new beginning – Mixy's Art Blog

unruliness

Last month I declared my intent for a new phase of being me.

The new rules? there are no rules. This is my age of unruliness!

So to start off I’m simplifying; I’m streamlining.

I’m de-cluttering my life both literally and figuratively. Honestly, permanently and fundamentally. It’s proving a wrench to begin, if I’m honest about it, but I do believe once I build up a bit of momentum there’ll be nothing to stop me.

I’ve heard good things about Marie Kondo’s book “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up”, so I’m watching this as a substitute for reading it. I can’t add to the pile of to-read-next books that’s remained untouched for an uncomfortably long time now. And I love irony. I still can’t.

Through the first 45 years of this life I gathered and collected. I took things on and things built up – actual things and symbolic things – I inherited these traits along with a lot of accumulated junk and an assortment of mismatched thought patterns and beliefs.

And the conclusion I’ve drawn from looking into this? it’s exhausting, confusing and not something I’m prepared to pursue any further.

I’m really going to shake this whole bag of nonsense up and see what sticks and what falls off. If it falls off it’s not mine to care about any more.

Climbing out of that old existence. This time is my time.

I plan to free up enough space that I can stretch out both arms and touch the outer edges of my imagination. I think that this colourful outpouring is part of that process and all these troubled tense scribbles are an outlet. As are the hectic dreams of monsters and gremlins that bite my arms and chew on my feet in my sleep.

I want to be free to explore the dreams I always knew would find their time.

Their time is now.

The Egg

Have I told you before about my fascinations with metaphysics? I saw this today, it just bobbed up on my facebook newsfeed ..

Which is funny, because I remember reading this same story some time, like forever or so ago, and it really stuck with me. It made sense. It had a sense of completeness to it that sat comfortably in my mind. But I forgot the name or the writer, or where I’d read it, or the title, and no amount of guess-Googling had brought me back to it. Until this morning. And there it was.

It really made me smile, cos in this last week or so I’ve been reading Mike Dooley’s Manifesting Change, and I’ve also been listening to a bunch of the Abraham Hicks stuff on YouTube. And there are just so many parallels in the way they describe this whole what-are-we-doing-here and what’s-it-all-about-ness and the essence of what I take from this story.

This whole beautiful synchronicity makes me smile inside with such happy. It makes sense to me. I love the whole knitted-togetherness of each of these individually, and then of them altogether collectively. And the metaphor of an egg just seems to fit.

I’ve had some fantastically vivid dreams lately, and two nights ago I had a whole heap of very loud, clear metaphors for new beginnings: planting seeds, young animals (kittens mostly) and eggs. Eggs again! I’m working on some new exciting projects (more of which later) and there’s a really big feeling of new beginningness going on round here!

So that’s how my week is setting out, I hope yours is sprinkled with joy, anticipation and optimism too.

New Beginnings

It’s that time of year, time of life, time of day.. it’s also the name of an exhibition I have some work in.

The title is open to interpretation but it got me thinking about the saying What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.

an untidy desk is the sign of... — an untidy desk is the sign of…

So with my fav kind of glorious inky messy, the divinely joyous, the snipping up of little bits of paper, the gluing bits accidentally to my sleeves, hair, floor… and the itsy small doodles on the wings… the magical making process, another project began to unfurl.

I remembered how I hadn’t done this for so long – let the inner kid out to play without any rules or boundaries – well, one – just do butterflies. We jumped in with both feet!

I began with 3 different butterfly images, digitally reduced to grey-scale, then high contrast mono before printing in a few different sizes. Some flipped over to fly in the opposite direction.

Enough of the tidy digital world, enough of the pristine pixel arrangement. Time for IK to make a mess with layers of inky goodness before cutting out the little beasties for collaging, and extra doodles.

So far there are 2 framed collages, and a series of cards. I’m in the process of setting them up over on DeviantArt so prints are available too ……….. and I’ve got another little side project where they’ll be flitting through too -> watch this space!

I will always be learning: day 1 :D

Well folks, I’m happy to report the course is running! Big thanks for all your kind support – it really worked!

I haven’t got my student loan through yet, but I’ve got my ID badge and I had first day today!

The story, so far…

Enrollment on Monday was the usual fiasco… but that seems to be the nature of enrollment days. Which baffles me every time, they do it every year, right?

Randomly we were sent about from room to room with groups of other students, and everybodyTalkingAtOnceAndVeryHighSpirits, and then to an induction to the photo studio – which I found the most useful part of the day – although one part-time technician + more than one dedicated photography courses means …well, we’ll see.

I left with very mixed feelings: I have such strong memories of the foundation course 2 years ago. Exhillerating, Mind-expanding, Enlightening, Exciting, So so Stressful, the Self-Doubt, Criticism – internal and external, Judgement, Exhausting, Draining, and Fantastic. I came out with a group of friends I know I’ll keep in touch with for a very long time. And more ideas than I thought my head could contain. And some of gloomiest moments of what’s the point of it all-ism. And an overwhelming need for more. Art IS a drug.

Can I do 3 more years of this? Can it ever live up to that fantastic year? Am I trying to relive the past? A lot of inspiring tutors had taken redundancy last year, the department is stretched. The facilities are ok. Old and tatty, but it has a homely feel.

The course runs Wednesday and Thursday, plus Monday mornings (a bonus 1/2 day of learning. Guess I can juggle to squeeze it in). Advertised to start next week, it began today. Depending who you ask, it’s either Art & Design or Fine Art. Details, details I guess. It’s just there are so many of them.

Throughout Tuesday I swung radically between Pro or Con. I made the decision to give it two weeks. Unless this week was enough to judge, in which case I’d give it one week.

Day One

We are a friendly group of 9, most already know each other from last year, there are 2 others from my year.

As an intro, we were asked to bring an example of recent work and give a short presentation. Well, as you know all my recent art is part of a larger (8 weeks @ a page a day!) format.

I’m going to let you into a little secret here………..
Until today, you were the only ppl who’d seen my project.

I’ve liked it like that, but it was also fun to take him (the book) out into the other world… as I explained why I hadn’t just taken a page or two from the book, I found myself describing him as ‘like a little animal I’ve been feeding and nurturing’. Looking back that might have sounded strange.

In the afternoon we were given 2 hours to produce 10 A3 line drawings from around the college, the theme: structure. As my brain ached from the struggle of translating 3D structures to flat pencil lines (strictly no shading) I thought back to all those hours of drawing practice I’d promised myself, but instead allowed IK distract me into something more messy, colorful, and with sugar-high instant gratification!

I had forgot how mentally and physically just concentrating really hard can be! The mental version of running a marathon straight after a fortnight in bed with flu. And having eaten a big roast dinner. Wearing flip-flops. I told the tutor this. She suggested it was more like a 1/2 marathon.

Some hours on, the drawings don’t look so bad, only one or two were a struggle to identify.

I’m back on that rollercoaster of a learning curve – Weyhey!

beginning of a new adventure

I started the page a day project on 16 March this year. 3 books and 6 months later, what began as a whim rapidly snowballed into an all-out obsession, and I have loved ever minute of it!

This is starting to sound a bit final, a bit endy, and it isn’t that at all. Although I won’t be starting the inevitable book 4 straight away…

Tomorrow I enrol at art school to begin my degree.

I did the same last year, but cos of lack of applicants/the college’s hugely disorganised system, we found out on enrollment day there was no degree course.

My fallback plan was to use this year as training, practice, to develop and explore my creativity alone.

It’s my belief that life throws us curve balls sometimes which don’t make sense til later. It turned out that the last year also saw my home life turned upside down. If I’d been at school most likely I would’ve missed time and been fairly unfocussed as a result. Instead what I needed to balance this chaos was plenty of quiet alone time and to throw my soul into my art. Which I’ve certainly done!

At the time of typing to you, I’m in that space between kid-on-christmas-eve-anticiptation and yeh-like-it’s-gonna-actually-happen-this-time-cynicism. Gotta say, this isn’t a comfy space, but one way or the other, I’ll know by this time tomorrow!

So, watch this space folks – I’ll let you know tomorrow! 😉