lynna_g

I can not believe these beautiful bright cold winter days. I am grateful for how the light brings colour to the world in a way that lifts my spirits. The usual grey palour of this rainy city where I live is probably my default palette because I was born here and because I am an impossible miserable pessimist some of--most of--much of the time. But right now in this light I feel down right optimistic. It was like this yesterday too. The four o'clock-- almost night time sky yesterday was a deep dark blueberry, mixed with, bad for you bubblegum blue. Right now, same time as yesterday, oh my god-- there is a little tinge of pinkish lavender blending with a silver blue. Oh and there goes a jet with a candy coloured pink streamer streaking behind it. Any way,I met a psychic named Misty on the street today in my neighbourhood. She sits on a bench around third avenue and reads cards to raise money for the homeless. She told me that she doesn't read them according to any body else's meanings. She sees things in her minds eye after she sits with the person and the cards just help her focus. She's a little bit of a con artist and a little bit of a saint, which is just the way I like my psychics. She gave me a great reading. I think today I will believe every word she said.

Continuing on a theme of flight and transcendence and birds and that kind of thing-- I was feeling experimental.  This was really fun.
Someone recently said to me that every painting I make is completely different. I am not sure if she was being critical or complimentary, or just noticing something obvious. I paint in so many styles, because that is the way it happens with me. Speaking of styles--apparently the word style is not used any more in serious art circles. It's frowned upon I am told. But I don't actually care about that and it's a perfectly useful word. Anyway,I paint and illustrate and make things, according to the mood I am in and the image that is showing up. It's part of my education as an artist and part of my journey through imagination. I wander in different rooms. I rummage through the messy drawers of my mind. This is how I explore the world. Anyway I kind of liked this picture. Oh and by the way I just heard Susan Boyle singing the Rolling Stones song Wild Horses and it was beautiful. It was stunning. She is one of my heroes for sure.

Soul's journey

This is a painting I started in the fall and reworked today. Is it finished? Who Knows? How do you know when a painting is finished or a story is written? How do you know that the story you write is the right story? Art does not have a formula. For me-- It is always terrifying and yet necessary sometimes--to keep going further with a painting. Something compels me to go back into that world and move things around. Of course,when you do this-- you risk losing it completely, but you just have to--you can't leave it alone--because something tells you to go back in there, and change it--add something--reach for something that flickered in your mind's eye. I don't know how many canvases that I have wiped and painted over? It's a dreadful feeling-- the image lost, the sense and the feeling destroyed. Adding a detail, a tiny detail, a brush stroke, can destroy the painting. But it can also free the painting, wake it up, bring it to life. You can't be afraid to try. You have to risk it. You have to be able to let go of your safety, and continue the exploration. It's not precious.It's not religious. Artists and teachers will tell you that you have to know when to quit. It's true.I suppose. But I never know. I never know when it's enough. My whole life is like that. There's always that decision to make. There's always that risk. But after all, it's only paint. It's only a picture. You can't be afraid.

 What is my blog about? Why do I blog? I post my art and my thoughts about the creative journey. I write about how art keeps me alive through my depressions. I write about living the creative life. I write about how I journey into the worlds of my imagination to arrive at a deeper truth about reality. I think about how the illusory-intuitive-imaginative-magical worlds seem to be where my truth lives and where healing happens and where learning takes root. But I wonder why I keep posting to the internet? I don't attempt to get my blog read. I don't tell anyone it is here or at least not very many people. So why would I even write what I am writing now? Who am I talking to? Maybe I am confused. But who isn't? Who isn't confused about life? Who actually understands anything. So much of life is a mystery. Why are we here? What are we doing? Why do we do what we do? Why do we think we are important? Why do we think what we do actually matters? These are bewildering unanswerable questions. Anyway, I continue to believe art matters and creativity makes my life meaningful even though I can't tell you what the meaning is

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I think the world needs a little more yellow sharpie on note book paper

We'll be fabulous Stars acrylic

I
Tall ghosts whisper.The glass lake listens.
Night hangs like a curtain.You can't stand here for long.

I have been painting these moody landscapes-- dark night, lonely roads and unfriendly  forests. I think there is a metaphor here in the images that have been appearing.  I think I am a little bit lost these days, but still going forward.  I am trusting somehow that eventually I will arrive-somewhere. I think this is what they call a  a transition period. Unfortunately I don't actually know what I am transitioning from or to. 

I seem to be working with a theme. I am experimenting with a darker palette. It's not easy. Darkness is the absence of  light but to paint the darkness of night, you have to use just enough light to make the night visible. It's like you push the darkness by shedding light on it. This goes for paintings and for people.

The other way round acrylic on board

I painted another night painting. This one seems to be  a metaphor about the way I feel lately--as if I am on a dark highway and I can't see round the bend-but i just have to keep going. The song I posted here is  I'm Yours, by Jason Mraz.  I just love this song. It has nothing to do with the painting, or how I am feeling but yet they go together  for me some how. My psyche doesn't always explain itself to me.

Mountain road Acrylic and oil on board

In the secret forest, just off the path, they could see death dancing mixed media-work in progress

Escape from the haunted castle Tempera on newsprint

Today I have been allowing myself to contemplate things from the darker perspective. I could not be honest with myself, if I did not do that every once in a while. Anyway, I have an idea for something I want to do, but I can't think clearly about it. I can't crystallize it, because I am spinning in tornados of fear and indecision. I fear that I can't do it. I fear that I am defeated before I have begun. I fear that life wont let me do it. I am trying to get through it. I am trying to ignore my fears and remember that they are just fear. It's bloody difficult to do this. It's bloody exhausting to fight so hard. It takes a huge effort. We depressive types are told often, that If we aspire to achieve something in life, we have to start by examining our self limiting beliefs. I don't have to examine them. I am intimately acquainted with them. Now, sure I want to accomplish something, but I am crushed so often by the emotions associated with these so called self-limiting beliefs, that fighting them off is the only thing I can accomplish. I mean I am too weak after fighting with my own emotions to remember what I was trying to accomplish in the first place. I have heard it said over and over that emotions are one of the most powerful kinds of energy we produce. I recently heard someone say that emotions are the high-octane fuel of our dreams-- that we can unleash this power to achieve our heart’s desire. All we have to do is think of something we really want, and allow ourselves to feel the wonderful positive waves of emotion, that we would have if our desire could be fulfilled. Apparently this creates a heightened vibration, which attracts the desire to us like a cosmic magnet. Well, this is what she said. Now I want to believe this. I don’t want to be a grumpy old pessimist. So, I tried. I really did. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself feeling the feelings I would have if my desire were fulfilled, but I felt nothing. I mean I don’t know what I would feel. How can I feel what I would feel if it’s something I have never known. To be perfectly honest with myself I don’t actually know what feelings feel like, unless I am feeling them. I can pretend to feel. I can look pretty happy, even gleeful, but when I do this, something is missing. I think it’s actual happiness. The woman on the talk show is one of the people who say that we create our own reality. I guess she created a reality where this technique works. In my reality, apparently, it doesn’t, but then that’s obviously because I have all these limiting beliefs. But see the thing about a belief, whether self- limiting or other wise, is that you believe it. I really have no idea how you let go of limiting beliefs-- which is what they are always telling you to do. I just don’t know how. Sometimes for some of us, when we start setting goals or building dreams, painful emotions emerge and transform desire into despair? Just when we begin to admit to ourselves, that we want something, the weight of impossibility presses down so heavily that we can’t feel anything else. What do we do? How can we tiptoe out of our own reality into that other sunny reality, that other people apparently have created. I want their reality. I know that the negative feelings must be fought. I accept that the moods that descend must not be embraced. I get that it has to be a constant battle to push back Depression. But from time to time, one has to wonder about things from the darker perspective. 

click here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpunQZ4cUyI

Music video for Tanya Davis' song Art by Andrea Dorfman who very kindly has unknowingly written a song for my life.

A mysterious image. She just appeared on the page as images always do. I don't know who she is or what she has come to tell me..

Flower girl Mixed media illustration

It's funny how a song can be so powerful. I was completely stuck  for weeks, until I heard this song and it moved me out of that stuck place. The song by Ben Harper is With my own two hands--he's singing here with Jack Johnson-- and I am reminded that if I am stuck,  I need to get myself unstuck. With my own two hands-  I am very grateful for hearing this song today.
Thanks Ben Harper and also thanks Andy and the Johnson's who are in in my last post. I needed some inspiration.

I am where the road turns back

 Am I just an impossible pessimist? Am I a naturally suspicious person? Well I know I am a melancholic type but why am I so reluctant to believe people who are exuberantly positive and sunny all the time. Am I jealous of them? Maybe. Any way I will explore this a little more in a future post. It's just that this subject is on my mind. The mixed- media art blogs I visited to day have given me a a sugar overdose, so I am bitchy. Now on the subject of inspiration--this is what I am talking about. The song by Antony and the Johnsons and the hypnotic video-- now this inspires me. The lyrics and the images and the vocals--it's art like this that matters to me.
Oh speaking of sugar overdose--I have decided that the word passion is over used. It must have been used fifty times on the various blog posts I read today. There were a number of bloggers all talking about their passion and their authentic life's purpose, you know, I think it's time to retire these words--or at least send them on a vacation. I have certainly over-used them myself. But more on that later. I have certainly  been guilty of a lot of what I moan and complain about so I definitely need more reflection on this subject.
Click here :
www.youtube.com/watch  

Beyond I see the ocean

Soft pastels and acrylic

"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it"  Picasso

This quote helps me remember that I don't have to know what I am doing or how to do what I am doing, to do it.  Knowing how to do it is not always possible but we are tied to this idea. We call it competence but so much of what we must do in life is based on blind faith and hope and will and desire and things that have nothing to do with competence. Sometimes we must just proceed in the dark and trust that we will find our way.

End of September inks and acrylic on vellum

"I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning. Every day I find something creative to do with my life."
Miles Davis
This quote is my new mantra. I love these words.
I wish they were true for me. My imagination is sometimes too busy spinning little horror movies in my head to get around to creating.It takes a lot of mental energy to feel depressed. Who has time for creativity?
 Oh well. Maybe if I could connect to the idea that every morning I am starting my future, I could get more focused on creating.