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Hello Painting Sangha
This is our third week together in our 4 week container. I think the process of creative exploration isn't just limited to each session but to the whole experience outside of painting as well. As the creative process awakens our Heart, Soul and Felt Sense, there can be an alivening or illuminating effect where we see the world with a little more Awe even in spite of the internalized critical or dismissive voices. Where color is a little brighter and the magic all around just can't be quite as tapped down. We must feed this shift, trust it and allow it fully. It doesn't mean that life isn't hard or full of heartache, and we can feel that too, but we also get to feel the wonderment, the joy, the mystery everywhere, seeping through the cracks in the mental boxes we have put life in. Life like your paintings doesn't care if you like what is being created in your life it just wants you to show up fully and keep going/growing and trusting until one day there is no more judgment, no more resistance to what is, just total trust in the Benevolent Great Mystery, and the process of life/growth. What a lofty goal to trust life so radically. In writing this I realize that I am so committed to painting because it helps me trust the process of life. It shows me over and over that I am held and that there is a mystery/intelligence that knows way more than my mind alone and that I can count on it. It is hard to put words to it so I will stop after I say this last sentence: It is wild how liquid color journeys on paper can open so many veils, portals, doors in my Soul. "You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop. Rumi Hello Beautiful and Mysterious People reading this post, Bowing to the Winter Season, As nature goes within, ideally so do we. Sometimes we are afraid to sit in the darkness or in the silence of our being and we do everything but that. But if we are brave enough it is a great gift to get to go within. Usually our resistance is out of an attempt to avoid uncomfortable feelings. Feelings are human energies that serve a great purpose. They need to be allowed and presenced (not fixed). The creative process can help one ride the waves of feeling and be a trailhead into the unknowns of our inner being where the Soul becomes the guide. For a while in my painting practice, beings that my mind labeled as "red nuns" kept coming into my paintings. It started with this little one with a lantern in the middle.  I felt so touched and tickled when she came in. There was a felt sense of delight and preciousness. I had an intuitive sense that she was taking that little light of a lantern into the dark nooks and crannies of my psyche, bringing love and kindness to all the exiled (unwanted, unloved) places in me and in the collective. She touched something in my heart and all the nuns that came into my paintings with their red habits and big hearts helped me feel connected to something mysterious and big and helpful. I didn't question them or need to know why, I just delighted in them and surrendered to the process. A lot happened in the painting inside of me. A lot moved and was met in me.  Painting always does that for me. It is my way of consciously entering the mystery itself inside me and finding the right orientation or relationship to it. I can't force that shift in me- where I let go and am moving from the "something bigger"- but I can show up to my painting practice and let it find me. If you are from Asheville you know that it has been a time of great disorientation and loss but one with many gifts, heart openings and possibilities to be birthed. One shift born out of the Hurricane for me is that it opened a door to be both in Asheville and in Frankfort, Ky where I can support my mother more directly and actually get to know her in the time we have left together. I will be coming to Asheville every 2-1/2 to 3 months to teach one day workshops and see friends and clients. In addition to my office/studio in Asheville, I now have a studio in Frankfort, Ky as well. I will teach Intuitive Painting out of both spaces and online.      wow, so much changed after the hurricane. I think of life as before the hurricane and after the hurricane. I think it will take a while for the words to come but I was so grateful that my painting practice gave me a way to process and let all the grief and anger move through. The painting speaks what my words cannot.
  I felt her so strongly. It was as if I was helping her let go. I often wondered if she really went back to spirit. It seemed that she didn't. I had a sense this was helping her go on. Love you Nanny.
 Burn baby burn. This painting was a fun and mysterious.
Blue beings, SASQUATCH, love streaming, Blood flowing, ANCESTOR fingers Coming from the earth6/5/2024  Wo!
- this painting was pure delight- fast and playful. I could feel all the dimensions and the joy of existence.  This painting started with me being so made at my cat Misha for wounding and killing so many small creatures. So much love and wildness in her. The painting took me where I needed to go.
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AuthorDon't try to be beautiful, Archives
June 2025
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