Mixed Media – Page 16 – Mixy's Art Blog

Sanctuary in Now 37/52

It’s been all this time since I posted. Cos I’ve been away.
But I’ve kept the book of weekly pages running, and so here we are with the page from the week before last.

Somewhere nice? Nah, it wasn’t that sort of away.

I didn’t leave the place, I just left the usual. I left the ordinary responsibilities of being me.
Time away to recombobulate.

I’ve been hiding out here in a sanctuary of colors.
Lost in time and lost in patterns.

And between you and me, I still haven’t gone back.
And between you and me, I’m not sure if I will.

Thing is, I’m just realising now as I explain my days to you, I’m making sense of it as I go along.
The reason I find so much warm comfort in these simple scribbles, blocks and lumps of colour…

As a kid I loved – more than almost anything – the simple pleasure of colouring in. It was as a meditative process then as it is now.

The only time I’ve had an out of body experience was sitting cross legged on my bed, aged about 9 or so, colouring in. I remember it like it was yesterday. My train of thoughts had wandered away from me and as I tried to back-track a mantra began to form in my head “what was it I was just thinking about – what was it I was just thinking about – what was it….’ then WHOOOSH I was somewhere up above looking down at this little girl sitting cross legged on my bed, colouring in.

In the moment I recognised that as me and had time to think Wow! and then How do I get back down? I was back.

I wanted to do it again. And I didn’t. But I did. Not for the first time I was utterly freaked.

So the part of my consciousness that heard How do I get back down? and set me back in my body, prevented me from trying (properly) again.

I carried on colouring.

So I’ve rediscovered this simple joy again as I’ve found myself still wanting to escape the real world in the way I did then as a little girl. I think the magic of getting lost in these colours is amplified by the knowledge that if I wanted to I could probably re-conjure that state again.

I’m soothed by the process, but I’m not looking to disappear now. I spent way to much life in escapism, I inherited traits and tricks that I see now didn’t serve me so well. I’m unpicking that past one bit at a time. Facing up to some ghosts.

Circumstances have set themselves out in front of me in a way I can’t ignore any more. This time I’m stepping up instead.

Fueled by Doubt 36/52

I look at them in their lives and their worlds, they do their things and they live their days.

I can do that. Look – watch me – I’m doing my things and living my days.

And then I turn sideways, and vanish.

Where did I go? All the fear folded in on me.

It all looked too big, I left. It’s all too familiar, so I run. .I hide from being me.

How am I not like the other people? Reasons crumple under their own weight and all the ideas dissolve into dust

Who thought the simple act of being me would become such a challenge, such a confusion, so fueled by doubt.

When this happens a lot I wonder if I should stop pretending.

Pretending the other people are real, or pretending I am.

I wonder at these words and fragments, at what will come next.

Most people will understand,

But most people aren’t real. Most people don’t exist.

Courage, Faith, Trust. 33/52

Scribbled things. Filled in with nonsense and part heard words

Dabs, daubs, splosh. Dragged, drawn out, drawn on.

And more, and further. Anemones? meteors? Some frenzied chaos. (I honestly don’t know.)

But as usual, I like the details best of all

The title for this week – Courage, Faith, Trust – came from the same-named scrap of paper that got itself collaged into the frenzy. (it appeared a week early, as it’s numbered 34) but it also calls up the essence of this practice. Courage, Faith and Trust in the process:

Keep showing up, don’t plan, don’t expect, just keep doing and making and going. And all will be well.

Ramping up 32/52

Life is flooding along.

I measure out every one of these weeks and I see it unfurl new aspects, new intrigues.

I don’t always tell you them – are they interesting to anyone but me?
Well, here you go:
These are three new facets of life which entered my world this week …..

The Speakeasy videos from the Wanderlust Festi.
The words are from Danielle Laporte’s talk ‘The Soul of Ambition’

IMG_5440a — *This weeks page is powered by left-overs from another project. (Too many to throw away)*

Tulsi Tea – I’m taking a rest from coffee in the interests of resting my adrenals and settling my cortisol levels. I’ve switched to Tulsi. It’s really grown on me. Yes, I kinda do miss coffee, but as a temporary substitute I’m glad it’s part of my world.

and finally:

Sauerkraut – from my ongoing fascination with all things prebiotic, probiotic & gut biome related.

An eclectic mix. Meanwhile, amid the above the following page took shape thus-ly:

See the face? 29/52

Close up, week 29 looked like this…

A lot of layers, a lot of buried words. A lot of rich, warm colour

Did you see the face?

fullmoon meltdown (26/52)

Everything begins with an idea. Everything.

See the little tiny bits of neon pink in there? That’s the idea that set this page running. I saw this colour in the art shop forever-ago. I’m not a pinky kinda person but I had a really visceral attraction to this particularly teeth-jangling shade, and it was in my head until I had to buy it last week.

It’s a colour that says Bite Me.

If I was in charge of naming paint colours it would be called Don’tFuckAbout Pink. Then for some reason that wouldn’t be allowed. So I’d call it BiteMe Pink. Then I’d get a job someplace else cos I can’t tolerate that level of being told what I can’t say, or what I can’t call colours.

But I digress….

Thing is, I didn’t know what this page would draw out of me. All I knew was it was going to be powerful, virtue of is starting out as these three modest shouts of BiteMe Pink.

Even under all this noise, they can still be heard.

And it was a cacophonous week.

The weekend in the middle (my weeks begin on a Thursday, remember? please keep up) consisted of more than my usual level of soul searching at a creativity workshop. Meeting with extraordinary minds and beautiful souls. Deeply spirit rattling. Still feeling the ripples now. And breathe….

This week concluded the first half of the year.
And this week concluded with a big fat full moon
And the hottest day of the year,
And a literal fullmoon meltdown.

It was monuMENTAL

As illustrated by the many layered frenetic scribbles.

Coalescing finally, as this….

“Be Real ~ Be Awake ~ Be Present ~ Be Now”

Create Your Own Map (22/52)

This recurring instruction: Create Your Own Map.
It’s what I’m endeavoring to do.
I’m mapping my way as I go.
I document when I remember,
I share when I think it might help.

Starting out in the usual fashion:

Colours and curls,
Cut outs, collaging the inconsequential,
daubs, dabs, smudgy smear.

State the intention.

Then populate:

Look up, look down. Look around

Remember it’s the journey not the destination.

Two Views (21/52)

Art journalers who embrace the unplanned,

who find their mojo in the serendipitous,

whose ideas bloom out of happenstance:

these folks will know this old trick: Squash that inky stencil between future pages of the book in which you’re playing and get the two-folded benefits of not wasting a drop of delicious colour and planting the seed for a creation yet to be born. That’s where this page began:

And another familar trick: glue in a load of the offcuts of paper that are littering the work table. Much of this was soon to be lost under layers of heavy paint. But that’s the nature of the ephemeral.

Last week’s pages were dominated by these faces. And where there are cut outs, there are the spaces from which they are cut. Add them to the gluings:

So I felt called towards bigger colors. More defining. Louder.

It came out as something a bit Easter Islandish, I like the way they are looking out:
One into the past, one into the future.

Chapter Next: The Letter

Another week, another page in the altered book to show you.

I notice sometimes when I’m working on a project, just how little control I have. It’s not that I don’t know where it’s going, I’m not even steering the way. It’s going its own course and I’m simply wielding the brush or the pen or the whatever-it-is.

Some sort of external force does all the decision making. It took my inner control freak a long while to learn to rest back and let this happen. (Sometimes she worries so. I distract her with thoughts of cheese and music and cushions. She chills, we move on)

This page was a bit of a hotch-potch til the latter stages when it seemed to start coming together.

See what I mean?

I mean it’s not lost it’s hotch-potchery vibe, but I feel like it’s crossed the line from uncoordinated chaos to cohesive vision. Although you aren’t seeing what will be the finally finished thing, it’s a large part of the way there. More again soon.

Chapter Next: Mirage

Some the pages in my altered book are already conveniently titled. The book began as an orphaned volume of short stories, and some of the tales’ titles just appealed too much to cover up.

Doesn’t Mirage just conjure such magic?

I haven’t embarked on any of these pages with a plan. Planning just isn’t in my spirit. I didn’t get that gene.

So to begin I just do something, and let that define where it wanders next. The first something that happened on this page took the form of sprinkles of Brusho swept about in circles with a wet brush.

Oh my how I love how these dusty crystals explode with colour. This stuff is the definition of less is more. More than a wee bit makes for a super rich gravy of an ink, which is gorgeous, but when you use an imperceptibly itsy amount each tiny trace of this magic erupts into zingy pigment on contact with moisture.

It is more than gorgeous. It is actual magic.

Another early layer was gesso scraped through a stencil, then extra messy gesso scraped haphazardly. If you’re a fellow scraper of gesso you’ll recognise those characteristic windshield wiper patterns of clearing excess off the scraper 😉

In the years preceding this project I accumulated a shed load of design magazines, rich full of the most gorgeous graphics and illustration. Just lately I embarked on transforming the knee high heap into 4 boxes of delicious collage ingredients, and a small mountain of recycling.

Thing is, I don’t know who this half a face belonged to, and as an artist I’d like to credit the creator. Any reference to the inventor got lost in the snippings. If it was you – thank you – and I hope that you like the new other half I made. In the spirit of self-portraiture I’ve mismatched the eyes for a familiar wonkiness!