New Year Collage

I enjoy taking the time to reflect and think about the new year. Last year I made an intention stick; this year a collage.

I gathered with two friends who have been on retreat with me twice this past year. We came up with our idea of an "at home" retreat which proved very helpful in our individual journeys into creativity.

I have made collages many times.....alone and with groups. This gathering to create a new year collage fell on the final days of our second retreat. Together we focused on the year ahead as individuals yet the camaraterie made this time very special.

There are several major events ahead for me this year and I gave them some focus. But the magic of creating collages is that images that are selected may manifest or predict a future event. For example, I made a collage of skiing in the Alps because that is something I wanted to experience. A few years later, I visited Switzerland and randomly selected three ski areas to ski. When I returned home and looked at my collage......................ALL the images were from places I visited and skied. Even a spot where I ate lunch outdoors in the snowfield was in the collage!

So, here is my new year collage. Let the magic to happen.

2012 Mandala

Mandala, a sacred circle, creations have been a discipline of mine to connect with myself. I began these way back when I was in a masters program in art therapy and learned that Carl Jung began this method of self-discovery.

What I really enjoy is the freedom and meditative state which occurs when creating mandalas. I guess the process is most important to me regardless of the product. Process versus product is the continual tension of art therapy theory.

After several inquiries about mandala paintings on my website, I realized that I had abandon this practice. Why?

Why not! Even though I sat down to create a mandala in December, it has sat uncompleted at my drawing table until today. Being in an introspective couple of months, I was open to what transpired in the process of creativity. I know frogs represent cleansing, but I am still wondering about the meaning emanating from this creation.

Frog, kaleidoscope, rocks, grounding..........hmmmmm?

Time Out

It is vital for one's well being to take time out for fun and new vistas to spark inspiration for creativity.

I just returned from spending time in Whistler, British Columbia, skiing with my good friend, Elaine. Our last day of skiing was absolutely STELLAR! I must share some images of sunshine, new snow, and mountain vistas.

This is the morning view from our window. You can see the snow line and shadow of the mountains behind us as the sun was rising.




I did get a few runs in the fresh powder and can appreciate the tracks down the mountainside off one of the many peaks.


The view from the top of Whistler Mountain.


Here is my friend imitating the Whistler-Blackcomb insignia.


How did she do?


This is my favorite photo of the Whistler-Blackcomb insignia which my son and I took a few years back.



Whistler is one of my favorite places for renewal and inspiration.

And outstanding place to ski!

Art From Recycled Tires

Today a fellow artist sent me photos of art created with recycled tires. I wish I knew who these artists are so that I could give them credit here for their amazing creativity.

Maybe someone out there can enlighten us?










Fabulous art and creativity!

Rocks - My Latest Art Form

Living in Washington, every time the sun comes out, (very rare at this time of year) I must take advantage and continue on my landscaping project.

I love rocks!

I wanted to create a river around my deck in the front yard and decided to use various sizes of river rock. Because the rocks were so large, I could not shovel them into the wheel barrow. Instead, I placed each rock in the wheel barrow, dumped the load, and arranged them. In other words, I handled each rock twice! I call this my Zen rock meditation.

I found it to be another outlet for my creativity; my latest art form.

This is what it looks like:

Painting in the Berkshires

I just returned from the East Coast immersing myself in the fall colors.

We did some "peeping"* in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York. I also attended a workshop at Kripalu entitled Yoga and Painting in the Berkshires with Linda Novick. Linda is an artist and art educator as well as a certified Yoga instructor, but best of all, a totally fun and supportive person to be with.

There were eight of us and our days revolved around morning and afternoon sessions of creativity and plenty of time to enjoy nature and do yoga. The food was outrageously good and healthy; glad to still fit in my jeans after the five days!

I dabbled with new media; a form of encaustic done with craypas and hot wax and I added colored tissue paper, as well as a return to pastels. Nature was intoxicating and I did several plein air paintings.

Here I am in my element.....



I created these wax paintings using craypas, tissue paper, leaves, and hot wax.





* "peeping" is a New Englander's term for driving around looking at the beautiful fall color of leaves.

Feng Shui Guide For Creativity

How do you create the best feng shui space to support your creativity? Contrary to the popular belief about feng shui, an ideal feng shui space is not the Zen-looking serene space. The ideal feng shui space is the space that has the best feng shui energy to support a specific activity intended for that space.

The feng shui of a creative process - be it painting, writing music or writing a book - always implies making space for that which is not here yet. In other words, it is like the birth of a baby - highly expected, painful, powerful and chaotic at the same time.

Rodika Tchi, a Feng Shui guide, suggests that in order to attract the best feng shui energy for your creative studio apply these basic feng shui tips:

1. Have elements from nature (plants, natural light, rocks from the beach, etc.)
2. Bring strong blocks of color and movement (art, music, small fountain, etc.)
3. Display representation of your successful projects.
4. Clearly organize all the tools you need.
5. Create a clearly defined "no-rules" area. Make it as big or as small as your space allows and let it contain various items you deem necessary with no restrictions. The only rule, though, is to revise and clean this area at regular intervals that work for you - be it every week, every day or every month.

To sum it up, the feng shui of a creative space will evoke the same energy that describes the creative process - the balance between the quiet energy of dreaming/germination and the full bloom of active, strong manifestation. By applying basic feng shui tips and guidelines, you will strenghten the feng shui flow of creative energy and create a feng shui space to support, as well as promote, your brilliant creativity!

Back to the Drawing Board

It has been about a week since blogging and painting. My new canvas, my house, has been consuming my creativity.

I am looking forward to setting up my studio, but must wait until the floor is done which I hope will be this week. I have been missing painting and tonight will create a mandala with my traveling set of watercolor pencils.

In the meantime I have been reading a fun book: The Paintings of Henry Miller; Paint As You Like And Die Happy. It is a book that is out of print and first published in 1960. It is the same Henry Miller the famous writer.

Painting, for Henry, was more than an enthusiasm. It was a passion, yet he was curiously self-effacing about this side of his life. He painted for the sheer pleasure of picking up the brush "to see what happens." During his lean Big Sur years, he often spent more time painting than writing and watercolors became his economic salvation. He freely bartered them for food, clothing, and anything else he needed - a cord of wood, a tank of gas. The beauty of it was he assigned no denomination and exchanged them for anything from a song to a month's groceries. Value was a matter of the moment - and the heart. In order to create the book, the author had to find Henry's art.

The paintings in the book are organized by decades along with three essays. I will share more in the next blog. Stay tuned........


Henry Miller

Advice From Donna Marxer

Donna Marxer is a recognized painter, writer, public speaker, and arts activist. Along with many roles in the art world, she is a regular columnist for Art Calendar magazine and a contributor to national art publications since the '60's. As a labor of love, she is a contributor of a series of oral interviews with older women artists for the National Archives of American Art.

She offers this sage advice: "First and foremost, artists should give up self-pity and do their work. Despair and fear of failure must be fought against as the enemies of creativity. Then, we artists should help one another, share information instead of hugging secrets. When we give out instead of hoarding our hurts, the pain becomes manageable and we are also doing some good for others."

Waiting for Inspiration

Wikipedia defines artistic inspiration as sudden creativity in artistic production.

Where does inspiration come from?

Today I was hoping inspiration would show up if I went into my studio. I did not know what to paint? I sat at my drafting table where I create my watercolor paintings and waited. Do I create a collage or a more traditional watercolor painting? What is the subject?

My discipline is to paint at least twenty minutes a day. I felt frustrated, yet compelled to put paint to paper. Many times when I am emotional or wanting to make some connection with Self, I paint a mandala; a Sanskrit word meaning holy or magical circle. Basically, I paint inside a circle which becomes a meditation. Maybe if my mind were quiet, inspiration would find me.

Being an art therapist, I am always asking myself the significance of the images which appear. Today it was a duck with something, figurative-like, on its back. I painted playfully and wondered.

I am beginning to believe that there is a process to spark the creativity whereby inspiration visits. It comes from engaging in art. As the saying goes, "just do it!"

Scribble Drawing

Taking an art class can be intimidating for some people, basically for adults who have not done much art in their lives. It seems that at some point in the growing up years either someone has made fun of one's art or the notion that I am not good enough has ended further pursuit of art. Yet, creating art sounds intriguing, so let's sign up for a class!

These are the folks I meet in class. BRAVE SOULS! Ready and willing to tap into their creativity. It is a treat to teach these people who show up.

My favorite first activity is to have them choose a color marker and close their eyes. I invite them to scribble all over their paper. Do you know there are many individual ways to scribble? I am amazed by each person's unique way to scribble! I ask them to stop scribbling and to look at their paper from all different angles to see what images they find. When they find something, I ask them to use the various colors of markers to bring the image or images out.

What fun they have! Scribbling is the very first stage of artistic development. Do you remember scribbling as a child? Or do you remember being told NOT to scribble? This art experiential that I use with my art classes seems to connect people with a sense of play. Maybe they get in touch with their inner child? But one thing I know for sure is that everyone enjoys it.