Growing up I lived in many different places, city and country. We had modern tract homes, lived in Victorians, run-of-the-mill city homes, apartments and out-of-the-way hovels with treehouses. We lived in a tent one summer, and a lean-to another. Our family built a log house from scratch, and we lived many years there without water or electricity.
We moved at least once a year every year of my children, many years we changed residences several times. This had a lot of effect on various aspects of my life, and it really impacted my creative urges. I take great joy from the re-modeling, renovation or creation of a dwelling. I love to make a place my own.
Many times in my life I have dreamed of creating a home from out of the earth, a more roundy, eccentric amorphous earthy green-energy based structure. I’ve seen it in my dreams, visited it in visions, and held that I would actually live there someday. It has much the feel and look of the house built by Simon Dale for his family in Wales. I just look at those photos or photos of the Hobbit homes and I am nostalgic for my dreams.
Several years ago, my good friend Jeralynn bought a place with a bunch of acres on the Consumnes River. She shares many of the same dreams as I when it comes to building practices and being gentle on the earth. I get the great joy of staying in the guest cabin with a cob stove for New Years. Our band, Souls Journey, is going to play and lead a Kiirtan/sing-a-long for whoever shows up to celebrate. Building joy in community.
Adding a new discipline to my schedule sometimes takes a bit. A few days ago, I fell into the pit in the middle of the street (metaphorically). I didn’t even realize it until that evening, when I became aware that I had not drunk any water (or any other liquid) all day, nor had I eaten anything. I didn’t go for the intended walk that I had committed to, and I only managed to get in 5 minutes of painting ( I have committed to 15 minutes per day no matter what) that day too.
I sat at the computer all that time, working at tedious and stressful things, in extreme discomfort and even pain. That is the dysfunctional pit that I used to get stuck in. I learned how to get out of it quite a long time ago, and even started taking a totally “different road” but suddenly this week I discovered that I had sleep-walked right back in there.
I am choosing to look at this setback as a growth challenge. I still have not walked, however I am prodding myself into active consciousness. These little lapses of self -discipline are a gentle reminder to me to open up to guidance – the Muse, higher power, whatever word works for you – because if it’s up to me to manage myself , I get too cerebral and mess things up. I begin to think that it’s up to me to figure it all out, and I literally drive myself crazy. And my art suffers. I can manage my art right into “dead”.
So I have dug myself back out of the pit, again, and I’m trying to find that different road once more.
I lived a good portion of my life up in the high dessert area of the truly northern part of California. Living there, I learned a lot about wells: how they are are much preferred to hauling water by hand from the creek, how to douse for them, how to not try to dig them by hand, and the destruction caused by running a well dry. Most every man-dug well provides only so many gallons per minute.
Depending on my own will power and thought processes, I also produce a limited outcome. However, my personal creativity well seems to operate on a different system when I remember to lean into Spirit or the Muse. In that case, it more closely resembles the blessing of an artesian well. The more I tap into the source the more I fill up.
Lately, I have been focusing a portion of everyday on leaning in. Every workday morning before my husband heads off for work, I pick up a pen and expect a Daily Napkin to be written. I have committed myself to at least 15 minutes of pure joy painting every 24 hours. I always bring a sketch book with me, and take the time to draw over a cup of tea when out and about. This practice is expansive. The more I do, the more urge for creative expression arises. Sometimes I wonder how much joy I can handle.
I have been working for awhile now with Melissa Dinwiddie and Cory Huff in the inner circle at artempowers.me, and now I am working further with Melissa in her Creative Ignition Club. A lot of work. Empowering, expansive, creative, simply joyous work. I’ve completely redone my website. I’ve done a lot of emotional clearing, strategizing, conspiring to create, and inner examination. I am now conducting my art business as a business.
An art business focused on serving up my art makes me my companys biggest asset. Suddenly, I owe it to my business to take care of me.
And now I paint. Before, I was working 12-16 hour days, and hardly allowing myself the opportunity to paint or do my own creative work at all. I kept putting off what I really enjoy until some day, when I would have the time. Then, I woke up to the fact that that day would never arrive unless I declared it so. Even more important to my business is that if I don’t paint, we run out of assets.
With that realization in mind, I joined the Creative Ignition Club, where I would join with others on a similar journey and receive encouragement, coaching and tools to change my day to day operations to support my art business. In the club I have dedicated myself to a minimum of 15 minutes everyday to pure joy painting, making the time happen, carving it out of the seemingly uncarvable. So far, it has really meant at least an hour, and more often several hours a day. Oh, joy of joys!
I’ve heard it said that if you want God to laugh, tell him you’ve got plans. Well, a comic by nature, I did just that. I have been re-building my website one page at a time for quite some while. I was being painstaking because I wanted to make it better than ever before, as I changed the focus from what I can to do to what I absolutely love to do.
I completed the project a couple weeks ago, and was quite pleased with the outcome. Except for one point. The blessed thing just loaded way too slow. Turns out I had far too many sites on one hosting account, so I purchased a bright and shiny new one with more whistles and bells etc. (joyfulnames.com)
Therein arose the laugh, loud and clear! Parts of my site are on wordpress, and part just pure html. It was my plan that I would just migrate this whole site seemlessly. HA! When you are dealing with data bases, and 50+ image-rich pages, it is a little more work than I planned, to say the least, yet I was persistant. Eventually, I was able to get the entire thing completely mirrored on the new host using a different domain name, re-configure where the original domain was pointing, and make it work great. Then I pushed the one button required to rename the old host domain so the other sites on there would be taken care of. Ooops.
I guess I did that too soon. There suddenly arose many little things that I had not done in the most kosher way threatening to either be corrected or they would stand out like a sore thumb! Weeks, months of work gone totally awry!
The Joy in all of this is that it is now all corrected, and even better than before. The parts function, and I can return my focus to what really makes my heart sing. Yay!
For me, there is a whole different paradigm for creating effective illustrations than creating fine art from the mind’s eye. Just like when I begin a piece of art, whenever I start to create an illustration I can see the beautiful outcome in my mind’s eye. It’s so wonderful. Then, I start drawing, or painting, or illustrating on the computer, and suddenly I am at a loss. It’s like all my knowingness just flew out the window.
Then begins the work of my craft – research. I seek out models from which to draw. I’ve got boxes of old cuttings from magazines and books that I started saving when I was quite young. I also have photographs that I have taken throughout my life.
‘ve been known to photograph models which I have staged specifically for the image I am working on. I have a collection of many odd things I can construct models from and have even used myself in costume, or not. As a last resort, there are always models available online to determine the angle of something, or the way something is “put-together.” One of the biggest boons to my illustration work from the whole computer graphics thing is the ease of cobbing together a composite model from which to draw. That is very helpful.
No matter how I get there, my favorite part is when the illustration gets to that sweet stage, where I’ve gotten to love the image through my pencil, pen, brush, mouse or tablet pen. Even if I really don’t care for the subject matter, I develop a love relationship with the image through the intimate interaction using whatever media fits the style I am to accomplish. That is grace blessing me in the process of allowing it to flow freely through me.
Actually, it not only doesn’t matter which media, or style, but it is the same for me, throughout all creative expressions. I remember first experiencing that sweetness when I did my first oil painting – a portrait of my feet – at 13. I’ve felt it when singing, dancing, and preparing food. The first time with type was on a Gateway computer, in the early 80’s. That type on the screen was so sweet, it curled the edges of my tongue. My favorite though, is the sweetness of a fully created image. Oh, yum!
