manifesto – Mixy's Art Blog

I wrote a manifesto!

For reals!

100 layers by mixy manifesto — #100layersbymixy Manifesto

I was telling you yesterpost how I came to pick my project, how I’m exploring beyond my usual painting boundaries.

How I’ll manifest this challenge:

For the 100 days from 3rd April to 15 July, I’m going to share my creative process.
Some will be on Instagram (follow along on #100layersbymixy )
Some over here on this blog
Some will be just in my newsletters (scroll on down to the end of this post to sign up if wanna get all the deliciousness of my project!)

I’m going to make a series of multi-layered paintings and time lapse the process, so there will be videos and photos to share.

Plus all the other layers: the ones that aren’t the actual paint and paper:

The layers of unfolding ideas,
The inspiration from what I listen to while I create,
The ideas & thoughts that lie underneath the images that appear on the canvas.

It’s going to be epic, folks!

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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.