How my art is made

Right now I specialize in pen and ink and colored pencil. I say right now because who knows where the creation process will take me. I like pushing my boundaries, and often the creation process goes both ways i.e. as I create my art, my art creates me. I may start a piece, and then, it tells me it needs to go in a different direction. I didn’t used to do colored pencil, but many of my pieces started to tell me they needed color; so I heeded the call. Scroll down to see my ocean wave created in colored pencil, printed on wood, and then painted on the edges with bronze paint. I then sprayed acid on the bronze paint to create a patina effect.

For my work that is on wood, I create it on paper first. Then it is scanned, and the digital image is printed onto wood at a fabulous facility that has HUGE equipment that uses a UV cured ink. I really enjoy the organic component the wood lends to my detailed work.

Much of my art is made using ‘pointalism’ or little tiny dots to create a piece. Not a lot of people do this work these days because it is very time consuming, but I find it super meditative. I can truly lose track of time…and even forget if I have eaten…and I am VERY food motivated. I also get philosophical about this form of creation; I enjoy the parallels I see with life. When I put a lot of dots in one area, or I put a lot of energy into one part of life, it creates a density there. Likewise, when I omit dots from an area, or I don’t put energy into that part of life, it leaves space. It is kind of like the ‘which wolf do you feed’ metaphor. See my octopus piece below for an example; Mr. Octopus is composed of little tiny dots.

And I feel like I would be leaving a very important part out if I didn’t tell you that my art is inspired by journeys in my mind…so part of how it is created is from me reading, listening to podcasts, exploring diverse mindsets and viewpoints and having my ethos changed by that. My journey with what I have explored becomes art with meaning…

Art with Meaning….What does that mean?

My mom always told me I should be a writer too as a way to get all my stories and contemplations down on paper…to share my thoughts with people beyond the images. So I share my creation time between visual art and writing.

Each piece I create is inspired by something I am experiencing in my life. I am a bibliophile and, because of that, I often create images that capture my response to something I have read. You know yow you can have your mind shifted through reading and that changes what you notice in the world and how you experience it? I call these brain fireworks. My images are ways for me to visually represent the brain fireworks; my words are my attempt to share that inspiration with you. I print the words on canvas that can be hung with the art.

Read on below to find some of the ones people have told me they most relate to.

Keeper of the Heart

When creating this piece, I was thinking about how we can get sucked into an undercurrent, kind of like the undercurrent in the ocean, and end up in a different place than we intend or desire. Then we don't even realize it until we are out in the middle of the ocean thinking, "How did I get here?" For me that undercurrent can take many forms from societal norms/expectations like: "You have to accomplish this to be successful" to "A beautiful woman looks like x, y, and z." Or, as I witnessed when watching HGTV recently, "This is a total gut job. I don't think I could live with a kitchen with laminate countertops." I laughed at this... thinking maybe I should contact the teachers in my school district and help them update the list of survival necessities: food, shelter, water, clothing, and granite countertops. However, as much as I laughed, I'm as guilty as the next person of being embarrassed by my laminate countertops. I hustle to earn money, and ask my husband to do the same, in order that we can make these 'critical' updates someday. But when it really comes down to it, that's not what I want. I want more quality time with my family. I want to cook with them on our perfectly functional countertops, and listen to music, and dance and sing. I want my husband to have the energy to dance and sing, rather than being exhausted from working so hard.

This got me to thinking that I really want to consciously create my path, steer it into joy, and buck those undercurrents. I want to own my authentic self. I also want to be conscious about what I say to myself about myself past, present and future. While I can't always control my circumstances in life, I can control my response to those circumstances.

The armored nature of the wings is born from the things I've felt a need to protect myself against and am finding the strength to expand in spite of. The heart symbolizes passion, love, and joy. My kneeling posture represents humility because I find humility crucial in learning to fly...kind of like U2's song, Mysterious Ways, with the lyrics, "If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel." I am steering a heart as a symbol of conscious creation and steering into joy. I realized that my heart only has me to direct it in life. I can either abuse it or cherish it. I think I'll choose cherish and only ride those undercurrents if they are going to aid me in getting to my goals.

Rising Momentum

This piece was inspired by Brene Brown’s book Daring Greatly and the process I underwent after reading it. I was particularly moved by the following quote of Theodore Roosevelt’s that Brene references:

“It’s not the critic that counts/not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with dust and sweat and blood/ who strives valiantly;…who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at lest fails while daring greatly” (Roosevelt, 1910 in Brown, 2012).

We all have to write and rewrite the story of who we are throughout our lives. For me, and many, a significant challenge provides the impetus to question ourselves. With challenge I started asking, “How do I want to define myself after this? What can I learn? What do I want my story to be moving forward? Am I striving valiantly or surrendering and letting myself be defined by the challenge? Am I daring greatly or am I altering myself in order to please the critic?” The critic can be someone close to us in our lives, or society at large, but it is so common to change ourselves. I decided I was done with that and would ask myself the last question frequently: “Am I daring greatly or am I altering myself in order to please the critic?"

What I found, once I truly got IN THE ARENA, was that there was no turning back…no option of returning to my inauthentic self. That self was hollow and occupying her literally made me feel ill like I was suffocating inside a fake shell. Sure it is terrifying in the arena, and I often ask myself, “What the heck I am thinking,” but there was undoubtedly a building of momentum that happened which made it, not only easier to stay in the arena, but that began to buoy me forward. There is an undeniable power in occupying our authentic selves.

I chose an ocean wave because of the power it represents. Water is soft; it is a fluid, but when it has momentum, it has the power to pulverize rock and transform it to sand. The piece is titled ‘Rising Momentum’ to celebrate the momentum that arises once we occupy our authentic selves and the resultant power. So cheers to the arena dwellers. Let’s cast off the voices of the critics and give ourselves the gift of embodying and empowering our daring, authentic selves.

Tentacles to Kindness

I was recently strongly impacted by two simultaneous events in my life. The first was that I discovered new insight into the consciousness of the octopus. I discovered that most of our research has been very anthropocentric…not surprising…how else do we have to understand the world than through our perspective and consciousness? But what we are learning is that octopuses have more neurons in their tentacles than in their brains and that, therefore, each of these tentacles can think and act independently. At the same time the tentacles somehow cooperate with each other to allow octopuses to move in such a coordinated and fluid manner, and we are not sure that this cooperation comes from running the ‘thoughts’ back through the brain. Not only that, but they change their skin color to blend in with their environment to avoid predators, and can do this in such a sophisticated manner that they can make it appear as if the shadow of a cloud is passing over their body underwater to match the weather outside. This is all because of the neurons in their tentacles, which may enable them to see with their skin.

This was mind blowing for me. I also found it expanded my heart. I found myself loving the octopus. You know that feeling that comes from the heart that can cause one to have a tender spot or take your breath away when you encounter someone or something. I have no doubt, that if I saw an octopus now, it would take my breath away because of how my consciousness has been expanded.

The second ‘event’ was that my teenage son has become very good friends with some teenagers whose family is at the opposite end of the political and religious spectrum than my family. I don’t love their particular belief systems, but I love these teenagers. They are wonderful, kind, thoughtful, respectful, articulate kids. And I have to admit to myself that these kids grew into the wonderful beings that they are today under the guidance of their guardians who come from such a very, very different perspective than mine…likely because these adults come from such a different reality than mine. And I realized I haven’t allowed myself to get to know their particular reality because I have spent too much time thinking that I have learned the ‘right’ approach from my years of education and life experience. So again, my mind fragmented and my heart expanded.

And here is what I thought from my mind-blown, heart-expanded place: Consciousness shouldn’t just come from the mind; it should come just as much from the heart. Really, it should come from the heart first. What would it be like if we approached with compassion and kindness first instead of this sense of otherness first? What if instead of republican/democrat we approached as human/human…albiet human with a vast, complicated long history…still human…human who wants a better world for their children to grow up in, who would give anything to make that happen, who is afraid it is not going to happen and is therefore willing to fight and in some cases oppress/kill others in order to give our children a better chance. If we approached with heart first, would we be able to find curiosity to understand why they believe their approach is what will create the best possible world for their childrens’ futures? And while I am talking about a better world, what if instead of human species/non-human species we approached as life/life. And we started to really explore more into what each life offers…just like the consciousness of an octopus. How would our world be different? Might we stop placing financial gain from ivory over the value of an elephant’s life? If we had led with compassion, we would have preserved more species in time to discover scientifically what we are discovering now about how much is being offered by things as little as bacteria. Bacteria in our soil make it alive and nourish our fruits and vegetables in a way that no chemical fertilizer ever can. ‘Good’ bacteria in our guts are helping turn on beneficial expression of our DNA.

As long as ‘our’ children is just the possessive of one political party or country, and not the possessive of humanity, there will continue to be tremendous divisiveness, fear, anger and war. As long as protecting ‘ourselves’ is just the human species, we will continue to create mass extinction on our planet until we obliterate even that limited version of ‘ourselves’. Compassion will expand the umbrella of ourselves to all species.

Compassion and kindness first will enable curiosity, and curiosity will enable understanding amidst diverse viewpoints both within our species and between species. Which brings me full circle to the octopus. What if all the different approaches of humankind and the different consciousnesses and contributions of different species could be like the eight tentacles of the octopus…thinking independently, but acting in a beautiful coordinated dance. What if we led with curiosity and kindness.