Summertime and the Living's Easy

Currently bringing me joy:

-iced green tea
-high piled clouds
-vibrant children- laughing, playing, jumping, talking, getting lost in their dream worlds constructed of lego and markers and funny words, begging for slurpees, teeth chattering after a swim
-2 yellow pansies in a clay pot
-pthalo blue stains on my fingers
-time to think, time to dream
-a nap on clean, white sheets in a sun-flooded room
-nighttime, snuggled on the couch, Battlestar Galactica, his scratchy beard on my bare shoulder -he says "How do you like them apples?" every night at the most suspenseful part, and for some reason, every night it's funny.
-summer rain
-Friday nights the boys choose the menu, and help to cook it. Liam presiding over a sizzling pan of calamari, with all the grave attention of a general watching his troops go into battle. Elliot stirring, chopping, chatting, so lively, so proud.
-holidays coming -a week full of promise, family, sunshine, open country and a long straight road, Harry & the Potters and oatmeal cookies, as we hurtle along through time and space, distance melting in a blur of green fields and huge Prairie sky.
-2 blond boys drawing as I read, asking for diagrams, asking for clarification, turning sharply in unison, grey-blue eyes round, as Gandalf faces the Witch King at the gate of Minas Tirith. I can see their imaginations spark, and turn.
-quiet house
-new art

Summer.

Buried Treasure: Repost

I am fairly new to art and blogging, so I didn't have to dig too deep to find my Buried Treasure for Seth Apter's blog sharing project.

I chose the following old post entitled "Fear", not because it includes a piece of art that is a particular favourite, but because the bravery of all artists is a point that I keep coming back to. Anyone who has ever wrestled with a blank canvas or paper, knows about that astounding feat of strength and death defying leap required to make art. To take what is vulnerable, private, untried and put it out into the world time and time again. To be willing to experiment, make mistakes, get messy, get ugly and break all the rules. To stand up and say, "I will make art out of the best that is in me, and chance the consequences". I am awestruck and inspired daily by the sheer nerve of the act of making art. So without further ado...


Fear


Fear. Fear of failure. Fear of success. Fear of looking like an idiot. Fear of looking like an asshole. Fear of screwing everything up. Fear of tragedies and calamities unknown. Fear of loss. Fear of pain. Fear.

The women in my family all run to anxious. It is genetic. Anxiety coursing through our veins right along with the red corpuscles. Hair trigger fight or flight responses, flooding our bodies with adrenaline at the most inopportune moments. Worry woven into the very fabric of our beings.

The women in my family also run to courageous. We don't give up. We stand, undaunted by the cloud of anxiety ready to roll in and smother us, at the first sign of trouble. We carry on every day building lives and families and ourselves, even when every step is haunted and hunted by fear.

I've been thinking and talking a lot about fear, as I venture on this journey of making art. Facing my fears of inadequacy and failure every time I sit down at a blank page or canvas. There is nothing there... no props or subterfuge to hide behind, just you and your own creativity. It is hard. It is humbling. It is exhilarating.

Everyone has fears, even those without the genetic predisposition to anxiety. And I think the trick may be really coming to understand the nature of the beast. The duality of the monster that both protects and traps you. That fear itself is not indicative of lack of character or resolve, but a primal force...important and inescapable. Sometimes to be mastered, sometimes to be accepted and sometimes even thanked.

So I embrace this idea of acknowledging the monster, looking it squarely in the face, and then carrying on. Fear, anxiety and worry will always be a part of me to some degree or other, because I am human, and because I am a human who is wired in a certain way, for better or for worse. But I will not let fear trap me. It can't be my motive, to act or not to act, or my excuse. Anxiety is my uncomfortable companion as I walk my path, but it will not determine my course. I have better companions by my side to help me with the navigation.

(the work above is mixed media acrylic on canvas, 9"x12")

Machinations

I've been working on this one artwork for awhile. I was savouring it, babying it along, slowly building up textures and layers with collage and glazes (thank you Julie and Layer Love!). But then I got stuck...not because I didn't know what to do, or had a problem and couldn't fix it, but stuck because I liked it too much. I lurved the texture I had created! The way the colours had come together! I wanted to marry it, eat it up with a spoon, wallow around in it, sit down, eat a popsicle and look at it forever (not necessarily in that order).

I knew it wasn't finished, but what if I ruined what I already had with my next move? I had a loose plan in my head when I started, but suddenly it was too scary to go forward. By creating a beginning I actually liked a lot, I had suddenly raised the stakes too high for my own comfort.

It has languished away on my art desk, untouched for several weeks. Sure I have been busy, a little ill and very distracted too, but mostly I've been chicken.

Not so today. Art is a risky thing. A mysterious magic trick, wherein you create something out of nothing, and try not to get buried in fear or ego along the way. This beginning that I had made, with paint and paper and my own magic, is mine. Mine to master, not to be mastered by! Mine to paint on, cut up, daub with ink, paste over or slash to bits...yes, even mine to screw up. And so what if I did screw it up, I can make another, right?

So I took the plunge.

I am not calling it done yet, but it is getting very close. And I am proud of it, and even more proud that I found the cohones to move forward, whether for good or bad...because really the only "bad" thing would have been to stay stuck, stagnant with reluctance.

Machinations - 16x20", mixed media
(acrylic, oil pastel, graphite, needle and thread (first time adding a couple of stitches to my canvas and I liked), found object, book papers, and junk mail)

Because the love is really in the small details on this one:

This Morning There was Laughter

Laughter! Real laughing...giggling, goofy, funny, cuddly, joking boys. Happy boys.

The DH came hobbling all the way upstairs to see what was going on. That's how long it's been, since laughter in the morning here.

Yay for summer! Yay for lazy, laughing mornings and quiet afternoons!

Remember that part in the Rankin-Bass Santa Claus is coming to Town, where the Winter Warlock's icy heart melts? I can see their stress beginning to melt away just like that...

"O, Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking cross the floor
Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking out the door..."

Someone Fetch Me My Smelling Salts

I haven't been feeling that well. It's come on so slowly, like that unfortunate frog in the frying pan that my Grammy used to talk about. I started out just a little tired, and then tired all the time. I put it down to STRESS. These last 2 months of school have been distinctly un-fun. Then a host of other annoying little unwell feelings, that I was determinedly ignoring, until finally heart palpitations and breathlessness that demanded my attention, right now! Again though, I was thinking stress. But the doctor says (drum roll, please)...anemia.


Oy vey. This will probably come as no surprise to anyone familiar with my pallid, "I have the vapors" track record. My dad's response, "Get that girl some red meat!" But it likely hasn't been caused by a dietary deficiency, but by my increasingly ugly periods.

I'm not sure quite what I want this blog post to be about...my almost amused exasperation at feeling like Mrs. Bennett, suffering with her much maligned nerves:

"...what a dreadful state I am in, that I am frighted out of my wits-- and have such tremblings, such flutterings, all over me-- such spasms in my side and pains in my head, and such beatings at heart, that I can get no rest by night nor by day."

Or that lingering sense of sadness and betrayal that I have about the latest twist on my road to hysterectomy. My woman parts...they don't work so good. I sometimes wonder if all the illness, pain and malfunction now, is tied into all the guilt, fear and rebellion I felt around sex way back when. Did that intense burden of what a good girl does and doesn't, that fear of the wrath of God, that deeply ingrained belief that a woman's worth is determined by her "purity" turn inward to sicken me? I used to secretly worry that I would be punished for my choices...and the things I didn't choose. I wonder if the worry constructs the punishment, at least partially. Or the scars manifest in physical hurts along with the emotional ones. I think so. Of course, there are genetics, and this durned Victorian constitution too.

Either way, I am only 34. Too young yet for the big operation (have had and will have to have smaller ones). I don't want to be stripped of that part of my femininity yet...5 more years...10 more years at least. Fingers crossed.

And love to my body. What if love and positive thoughts could do the opposite of all of those old wounds and worries? Sex is now a playground, a healing haven, a shared pleasure with my very favourite person. My body is more my own than it has ever been...working on feeling beautiful, working on not micro-focusing on the flaws, working on being free of all the bad old ideas and memories. I want to allow love the same power over mind and body as fear once took.

And in the meantime, I'll be loosening my corsets and reclining gracefully on my fainting couch.


**PS I do realize that Pride and Prejudice is not from the Victorian era, but my constitution is. ;)