Cartography of the Unseen World

I woke up this morning thinking two things.  

1. I really should start working on an artist’s statement for “I Am Usha.”

2. I am at an age where many people have reached the top of their field.

And then, as I so often like to do, I completely deconstructed both of those concepts until I was staring at scattered piles of  assumptions, ready to be reassembled into something that resonates with my frequencies.

Let’s start with number 2.  What an interesting phrase.  Is the field on a hill?  Or has the person who has reached the top, like Yertle the Turtle, merely piled the other less fortunate, less ambitious, and less opportunistic into a mountain onto which to climb?  The mere concept of a winner relies on the existence of a loser, or many losers.  The more losers, the higher the winner rises.  

Some people will tell you this is the way of the world.  Others will insist it is human nature.  And still others will look toward nature itself as a justification for the competition model of human behavior… law of the jungle, survival of the fittest.  One can look at world history and into nature to find a certain logic to this theory and stop looking further.  This is a narrow search, the place where many have chosen to remain, having found the answer they were seeking.   

Or… one can widen the search.  One can search for and discover the history and the anthropology and the systems that wait patiently, just outside of the mainstream.  There are answers that you will never find unless you ask more questions.  There are voices you can’t hear unless you get very very quiet.  You have to be listening for something you’ve never heard before, something which at first might sound like a hallucination, or look like a mirage.  The unfamiliar always enters this way, always finding a way in.  Let your senses adjust and stay with it.  This is how we widen the search.

I have spent my life wandering through fields.  I can often be found on the edges, where the well trodden paths mark the way, reminding me I’m not the only one wandering.  I look down and see the coyote track, the deer track and the evidence of a system in flux, always striking a balance.  I have wandered through many fields, some lush with life and some deadened with chemicals and overuse.  Some in dormancy and some in their prime.  Witnessing the nature of fields from the ground has taught me many things, things I never would have understood if I insisted on climbing to a pinnacle.  

“I Am Usha” is the Cartography of the Unseen World, always witnessed in fleeting glimpses, wandering low along the edges.  Every piece of art is created as a marker along a path, a path that runs parallel to the deer paths on the edges of the fields, in a world where the human eye does not adjust to the wavelengths of light.  One sees with the heart, discovering a new form of communication within the body that has been patiently waiting to be awoken.  When I am creating from this place, a direct line from my heart to my hand guides me.  With great trust and an even greater love for the process, I make art.  I leave my own prints in the soil of consciousness, not to rise or fall in the drama of the world, but to mark my path in this parallel place.  

“Usha” is no more than a name, my name in my Ancestors’ language.  It is simply “Dawn.”  A name for transition, for the darkest time at the moment before light.  In this strange moment of flux, one sees with the heart what the eyes cannot decipher.  After my own personal transition from grief and detachment to acceptance and forgiveness, I have the strength and confidence to claim my name.  I claim it as my own, if only to offer it as my gift, a Gift of a Map for the Travelers to Come. 

Video Stills from "Skeleton Tree Dance" Jan 2017

Healing and Art: The Truth Will Set You Free

"The Way Home"          Finished Painting

Sometimes life is stranger than fiction.  Life certainly gets interesting when you are truthful with yourself.   Somewhere, deep inside our subconscious, where no one else can give you directions, where no teacher dictates right from wrong, where no dogma, definitions and simple answers can exist, there we can find the truth.

I began a strange and very interesting journey this month when I decided to write about my painting, "The Escape" in a post titled "Victim no More, Silent no More." (03/10)  Circumstances beyond my control compelled me to write about my own experience of domestic abuse and the therapeutic way it appeared in my art, revealing to me my suppressed emotions and memories.  Writing about the painting, I exposed myself to public scrutiny with my own issues, many of which have been subjects of pain, shame and fear.  I could not have foreseen the encouragement and insight that would bless my life as a result of the simple act of telling my story.

A close up from "The Escape"    There is a struggle and conflict in my heart and my mind, as I give away my power.

In the original painting, I appear in several forms.  One of these is a dog.  I allowed myself to be treated like one.  This is how it feels when you have lived through an abusive relationship.  And so many of us stay, like a dog that returns to an owner who beats it.  It is a dehumanizing experience, and looking at it as a part of my own personal history filled me with shame.  I think of myself as a strong woman.  Because I had memories of allowing myself to be treated in this way, there has been a fundamental disconnect in my own definition of self.  It lead to a certain lack of honesty in everything I did.  It split my self image into two parts, the one I cognized and the one I suppressed.  In the original painting I am the dog, but I am also a bird fighting the dog.  The figure who represents my abuser has his fingers in my head.  The suppressed self image remains in this passive dog-state without power and without a real form.  It is skeletal.

In reworking the painting the fingers get pushed out of the dog's brain and the dog and bird metamorphose into a new creature.  This new image of self is not perfect, but whole and united, with yet to be realized powers.

When I approached this part of the painting and saw what I was denying to myself, I started to remember parts of my life I had pushed aside and buried for so long.  Some were horrific acts of physical and sexual violence.  Others were moments of shame, when I supported my abuser and his actions with my silence.  When I met him I was 20 years old, and I was a naive and idealistic young woman who was in a state of constant rebellion from the world I was raised in.  I grew up with privilege, but I knew the world was unjust and was unable to accept it.  I spend so much of my teenage years battling my father and anyone who considered themselves a realist.  In my mind accepting the world as it is, unequal and unfair, was nothing short of treason to a higher sense of justice.  My youthful idealism met many obstacles head on, and an undeniable one was the injustice of my own middle class childhood in a world where many have so little.  My childhood starkly contrasted the world of poverty and violence my abuser came from.  His pain pulled at my guilt as much as his violence transformed my innocence.  That was the initial dynamic.  He showered me with praise and adoration, while reminding me of my shame: my birthplace in an unjust world.  When his behavior shifted from "sweeping me off my feet" into violence, rage and blame, I was left mute and paralyzed, like the dog on its back in my painting.  I was dependent on his affection as the only redemption for my guilt.  If I left him I only proved him right, life was easy for me and hard for him.  I did just that and I never found a way to address that fundamental conflict in my mind and heart.  How quickly and easily I went from rebellious teen to submissive victim, never leaving either completely healed.  It has been a truth of myself I refused to admit.  It has been the suppressed spilt.  I couldn't bear to see myself with that kind of unflinching honesty.

Facing my fears means facing shame, regret, and things I haven't wanted to believe about yourself.
It has made it possible to transform.  The transformation helps me feel courageous, powerful and honest.
I am becoming a person my idealistic teen self would have looked up to.

Since I started writing about this experience I have received vicious backlash from my abuser, I have been able to finally get a temporary restraining order signed and served, I have found inner strengths I didn't know I was missing, and I have been reminded, over and over, that I am not alone.  I have been added to a directory of healing artists, been highlighted in the local paper's e-newsletter and been asked for permission to share my stories with social workers and their clients.  I have sometimes stayed home, too tired and confused to face the world.  I have established healthy boundaries in all areas of my life.  My paintings have reached a deeper and more dynamic level, acknowledging the dualities of dark and light without judgement.  I have found a voice within me I didn't know could be so raw and honest.   I am moving beyond the classifications of abuser and abused.  We are all victims until we heal our own internal divides.  Only then can we understand healing in the world outside of us. 

I have never mentioned the name of my abuser and I never plan to on this blog or any public forum.  And yet he has revealed himself.  I was unable to get papers served by the police, but he showed up to confront me and was surprised by a Sheriff with papers.  The ironic and fateful way my story keeps unfolding as I do nothing but tell it with candor has given me a new faith in justice and fairness.  I do not accept injustice, but I am waking up to the realization of the divide, that creates it.  I can live without hidden shame and suppressed pain.  I can be my best, and that is what we owe to life, and to the world.

Everyone has a gift. Nurture It.

"The Escape" is now "The Way Home"

This painting is still in progress, but I felt the urge to write a short but hopefully sweet post reflecting on where I'm at in the process.

 Since posting the post "Victim no More" I have been asked if I need therapy, a guru, hypnosis… I appreciate the concern actually, all caring questions from caring friends.  But it seems to me what I need to do is just to continue painting.  When I'm painting the questions present themselves, the memories arise, the emotions resurface.  And a visual language I have spent over 30 years developing helps me to see these memories, feel the emotions and begin to process answers to questions I have until now been too afraid to ask.  It feels like a miracle.  It is certainly a gift.  I am incredibly grateful.

If you have a gift, all I can say is this: continue to exercise and develop it, even if you feel short on time and energy.  Just a little when you have time is better than nothing.  Some years I only had a few weeks out of the entire year to wholeheartedly attend to painting.  I'm so glad I did.  Nuture your gift, let it be important.  The unique way your gift will reveal its meaning and purpose in your own life will someday be clear.  Have faith.

Buddha Pages

                          Being a seller on etsy requires more than talent, creativity and passion.  It is a very competitive marketplace where one must consider most choices with asute business sense.  Because I have been moving away from my life as a business owner and back into the studio, I often struggle with the double edge sword of self employment.  The work is hard, and I still have to make choices that are smart from a business mindset,as well as inspiring to my artistic mindset.  Creating an affordable art piece that is unique, one of a kind and inspiring to the viewer is a challenge, but one I am beginning to enjoy as an important part of my artistic journey.

The Buddha pages are a new idea I brought to my etsy page as a way to combine the lessons I have learned from creating products that sell well on etsy with the projects that are on my table and close to my heart.  I have been sketching flowers, animals and images derived from my studies of Medieval art this winter as preparatory and preliminary work for my large paintings.  The sketches at times develop into finished pieces in their own right.  I offer prints of many of my drawings and paintings, but I wanted to come up with something more.  When I'm at work on a painting I so often rely on chance, or what at times feels like serendipity, to bring the meaning of an image into focus.  

Combining the images from my sketchbooks with pages from a vintage book is not a completely original idea.  Artists print on found paper, especially in the world of assemblage.  The personal significance for me is the particular book I chose.  I have spent many hours sifting through old books since my father passed away three years ago.  He was a voracious reader, and he loved to share everything he learned from his books.  Many of my memories of family vacations at our northwoods cabin getaway are of my father either reading on his recliner or asleep with a book on his chest.  He was so happy with his books.  I don't read nearly as much as my dad, but I do love books and I have had a keen interest in Buddhism in the past year, reading everything I can get my hands on.  So, going through my dad's collection, the text on the Buddha's life, "Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism" 1969, has been the perfect choice for a backdrop for my sketches and studies.   I love to layer an image full of symbolic meaning with a page that somehow relates to the image, inviting further contemplation.  When I look at them now I see them as small versions of the layering process I meticulously work through in my multi media painted works.

Adaptation

I invite readers to check out the Buddha pages on etsy.  Each one has a special meaning that I begin to explain in the listings, leaving the rest of the discovery to each viewer.  At the top of this page is a link to etsy, it will take you to the shop: Dawn Patel Art, and the Buddha page section can be easily found there.  

Beneath the Snow

I would love to hear what meanings you discover in these small and precious pages.

Work in Progress: This is the Fun Part

Intermediary: Work in Progress

It's fun to talk about a painting in progress, sometimes for me more enjoyable than talking about a painting after it's finished.  Once the work is finished, everything has been decided.  At that point I'm much more interested in hearing what the viewer has to say, what an individual walking up to a painting for the first time sees, interprets and understands.  

At this point… I would say this painting is nearly half finished, but it's impossible to say for sure, mysteries can still unfold, meanings can show themselves and changes can occur.  I can still have an "aha" moment when the meaning of this painting suddenly goes deeper, or takes a turn I never expected.  At this point I have, in my mind, an pretty general understanding of what it means, to me. 

SPOILER ALERT!  

If you wanted to wait and interpret my painting for yourself before being influenced by my intentions, stop reading now.  I am going to write about what I began to see in this painting, on the second day I worked on it.  

When it began I had some general ideas going into the image.  One was the idea of forces of opposition. Conflict.  Dichotomies.  I used a drawing of a bird and a snake in an attack/defensive struggle.  I also had an image of two creatures facing each other, also in attack/ defense mode.  One is a deer-like creature and the other has computer keys for teeth.  The third image I used is from a Medieval Alchemy text and it shows a bird facing downward with a rope in it's mouth.  At the end of the rope is a large stone.  From it's feet a scroll of paper unravels.

The three drawings, all torn from my sketchbooks, are drawings I have done in the past of things that interest me.  They represent concepts I enjoy trying to understand, ideas that help me make sense of the world.

I began painting by trying to visually tie together the images with paint while thematically tying together the images with new and larger images in the paint.

By the end of day two I found myself with a painting of a sleeping figure.  The meaning of the painting is beginning to reveal itself.  In the center is a seated Buddha-like figure.  He has technology - all that is man-made on one side of him and spirit/nature on the other.  Like the snake and the bird that surround the sleeping figures' head, these two creatures are in a fight- one has an aggressive stance and the other a defensive stance.

At the sleeping figure's feet is the bird, attached to his toe.  And the same foot that holds the bird with its' toe carries a large swan made of stone.

In the center of the painting is the Buddha-like figure.  His eyes are closed and his arms are wrapped around him like a straightjacket.  A tear falls from his eye.  The figure whose sleeping body stretches across all of these images also has his eyes closed.  The bird at the foot end of the figure drops the stone.

To me this painting is about being asleep.  I think it's something human-kind is very guilty of, and I do not excuse myself.  We are here in these bodies witnessing the essential nature of life, but we have our eyes closed and do not know what our roles are, perhaps we are even trapped.
The images in the painting imply that perhaps one of our roles is that of the intermediary between these worlds that seem at this point to be in opposition.  Whether or not they are truly in opposition is a question… is it a result of our sleeping that the conflicts exist, or do we sleep to avoid the conflicts?

I once had a dream, and in the dream a fatherly guide said, "The ones who know why they are doing what they are doing will control the technology."  Today listening to one of my favorite Buddhist teachers, Heather Martin, I heard her say, "Know what you are doing."  It seemed to fit.

Perhaps I paint these to teach myself what I need to learn, but in the meantime, I hope I paint something that also gives pleasure to others.