A worthy cause

I just finished up a commission for another lovely client (I swear my clients are the best people!!) and he was telling me about an organization that he volunteers for called, The Frederick County4H Therapeutic Riding Program. This is their mission:

The Mission of the Frederick County 4H Therapeutic Riding Program is to provide a recreational experience and therapeutic regimen to Frederick County citizens with medically certified mental, physical and emotional disabilities, through appropriate equestrian activities.

So, we are going to work together (Barry will provide me the photographs of one of their horses) and we will come up with a great drawing that they can then auction off at their fundraiser in November. I love fun projects like this that help such wonderful causes. Please check out their engaging website at: http://www.fc4htrp.org/index.htm

Productive weekend

Finished three drawings this weekend and started a new small (5x7) graffiti piece. Very productive of me...but really, I was by myself almost all weekend long and with having sciatica right now, what else am I going to do? And I love, love, love drawing...soooo..it's a no brainer!!

I really love my trash can/palm tree drawing and the new one, Just Another Day, below. The reason why I love graffiti so much?...I believe it's the layers and layers of messages and art all entwined together...knowing that it's been touched by so many hands. It's the idea of artistic freedom and expression. And it's the mystery of what it all means. Plus they are just really fun to draw!

I also came up with an idea from this piece above to start incorporating more of my own messages in these pieces...this will make it even more personal to me.

Quotes by Alan Cohen

View the past as your enemy, and it will be an albatross.
View it as your friend, and it will give you wings

Keep in mind that every challenge, great or small, is moving you to look deeper and draw
forth
the highest in you. You're never given a challenge beyond your ability to meet and master.
You'll rise above every circumstance because you're greater than any circumstance.

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new.
But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the
adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.

self portrait challenge

Growth is continuous.

Change comes in an instant.

Healing can happen in a moment.

Lazaris~



self portrait challenge on wednesdays at: Misty Mawn

New Drawings

I started this drawing awhile ago but am now trying to finish it so I can enter it in the Artist Magazine competition. 9 finalist will have their art published in their magazine as well as the calendar. I just think if I can get this, it would open a lot of doors for me...so I'm excited to try. Now, if I can just get my butt going and get motivated enough to get it done in time (May 1) Argh!!

This is a small piece (5x7) I just started this past Sunday...not use to working quite this small on these graffiti pieces, so I am going to buy a mechanical pencil to see if I can get a finer tip for details. I've always used staedtler graphite pencils...which I love best, but feeling like a mechanical will do the trick this time. This little piece will be for sale at my show in June , but am thinking of using it on my new business cards as well.

And lastly, I did this card in January but wish I would have read it last night as I could not get motivated to do a thing...was feeling exhausted, depressed and in self pity. So, I was a couch potato watching the good but depressing movie, Seven Pounds with Will Smith. When my mood hadn't shifted by morning I knew I had to start talking the spiritual talk...and you know what? It wasn't hard to shift it, it just took willingness to do it. Because to be sad and depressed, you have to think sad and depressing thoughts and I'm so tired of rehashing those thoughts and the past, crying over something I'll never have again. I have to get past this. So, this little card is going right over my bed with some other sayings to help remind me of the new life I want to create for myself. After all, my exboyfriend was perfect for who I was at the time we first met, but now I'm expanding, growing and changing at an accelerated pace...I need someone who can keep up with me!

healing

Been away this past week trying to heal my heart...my (ex)boyfriend told me it was finally over, that he was definitely moving on without me in his life. It hit me so hard...all over again, and I realized just how much hope I was holding on to...hoping that he would find his way back into our life together. But sadly he did not.

I'm trying to see this situation through spiritual eyes instead of just human needs. This I believe: This breakup had to be extremely difficult and very painful for me so I could set myself free from it. When you love someone as deeply as I did him I glossed over many things that were not working in our relationship. I really had built my whole life around him, my children and my art...letting many things fall away, including close friendships. We were intensely in love and passionate about each other and only wanted to be together...not a balanced life. Altho I was very, very happy, it was also a very limiting life. And maybe, just maybe the Universe has someone else in mind for me, altho that's hard to accept. I know that he kept trying to clip my artistic wings, not understanding that I am a late bloomer and that means my approach to art is experimental. (Experimental artists build their skills gradually over the course of their careers, improving their work slowly over long periods. These artists are perfectionists and are typically plagued by frustration at their inability to achieve their goal.<--boy that's me in a nutshell!)

No matter how intensely I loved him, I couldn't be kept in a box. But, I also know this to be true about myself..."this is the final lesson of the late bloomer: his or her success is highly contingent on the efforts of others". This is one of the many reasons it's been so difficult for me to separate from him. Yes, the loss and loneliness has been immense but I think this is the reason that I've had no desire to do my artwork...to me it was a partnership and with that love and support gone there was just no yearning to get back to it. I've had to push myself relentlessly to draw, to try and get ready for my upcoming show at the Montrose Arts & Crafts Fair in June. There was (is still) tremendous fear of doing it all by myself, when I know this was all part of our dream..our future together.

But life goes on doesn't it, it never stands still waiting for us to heal...it beacons us forward. And so I am trying to answer it's call to catch up. Throughout the week I'll share the artwork I've been working on this past weekend. Slowly I am getting back into my artistic groove.

progress

Okay...I think she is finished...halleluiah! Now I can get onto the collage part!




I've amazed myself lately with the amount of drawings I'm getting done in the evening. Especially because I've been soooo exhausted due to lack of sleep...one thing or another (kitten, police helicopter, phones) have been waking me up at ungodly hours of the morning, the brain turns on and then darn it all, I can not fall back to sleep!

I've also just finished a very nice commissioned portrait of a young girl and her golden retriever and am almost done with a commission of a sweet pup that reminds me of our family dog growing up. So...very, very busy! That's good tho! It helps the healing process.

This last week I've really been looking at/journaling about Lazaris's qualities and levels of love. Their words about love/loving has taken on a whole new meaning for me. They are not just words or something you do...they are now living and breathing.

The four levels are: security and pleasure (foundation) vulnerability (exposing your weaknesses) and trust (level two) intimacy and caring and lastly, knowing (...you can create love. When you know you don't have to wait for love...you can allow it to flow not only from you but to you<-- isn't that great!!)

accomplished!

finished drawing...now onto the collaging part of this piece

I'm very happy with how this drawing came out...it's one of my favorites. The hat was challenging as well as the freckles... didn't want them to just appear as dots on his face.

Now the collage part of this piece: after weeks and weeks of studying numerous collage artists and what collage elements I feel really worked in their pieces, I devoted time to just thinking/dreaming about how all of these segments would come together as a cohesive, interesting piece. From the beginning, I knew that sewing was going to be apart of it, beyond that I had no clue until now. Now I'm adding words and distressing the paper with tea stains and sandpaper. I figured, heck, even if it comes out as a total disaster at least it will have been fun and I'll have learned a lot in the process!!

Exploring....

Angeles Crest California


We saw patches of snow


We meandered through a brook


We clambered over rocks


We conquered the world!

you go girl!

“I felt a million times better, and I’ve never had a bite of meat ever since then,” Cloris said of turning vegetarian nearly 50 years ago.

WOW! From someone who's been a vegetarian for 18 years, let me just say that I am totally impressed...had no idea Cloris Leachman was a vegetarian...and for THAT long!Way to go!

i c w

monarch ~detail by Cathy Rose


faultlines by Cathy Rose

Isn't Cathy Rose's wooden sculptures absolutely, incredibly fabulous!! I can just feel the celebration in these beautiful pieces...arms wide open saying YES!! I am willing to have it all!! And in alignment with my post yesterday...metamorphosis..."emerging a different kind of person"...wow...I'm in love!!

Please head over to her website and blog and check out all her amazing artwork. It looks like she also does the art fair circuit...hope she writes more about that as well. I bet she has some very interesting stories to share.