weekly art journal – Page 5

Shadow Monkeys (8/52 cont/d)

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.

An Unintentional Mermaid (8/52)

Week 8 of the page a week looked like this:

And it must be the most colourful yet. It’s also the most full of subconscious tells – I’m only starting seeing now I look back from a few days later. Like the green mermaid/peacock – I didn’t draw her but she emerged from a funny little cross-leggedy figure and the phrase ‘move toward’ and some doodles.

I’ve got no idea at all what that means (yet).

There’s a lot of scribbly writing on this week, from an outpouring of encouraging words & phrases I was trying to sooth my brain with. You’ll catch glimpses of them here n there altho a lot are now buried under drawing.

She believed she could and she did.

Cos gosh darn it if that hasn’t been the case recently! And I’ve still riding that wave, so it goes down in the book as a marker of the time I’m in.

Move Toward. If I had a strategy for life, it would be that. As opposed to the alternates: running away from, or worse: sitting in stagnation. I’ve tried both of these approaches in the past. The results haven’t been so good.

Since I began this page-a-week game I’ve become aware how often the opportunity for another list of intentions comes up – it’s almost weekly!

Since forever it’s been a thing I do at the start of a month, and on a New Moon. The big ones are New Year (often I begin this at Winter Solstice), and there’s Chinese (Lunar) New Year which fell last week.

You see what I mean?

No wonder I’m so often listing the same things.

So for the record, here are my intentions for Year of the Goat/Sheep/Ram/Ovicaprid

Raise my vibration – belong
Use my time – spread my thoughts
Make more – share more
Love more – Read more – learn more
Collaborate – Assimilate – Consolidate
Stretch out – Drink in
Sleep well – Eat well
Trust the process
Find my tribe – Share stories

These flooded out in a sorta stream of consciousness so I can’t offer much by way of explanation for them. More I hope will become apparent in the course of time. Hey – they’ve got a year to puzzle themselves into fruition!

Wordful Week 7/52

Week 7 turned out to be a wordy week. And full of stuff : New (super) Moon, Valentines, I hit my weight lifting target that I set at the start of the year…. All in all, a week of giddying goodness. And…..

My Birthday, which involved coffee, cake and kitties at Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium in Bethnal Green. I am soppy in the extreme about cats and since my home has been empty of furry friends for a few years now… you can imagine this was like the ultimate in birthday fun for me!

When I saw this list I knew right away it had a place in the book of 2015 : these are the things that matter to me:

To Be An Explorer of the World:

Always be looking (notice the ground beneath your feet)
Consider Everything alive & animate
Everything is interesting – look closer
Observe for long durations and short ones
Alter your course often
Notice the stories going on around you
Notice patterns: Make Connections
Document your findings (field notes) in a variety of ways
Incorporate interdeterminancy
Observe movement
Create a personal dialogue with your environment: Talk to it
Trace all things back to their origins
Use all of the senses in your investigations.

It sits neatly alongside the list of new moon intentions (which tbh are not much different from the last few intention lists. Basic stuff I’m trying hard to hammer home in the subconscious).

Love is in the air: Love and Be Loved

I guess it’s fitting that my love of words and lists is really prominent this week! These things that bobbed up on my horizon this week (would love to credit where they came from, but only there long enough to scribble down before getting buried in a million tangential thoughts and surfs and immediately-pressing-need-to-knows that the www sends my way.) The second one is more mantra/affirmationy:

I’m neither doomed nor completely free
But I’m creating my future with every word, every action, every thought.
I find myself in a very dynamic situation with unimaginable potential,
I have all the support I need to simply relax and be with the transitional, in process quality of my life. I have all I need to engage in the process of awakening.

Thank you to whoever put those words together and sent them into the internet ether. I get where you’re coming from and I wish you happy adventures.

So that was last week… a scattering of butterflies (more next week – new project I’m about to launch into later today), and again with the eyefish. What’s with the eyefish? Srsly?! X

Week 6: Confusion sets in.

All that about loving weeks beginning on a thursday…. what was I on about?! I’m not embracing this self-imposed confusion right now! (I’d meant to type I’m NOW embracing, but clearly I’m not, that’s a subconscious truth leakage!)

SO quick before this week’s gone as welll … Week #6 of 2015 looked like this:

The week that my daemon manifested himself in glorious turquoise velvetty form.

See, he did look a bit more cat than dragon in the planning stages… His early plannings are nestled up with left over fabric (sorry, fur – feathers – scales??) snippets

Close you eyes, fall in love, stay there. (Rumi)

And the best advice I heard all week.

Behind the times 5/52

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!

4/52 Week-ends & Breathing Space

So week (page) 4 of the year (book) ends, and so does a project I’ve been working on for (what feels like) ever!

Week 4 is a wholehearted week, in all senses.

My computer is in for repairs this week, so my usual work is temporarily suspended. Last night I finally finished up this thing I’ve been working on for ages. It’s left a curious sense of spaciousness in my world. I can stretch out my hands and not touch any overrun deadlines, in any direction.

I know this grates with some folks, but I relentlessly endeavour to find the silver lining to any situation. It’s a challenge I can’t resist. It appeals to my stubbornly optimistic nature. So I’ve embraced the computer free week. Either my data survives or it doesn’t. My files are in a Schrodinger’s cat state and will be for a few more days.

While there’s nothing I can do to change this state so I’m enjoying being away from a cold office, I’m getting on with other stuff. To be honest, if this hadn’t happened, the other thing would likely not be finished yet. (I’ll show you that thing in a future post)

This afternoon I sat in a coffee shop making plans for what I’ve got lined up next to do in a relaxed, calm brain-zone. Such a refreshing change.

My engine is idling and I’m planning the next leg of my route. It’s all good.

And I’ll be back on the road again soon, come whatever.

What the eye-fish?

It might look like I’ve been deliberately obtuse about the eye-fish thing…

What can I say, they appear in groups of three, and so far 2 of the 3 weeks of this new year’s book have hosted a set.

Yeh, really, they aren’t eyes, they aren’t fish. Eyes and fish are quite different things, and tbh, this one looks like it’s sprouted backward facing legs with which to march, tail first into the unknown.

But that’s just my drawing style – everything piled up on each other style. It’s really a trick of perspective. The eye-fish is, in actuality, some way off in the distance, and hugely bigger than the foreground scribbley yogini attempting to master Warrior 1 pose.

But if you know me at all, you’ll know, it’s not in my nature to be cryptic. So this is as baffling to me as it is to you.

Here are the facts as I understand them to be:

I draw what arrives in my head when I stop thinking.
Eye shape and fish shape are largely interchangable to me.
I think that thinking about the word Focus has had a bearing on my subconcious. (This doesn’t account for the fish)
They hang out in threes, cos having drawn the traditional arrangement of two, I have to (recent compulsion) add a third. I’ve been getting a lot of dreams involving third eyes (more on that another time).
The third eye is a thing. I didn’t make this up. It’s just not a literal viewing hole in the face (mostly anyhow)

So there we are, more info and less sense. It’s all a big brain-dump. Making sense is an improbable ask.

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.

the midweek weekend

I love and hate time.

I don’t believe in time per se, not as a strictly regulated measured thing. I think of it more as a malleable substance that (with practice) can be manipulated. And with just the tiniest amount of neglect, can run away (forever).

Some years ago I worked an office job Tuesday to Friday. It worked out well. I did my own thing on the weekends and took Mondays off. Sometimes I took a 3 day break. I enjoyed that choice of freedoms.

Then things changed: I switched to just Thursday-Friday in the office.

And time went totally out of control.

Suddenly I had a 5-day stretch of not exactly weekend, and before I knew it I was beginning another ‘week’. The whole thing spiraled out of control and the weeks and months flew at a devastating rate. I didn’t enjoy this and only lasted it out less than a year (which felt like a lot less!)

Sure, I know many folks who wish their working weeks away, but that’s wishing away a lifetime bit by bit. If you hate your work, change it, don’t rush through in the hope that one day you’ll be on vacation, retired, dead, or whatever is lined up next.

Nowadays I work for myself. I have some regular routines, but they’re all flexible. I wake up early and have long days (thank you insomnia – some days are verrrry long!)

I think the key is to keep mixing it up.

My newest routine is the page-a-week art journal. Today starts week 3, which as the year began on a Thursday, so now do my weeks (in a sense).

It’s helped lift the pressure of the Monday to Friday VS Saturday/Sunday rut that’s so ingrained. One week ends on a Wednesday, Another begins the next, another ends the next. Perhaps it’s like I’m squeezing 2 weeks into every 7 days, but it’s really slowed it down to a manageable pace!