transforming shadows – Mixy's Art Blog

Week eight of 2015: a busy page that’s warranted 2 posts…

And that’s without any mention of the butterflies.

Or Steve Jobs. But that’s all for another day…

The thing I wanted to tell you about now is monkey related:
Since I spent a weekend in conversation with my daemons, they’ve been magicking themselves into apparency here, there & all over. This week they’ve manifested in a semi-Cubist, heavy handed biro scrawl, merged, their tribal Día de Muertos faces peering out from the recesses of the page.

We’ve been sharing the available space in this mind for a few decades. It’s refreshing to shift the power balance between ‘them’ and ‘us’ (for want of better terms).

So when I read the post from Danny Gregory this week, asking for tales from our Monkeys, another bunch of dots connected: Monkey minded me, the battles with my daemons, and all the reasons it took me so long to go to art school.

I dedicated a corner of a page to the Monkeys (they were chief trouser-wearers and direction-choosers in my life for way too long. They get a corner to play in now. I get the rest of the page. That is ALL) A place to start unscrambling some thoughts:

These are the bare bones of those thoughts:

My monkeys bewilder me with their faultlessly formed logic.

They have faith only in the opinions and the hard-hearted snipes of the the hardcore cynics. They know why I can’t and what I can’t and all the reasons why.

They will poke at me with pointy sticks if I turn my back on them for long. They stand in my way. They say: don’t show yourself, not your real self, cos then the haters aren’t hating the real you. You tricked the haters, the mean kids, the ones who know. You win. See?

The monkey’s logic is flawed at a level so deep I sometimes forget : Do not trust the monkeys.

It was the Monkey’s determination that as art isn’t a real job, and work isn’t supposed to be fun, and all the associated hooey, that defined my existence until quite recently. A large part of life (by my reckoning) is unpicking the knots that we spend the preceding years tying ourselves up in. Unattended monkeys will continue tying knots.

Last week was such a wild week, full speed ahead into the future. …. Big mental adventures, idea exploration, culmination and loose end tying. And then the massive full moon on Tuesday. Maybe that’s why it’s taken until now to post last night week’s page.

This is where it started out: a splurge of words came tumbling… so many they needed watering down. (Literally)

Edit/note to self: a daemon from a daemon (transformed)

I’d spent the weekend at Jamie Catto’s Transforming Shadows workshop. I’ll post more about that separately once it’s settled more in my head – suffice to say for now, transformation occurred! And it led me back to a bit of face drawing, I haven’t done this in a while…

The theme of the workshop was centred around befriending inner demons. As each day the page evolved the faces developed, coming more into their own. And the big full moon started to dominate.

Something tribal feeling began to show. I’ve had an increasing sense I need to find my Tribe. And the page seems to be reinforcing that. (Gotta love the way art unfolds answers to questions you didn’t know you were asking)

As a marker of time and achievement, the final additions: collaged left over bits of the project I completed this week, oh and a big ole FIFTY. Cos guess how many kilos I lifted at the gym this week? 😉 Gotta love a round number milestone!