In drawing class this week I had everyone work from photographs of flowers again. The class is most comfortable drawing nature and this gives us the chance to work on skills and to think about how we might like to use color in a strong expressive way. We looked at art in a book of prints and studied how other artists approached using both color and line. We experimented with making our drawing in a pale line then going back into it with color and deepening the lines if we wanted to do that.

At the end of the morning one woman said the class had changed her life. She’s a brilliant colorist but had never drawn before. The distance she’s come in a few months is amazing but more amazing is the way we are all coming forward together. It’s not just mutual support for what we’re doing but joining together to play and explore in the spirit that everyone has something brilliant to bring forward.

I’m taking that brilliance seriously. I’m intending we grow our art to the point that we can bring forward whatever we want to express. We’re studying boldness. There are so many ways we’ve all been shut down, so many ways our spirits have been tamed, especially we women. We’re all about being wild again. We’re moving beyond any need for approval or permisssion and letting it rip. We’re giving weight to nothing but the spirit that moves us. Hooray.
The image here was made first in pastel in class, then scanned and posterized in Photoshop. Just to make it bolder and brighter. We’ll explore digital printing as we go on.

On Saturday I asked the ladies in our art class to draw in an abstract way for fifteen minutes while we listened to Sting. Some of us find it harder to draw nothing than to draw something specific even though when we were five we had no difficulty scribbling. Marks on paper are drawings and so much presents itself when we don’t have anything specific in mind. We’re getting back to being five again, to just playing and discovering and being and receiving. We tried drawing with fine lines and smudges—just those two elements.

Later we tried to draw from a photograph—a flower in a vase. Each was different. One of the ladies brought in the fine lines and smudges in the most brilliant way. There was beautiful delicacy and contrast between the two elements. That’s what it’s about—learning to play and to think in a creative way, learning to simplify, to break things down into the elements of line and tone, space, shape. Learning not to be literal but to be interpretive or expressive.  It gets easier with practice.
Next week we carry on but will add the element of color and consider the different ways that color could be used to create the image we want to create. And again, first, we will play and see what emerges for each of us. Then we’ll use both intention and inspiration to carry on.

My friend Kathy Todd has a new website where you can catch a glimpse of some of her magical paintings. Kathy lived for many years on a small island called Tresco, part of the Scilly Isles off the southwest coast of England. The island itself is magical. There are no cars or pollution and visitors are soon swept up into the island’s peaceful energy. It’s quite extraordinary to experience a place so filled with bliss.
Kathy now lives in Penzance like the pirates once did but her paintings are still filled with the energy she discovered on Tresco. Many are infused with light and filled with peaceful energy. To me it’s one of the high purposes of art—to lift us up and remind us of peace and bliss. In this world they can be all too easy to forget. But through Kathy’s art you can bring that energy into your space and make your home a real sanctuary. It’s no wonder that many of Kathy’s paintings have found their way into healing environments like hospitals and acupuncture clinics.
So check it out. You can contact the artist directly for information about purchasing available art and commissioning new work. She also has giclee prints for sale. I promise this art will brighten your life!

http://www.kathytodd.co.uk/

Yesterday Oprah had a traditional medical doctor on her show to answer questions. His name is Dr. Oz. There were the usual questions about cellulite and botox but also a segment where Oprah had her first acupuncture treatment. Dr. Oz became suddenly agitated and made an amazing pronouncement for a western doctor on mainstream television.

He said the present state of global communication allows us to learn about medicine from all over the world and what we synthesize is going back out around the world almost instantly. He said that the future of medicine is energy medicine. He said it is not surgery and not pharmaceutical drugs that try to change body chemistry but energy. And he a western doctor.

Many of us know this and now more people will open their minds. Oprah sat right up and said that no doctor would have said that on her show ten years ago. Western medicine has resolutely refused to acknowledge any form of energy medicine, even homeopathy. In the midst of that refusal a whole world of devoted explorers and pratitioners has brought knowledge and change to the world of healing.

I’m very grateful to Dr. Oz for spreading the word. He’s not the first but it does matter that he said this. So many people will now be encouraged to explore alternative healing. It’s a paradigm shift of major proportions.

Which brings me back to art. Real healing is finding our way back to a state of peace and contentment and truth. Art too can create good vibrations and is another form of energy medicine. I believe that’s art’s true purpose now. We should all have some.

At last Saturday’s art class I put up two huge pieces of kraft paper on the wall to make a drawing surface eight feet square. None of us had drawn that big before and the idea was to catch the feeling of expansiveness. I decided that we would collaborate on a drawing by stepping up one at a time and adding to what the previous person did. Before we began we looked at some photographs of plants. Most of the class are comfortable drawing nature.

I went first and I have to say it was very liberating to work so large and throw the whole body into every line. We are so habituated to restriction in so many areas of our lives that it was great to just let it rip.

But there was hesitation too. Doubtless some wondered if they might be judged even though I kept saying it doesn’t matter what you do. But everyone stepped up and drew large. Once we’d each put something up there they worked on the picture together.

Then I taped a large piece of paper on the wall for each person and they did their own drawings. One of the students had a huge breakthrough. She let herself go. Two students had a crisis of faith. They questioned what they’d done.

What was truly wonderful was that both of them expressed their doubts, each in their own way. The truth is we all have them and they are sneaky, snakey things that insert themselves whenever we get out of our place of practice and assumed perfection. It’s when we head into whole new territory that the voice of unreason tells us we can’t do that, our work sucks. But it’s when we’re out there that we know we’re going somewhere. Art is new. It’s the discovery that comes with faith. We have to step into the void. It turns out to be fun.

Above a wee bit of paper torn from a large drawing.

There is a must-read story for all artists on Truthnet this morning by Chris Hedges. It’s called The Rise of Christian Fascism and Its Threat to American Democracy. Among other things Hedges points out that currently in the United States one percent of the population controls more wealth than the rest of the population combined. In addition there are inadequate supports for the disadvantaged at atime when religious fundamentalism gains a foothold in governments everywhere.
Hedges writes—’Arthur Schlesinger, in “The Cycles of American History,” wrote that “the great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights in the contemporary sense — not only for their acquiescence in poverty, inequality and oppression, but for their enthusiastic justification of slavery, persecution, torture and genocide.”‘

I believe my work as an artist and writer is to raise the energy and bring light to darkness. But I have a tendency to sidestep harsh realities. I don’t believe in giving energy to the negative but I do know we need to be informed and aware. Our work does not need to be overtly political but it needs to be strong and free. If we are in the light we have the strength to face down any darkness.

So I recommend this article because we artists can help create the universe we all want to live in and we need to do so with open eyes and the strength of warriors.

‘Common sense is the enemy of romance’ Oscar Wilde

In an art blog in The Guardian this morning Cathy Lomax, who’s founded an artzine called Arty, proposes that art now shift to the romantic. There’s not been much romance in art for the last twenty years. Art’s been all about minimal, conceptual and SERIOUS. It seems like fun couldn’t possibly be art. And that love can’t be fun.

Lomax remembers a teenage, secret fondness for the novels of the all-too-tacky Barbara Cartland—

“She had very large eyes in a heart-shaped face and her hair under her plain, unfashionable bonnet was the colour of ripening corn. Her eyes surprisingly were not blue but, unless he was mistaken, the grey of a wintry sea.” (Love for Sale - Barbara Cartland)

He was probably mistaken, but never mind. I love the idea of a new art movement that is F.U.N. It isn’t a common sense idea, of course.
www.artymagazine.com

The day before class last Saturday one of our members called to ask if her husband might take her place as she had another commitment. I’ve met her husband many times socially. Scott’s a lovely man and a consultant, as it turns out, to government agencies. I knew he drew very little and I expected we ladies would offer encouragement.

Scott arrived at class and the ladies all welcomed him. This Saturday I’d decided we’d work on our life drawing skills. Most of the members of the class are more comfortable with drawing from nature but I think we need to be comfortable, fearless even, in drawing everything.

I posed and they drew. Afterwards when I went around to see what they’d done I discovered Scott had done the most beautifully rendered, accurate drawings. The ladies, meanwhile, were aghast at the way the proportions in their drawings had gone distinctly overboard. Then we did an exercise of drawing from our heads. Again everyone struggled, save for Scott. He drew a series of imaginative, bang-on portraits, more full of character than the ones I, the teacher, drew.

I asked Scott if he drew often. No, not since childhood, he said, but then he’d spent hours making carefully rendered drawings. Clearly drawing is like riding a bicycle, wherever you get with it stays with you.

Meanwhile the ladies were feeling, I think, a little frustrated. In fact, some of their drawings became less confident as the morning went on. What does it mean when we’re confronted with someone whose skills are more developed and appear to have been effortlessly acquired? Can we still assert ourselves and march boldly forward? Or do we shrink?

So, I’m thanking Scott for giving us the opportunity to march boldly forward. In the ladies’ drawings it was plain to see spirit and strength emerging because they kept trying despite discouragement. That’s just as important as what our drawings look like and far, far more touching.

A phone call today inviting me to submit art to the humor show at The Arsenal Center for the Arts, our grand new art center on the fringe of Boston. The show is called—Laugh.

And I love the idea that art does not have to be dead serious all the time. Visual images can contain ideas and they can make us laugh. And I’m not just talking about cartoons.

Serious art doesn’t seem to go in this direction very often. Once again I think Picasso showed us how. That bicycle seat that looks like a bull’s head is pretty playful, funny even. So simple and outside the box, key elements of humor.

So, I must oblige because anything called Laugh gets my support. Will post my entries when I get them done.