Long Time, No Post

Looking at my blog just now, I was shocked to see that I hadn't posted anything since last month's Searching for Roy G Biv.  I keep meaning to do a post, but sometimes life just keeps happening.

So for now, I just want to wish you the happiest of holidays and a blessed solstice. I promise to post more artwork again soon!

Searching for Roy G Biv: Pink

Since finding something pink around here in November is pretty difficult (gray or brown - take your pick), I had to go back a month or so for the photos.  I tried to cover a wide variety of the possible shades of pink, so here goes.

 Rosy pink veronica...

 ... a lavendar-pink petunia...

 ... a classic pink cosmo...

... coppery-pink grasses...

... magenta-pink cosmos...

... and faded pink coneflowers.



To enjoy all the shades of pink found by other Roy G Biv participants, please visit the blogs of our hostesses, Jennifer Coyne Qudeen and Julie B. Booth.

Drawing Challenge: Liminal

Portal

collage, 5 x 5 inches

When Veronica called the latest drawing challenge, "Liminal", I must admit that I had to look up the meaning.

1:  of or relating to a sensory threshold 

 

2:  barely perceptible

 

3:  of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition :  in-between, transitional liminal

state between life and death — Deborah Jowitt>

To see other interpretations, go to Veronica's beautiful blog and check out the links.

Weekly Quick Collage: Sacrament

Sacrament

collage, 5.5 x 5.5 inches

This one is more of a "traditional" Surrealist piece than what I usually do. There is no intended meaning, so you are free to make one up yourself if you wish! It's the only thing I could come up with that's sort of weird and "Halloween-ish".


Happy Halloween, everybody!

Weekly Quick Collage: Precision of Nature

Precision of Nature

collage, 6.5 x 5.5 inches

 “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”                                                                      ~ Albert Einstein

"Nature is not a place to visit, it is home."                                               ~ Gary Snyder

Searching for Roy G Biv: Gray

In our search for Roy G Biv, we have now come the color gray. Our hostesses, Jennifer Coyne Qudeen and Julie B Booth, had to add on some colors that aren't in the rainbow, in order to round out the year.

A statue at Spring Grove cemetery in Cincinnati displays soft, mottled grays...

Huge gray rocks at Eagle Falls in the Great Smokey Mountains...

A little footbridge at Springrove...

A towering gray rock wall beside the Cumberland River in Kentucky...

An old, abandoned building (corn crib?) on what remains of a farm in rural Kentucky...

A widow on a lovely memorial chapel at Springrove...

A view of the side of that same chapel...

Shelf fungus on a log in Lewis County, Kentucky...

A fallen silvery gray leaf...



I hope you enjoyed my grays! To see what grays other participants have on display, please visit Julie B Booth or Jennifer Coyne Qudeen.

Out of the Darkness

Out of the Darkness

ingredients: vintage book covers, vintage book pages, vintage watch movement, other found objects, feather, stitching, metallic oil crayon, graphite;  10.5 x 15 inches



"Art is a wound turned into light."                                                                      ~ Georges Braque
   

                                                                                          
I made this piece at a time when I was too upset to really think about what I was doing. I just started ripping stuff apart and gluing it on; the process was entirely intuitive. I know it expressed my desire and hope to leave that dark place and be healed. Perhaps when something important is lost, it can be replaced by something even better. I had to believe that. And I know that making this was a part of my healing process. Art has transformative power.

As someone who at one time considered becoming an art therapist, I found the whole process of making this piece to be eye-opening.  Not that I haven't had experiences of art-making that were like meditations, like being on a  completely different 'mental plane' than normal; but this piece was accompanied by a great release of emotion. Also, I have little memory of actually making it; I couldn't tell you what I did first, second, third, etc.

Art therapist and author Shaun McNiff says, "Like dreams, art works are surprising syntheses of elements on the threshold of consciousness that present themselves. The artist prepares the space and lets the controlling mind step aside. Artistic cognition responds and takes advantage of accidents, chance, lines, forms , figures, and interactions that emerge "unwatched." (Art as Medicine: Creating a Therapy of the Imagination")

Though I never purposefully set out to engage in any sort of therapy (as I didn't here), sometimes it just turns out that way. Does this ever happen to you?  I'd be interested to hear what other artists think about this.

                                                                                                           

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of every day life.”                             ~ Pablo Picasso