collage – Page 8 – Mixy's Art Blog

outpourings

(today I’ll let the images speak for themselves)

Wishing you all a Wonderful Weekends X

on a quiet day

Just a couple of weeks ago I found myself cutting out shapes from magazine pages and scrap paper.

Nothing particular in mind, just another odd compulsion. But I’ve been me all these years now, I’m used to this, I don’t give it another thought.

Some good will come of it. Meanwhile, I’ve got a heap of hands and fish and butterflies and cats and things. As you do.

Then this began to evolve.

Now I’m as curious as the next person: What does this mean?

Last year I was doing this (again, no idea why).

So I carry on, still not knowing, but enjoying the bejeepers out of the process.

Perhaps that’s reason enough, right?

The words that I remember as I play join the page, they get buried in the mix.

Somewhere under and amongst these layers sit the words:

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it.

To deprive it of oxygen.

To shame it. To mock it.

…

…

With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories.

Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe

….

…

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this:

We be many and they be few.

They need us more than we need them.

…

…

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

– from Arundhati Roy, War Talk

365 self love update

The pace of this project is slow but steady, marching through time at 1 inch per day. And already since the start of the year it’s a past the first page.

And the book is teaching me lessons already: Page one’s squares were measured and neatly spaced. Page two’s are are more in keeping with my style: eye-balled, uneven, bit wonky in places.

After the first few weeks I’ve wandered off from just doodle/painting to include collaged bits – fragments of that day’s doings. It intrigues me how different the mood of each day looks. It intrigues me to see how the coming weeks and months will look, and the lessons they will bring.

The Stretchiness of Time

2015 was tied up in this book, in the rigidity of one page: one week, when some weeks felt empty of expression and some pages felt too small for all that was flooding out of my imagination.

By mid year it had taken on a thick, heavy persona with paint all gooey and chewy and some weeks where no amount of layers would cover up the uncomfortable truths of ugly: a parallel to the world it was illustrating. Something intangibly off. Something meh. Some things I didn’t like, didn’t like confronting, didn’t like to witness. I didn’t want to relive, repeat, or even properly acknowledge.

The book served a purpose: A lesson in being a grown up is knowing when to persevere, and when to stop. I persevered. And when the year was up I was glad the book was full. Finished. Finally time to move on. Onto what next.

What next?

…And then a really long time seemed to pass, and I rested. A really long time that went quickly, and dragged slowly and passed in a flash.
Because Time is Weird like that…

I found myself cutting out shapes from magazine pages, scrap paper and junk mail. Something was stirring, I didn’t know what…

Last week I fell into a new facebook group run by the gorgeously art journally Orly Avineri. It was the catalyst I needed to jump into this new book.

I’ve got gesso under my nails and ink on my face again.

I feel like I’ve come home!

This book is different, there are no limitations and no rules.

Free to fly in and out, land a while –

‘Take a closer look’ – the serendipity of the cut up.

– chat with my thoughts, flit off again.

It takes as long as it takes.

I’m getting more and more aware that by pouring out my unconscious I can steer myself through this life in a fashion not like anything else.

It’s a compulsion.

You get this too, right?

Everything that was feeling stale and sludgy has dropped away since just this first page.

Life feels like spring time: new pages are beginning to blossom.

A Year in Mixed Media ~ part one

Throughout 2015 I completed a mixed media art journal, one page each week.

Some weeks were easier, some were colourful, some were hard to start and some were hard to finish. Both in terms of the art, and in terms of the weeks out of which the pages emerged.

It’s all metaphors, right?

This year I’m revisiting my year of mixed media, and bringing the pages to life in a different form. Here I was, one year ago:

Starting out here, in January 2015, a blank book (year) ahead – full of possibilities

Week 1 unfolded, bright, wordy and eye-filled.

Week 2 was a big ole brain dump. Funny how this process cements moments into the memory.

I remember listening to podcasts and YouTube things as I doodled this out. Words and phrases filtered through my ears down, out through my drawing hand – sometimes verbatim – sometimes slightly altered by the messages I heard inside the words.

‘Make 2015 the year you question everything’, said the scrap of paper. Glued into my book, glued into my imagination, this phrase was to inform the way the coming months played out. Question Everything.

Week 3: Comfortably into the new year I was setting myself some targets. I achieved the specific ones – way quicker than I expected too. But reflecting from a year further into this life, I see how woolly and unquantifiable some were. Lately I’ve been listening to Leonie Dawson. Do you know her? She’s also loud, smiley, fun and colourful. I like her a lot. She’s big on goal setting. I’m following her wisdom this time round.

5openbagua93

Week 4 found time to pause for thought. I was brimming with optimism, which mirrored again this year as a time so rich in potential and beginningness. As much as anything else, I’m getting to know me a while lot better through doing this. Turns out that’s my happy place: just on the cusp of an ending and a beginning. (Oh, and in case you’re wondering – the computer came back in full health – having not forgotten anything).

Week 5 – the cross over from January into February. Another big week. (They’re even bigger looking back – it’s a trick of perspective, maybe).

So as we turn into the next month today, this seems a good point to pause. Part two will follow along soon.

Heart Wide Open 3 of 3

The final chapter of the book

“I believe in the good things coming…
More pages more words to my story,
More grace, more meaning unfoldin’…
Everything’s already alright,
Everything’s already alright…”

~ Nahko Bear

Find all the book here……………..

~ Part 1
~ Part 2
~ Part 3

Heart Wide Open :: Part 2

Yesterpost I showed you the first of three chapters of my book. So without any further fussing, here’s the next one.

~ Part 1
~ Part 2
~ Part 3

The Year of the Heart Wide Open

Earlier this year I embarked on an art project that crept up on me and took me unaware. I didn’t see its approach – no rustling in the background – no warning at all.

One moment it wasn’t there at all in my world, then BOOM it was there: front and centre in my field of attention, large as life, impatient to be made. Suddenly the biggest most important messy painty colorful thing in my life was this book:

The Complete Short Stories of W Somerset Maugham (volume 3).

I’m not sure where it came from, but somewhere down the line I rescued this shabby orphaned volume from an uncertain fate.

It’s destiny now was to become an ingredient for ART.

Along with the stacks of magazines I set to work on filling the book with colour and collage.

Over the course of a few months this book became my retreat from the doubts and the obstacles in the outside world. When ideas weren’t showing up for me, I dove into the book and let my unconscious put together shapes and words. When in doubt, play.

I’ve shown you some of the developmental stages already, but now the book has got to a point I’m calling pretty much finished I thought you might like to see it altogether in a flip through.

The song, from whence I adopted this title, is by Winterbloom* and is in the movie Indie Kindred. *since I put together the video a couple of months ago the Winterbloom website seems to have fallen off the interwebz. Such is the constant moving and changing of the world.

When I watched the film this song got caught up in the wheels of my mind. It’s all about creative collaborations and the mutual support of the tribe, which mirrored a lot of what’s been going on for me lately. And this year I have felt my life open up to a new phase. This book is one of its illustrations.

With more than 40 pages the flip is separated into 3 episodes. I’ll share them over the next few days by way of something bright and fun as my holiday gift to you, dear digital friends. With much love X

~ Part 1
~ Part 2
~ Part 3