Break (it) Down

The Prophet             by Kahlil Gibran

And a woman spoke, saying Tell us of Pain.

And he said:

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over the fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen,

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseeen’

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

Mariposa 1994

Break (it) Down

I have been thinking about the tension of opposites.  Engaging with the world in a time of turmoil has flung me into the tension of opposites.  I am beginning to see how this experience, if not consciously broken down, leads to a breakdown.  The last time I experienced it I gave into the grief for a very long time.  This time I am stepping back from the world when needed, for self care and reflection.   Sometimes I have to get to the point of spinning my wheels (and flailing my arms) before I realize it is time to step back.  Painting has a great deal to do with stepping back, for my approach to creative work includes hours spent in meditation, gathering information, shifting and understanding.  The painting is only the tangible record of it.  Painting is the material world, the body of work.  The rest is spirit.  

Journey 1995

   

Love for the world creates a desire to enter the world.  That, and the realization that it is not possible to retreat from life.  It follows you and pulls you back.  The more “alone” you make yourself the more your senses adapt and hear the smallest heartbeat, the tiniest call.  You feel the pulse of the world as acutely as if you were standing in the center of it.  It has lead me to a very conscious decision to reconnect.  One could say I picked a fine time.  I know I am not the only one.  This love can be so easily transformed into grief with the day to day experience of witnessing the world we love.  My grief has turned into action, but that has thrown me into a world of activity that is also motivated by fear and anger.  The fear, grief and anger are all so related they end up on the same team.  My conditioned response is frustration, inarticulately communicated to friends and acquaintances… leading to more frustration, of course, and ultimately frustration with myself.   

Untitled 1995

Jung’s theory on the tension of opposites concludes if one stays in the discomfort of this tension a third thing arises.  A “quantum leap”  of thinking and being, ultimately of consciousness.  It cannot be predicted because it is new, born out of opposites.  Try to force it would be like trying to determine the personality and destiny of your unborn child.  Sometimes we have a “feeling” about these things, sometimes even visions.  But in these bodies, in this world, we still have to wait and see.  How can I remain with my love for the world and my grief without breaking in half.  It seems only with the qualities of joy and hope, which are not always my natural states.  For me joy and hope have to be worked at, earned through understanding.  It is not just an intellectual understanding, it is a whole body and spirit experience, my definition of faith.

Faith 1995

I go into the world and am pulled by the tensions.  I act and react, often in ways I regret, and then return to my inner world where I can quietly break it down.  This is a conscious act, brought about by the same conditions an emotional breakdown would be.  I am approaching it these days as “beating it [a breakdown] to the punch.”   Taken to the point of a breakdown, I am able to break down the opposites and see them more clearly.  In this understanding I find myself in a more open and honest state, where trust, not in a determinist future, but in the vast universe of the present, can grow.

Juggernaut 1995

I found these older paintings of mine to be surprisingly effective for illustrating the tension of opposites that I am so aware of today.  Something to revisit in my work this year....  Perhaps my paintings will see the third thing before my conscious mind can grasp it.

Dreams and Visions - paintings in their raw states

I have made two decisions this month.

One is to leave paintings in their raw state.

The Other is to share all of my visions, even the ones I have been quiet about.

I don't turn on a lightbulb. I see in the darkness and find my way through it.

What i see in the dark, i can't see in the light. Not yet. Go deep, wake up. One day you will do both. 

We are in Kali time. I am Usha. My time is not here yet, but I am preparing for it.

In Kali time the darkness makes the others remember. We are not smaller than the one controlling the story. We control our story. We heal and are unafraid of the darkness.

The governments of the world call it post-colonial. We ARE living in a Neo-colonial world

My ancestors came to me in a dream. They were refugees from a war with no winners. 

They were seeking shelter in my cellar.

I asked the smaller man in front of the group, 

"How did you get in?"

he said,

"We always find a way in."

I was afraid I could not care for them and I left them.

They left me.  For many years they were hidden in darkness and unknown to me.

I promised to stop hiding from the darkness of the world, 

as I promised to not let my grief for the world blind me.

I promised to walk out into the darkness and face every fear.

They are coming back to me.

I'm back... writing about art

I finished this painting today, stopping at a point that I would have not been able to leave alone in the past.

I've been thinking about getting back into the habit of writing about art lately.  I've probably been thinking about it for more than two months, but it took me that long to turn that impulse into action and those thought into words.

When I paint I have a pretty constant flow of thoughts, many that transform themselves into images, colors, textures and patterns on the canvas.  The rest are left dangling in my head, and I often feel like the process is not complete until I clarify it.  It doesn't really need to be verbalized to the world, but why not?  If anyone wants to read it, that's great.  If no one wants to read it, it's basically my own personal art journal on the internet.  

So.  I'm back.

This new painting is my way of processing the recent (and not so recent) events of the world.  The constant conflict, the divisions based on ideology and political affiliation, the wars, the inequality, the lack of understanding, the lack of dialogue, the anger, hate, fear....

The dualistic thinking that has led humans to cannibalize their own selves.

And the compassion, the way some still stay connected, the love that remains, the bridges, the palms held open and the hearts that strive to stay there too.  

I've been wondering if the human family is like a viscous dog, filled with fear, attacking and devouring it's own tail.

I think, but I'm not 100% sure, this painting will be titled "Cannibal"

I like that it's not obvious.  It is vague and a little confusing and ambiguous in content.   

It's how I feel.

I sincerely believe we are all connected.  What to do about it is a mystery to me.  I'm just trying hard to open my heart and keep it open.  At the moment that's hard enough.  Maybe it is enough.  Maybe not.  

The jury seems to be deliberating.

What does this all have to do with painting?  I paint to figure this out, to articulate my innermost feelings and ideas to myself.  I don't think my thoughts are going to be clear to the viewer.  I think it's ok for every viewer to look and come up with their own meaning.   I like to think some vital force in the image, in the colors and the compostion and the feelings that arise from them will communicate something, something close to what I'm experiencing when I'm painting it.  I'm more and more comfortable with that.  Is it possible to misinterpret art?  I am trying to accept this is something I don't have to feel responsible for.  Letting it go is a part of the process.

After painting on canvas today I sat down and continued a few ideas on paper in a simpler and more lyrical way.
Working on illustrations alongside larger more complex and evolved work comes naturally to me.  

All I know for sure is I have to keep painting, and I think writing about it a bit helps me to make a little sense out of it all.  Just enought to keep focused and stay with the ideas that arise out of the work I do on canvas.

And if you read this far... well... welcome back to my art blog :)

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!

A Cast of Characters

You have already been introduced to The Introvert... here in his traveling form.

The Sentient Beings are a cast of characters I have been developing for years, I guess I can say my entire life.  They are all coming to life, together!  I am introducing you to a few more today.

Meet Grandfather Hummingbird

Grandfather's hummingbird, like the write E.B. White, has a conflict of interests.  "I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have a hell of a good time.  Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult." (quote by White)

White knew some really interesting Sentient Beings himself, I hope Grandfather Hummingbird can do them justice.

The Snake Spirit appears in many forms, here are two: The Anhinga, also known as Snake Bird and the Winding Vine.

The Snake Spirit is a misunderstood character, but the Introverts know his true intent, because Introverts pay attention to the little things and are never swayed by a mob mentality.

Luna Bear dreams all day and runs through the forest at night.

Luna Bear is a dreamer.  He also has a fierce and protective nature with a gentle and nuturing spirit.  Spirit Bear sometimes fools people into thinking he's a scary beast, but he has to do that to protect the innocent ones who can't always protect themselves.

 Many fear what they don't understand.

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.

This is the Place

My painting from 2000/2001 is now hanging at Lost Moth Gallery in Egg Harbor

This is the place where the land and water meet.  This is the place where the waves crash against your feet.  This is the place where shore greets sea.  This is the place where you become me.  
This is the place of diamonds and pearls.  This is where boys become girls.  Anything is possible, every dream is true.  This is the place where I become you.
This is the place of forest and sky.  You’re ready to live when you’re ready to die.  Love in between if you’re ready to cry.
This is where all weapons go to rust.  The place where anger turns to trust.  This is where night becomes your friend.  This is where your dream began.
If ever you are cast out with your fears.  Look them squarely with thy soul and it will bring you here.  Do not try to fight the waves of change.  Hang on tightly for your life and do not be afraid.
For this is the place where flight is made with broken wings.  This is the place where the mute swan sings.  This is how the question when becomes the question why.  This is where me becomes i.

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.

In Life As In Art

In Life As in Art: Lessons from the Studio

William Blake

"Behemoth and Leviathan"

c. 1805 - 1810 

I love the paintings of William Blake.  I don't share his religious sensibilities, but when I look closely at them I share something beyond the literal interpretations, into the vision.

Many people will marvel at his work but dismiss his genius as fueled by insanity.

Sometimes I wonder if the greatest insanity is the compliant acceptance of the culture we live in and the restrictions it imposes on our vision.

Look at a Blake painting for a very long time.  The next time you look at a flower, look for a very long time.  Look at another person's face for a very long time.  

Apply the same thing to your thoughts.  The next time you are contemplating an issue, look at it from all angles, look at your emotions as they form themselves around your thoughts and move them from side to side, shifting their very essence into something new... more tangible perhaps.  Or more accessible, more palatable, more digestible.  We blind ourselves to the truth of our own existence and shrink ourselves to fit into a world that needs to keep us small and obedient.  And it is safer to stay small than to expand into a space we are unfamiliar with.

   "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."

                                                                                              William Blake  "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"

Work in Progress from the Studio  (This one is mine)

There is a lot of insanity around us in this culture we live in.  And so little time to contemplate.  The Buddha told his followers not to believe what he said, but rather to go out and find the truth for themselves.

We find by searching, we see by looking, not for what we already know, but for what we haven't known yet.  And that takes a lot of time, an excruciatingly long look without turning away.  

Old thoughts need to be released in order for new thoughts to arise, and when we hold onto our beliefs and opinions we don't see what is before us.

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.

                                                                                                   William Blake "A Memorable Fancy"

In life as in art, the experience is entirely up to us.  It just depends on how long you are willing to look and how wide you are willing to see.  The possibilites are infinite.  

Victim no More, Silent no More. The Healing Power of Art.

The Escape

This is the story of the birth of a painting, but it is much more.  It is the story of life events that nearly destroyed me.  I was not destroyed, but these events followed me.  I moved from place to place, but they were never far behind.  I tried therapy, but they returned in the night.  I grew strong and confident, but they lingered in the corners of my world waiting for a weak moment to pounce.  I built a life for myself, but they built a wall around that life, keeping my fears in and real intimacy out.  This is the story of domestic abuse, abuse from an intimate partner. One of the most insidious and terrifying forms of violence, it is one of the most common.  And it is a story of a painting that has been my way of breaking down my walls, the real and the imagined.  
Two years ago, almost to the day, I awoke with my pillow soaked with tears.  I was still weeping as I awoke and recalled the dream.  I was at a party, a farewell party for a young man at work.  He was loved by everyone there, so when he announced he was leaving we begged him to stay.  He insisted on leaving, so we decided to throw a farewell party as big as our love for him.
At the party we drank and sang, and danced to live music under the stars.  Each person had a dance with the young man, and I was the last.  When I danced with him I held him so tightly, and I wept a river of tears.  I felt like I would not be able to let go.  Finally he held me back at arms length, so he could look into my face and tell me that it was all OK; he loved me and I had to let him go.
When I woke up I knew the young man was my son, who had died in my womb 22 years earlier, after I was beaten with the handle of a hobby horse.  I was beaten with repeated blows to the back, until the heavy wooden pole actually shattered into several pieces.  During the beating I twisted and turned, exposing my back in an attempt to protect my 6 month pregnant abdomen and the baby inside.  A month later I delivered a fetus that had been dead for over three weeks due to causes not completely known, but assumed to be strangulation by the umbilical cord.  This has always been my dark night of the soul.  And I am bringing it into the light.

I would like to say this was an isolated event, but it wasn't.  I was 22 years old, in the final month of a relationship that had lasted 2 years.  I was soon to run away and find safety in a women's shelter. Slowly I began to put myself back together in a life of my own, but at that time I was the shell of a person.  A person who had become a captive in a prison with no concrete walls, but rather walls of fear and manipulation. To this day, I cannot understand or even fathom the undeniable strength of those walls, made of blocks that were harder to shatter than concrete itself.  
Some people may believe that when an abused women leaves the abusive relationship the torment is over.  Yes, the worst of it is.  My own experience of leaving this relationship was in many ways a second chance at life.  I had escaped the brutal world I was trapped in.  I had a one year old baby girl who kept me going.  I had camaraderie in the women's shelter, where I was given the love and attention I had so missed in the years of isolation and abuse.  I eventually reconnected with my parents and my two brothers, and, with the support of my family, I began the long road of recovery at the age of 22.  But one reason so many women stay in abusive circumstances is because they believe the threats.  Most threats end with a promise: if they leave the brutality will be even worse.  It is not words that make the threats real, it is bloody noses, black eyes, and worse.  It is the monstrous way a sadistic person can weave lies through the brain of his victim.  I believed I would be hunted down, and possibly killed.  I believed this for so long, that even when my rational mind had worked through the unlikelihood of such an outcome, every cell in my body seemed to still believe it.  It didn't help that in the many years since I left, my abuser has continued to try to connect with me, sometimes with a twisted gesture of friendship and sometimes with condemnation and demands, but always uninvited, unanswered and unwanted. 

I awoke from the dream two years ago, almost 24 years after the day I entered the women's shelter.  I awoke weeping.  I had said goodbye to my son. Still in my pajamas, I walked downstairs and picked up a painting I had begun a few days before; it was one that had baffled me.  I put the painting down on the kitchen table and picked up a paintbrush.  I knew exactly what I needed to do. 

This is what the painting looked like it when I started painting that morning in my pajamas

When I paint a large painting I usually go through a stage of confusion, when I'm baffled or bewildered by the marks I have put down. This is not unusual.  What, if anything, was unusual about this painting was how angry I had felt while working on it.  At best I am usually challenged and inspired by this stage, at worst I am irritated.  I recognize the feeling and I know it's temporary.  This painting actually made me mad.  But that morning all the anger was washed away and I was mourning.  Suddenly I felt like I understood something very profound about the events of my life, and it was all symbolically taking form in this painting.  

I started "The Escape" as I do many of my paintings on boards, with collaged images.  I glued a print of mine with a dog and bird in ambiguous conflict, pages from the New York Times and pages from Tolstoy.  I thought I was painting about ideas, as I often do.  But the images that kept appearing were too personal for me to connect to the social and political content of the collaged scraps.  A figure appeared, looking suspiciously like my abusive partner from 24 years earlier.  He reached out long fingers that shot right through the head of the upside-down  dog.  A mask that looked like a demon from a dream looked over it all and a Thunderbird appeared that seemed to be flying off the page.  I say "appear" because at this stage in the painting I am not painting with any premeditated brushstrokes, I paint without forethought.  I am as surprised by what comes off the brush as any bystander would be, often more so. 

A close up of what happened that morning

I painted all morning and well into the day, without eating or getting dressed or even cleaning up.  There was a force driving me that surpassed any other needs, and it was the force of healing.  When I painted this piece I truly understood the transcendental healing power of art.  Pi is a transcendental number.  It is real, but not algebraic.  It does not have rational roots. If you try too hard to make rational sense of it all, it disappears, like the memory of a dream.  When I painted the section that most pained me, the one where my abuser stuck his fingers into my head, comforting images appeared to soothe me.  My daughter and my son were soon part of a vortex of circular movement that emanated from the source of my pain.  I saw the good with the bad, healing as an outgrowth of suffering.  One cannot exist without the other.  If you let go, it will be OK, as my son told me in my dream.

On one side, the dead infant leaves the thoughts of the abuser as a mere outline, almost a caricature.  He is in the bottom left corner of the painting, where the pain and deception of the past events weave imprisoning webs that eventually grow into a brick wall.   But the spirit of the baby boy emerges on the other side of my abuser like a rock formation, his leg turning into a wing that becomes one of the wings of my living child. My daughter is the one who was my only reason for living when, lost in the darkness of abuse, I considered suicide.  The left side and especially the bottom left corner of the painting are the beginning of the story, they are real events, but they are the past.  I will never forget the past, but I have to fly away.  

At this point I find myself in the painting.  I am flying away.  I am as far away as possible from the painful events, but my flight has also taken me away from those I love, it has taken me away from the center of the painting where my story is told.  In my desire for freedom from the fear and the pain, in my usual enthusiasm, I have gone too far.

When I realized where I was in the painting, I also realized I was connected to a pair of legs on the other side of the Thunderbird.  And holding onto the foot was a figure seated on a horse.  He has white hair.  I realized who he was and I was a little annoyed.  I can laugh now, but I was really irritated by this.  It was very difficult to let a man into my inner world, although I had attempted to have relationships in the last two decades.  I had either chosen unrealistic, unattainable partners, or I had pushed or pulled at the the men in my life, until the relationship fell apart.  No one had made it into a painting like this.  But the work I was doing at this point was exhilarating, and the white haired man on the horse was a person who gave me a lot of space, and was someone I considered trusting, something I had previously found impossible.  So eventually I was able to accept the goofy turn of events in this image.  After all, there was someone holding me back from completely flying away.  A good thing.

One thing I love about this process is that it can be so serious, intense, even frightening; yet it can be lighthearted, playful and irreverent all at the same time.  I have learned to accept all aspects.  I have learned to let go.  There was a moment, somewhere around two in the morning, more that 18 hours after I got up and started painting in my pajamas that I found myself leaning over the painting and screaming through tears, "You had no right.  You had no right to do the things you did!"  I was lucid enough to realize if anyone walked through the door at that moment they might be concerned for my sanity, but believe me, it was one of the sanest moments of my life.  It was the moment I released the rage inside of me for over two decades and with the rage went the fear, went the walls, went the prison I had been living in.  My catharsis was the result of 24 years of hard work, practice, patience, and all the stuff of life, but it came down like a crashing wall, and it took form in a work of art.

By the time I fell asleep, 20 hours after I started working that day, the painting was nearly complete.

I went to sleep that night as the sun was rising.  I had ended the day laughing through the tears, a day that began crying into my pillow.  There were finishing touches to be done.  There were parts of the painting I still did not understand.  There are still many walls around my heart to be torn down.  I could not know, that night two years ago, the profound effect that day's work would have on my life.  The therapeutic value in art for me is the potential for understanding, control, and release, all through the language of painting.  

Two years later I am revisiting this work.   I am actually making a printed canvas to save it in this stage, and I am taking it back to the easel, realizing now that I am armed with the truth and the absence of fear and shame.  With these tools I can see areas of the painting that are clearly unfinished, and I now feel ready to complete.

Releasing the past through creative work has proven to have a key role in my ongoing growth, most importantly releasing my fears.  What I dealt with in these past 26 years has been the stalking and attempts at communication from my abuser.  I had a very difficult time shaking the fear and damage that resulted from extreme abuse, and the inconsistent, incomprehensible nature of his attempts to insinuate himself into my life have never ended.  But years went by, and I am stronger.  I have armed myself with protection, material and emotional. My paintings, which over the years have become a diary of healing, help me feel less controlled by the past, and therefore, less threatened.  I can honestly say I am no longer afraid, but I am still not free from the unwanted attention from a past I have let go of - a man who has relinquished all rights to be in my world through his own actions 26 years ago.  I have realized that nothing I do or say would define this boundary more than the truth.  The most empowering aspect of my artistic process in this piece has been the courage to tell my story.  The truth, it is said, will set you free.  And now that I no longer feel the need to run away, I am claiming the right to be free.

Layers: Time, Space, Memory, Patterns, Connections, and Movement

The bird without feet flies to the tree without branches

I have been painting in layers for so long now I can hardly remember how it all started.  Ironic, actually, because to me layers are all about time and memory, our experiences and how they sometimes fade, brighten, change, recede, collapse and even disappear under the weight of time, new experiences and sometimes even the strength of our own will.

The beginning stages of this painting consist of a mixture, a paste made of equal parts determination and chance.  I chose the drawings that I cut and paste based on my recent studies of nature, tying them together with past drawings with themes of individuality, strength, power and freedom.  Not knowing yet where all that would take me I added some pages from Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" on the theme of space travel and nuclear fusion with a vintage map of the Southern US, focused on New Orleans.  

Like most of my paintings, I was thinking about relationships, both the connections and the tension between the world of nature and the world of humankind.  In this case I was most concerned with energy.  Our willful energy and it's effect on the earth and on nature is one theme arising, but also the energy of our hopes and dreams that lies under the surface, the subtle forces we impose on events without even knowing.   Sometimes the outcome is not what was planned, but it IS the the sum of the parts that went into it.

While I was cutting and pasting I accidentally cut the feet off of one of the birds and decided to glue them down as separate pieces in different places, not connected as they were previously.  That evening Dale and I watched a film called "Pariah,"  (recommend it, by the way) and the main character in the movie, a teenager struggling with issues of identity and belonging, writes a poem, one of the lines going something like this... "the bird without feet always flies to the tree without branches."  I'm probably not quoting verbatim, but you get the idea.

This little bit of serendipity fueled a newer and more complex meaning in the painting for me, how movement can be a restless never-ending quest for a landing that does and cannot exist.  I spend a lot of time marveling at the spontaneous eruption of movement when I'm painting, and this movement is crucial to the overall content in the painting.  That is, the moment keeps you IN the painting, while it also keeps you from staying in one place. 

The preliminary stages: drawings and vintage book pages

Halfway through this painting I am discovering the meaning inherent in it from the beginning while simultaneously defining the meaning by the marks I make as a result of those discoveries.  Ah, a parallel universe, working through the processes of life itself in a creative act.  Few things, in my mind, are as rewarding.  I layer in order to cover, uncover, highlight, remember, obscure.  All the same things I do with thoughts, actions, words… but how I love to do it with paint.

Some areas are raw, even becoming more raw as the painting progresses.  Some areas are detailed, specific, ordered.  Some fall into chaos.  All is somewhat controlled, but never completely.  There are patterns that arise and patterns that fall away.  There are synapses and there is punctuation.  It is constantly in flux, to the point that I can only arbitrarily, or maybe intuitively, impose an ending at some point, out of necessity.  But through it all meaning evolves.

Fot this particular painting the meaning is poignant.  The bird without feet is autobiographical, while the relationship between nature and nuclear physics is based on observation of the world.  The result is an inquiry into the process of finding ones place in this world of natural laws and the laws of man.  And this inquiry is fascinating enough to me to get me into that studio again tomorrow for another day of work, another glorious day of painting.

Spirit Helpers - Arctic Peoples

Close up from "Spirit Helpers- Arctic Peoples"

Last December we were settling into our new life, working daily in the studio and living in a small house in the woods in Door County Wisconsin.  It happened to be an early, and somewhat snowy winter.  The studio is in a very open area; being a farming region, we are surrounded by fields.  The result is a view out of my window that often looks like the arctic tundra, snow blowing across a palette of white, gray and blue, with a backdrop of a dark tree line and big sky that often calls me to the window at sunset with its breathtaking and bone chilling beauty.

When a friend from Europe contacted me with a request for a commissioned painting I was thrilled of course, and when she told me she was fascinated with Arctic Peoples and culture, I had to marvel at the serendipity.  Looking out my window, I thought I already have a great deal of inspiration in my daily routine.  So began a long distance collaboration of ideas between Brussels, Belgium and Egg Harbor, Wisconsin, connected by gusts of snow and the howling of the bitter wind.

Research and Inspiration

Before embarking on a new painting I spend a little time hunting and gathering.  The inspiration that Kerstin felt from her new found fascination and attraction to Arctic Life opened the door to many possibilities and directions for research.  I started with a gorgeous and sparse film called "The Journals of Knud Rasmussen," an Inuit Film that opened my eyes to the qualities of Arctic life that I have come to deeply admire. http://www.isuma.tv/en/isuma-productions

After watching the film, I contemplated the harsh day to day realities of Arctic life and the pared down and elegant cultural solutions to these challenges developed in Inuit culture.  I dove further into the concept of Spirit helpers and Shamanic Culture, an aspect of the film that I loved.  An online search led me to the work of Abraham Anghik Ruben, an Inuit carver whose work and life story I won't get into here, but would urge readers to investigate, not only for art, but also for the lesson in history: http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/abraham-anghik-ruben-the-intermediarysculptor-carves-inuit-legends-of-his-heritage/2012/10/25/6fbbaf12-1d5d-11e2-b647-bb1668e64058_story.html

After a week or more of reading, watching, and reflecting I had my own ideas forming.  The physical and spiritual life of the Intuit ignited my imagination, the all too common damage caused by the introduction of Western culture and it's colonizing mentality dug into my heart, and the cold winds outside my window haunted my dreams.  I was ready to begin.

The three levels of existence are beginning to appear.

The Blood and Guts: Paintings have a life of their own.

My painting immediately began to evolve into three levels, and I saw, in my interpretation of Arctic life, three very clear experiences of reality which, unlike our Western experience, are not compartmentalized.  The levels of existence: the human world, the natural world, and the spirit world are all very intertwined and interdependent.  My personal belief is that, despite our Western dichotomies, this is always the reality of experience.  In the vision of Inuit Life I have captured they are all one, and working together with elegant grace.

Images of a Swan Maiden, fox spirit and a canoe as a vehicle of transpiration between the worlds are my own iconography, a symbolic language and story that developed while painting.  Although not directly borrowed, the symbols and characters that arose were very much influenced by Ruben's Sea Goddess and the spirit helpers in the film.

Color, texture and pattern: Sun and blood add life to the monochromatic landscape.

During the weeks I spent painting this piece, Kerstin and I occasionally emailed each other with thoughts about the painting.  I shared my discoveries and she sent images and ideas that inspired her.  Although the exchanges were brief and arrived over the tangled web of the internet crossing an ocean, it seemed as if our minds were meeting in a way that transcended words.  I would describe it as a meeting of not just minds, but of hearts and souls.  The serendipity continued to inspire new developments and strengthened my trust in the process.  Doing a commissioned piece is not always easy for an artist.  Expectations can hinder creative thought and and outside influences can muddy the clarity of the process.  I am fortunate to have had very good experiences, I only take commissions if I feel the buyer loves the innate qualities of my work, not just the superficial formal look of it, and he or she does not have a restrictive definition of art.  Each painting has a life of it's own, and when it is a good commission, it has two minds behind it, working together.  And when this happens it's magic.  I often charge less than my customers expect for commissions, because to me these projects are a gift, and a shared effort and experience.

Finished Painting with fabric backing and bamboo rod.

Technical Issues

The final issues with this piece were technical, how to ship this Belgium without adding hundreds to the price.  I solved this by sewing the canvas to a large piece of fabric.  I chose a Batik from Ghana in deep blue and gold.  The African pattern and colors worked so well with the painting I had to chuckle.  A little symmetry between continents, pulling us all together.  I added leather loops on top that support the entire piece with a bamboo rod.  When Kerstin opened her shipment all she had to do was unroll it and hang it from a couple of nails on the wall!

She emailed me to tell me she cried when she saw it in person, and it hanging on her wall it felt like it had always been there.  What an amazing experience for both of us.  I couldn't be luckier, doing what I do.

In the middle of painting this I had a little story arise.  It captures, for me, the essence of this experience.

Fox speaks to the swan maiden. Both are protected by the sun spirit. Fox tells the maiden, "you are going to grow up and forget, but never forget. Those who have grown up do not know everything. They have forgotten more than they remember."

May we all find ways to remember.