of morning. Either way it was fun to do, I recommend it as a way to break colour habits!

Colour Prompt 10

You know me, I like a challenge….
So, restricting myself to just three colours was one I decided to rise to!

Creating something every day

Today’s colour challenge. How can you use it?

10 January 03

Choose at least three colours and use them to create something. You can add more colours if you wish – no limit to those. Please link back to this post if you blog about it – then we can all come and visit.

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Unstuckness

Do you guys know Jane Davies? I’ve just watched this video of hers. Really simple black and white mark making, so vibrant and lively and really ‘in the moment’. It made me think how great this would be as a kick-start when I can’t get going. A reminder: don’t try and make something just do.

I was reminded of the stuckness all us artistfolk get somewhile.

It’s a bitch: that art-void head space. Can’t think, can’t make, creatively constipated.

It’s tiresome, it’s draining, it’s vexacious, and until you’ve gotten through it a few times, it can scare the pants off you: “What if it’s all gone? Dried up? Never coming back?…”
When I finished school last June I got struck down by it big time, and it didn’t let up for AGES. Months.

I tried to to coax my mojo back into being by sorting out my art making space. I tidied and reshuffled and organised… I even had a fantastic commission to get on with, but I was stubbornly standing in my own way and refusing to budge.

So I waited it out, I lined up ideas in my head and on paper and physically in little heaps about the place. (I think the 2 years of intensive study and practice running in parallel with some big life shifts in my personal world had just run the tank dry and I needed this long while to regroup.) So I used the time to seek out and absorb new influences. I played more with words than colors. I began to enjoy the world outside the confines of my head.

I haven’t entirely got back in the art-swing still yet. Doesn’t seem to be an ON / OFF, more a growing appetite. But everyday I’m feeding the spirit with the nourishing goodness on tap here in the online community and in the books I’ve acquired over the years; The simple beauties around and about in nature and people-made-stuff.

Today I’m beginning a new year long project – a page a week art journal/sketchbook. I feel sore and rusty in the art-muscles, but it’s coming back. (I also bought a bunch of new colours to play with in the sales!)

New Wishes for the New Year

Happy New Day folks!

Yesterday (last year) I had a little rant about New Year’s Jumblings. Cos I don’t really understand a lot of it. Cos it doesn’t make sense.

But that was Then. This is Now!

And as I promised, here are the New Wishes I’m beginning my version of 2015 with:

To double the weight I can lift now.

I began weight training 3 months ago. It’s been damned hard, I hurt and ache more of the time than I don’t.

But I get the biggest buzz from it, and have squashed so many mental blocks and phobias along the way already. And I quietly amuse myself with thoughts of how absurd this seems in comparison to my first 4 decades on this planet.

If the previous version of me heard me wish this (even earlier last year), she would have fallen off the sofa laughing. Then asked me what I was on, and could she have some 😉

So, I’m small and flimsy, but I’m doing my best. And my best is (gradually) getting better. (For the record, I’m dead lifting 1/2 my OBW now. Just!)

And in turn my yoga practice is getting stronger and a whole lot less fally-over with my new found sense of balance!

To Live my Art.

Art has always been at my core.

It’s the centre of my being. It’s my purpose. I always knew this.

And for all that long time I dismissed it as frills and extras – when space and time permitted – to getting on with the serious job of not enjoying of life. WTF? Yes, old thinking, bad programming, obsolete life plan.

So if you’ve read my previous witterings you’ll know I embarked on the art school adventure just a few short years ago, and I now plan to move on from art student (my highest ideal when I began) to actual real live artist!

I’m joining the Dirty Footprints 21 Secrets in the Spring. Meanwhile I’ve got my Newest Sketchbook Project to begin today!

Let Go.

Whatever it is, FFS, just let it go!

The tension in my shoulders, the stupid things I did and said, the wanting things to be different from how they are, the wishing those wasted years back, the constant want of approval, congratulation, praise and ego bolstering.

Let it all go.

The need to make everyone laugh. Or think differently from how they are. Or be other than they are. All those judgements, the blame, the remorse, all that past – the whole darned lot of it!

There’s stuff I don’t know if I need to let go of, or persevere with – y’know that quandary? Yup, let that needing to know go too.

If it matters, it won’t go far.

So that’s the essence of my Three Big Wishes.

I also wish you well, as well. Be well, lovely folks! X

Resolutions or Wishes

NY Resolutions with a subtext: I must try harder, be this-er or that-er. I’ll do more of the things I don’t want to and less of the things I enjoy. All those unrealistic, unwanted demands pinned to a future version of self. So often they’re rolled out – same every year – safe in the understanding it’s just empty words that can be consigned to oblivion by the time you go back to the usual routines next week. Do you do this?

Fuck it, yeh? Never really meant it anyway.

And we begin this dramatically different, new phase of life with indigestion, a banging hangover, the tormentful regrets of the hazily recalled night before….

‘did I really say/do that? did that happen? what did happen? …..?’

Cos that makes sense, doesn’t it?

….so it’s just another Wednesday night in my world, then?

Heck NO!

Like the New Moon on the Winter Solstice just 10 days ago, like every New Moon, New Month, Birthday (personal New Year) I like to set New Wishes. It’s punctuation in my life: a pause for consolidation, review, and rev up for the next phase.

Tomorrow I’ll share with you my first Wishes of the New Year.

Meanwhile I wish you all, dearest digital friends, the happiest of beginnings to this new phase. May it bring you abundance and joy beyond you expectations. Love to you all X