Dreaming Jackal

Before there was Dancing Jackal there was Dreaming Jackal.  He is a playful soul who has lived many lives and taken many forms.  He most remembers his human self, and uses those lessons he learned in his new life as Jackal.  Unlike his human self he takes nothing for granted, and unlike his dancing self, he waits for the perfect moment before jumping in.

The wheels are always turning in his mind, but he is steady like a wolf in his moves.

In his human life he took much for granted, but as Jackal he has learned this can lead to devastaing consequences.

He is wiley like a fox, but he has the heart of an old soul.

Sometimes he wakes from a troubling dream, is he human or is he canine?

Even the troubling dreams have important messages.  Jackal is smart, and he knows to heed his visions.

Each Jackal original miniature painting is for sale for $18 on Dawn Patel Art at Etsy.com

He thinks like a human, he moves like a fox... he hunts like a wolf and he laughs... well no one laughs like Jackal!

What's in a Hand?

Lately I've been pushing myself to focus.  I love to paint, of that I am sure.  But in the process of establishing a career for myself as an artist I have to also think practically,  and focusing both the style and the content of my work is necessary.

What I love most about the creative process is starting with the unknown.

As I work through the process of finding a focus to my work in this moment I have several things to think about: materials, markmaking and style, palette and content.  The problem with my love for image making is that I love creating in many styles, many palettes and a full range of materials.  Content, for me, is an easier place to start.

Certain symbols show up over and over again.  I have spent years depicting hands.

I know I can count on nature,  animals, plants, and human figures (in particular eyes, hearts and HANDS) to provide me with plenty of symbolic meaning.  So much so that each one deserves its own thesis.  Let's take Hands....

If a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush... what about a soul?

I can't take any credit here.  The hand is one of the most commonly symbolized parts of the human body.  According to Aristotle, the hand is the "tool of tools.  It can communicate more concisely and definitely more universally than our voice ever could.   Throughout the world hands hold meanings, both specific and general:  Hamsa hand, Milagro hand, Helping hand, Hand of power, Eye in Hand... a more universal and powerful symbol is hard to find.

Hands heal, they also carry, point, grip, release, shelter, wave, gesture and punch.  They can offer assistance and they can do great damage.  In my own musings over humanity and the natural world I often see the hand as a symbol of technology, the human impact on the natural world.  It is a part of nature that has severed itself from its source.  What good is a hand is severed from its body?  What good are we when severed from nature?  These questions present themselves as I work, and I work to understand the answers.

By working with a symbol over and over again I develop my own personal encyclopedia of meanings.

Despite its frequent use in art and culture, I choose the human hand as an important symbol in my work.  I know I will return to it again and again and it will continue to evolve in my visual vocabulary, because I now have a very personal relationship with the symbol and its meaning.  

What's in a hand?  A Universe of meaning.

All paintings and painted stones are available at Dawn Patel Art on etsy.  Prints and printed merchandise available at Dawn Patel Art on Society6.

For Every Thing, There is a Season

 

Close up of Painted Door...as of yet this is untitled

Painted Door

It's been the spring of slow beginnings here in Door County Wisconsin.  It's April 27 and it's a chilly 37 degrees today.  None of the bulbs in our woods have bloomed yet; we have just lost the last snow from the melting banks along our driveway.  Nonetheless, setting up shop for the Gallery season is on the agenda this week, for an opening on Memorial Day weekend.  The days of getting lost in painting all afternoon and reading and writing in the evening, if not coming to an end, are going to be rarer than busy days of business ownership.

It has me reflecting on balance.  Many of us spend a great deal of our lives trying to understand our lives.  My painting is my meditation, my vigorous practice where I find meaning.  Listening to archived podcasts of On Being with Krista Tippet today I listened to an interview with Brian Greene, "Reimagining The Cosmos."  http://bit.ly/1bMQQzP  At one point in the interview Tippett asked Greene if he experienced the relativity of time or only understood it through mathematical equations.  I was surprised at the answer.  He wholeheartedly believes the proof in the math that time does not have the linear and regular structure we understand it to have in Western Thought, it is the same equations that bring us our technology, our cell phones and our podcasts!  And yet, in his daily life, he does not experience time to be fluid, changeable and relative.  If asked if the past is over and the future hasn't happened he has to be truthful, that is how he experiences it.

I can't wrap my head around the math, but I feel that I am able to experience the non-linear nature of time.  Within the time at the easel there is "lost" time, and during those intervals of being I experience things differently than I do when conscious of time.  I "know" things I would not otherwise know and I can experience life differently, with a spaciousness that otherwise doesn't exist.  Perhaps seasoned meditators feel this way.  When I get caught up in the linear aspects of life, paying the bills, keeping up my online shop, shipping orders, and setting up shop for customers, the structure kicks in out of necessity.

I enjoy having a Gallery to open, am looking forward to seeing my regular customers and meeting new people, and set up is a fun creative project.  Meanwhile my time at the easel is going to be a fraction of what it was this winter.  And moving back and forth between ways of being is not always easy.  So how to find the balance....?

Wishing Stones.

I have more questions about this than answers right now.  I would love to hear what other artists do.  For now I have embarked on smaller projects that focus my energies into a specific idea, something I can meditate on.  They may not take my thoughts to the depths of my larger paintings, but they take me out of the cycle of work, production, and earning that we all have to do to survive.  It'll be interesting to see how that changes my ideas and work.

The Stones are characters in a larger story that I can experience individually.

Perhaps the seasons demand different ways of being, and the progress made in the summer season make it possible to do the expansive work of the winter.  I am pondering these things this week.

Back at the Easel

Work in Progress: "The Three Graces Revised"  Mixed media on cast fabric

     After an eight day trip to visit with my daughter I am back in the studio, refreshed and inspired.  There's something magical and mysterious that happens when I approach a new painting, or return to one after time away.  When I return to the easel I have a moment (or many) when I wonder if I will be able to paint anything at all.  

     It reminds me of struggling to look into a "Magic Eye" poster and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't see the hidden images that were supposed to be there.  Remember those?  One day it clicked and I stopped trying to see anything and there they were, the dinosaurs silently hiding out in a field of sunflowers...  Or when you can't remember the name of a movie, but when you're driving home thinking about what to make for dinner... there it is, "Soylent Green" creeps into your brain, acting like it was always there.  Sure you can dismiss this as a right brain/left brain switch... but just because a college class gave me words to describe what to me is one of my life's greatest miracles doesn't mean I'm going to stop marveling.   It feels like more.  It feels a lot like the moment you realize you really do love someone because when they need you to let them go, you can, and you do.  

     The process of creating is a process of letting go.  Nothing can enter your conscious or subconscious mind until you make room for it.  Have an idea?  Grab onto it, hold it in your mind for awhile and let it rest there, and let it go.  What you will create is not the idea, it is the product of the idea.  It is your mind's child, and while you may have a lot of input into the development of your child, every parent knows we have to let them grow to be themselves.  Intuition is a vine, a root system in the air searching for the sediment of the spirit to feed it.  Every time I approach the easel this alchemic process occurs, the paint sits on the brush and waits for the signals that come from a space that I can't see or know any other way except this way.  My past lessons and practice inform every choice, deciding how much pressure to exert, how much paint to load, when to start and stop each mark, but the marks themselves come from a place beyond language and beyond my these thoughts.

     One of the greatest revelries I experience in my life is the reoccurrence of this magical moment, when I think, "Maybe that's it, maybe I have nothing left to paint.  Then I approach the easel and the vine of intuition starts winding itself around me, the easel, the painting, the room.  It is as close to an ecstatic moment as I'll probably ever have, or at least have had up to this point.  It is the feeling that there is a force larger than me and it can be trusted.  I end up saying to friends, "When I'm painting everything makes sense to me."  I'm not sure if the sentence even begins to explain the experience, words always fall short for me.  And that's why I paint.

Believe in your dreams

 Today is the day I have decided to believe in my own dreams the way I have encouraged others to believe in their own dreams.  As long as I can remember I have had one consistent dream, one consistent love and one consistent passion.  Art.  And yet...at the age of 48 I have done EVERYTHING ELSE but pursue my life as an artist with all of my energy, confidence and hard work.  Don't get me wrong, I have never stopped MAKING ART.  I have been drawing, painting, collaging and constructing images almost every day of my life, while waitressing, teaching, owning my own retail store, parenting, traveling, drifting, dreaming and sleeping through life. 

For the past week I have been visiting with my amazing daughter. Yesterday we got to talking about my business plans for the upcoming year.  I starting throwing out all my ideas, various plans of consignment galleries, workshops, even part time jobs.  In short my fear based plans stemming from the deeply embedded data in my brain spelling out: YOU CAN'T MAKE A LIVING FROM YOUR ART.  I have opened and closed two successful retail stores, worked as a barista, waitress, bartender, teacher, social worker.  I have two etsy shops, one for vintage and one for up-cycled clothing.  I have trademarked brand names and been the subject of newspaper and magazine articles.  And meanwhile I run home at the end of the day and sketch in my sketchbook or paint at my easel... usually giving away the products of the late night endeavors to friends and family.

In the middle of this conversation that began like so many other my dear daughter Candance says, "When are you going to start putting all your effort into yourself?"  The question stopped me short.  Being an independent woman making my own living (often through self employment) I thought I was, but after being asked the pointed question I thought about it... I worked hard for everyone, my landlord, my employees, my vendors, my consignment artists.  Not that these people aren't very important, but I was at the end of the list, and often, because of lack of time and energy, I fell off the list altogether!

So that's it.  No more excuses.  I am starting today.  This blog is dedicated to a new beginning, a new life.  The one where I believe in myself wholeheartedly.  Where I live my dreams without fear and follow the words of advice I preach to so many others, "To thine own self be true."  I will be sharing everything here, my thoughts, progress, past work, future dreams and even my mistakes.