Chance and Circumstance

When life hands you lemons, make something nourishing, and get stronger

It's been a long time since I've posted.  A lot has happened and I have not been in the right frame of mind to write about it.  When we are navigating through unexpected changes in our lives, all of our energy goes into steering the mothership.  It's been 2 weeks since my partner Dale and I decided to pull the plug on our brick and mortar business and it feels like it's been months.

I don't feel like it's necessary to dwell on the reasons our business isn't opening, the short story is this: a less than adequate building with an out of town landlord who didn't keep his word.  That's short, and WAY sweeter than it could be.  Life goes on.  And ours has, in a way that makes me feel like I'm swimming with the tide now, and not against it.

In the Winter I drew this to imagine the summer, now I am framing prints to hang in Lost Moth Gallery, Egg Harbor WI

In the two weeks since we decided to move out of the building I have been contacted by 4 business owners that want to display my work.  I have been busier than I could imagine framing prints and making new pieces to put into a local gallery.  I found out there were still some openings in a few Door County Art Fairs and am planning to show my work in person this summer.  The saying is old and cliche, but OH SO TRUE:  When one door closes...  The doors are many, not only doorways to new opportunities, friendships and experiences, but also the doors of the imagination, doors of possibilities, and of course.... the doors of perception.

New Clothing Projects: Find these at Olde Ellison Bay Days in Door County this June!

Of course I am happy to have opened these new doors to income generating opportunities; after all the bills don't stop piling up when plans change.  But my most exciting discovery has been the new ideas blossoming like the Trilliums outside my window.  For the past 10 springs I have been fully immersed in opening a retail shop for the tourist season.  This spring I have been at home, watching the forest floor explode into white, pink, yellow and green.  Today Dale and I listened to an Oriole calling hopefully for a mate all day long, when this evening the call was finally answered.  I noticed the subtle differences of green in the trees, the shifts in the wind, and a bird's nest resting on the fulcrum of a fallen branch.

I have had time to revel in the beauty of random events, and what they can lead to.

My day of marveling at nature led to an afternoon of creative outbursts, and I have begun to translate my experiences of the day into art.  A little assemblage...

I call this one Lone. 

And finally, I have the first exciting ideas forming for an interactive project using my painted stones.  Inspired and propelled by my interest in randomness and chance vs patterns and destiny, I am embarking on what will hopefully be a long term project affecting many friends and strangers.  There's more to come on this later, for now I'm referring to it as "Mystery Stones" and I am painting away!

Hope you like a good MYSTERY!!

For more information about upcoming art fairs, galleries or solving the mystery of the stones keep up with Dawn Patel Art on facebook, or join my mailing list.  Links can be found on this blog.  I hope you are all having your own creative rebirth this spring!

Finally, I have to credit Peter Malik for the title to this post.  It's an album I have been listening to for over 9 years.  That's right, we call those CDs these days.

Aftermath of Speaking Out: What Breaks Us, What Puts Us Back Together.

With every new painting I essentially say the same thing, "I Am Here."

This blog has become a public platform for some very personal topics.  I am driven by the belief that our most personal stories are in fact the most universal.  Everyone has their own way of making peace with life.  And that peace brings us closer to our truth. In truth we have no grand illusion to blind us from the incomprehensible mysteries of life. In peace we have no outside pressure to cause us to fool ourselves.  In my life I have found that true peace can only come from my own individual search and the lessons I learn, which come from a life of searching.

In the process of I confronting my past and facing the fears that had held me prisoner,
I revisited old letters, journals, and now I am revisiting another older painting.

Those of you who have been following my blog already know that a little over a month ago I wrote about my experience of domestic abuse, and the years of harassment that followed.  I was driven by a need for freedom, and I knew by speaking out about my personal experience I would be opening Pandora's box, in a sense.  I had no idea how it would all unfold.  What I was doing was opening a dam that had been holding back my own flow for far too long.  I felt strong enough to ride the tide and let it take me where it would.  A deep and hard earned appreciation for the logic of intuition in this life, a trust in life itself, was the only faith I had to go on.  I can tie these things in to my paintings, because it is often and sometimes only through painting that I understand my deepest feelings and thoughts.

The month that followed that post was tough.  I ended up filing a harassment/stalking restraining order and a few days ago, I won that in a hearing in a local courtroom.  The order is for four years and it doesn't guarantee my complete safety, but it secures my freedom to express myself in my own blog and other public forums without being harassed, frightened or bullied.  The fight for those rights meant going to court where I could legally and safely stand up for myself.  It was an essential step in the process of putting my pieces back together after being broken apart so many years ago.

Sometimes the events of our lives fracture us.  In my case, I had split into two, and each half co-existed.
A sense of detachment, a shadow self, prevented my connected self from fully participating.  

Healing, as I now understand it to be, is not a return to what we were before.  We cannot stay in one place and we cannot go back.  What we move into is our choice, but so often we go through life unaware and half asleep.  We make excuses, we blame, we escape into distractions.  Being fully awake means to acknowledge all the sides of ourselves, even those that have been neglected, disavowed and overlooked in the struggle to keep up, move on and live life in the world as we know it.

When the reality of my own life became too painful to face, I escaped.  This does not mean I became bipolar.  I chose, not knowing it was a choice, to sometimes not "be here" while going through life.  It can best be seen as stepping back, letting life unfold but being somewhere else in your mind.  So many of us, the childhood dreamers, know what I mean by this.  My mental escape became more extreme, and a convenient hiding place when unwelcome emotions surfaced.  Fear, anger, anxiety, sadness... they were unwelcome.  What happens when you push these away is that their counterparts, joy, love, peace and bliss also move into a murky space where thay are inaccesessable.  Because the pain of the loss of my son drove part of my self into a private and safe place, the other parts of my life missed knowing all of me.  I can feel regret, for how long it took to see what had happened, but regret is a backwards road full of pitfalls.  This is life, it is messy.  It is a series of questions that just lead to more questions.  But it can be entered into everyday with open eyes and a recepetive heart.  That is the truth of life I had missed by escaping.  

In the past four years I have become increasingly withdrawn from the relationships in my life as I entered
into a "cocoon" phase.  This was a necessary step towards understanding my own boundaries
and gaining the self reliance and acceptance to assert these boundaries.

What I now understand as the "cocoon" phase, a time of intense introspection and hermetic isolation, has been a wonderful experience for me.  It required many hours at the easel.  Although I had to pull away from the world in order to access my subconscious and begin the healing process, my family and most friends have understood and given me the space and freedom required to turn inward.  There I found the strength I needed to see my own life with open eyes.  The confidence I gained from these recent years has been exactly what I needed to recognize what a violation the harassment and stalking have been.  The courage I had gained made it possible to assert my rights without further fear of retaliation.  I know I have to live my entire life knowing safety is not a guarantee, this person who violated me may at anytime act out of anger.  I have prepared myself for this possibility, and a big lesson for me was that 90% of that preparation is mental.  Our minds can be our strength or our weakness.  It takes a strong heart and a disciplined mind to face a dangerous world.

As I paint this autobiographical painting that I started three years ago, I give form to all of these abstract ideas.  The gestation of my heart in it's cocoon phase, the splitting apart with two significant events, the birth of a child and the death of another.  The incubation of a self-realized identity that arises from the wounds and divisions caused by violence.  The images all arise, situate themselves in the context of a human figure, and I organize them.  I highlight some while glazing over others.  I reflect on their existence.  I acknowledge their purpose in my life.  A swan symbolizes the unseen world, the parts of life where intuition and trust are needed most.  A pair of eyes peering out from my brain, the self reflection and honesty needed to repair.  A grieving mother, a watchful mother, and a hand with a weapon.  A victim, a protector, a survivor.  A heart, a mind, a past and a future.  All the pieces that are put back together, a familiar but transformed and unified version of self.  

Being awake inside of oneself is the now the only option.  It is a the key that unlocks the cage,
the prison so many of us live in.  A cage with a key that has always been there.

 With every new painting I essentially say the same thing, "I Am Here."  It seems an odd thing to do.  I wonder if it's really what we are all doing, all of the time, and I have just found the way that works for me.  I don't feel a great sense of belonging to any particular group, religion, race, social caste or political organization.  As I grow older the purpose for my own existence becomes something that only I can unlock and live.  More social people might think it seems lonely.  But I'm not lonely or unfulfilled.  Those who seek validation in fame or riches would be disappointed.  I have a roof over my head and I eat three healthy meals a day.  I paint, I live my life and I face each problem that presents itself when I'm ready.  It feels like an integration of the broken parts, and it brings me great peace.

At this point in my life the studio is my workplace, my place of therapy, my place of peace.
I am happy here and that is never something to take for granted.