collage – Page 7 – Mixy's Art Blog

hidden in plain sight

Sometimes I’ll notice a thing, it’s been there all along, just hiding from my awareness.

Case in point: I ran a year long project a few years ago, where each month was dedicated to a colour.

Conveniently there are 12 months and if you use the Primary, Secondary, Tertiary groups there are 12 colours. I called it ‘12 in 12‘, beginning January with Red-Purple cycling through Purple, Blue-Purple, Blue…etc. finishing up in Red.

For the whole month I filled a few pages in this book. I feasted on the colour and resisted straying into another month’s territory (not easy for a colour glutton). I was strict and disciplined and it meant all the other colours exploded into my art outside this book with a new found gusto.

The year produced a lush rich rainbow of mixed media and collage.

I’d thought of doing this many times before, but for some reason I hadn’t gotten around to starting it. It wasn’t until around 3 colour/months in when it dawned on me… the year was 2012…so this was 12 in 12 in 12!

I bring this up now – not just as I love a bit of subconscious synchronicity – and this one still makes me smile years later – but because this project has inspired new ideas too.

I’ll be reviving this idea later in the year, and this time you can join in too! Watch this space, I’ll tell you more about it in the summer.

derailed logic

You know me well enough by now – you know not to expect a simple train of logic, don’t you?

When I found this anonymous model, the leopardskin, that sultry seductive look, and all the glamour of the 1940’s ‘do — and I don’t remember the exact connecting train of thought that same next –– I just straight away thought mermaid.

Of course, right? <welcome to my world!>

spinning into spring

A few days past the Equinox – whichever hemisphere you’re reading this from – we’ve all just tipped a balance of seasons.

I’m typing to you from the north, so my days are now eversoslightly longer then my nights.

Which makes me glad.

It suits my intermittent insomniac tendencies – if it isn’t cold and dark when I wake up my days are more likely to begin earlier – and in turn rebalance my days and nights into natural circadian rhythms. (Until next time…)

Last week my sleep was completely unsettled.

Beginning with the night I had all the nightmares that children get where beasties and monsters are chewing my feet. And my tired mind forgets it’s just a dream and refuses to go back there just in case.

Popular science de jour supports the belief that missed sleeps can’t exactly be repaid at a later date, and rather than try to catch up, it’s better to enforce a bed time and wake time, forcing the body to comply. Good sleep hygiene. All that stuff.

I’ve tried that.

The obstinate donkey that runs my brain doesn’t like that game, so won’t play.

We (me & donkeybrain) have to lay there all restless and thinky for a long time when we try this. Unmedicated early nights are effective only when preceded by some fairly appalling regard to rest for a good few days by way of a build up. Even the donkey doesn’t think that’s wise.

If I do get to sleep by my ideal of 11pm I fall into what feels like a deliciously deep, eight hour, dream fuelled, well rested slumber. Mmmmmm…

But in reality turns out to have lasted just 90 minutes or so.

And is followed by any combination of thinky/over-thinky/wide-awake/best-ideas-ever-just-not-quite-awake-enough-to-write-down-or-record-somehow/what-the-crazies-was-that-dream-meant-to-be-about?…………….

I mean – it’s rarely worrisome thoughts – I’m not that ball of anxiety (had that in previous chapters, thankfully free of that now). So it could be worse.

I say to myself: Shush, it will be morning soon, you just need to shush back to sleep for a little while til then… continually for 5-6 hours before another 90 min nap.

Last week I had two consecutive nights on just scraps of rest and a few really busy days with a lot of fresh air and walking. So that should be an effective reset, right?

Then the weekend was almost totally filled up with sleep.

Like the rest of my life, I think I’m probably quite well balanced on average – but looking at individual episodes I’m mostly to be found on the outer edges of everything.

There we are.

This isn’t me, but she can be my representative in this tale of chaos. Standing there in her mismatched legs, holding onto her head (keeping the donkey in – he has his uses) and leaning – all casual like – against the one edge of this so called reality. Just for now.

the str-e-e-e-tch

This guy was in a yoga magazine before he got here. In between times he’s been hanging out in my collection of cut out magazine snippings.

I haven’t attempted this asana for a long while, it’s one that feels amazing at full stretch with straight limbs like this, but limbs and joints don’t always want to cooperate…

So he’s here as a reminder of what I can do on a good day, and good days are returning.

Meanwhile I’ll focus my dexterity on scissor work and paintbrush wielding 😉

circus of uncertainty

It’s a continuing theme…

We are back in the book again. Come in, have a stroll round…

It’s a bit wordy underfoot so mind your step.

There’s a regularity to the irregular once you get used to it here.

There’s a quiet comfort in the uncertainty.

And as in the parallel world outside, no-one’s really sure what’s going on.

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.
…live in the question.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

Welcome to my circus of uncertainty

merging emerging

Last night I couldn’t sleep. So I painted. And I pondered.

The magic of metallic paint on cushiony soft paper, that biro marks indent and cast tiny shadow outlines.

Life is as quick as a flash, a sprint through some generations and it’s done.

And life is a slow evolution, spiralling up through understanding new layers of the game.

It’s both.

Everything & Nothing. Empty & Full.

Contrast & Confusion. Zigs & Zags.

Deep & Shallow.

Some folk like to scramble the edge, following the truths they’ve chosen to absorb, busying away their days in occupation and activity, punctuated with ritual and escapism.

Fearful of treading over the lines, getting their toes wet, or worse.

Some folk run at it fast, not leaving anything to chance, escaping the dangers by out-running and out-witting. No way is right, no way is wrong. We’re all just making it up one bit at a time.

~~~~~

I’ve been listening to Pete Holmes’ podcasts: You Made It Weird. He kept me company through the night, kept me laughing and thinking. So far I’ve really love love loved his interactions with Liz Gilbert & Deepak Chopra and been curiously riled by Noel Gallagher & Tim Minchin.

Scraps of Serendipity

How to make a decision, how to avoid paralysis of overhwelm, when there are a hundred gazillion options, how does that work?

Cos here we are, right, in the 21st Century, and if you’re reading this I’m figuring you’re someplace a little bit like here. A place where art supplies are available in more colours, more media, more super-doopy newly formulated zingyness, more variety than you can shake a stick at.

And even when you’re on a strict self-imposed use-what-you-got-already-before-buying-more-at-the-art-store diet….. there’s no still shortage of choice. Especially not when you’re compelled to repurpose just about anything into art.

Scraps of Serendipity. Love it when that happens!

Lately I’ve taken to limiting what I can use to the scraps that are on my work table. These tubes of paint I didn’t put away after last time, these nibbles of torn paper. These choices were made by a previous me, and today’s ingenuity is tasked to find a new way to combine them.

friday afternoon thoughts

The unfolding of my days now includes this nightly ritual,

no matter what time I have between getting home and going to sleep, at least part of it is spent between the pages of this book. I make the time, eke it out, surprise myself how much page can be covered and how many doodles will flow.

It’s a dumping ground for thoughts and feelings, fragments of information, part formed thoughts. Ends of words that doodle off into a cat’s face. That sort of thing.

(the dictionary pages are back… yes, the same dictionary)

And collaged people. I don’t know who they are or where they came from.

This one emerged from nowhere. I don’t know him either.

Wishing you all a good weekend, dear friends. X

A questioning mind…

You know me – you know how I love to puzzle something out. I was wondering about my current art journal recently. Join me over on Dirty Footprints Studio for my monthly guest post where I unscramble these thoughts about just this.

PG_questioning_FEATURE

thoughts de jour

Traditional journalling – the outpouring of words and thoughts and the recording of happenings, events and reactions is quite linear: these things occurred, then were recorded; these things were planned and projected, then recorded.

Art journalling is far more holistic. Even the most literal illustrations are cast in the light of the mood, defined by the view of the artist and constricted by the limitations of their style and skill.

And then there’s this whole exploration of the psyche that forms from the deluge of abstraction that some of us create.

Like many other artists who play this game, mine is largely an unplanned stream of consciousness.

As life ebbs and flows there are periods dominated by torrential outbursts of imagery.

I’m driven by a force beyond my thoughts to combine and construct these collections of objects, images and notions. They make no sense at the time and only sometimes later can I pick out an impression of context, a reflection of thought.