Making Room for all My Loves – Music, Art, Writing

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art, creativity, lifestyle, music, painting, personal, writing

Piano by Rene Margritte

A year and a half ago I blogged about Learning to Play (Again) and wrote this

I played piano as a girl and always regretted giving it up. Lately the thought that I may never play again, never experience the pure pleasure of music slipping out through my finger tips onto the keys–-to lose that forever– -seemed too sad to bear. So I bought myself an electronic piano, something I could set out on my dining room table to play.

Nothing so romantic as a baby grand–-but it has the touch and feel of the real thing. I can close my eyes and listen and imagine that heavy-breathing instrument bowing beneath my body as I play it.

The music I want to play is the kind that sweeps you away–Chopin, Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven . . . . What I yearn for, and seem to remember, is the kind of playing where body and music meld, where the notes sway through my body and spill out on the keyboard, like some lover I’m caressing. A musical love-making.

Sad to say, I did not play my keyboard as much as I had first thought I would and eventually it was put away to make room for my painting, which I also pursued on the dining room table.

But I regretted not having a permanent place for my keyboard, where I could go whenever I wanted and just sit down and make music. I still longed for a “real” piano, but it seemed, even in this large new home of ours that there just wasn’t a good place for one.

Then this summer my daughter came for a visit and stole back the large antique cabinet that I had been storing for her all these years. I knew she would be taking it now that she had her own home to fill up. But what could fill that empty space in the corner of our foyer, which was so much larger and “grander” than any home we had ever had.

And then I knew.  Why a grand piano, of course! Which is what I had always wanted but never thought I would have.

I discovered that used baby grand are not so very expensive.  And antique baby grands are so inexpensive that some are given away for free. So we found a beautifully cared-for antique on Craigslist and moved it into the corner of our foyer. Now it takes center stage in our home where I pass by numerable times a day. It’s always there, beckoning to me as I pass by, and now I play, not only daily, but several times a day.

But my dining room table is still a mess, covered with tubes of paints, and brushes, and palettes. It’s time to make a permanent home for the newest love in my life, my artwork.

This fall we plan to add an “art studio” to my home office where I do my writing. We’ll build a counter-top across one wall and halfway down the center of the room, to create a T-formation and two work stations.  On one side will be my computer and printer and all my writing paraphernalia, and on the other side will be room for my artwork.

When it’s done I finally will have a permanent place to play with all the loves in my life. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to do that, to even discover what all your loves will be, let alone make room for them. My only problem then will be finding time each day to enjoy them.

How do you make room and time for all your creative endeavors?

My new piano

 

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Playing with Abstracts, Loving the Process

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abstract art, art, color., creative process, creativity, painting, personal, watercolor

I was surprised by how much I love painting abstracts. Just playing with color, design, textures is so freeing and creative. There’s no worry involved, no trying to make the work look like something in particular, or any hesitation to try something new for fear I’ll “ruin” it.

Yet it’s not like I begin with no thought in mind. I have a sense of what I want to create or capture. It’s not like I’m just throwing down color willy-nilly, although I suppose there would be nothing wrong with doing that either. But I like the creative process of laying down lines, swirls, design and adding paint to create a sense of balance, interest, complication, and completion. Each layer or choice adds something distinct and interesting to the whole.

In this first piece I started with that primal swirl in white oil pastel, then added the three slanted lines at the top in gold oil pastel. After that I dropped in various hues of blue, wet-on-wet so they could mix and mingle, and let it dry. When dry I added the dark blue dripping at the top, coaxing the drips around the oil pastel. I added the dark gold at the bottom and in various places for interest and balance, then let it dry again. In the last pass I toned down the gold pastel with blue pastel, added more “sparkles” and swirls of white and gold pastel, then more blue pastel toward the center of the major swirl to help the white pop.

It was all a careful, studied consideration, born of intuition and gut-feel, to reach the balance and interest I was looking for. My love of blue and gold in combination was given full rein to play with each other, and I noticed how my favorite doodles when I’m lost in thought made their way into the painting as well.

In the end, this piece reminds me of the night sky, with its swirling galaxies, shooting stars, and so on.  Although intentionally, that wasn’t what I had started out to create, I think my love for the night sky, that mystery and romance, was expressed here subconsciously.

I think that’s what I love about the making of abstract art, the little I’ve done so far, surprising myself with what gets pulled up subconsciously from some deeper inner reservoir. It’s what I’ve always loved about writing too, surprising myself with what comes out on paper.

The next piece I created was totally different in style and by intention. I wanted to experiment with lifting out a figure from layers of paint, which I did on the right. I wanted bright primal colors. After the deep blue and red on the right I laid down a brilliant yellow and then a dark gold below. Then I added the marks at the top and bottom left purely for what I thought would be “interesting” and enough to balance with the dark red and blue on the other side without taking away too much attention from that vague ghostly figure, which I saw as being the main focus.

When I reached what appeared to be an interesting balance, I stopped. “Man in Motion” came to me unbidden when I looked at the figure, so I suppose I will name it that, although what that means, if anything, I do not know.

This last piece was inspired by my love of scarlet and gold “in conversation.” I decided to split the painting into two unequal wholes. I started with swirls of gold and red oil pastel across the whole sheet. Then I used masking tape to divide the two sides and began splashing on two or three variations of red, one on top of the other, wet on wet. I did the same with yellow and gold on the other side. Then I used crushed cellophane to add pattern and texture to both sides. Finally I added some drips of blue on the red, and drips of dark gold and red on the yellow side.

But I wasn’t quite satisfied.

So I did something dangerous and daring. I added a strip of dark blue across the middle of the yellow side. It was awful! I thought I had ruined it and began trying to sponge it away, then I washed and scrubbed it, but a green stain remained. So I added more yellow on top of it and added more swirls of gold oil pastel. And I kept playing and experimenting until finally I was satisfied, and decided I liked this better than what I had before after all.

This is what I ended up with. For some reason the colors seem brighter in the previous photo than in this one, but in actuality, this is as rich and luminous as the one above. However, this final version seems more interesting and “complete” to me than the first, which seemed to lack “something,”  a depth, perhaps, or focus, or darker interest.

Anyway, I enjoyed this whole process so much, I know I’ll be painting more abstracts.

Knowing little about abstract art I did some research online and found this essay on the Metropolitan Art Museum website. It was fascinating how many abstract artists felt they were tapping into some “universal inner sources” when they painted, and how they felt their works “stood as reflections of their individual psyches.” I also like how “these artists valued spontaneity and improvisation, and accorded the highest importance to process.”

“For Abstract Expressionists, the authenticity or value of a work lay in its directness and immediacy of expression. A painting is meant to be a revelation of the artist’s authentic identity.”

I suppose that’s why someone like me who is playing with art and doing it purely for my own pleasure and interest would be drawn toward the abstract. And no doubt it is why the creation of art itself can be such a healing activity.

The essay ends with this interesting bit about the “expressive potential of color,” and the artist’s quest for the sublime.

Mature Abstract Expressionism: Color Field
Another path lay in the expressive potential of color. Rothko, Newman, and Still, for instance, created art based on simplified, large-format, color-dominated fields. The impulse was, in general, reflective and cerebral, with pictorial means simplified in order to create a kind of elemental impact. Rothko and Newman, among others, spoke of a goal to achieve the “sublime” rather than the “beautiful,” harkening back to Edmund Burke in a drive for the grand, heroic vision in opposition to a calming or comforting effect. . . . For Rothko, his glowing, soft-edged rectangles of luminescent color should provoke in viewers a quasi-religious experience, even eliciting tears.

Certainly color and color combinations have always had a particular hold on me, even to the point of a “quasi-religious experience” that has led to a “tearing up.” It’s how I judge art in general, not so much for its beauty but for its ability to move me, whether toward the sublime or in some other deeply felt way.  This is true for me both as a maker of art and a lover of art.

Love, I think, is the glue that holds it altogether.

5 Years Blogging from the Edge of the Wild

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Blogging, Deborah J. Brasket, Ghost Stories, human consciousness, life, memoir, mystery, personal, Philosophy, writing

I began this blog five years ago, in July 2012. It’s been a wild ride, and I’ve loved every minute of it. My first post earned me one “like” and no comments, and now I have over 9000 followers, mostly due to being “Freshly Pressed” three times.

Still, it’s humbling.

When you start blogging it’s like tapping out a weak signal into a vast universe wondering if there’s anyone out there listening who will pick up and respond.

You feel small and alone at first, but powerful too, like that first explorer setting out into the wilderness, not knowing what you will find there, if anything at all.

And then you get your first ping back, a response. That’s all it takes.  You’re not alone after all. Someone is listening, someone like you, and community of like-minded adventurers is formed. Your little spacecraft has a purpose, and a grounding (a following), as you zip through cyberspace exploring what’s out there.

The purpose of this blog, as I wrote about in my first post , has not changed much, although the emphasis has shifted over time.

“I created this blog to explore what it means to be living on the edge of the wild.

 

We all are, in some way, living on the edge of the wild, either literally or figuratively, whether we know it or not.  We all are standing at the edge of some great unknown, exploring what it means to be human in a more-than-human universe.

We encounter the “wild” not only in the natural world, but in ourselves and our daily lives, if only in our own strange dreams, our own unruly minds and rebellious bodies, our own inscrutable families and weird and wonderful pets.

We encounter the “wild” at the edges of science, the arts, and human consciousness.”

I started out with a series of “Sea Sagas” about when we went sailing around the world, most posts on the why and how of it, not getting very far in our journey, and I’d like to get back to that again.

The wildest, bravest, and most romantic thing I’ve ever done was to fully embrace my boyfriend’s dream of sailing around the world and make it my own.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s why I married him.

I also wrote a lot about the art and craft of writing, and my own writing experience. The two-part series about writing with Annie Dillard is one of my and my followers’ favorites.

When I look at the things I write about, that I’m drawn to write about, that seize me, here’s what I see, what I’m drawn to explore:

The gap between appearance and reality; between what’s real and what’s not, and how we can ever truly know for sure. If it’s possible at all.

The dark and the light, good and evil, beauty and brutality, the foolish and profound: how they play together, how they are all wound up in each other, how it’s almost impossible to tear them apart, as least in our ordinary, daily experiences. They lay side by side, or one on top of the other; they copulate over and over, and we, this life itself, is what they give birth to.

Some of my most “viewed” posts explore those darker edges of human consciousness. Hardly a day goes by where the following post does not get several views:

A Deer’s Scream – Beauty and Brutality at Home and in the Hills of Vietnam

The most horrifying sound I’ve ever heard came one night soon after we moved here.  A scream of pure terror that seemed to last forever.

Although I wrote it five years ago in October 2012, it got 106 views last month and 93 the month before, even though it was never freshly pressed. It was one of the hardest posts to write and one of my favorites because of that, I suppose. It spawned a similarly hard post The Deer’s Scream, My Mother’s Eyes, and a Ripe Strawberry,

Perhaps at the very end, when there finally is no escape from death, like that deer, like my mother, and that awful inevitable conclusion chasing us down grabs hold, something unimaginable happens.  Some unseen hand plucks us like a ripe strawberry from the jaws of death and swallows us whole, savoring all the sweetness of our brief lives, and reaffirming with a sigh, “Oh, so delicious!”

A prose poem followed, based on my experiences caring for my mother when she was dying: 13 Ways of Looking at Dying, Just Before, and the Moment After.

IV
“Come here. I want you to sit on my lap.”
“No, Mama. I’m too heavy. I’ll hurt you.”
“Come, I want to hold you, like I used to.” She pats her lap.

Her hands are all bone now, her nails long and yellow. Her pajama bottoms are so loose there’s almost no leg to sit on. I balance on the edge of the recliner and she pulls my head down to her chest.

“There now,” she says, “there now.”

I feel like I’m lying on glass. Like any second I’ll break through. Like the long sharp shards of her body holding me up are giving way, and I’m being torn to pieces in her arms.

Another popular series of posts began with True Ghost Stories, Part One, Growing up in a Haunted House. One of the most popular in that series was about A Demon Sitting on My Chest. The series ends with me questioning whether all I experienced was “really” real, and evoking the voice of one of my favorite GOT characters.

So are the ghosts, demons, and other supernatural beings that have haunted humans through the centuries, that make brief appearances and then disappear, “real”? I do not know, and I’m not sure if it even matters. They are real enough to those that experience them, as least while they are experiencing them, and then afterwards, one wonders.

Each of us makes but brief ghostly appearances in this world we call real. We apparently spring from nearly nothing–a few multiplying cells, and then disappear into nothing as our bodies disintegrate after a short visitation that can last a few days or a few decades. Are we “real”?

“You know nothing, Jon Snow!” So claims the wilding Ygritte in the Game of Thrones series, a saying that has become a popular catchphrase for fans. And rightly so, I believe. It has the ring of truth about it.

Author George R. R. Martin created a soft-edged, constantly evolving world that surprises and delights and dismays us at every turn. And if we become too comfortable in believing we know who the good guys and bad guys are, or who has power and who is powerless, what is real and what is not real, we are sure to have it turn topsy-turvy in no time at all.

It is a world that feels very much like our own, psychologically, emotionally, if we would only admit it.  Perhaps we are all Jon Snows, grasping to know for certain, what can only be known tentatively at best. And this is true when considering the limits of our own private, personal lives, as it is when considering the Big Questions about Life and Death and Reality.

So when people ask me now if I believe all this stuff I’ve written about in this series of ghost stories, I can hear Ygritte’s mocking voice challenge me:  “You know nothing, Jon Snow!”  And I wisely keep mum.

But lately my posts have been more about exploring the world of art, and my adventures playing with watercolor, than about writing or exploring the darker corners of consciousness.

I don’t know where this little blog-craft will take me next, and that’s the fun of it, that not-knowing: The mystery that lies beyond the edge of the wild and beckons us onward.

Thank you for taking this ride with me, for reading and responding, and for allowing me to be part of your lives as I follow you on your adventures.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Tags

art, Consciousness, David Bohm, Deborah J. Brasket, Indra's Net, inspiration, personal, Philosophy, reality, Science, spirituality

Dancing Poppies in a Blue Bowl by Deborah J. Brasket

I fell in love with the title of Milan Kundera’s novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” long before I ever read it. To me it evokes something unbearably joyful and rich, playful and profound.

So I was disappointed to find the novel itself, while a wonderful read, rich and playful and its own way, suggested a different interpretation of its title, a profound sadness at how fragile and transitory life is, how quickly its bright light fades.

I don’t see life that way at all. I mean, I see it, I understand why it may seem that way. But I don’t believe it.

To me, the beauty of  this “lightness of being” is not that it is “unbearable” as in too horrible to bear, but “unbearable” as in too delicious to bear, to contain. It spills over.

I think that’s what I was trying to convey in my painting of the dancing poppies in a blue bowl. The beauty of the seemingly solid things that surround us, that make up our lives, is that they are not “heavy” or “static,” but constantly in motion, “dancing” as it were through time and space.  Constantly dissolving itself and resolving into something else, similar, but not quite the same. The way the present moment dissolves and resolves instantaneously as we move through time.

There’s a wonderful analogy of the universe/reality by the physicist David Bohm. He sees reality and consciousness, what he calls the “implicate order,” as a “coherent whole, which is never static or complete but which is an unending process of movement and unfoldment.”  He likens this whole (all that ever was and ever will be) as a tightly woven ball of yarn, one infinite thread. Yet the way we perceive it through time and space is as if the ball of yarn is rolling away and unraveling before our eyes. We glimpse “what is” second by second, inch by inch, as it reveals itself to us in micro-bites and nano-seconds. It’s not that reality is actually unraveling, but that the illusion of its unraveling is how we come to comprehend it, see it, know it, love it. We are one with it all the while, even while it appears as something distinct and separate from our selves.

Another analogy that I love is Indra’s Net. Here the universe/reality is like an infinite net with a pearl at each interstice. Each pearl reflects every other pearl as well as the whole net itself. Each pearl contains within itself, as part of its own lustrous being, part of its own distinct individuality, all the others around it. The part contains the whole and vice versa.

This view of reality makes sense to me, not only from a scientific and spiritual viewpoint, but experientialy as well. I experience this every time I walk through the house and pass through one doorway after another and watch this interior landscape flowing past me, one room dissolving as a new one approaches. Every time I look out the window and take in the trees and hills and houses and sky and hold them in my mind’s eye even as I turn away. Practical, ordinary, experiences we all share.

I hold all those I love with me wherever I go as I know they do me. My breath is constantly circulating through my body as I breathe in the world around me and breath it out again. Nothing is still for even a second. All of life is in constant motion, the atoms within us and the galaxies swirling about our heads.

This is the unbearable lightness of being. Dancing poppies, dissolving bowl. Brush dipped in water and paint spilling images across a page. All this spilling together going on right here and now as you read this, my heart and mind spilling out to you.

What could be lighter, brighter, more playful and profound than that? This unbearably rich and joyful lightness of being.

My Art or My Novel. Which Would You Choose?

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art, Blogging, creatiity, Novel, painting, personal, Pleasure, writing, writing process

Dorothea Lange’s iconic photograph

Someone asked me recently what I loved more, my painting or my writing? Or, she added, is that like trying to choose which child you love most?

It is a little bit like that. Writing has always been the love of my life. Like a first child, I never thought I could love another as much as I loved him. And then number two came along and I learned that I could. Just as much, but differently.

Some children are easier to raise than others. My writing, like my first child, has wild mood swings. It’s like riding a roller coaster, one moment were up, up, up, dizzy with exhilaration, and the next were down, down, down, hating each other and sure we will never write another word again. But painting, like my second child, couldn’t be easier to live with, and there’s never been a cross word between us. She’s always ready to play when I am, and she keeps me delighted for hours.

Painting gives me more pure pleasure than writing. There’s pleasure in looking for a new project and in planning it. Pleasure in the process of painting and in the finished product. Pleasure hanging it, and every time I enter the room to view it anew.

There’s pleasure in writing too, especially in those first few hours, or days, or weeks, when the writing is hot and flowing out of me like I’m taking diction from some inspired muse. There’s even pleasure in the revision process where I’m weeding out what is extraneous and trying to make it as lean and luscious as possible. There’s pleasure in reading what I’ve written when it goes well, when I’m in the right mood, when I’m feeling confident or inspired.

Those are the peak moments. But in between all this pleasure are deep, deep lows. The sense of futility and frustration and despair can seem overwhelming. And then there are the long droughts when nothing inspires me. And the long, cold slogs when nothing is going well. And the times when I cannot force myself to sit down and try again, to keep it going. When I’d rather clean the toilet or go to the dentist or pull out my own teeth with pliers than sit down and write.

With painting, I never have to force myself to start or finish a project. If anything, I have to force myself to leave it be so I can do the laundry or prepare dinner. It’s not that I absolutely love everything I paint. But at the end of the day, it’s deemed good enough. And I feel my time was well spent. Sometimes I’m thrilled with the results and hang them on the wall. Other times I’m mildly pleased and lean them against some bookcase or pin them on bulletin board. Either way they keep me company. They suffice.

But writing, when I’m finished, disappears from sight. I might get pleasure re-reading it from time to time, but mostly I don’t bother. The few pieces that get published seem to go into a dark vault and are forgotten. Worse are the pieces that were much-loved but remain unread, unpublished. Instead of pleasure is a sense of loss and regret, of unrequited love, of stillborn life.

Given all that, you might wonder why I bother to write at all. Why not give it up for painting?

Because I can’t imaging life without writing. In some ways, for me, it’s like breathing. It seems a natural, intrinsic part of me. I can’t live without it, as difficult as it might be. I’m writing in my head all the time. Thinking and writing gets all rolled up together. Writing–putting thoughts on paper–takes me to a deeper place, and sometimes I don’t know what I think until I write it. It’s like the act of writing pulls up astonishing things from my unconscious and twirls them before my eyes so I can see what I’ve never seen before and be amazed. How could I give up something like that?

Writing this blog gives me pleasure and is a great outlet for my need to write. And your “likes” and comments help to sustain that pleasure, make it seem worthwhile. I don’t feel like the writing has dropped into a black hole or disappeared into cyberspace. I don’t feel I’m engaged in a futile exercise.

But my novel. My poor, poor novel. Unless I return to it, it will remain stillborn. And that I can’t bear. Pleasure or no, I must do it justice and publish it myself if nothing else. But all that takes time. Days, weeks, months of dedicated painstaking work. And I’ve become bewitched by painting. I can hardly stand to be away from her for a minute, let alone days, weeks, months.

So if you were me, what would you choose? Pure pleasure, or high anxiety and uncertain results? The answer seems obvious.

And yet, and yet, in the still of night my novel still calls to me.  In soft, wistful whispers.

Studying the Masters, Playing with Style

Tags

art, creativity, Holly Irwin, inspiration, Odilon Redon, painting, personal, watercolor

Not long after I finished those first three watercolors paintings I shared last week, I was inspired to try to capture something of the style and subject matter of some of my favorite artists.

I fell in love with the paintings of Odilon Redon and especially his paintings of boats. It’s not surprising, given my own love affair with the sea and boats and sailing. There was something so iconic about his images. His seas capturing the deep unconscious, his amazing skies, and the boats themselves, so graceful and buoyant, evocative of vast journeys into the subconscious, the unknown. I had to try my hand at that.

I created studies of two pieces, the one above in the header, and the one below. They aren’t copies. The colors are different, the composition. But if you know Redon’s work, you definitely know who inspired these.

The drawings themselves were simple, the people harder, but capturing some of his techniques, done in oil, with watercolor was a challenge, and the part I actually enjoyed the most. I wanted my paintings to have the richness of oils, to have that “primitive” look, and to look “old.” The blue sail one was my first and easier to paint for some reason. Here’s the original I painted.

I ended up toning down some of the gold at the bottom and the colorful reflections at the right in the final version. Now I’m not sure I should have done so.

The gold one was more of a challenge. It’s a study of his painting called “The Yellow Sail, Final Journey, Guardians of the Soul”. I love that title! It was challenging capturing the “souls” in the boat and those little bits of light floating away (the souls moving heavenward?) which I translated into butterflies (he paints lots of butterflies in his works). And that sea. I wanted blue/green, rather than his gold, but getting the right color, and getting a reflection of the sunset in the water, that was difficult. I reworked it too much in some places, but I think that added to the “primitive, old” look.

I think I’ve succeeded to some degree  in what I wanted to do. Enough to want to frame these and put on my wall in more prominent places, our foyer. They just got back from the framers. But they looked a little lost in the bigger frames I’d ordered and wide matting, so I trimmed it down and put them into smaller frames. Here they are lined up on the couch. We’ll hang them on the wall later today.

I was especially pleased that my husband liked these as much as I do, even more than my paintings of our tropical travels. He likes the other study I did below as much. No, even more so. It is in our bedroom over a dresser where we see it each morning when we wake. I’m so lucky to have a husband who has the same taste in art and who loves my work (or me, least) enough to want to show it off.

The following is a study of the work by a contemporary artist, Holly Irwin. I used one of her paintings in the header for my post “Able to Be the Mother of the World.”

I love the way her images, mostly women and girls, seem to appear out of thin air, or melt into it. That sense of oneness with one’s surroundings really speaks to me. Then of course the iconic image of Madonna and Child, mother and infant, is so heady with the evocation of unconditional love and acceptance, of nurturing and birth and creation, of life itself, that it’s hard for me to resist wanting to capture some of that.

And I think I did. At least enough to want to wake to it each morning. What do you think?

 

 

Dare I Share? Paintings in Progress

Tags

art, artists, Blogging, creativity, inspiration, painting, personal, travel, Visual Arts, watercolor

Family and friends have been asking me to show them some of the watercolors I’ve been working on, so I posted a few on Facebook the other day.

I thought when I first started that my painting would be “just for me” and not shared with the world at large. But it’s hard to keep things you love, that bring so much joy, to ourselves, it seems. And I’m curious to know what others think.

I’m averaging one watercolor a week, and so far, all have been deemed “wall-worthy,” unlike the pastel paintings I worked on last year. My walls are filling up fast. A year from now, will there be any wall space left to fill?

I’m reminded of an immensely talented but public-shy artist friend. She’s been painting for 13 years, but rarely shows her work and does not display for sale. “What do you do with all your paintings?” I asked her one day after class, which she attends for the camaraderie, since she needs no instruction at this point. “Your house must be full!”

“Oh, yes,” was her nonplussed reply. “My house, and my garage, and a storage shed to boot. I trade them in and out of the house to mix things up a bit and give each a chance to shine.”

What a shame, I think. So much talent and beauty hidden from public view. Then I wonder what I’ll do when my own walls are full. How soon will I need a storage shed?

What a think to worry about! Especially when I’m having so much fun, and when there’s still so much I want to paint. I have at least a dozen paintings in my head that I want to get on paper. And there’s more inspiration every time I go to my Pinterest boards and view all the amazing artwork I’ve collected there.

Which brings me back to this blog. Perhaps I will start sharing some of my work here, despite what I wrote in a previous blog post about my painting being “just for me.” I’ll start by sharing my first three watercolors, which already have a place of prominence on a bathroom wall. They were inspired by photographs taken when we were sailing on La Gitana. I’m planning a whole series of tropical paintings–seascapes, boatscapes, landscapes, all from our travels.

Lately though I’ve become sidetracked from the sea to try my hand at some more impressionistic or symbolic paintings, as well as some florals and still lifes. I’m still experimenting with style, you see. While I admire realistic, representational painting, and I think it’s so important to be able to do this kind of painting well, I find myself drawn to a looser, more imaginative style that captures the essence of things with all its attending emotions and conotations. Like the paintings from artists I’ve featured on this blog.

Of course, representational painting in the hands of talented and inspired artists can do the same thing. But I’m not there yet. And these first three paintings I’m posting aren’t there yet either. But they capture enough that I’m pleased with. Enough to inspire me to keep practicing, keep painting.

They don’t capture that “something more” I’ve been writing about in one of my last posts on art, the form and the formless. But each hint at it. Something in the shimmer of the sea with the rocks half-hidden beneath. In that white-sand serenity of a turquoise sea. Something deep and dark in the dream-like beauty of those mountains rising out of the mist during our first tropical landfall in the Marquesas islands after thirty days at sea.

They hint at, but do not quite capture what I was after. Yet viewing them with the mind’s eye I can still go there and feel it. And that to me is what art is all about.

Snorkeling in the Bay Islands, Honduras. Watercolor by Deborah J. Brasket, 2016

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Anchored in the Isle of Pines, New Caledonia. Watercolor by Deborah J. Brasket, 2016

Landfall at Nuka Hiva, the Marquesas Islands. Watercolor by Deborah J. Brasket, 2016

 

“Able to Be the Mother of the World”

Tags

creativity, inspiration, mantra, meditation, mothering, personal, Philosophy, spirituality, Tao, Tao Te Ching

Madonna and Child by Holly Irwin

These words from the Tao Te Ching are my mantra. They inspire me to identify with and live larger than what I appear to be individually. I turn to this felt-sense of self when I want to have a clearer, purer, more expansive sense of who I am at heart, when all that’s extraneous is removed.

The words refer to the Tao, that which is all-pervading, all-embracing, unchanging and unceasing. But I take them in a more personal way, as something to aspire toward–as a mother, a writer, a homemaker, artist, citizen. The world has much need of our mothering.

Each part of the mantra inspires me.

“Able to be” speaks to the capacity, the potentiality, of all humans, male or female, to aspire to something more, something beyond our current understanding of who we are or can be. “Something more”–that intangible, mysterious Other we yearn toward.

“Mother” is the symbol of all things round and fertile, life-giving and nurturing. Unconditional love and acceptance. The ground or source of being. The creator.It refers to inscrutable urge to turn ourselves inside out, to bring that which we love into fruition.

“World” refers to the entirety of creation, the universe and all that lies within. But it also refers to all that is yet to be. All those intangible, interior unwritten landscapes.   It refers to that hidden nebulous thing within which longs to be brought into full, vibrant, elegant being.

The mantra leans toward the female but the male is not excluded (note how the words  male and man are included within the words female and woman).It’s impetus is the male and female in blissful, rapturous union. The male rooted within the female, the female pierced by the male, the two wrapped together, one being. No “mother,” no “creator,” emerges without this union. No creation, no art, no worldly domain. No new life or exterior being.

There’s a sense of fullness here, within the mantra. A sense of  completion, satisfaction, fulfillment. A sense of power and presence. Powerful presence. There’s nothing static or final about it, despite the fullness, the sense of completion. It doubles back to the “able to be” part:  Capacity. Potentiality. Ever fertile. Ever reaching toward the intangible, the unknown, to bring it into being. Ever reaching toward that “something more” waiting to be born.

When I meditate on this mantra and feel its full potential within, feel myself as some reflection or expression of that woman “able to be the mother of the world,” I know I’ve come home. Home within myself, and within this world that embraces me.

O Holy Night, Ablaze in Light

Tags

Birth of Christ, Christmas, inspiration, personal, rebirth

Star_birth_in_Messier_83_(captured_by_the_Hubble_Space_Telescope)

“Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright.”

The single-most, salient symbol of Christmas, for me, is a shining star in the night sky.

It’s what wakened the shepherds and fell them to their knees, what mesmerized the Magi and led them across a wild desert with precious gifts in hand. It’s what shone above a humble dwelling, revealing a holy trinity–mother, father, child. It’s what revealed the Christ, a promise of hope, salvation, peace on earth, and goodwill toward all.

It’s what leads us each year away from our mundane, daily lives to a world full of wonder, magic, and mystery. It’s what drops us to our knees in recognition of the vastness and beauty of the universe, and our own humble and radiant place within it.

For me Christmas will forever be wrapped in the silence of a starry night, the background against which the beautiful pageantry and rituals and traditions of Christmas unfold.

All unite in igniting that sense of awe and wonder and delight, of humility and holiness:

The Christmas tree all aglow in the dark, pointing upward to the heavens.

The magical whimsy of that great gifter, Santa, driving his sleigh across a night full of stars.

The children tucked in their beds as their fondest wishes magically descend in the night to await the first light.

Whole streets full of houses ablaze in the night, inviting the gasps of wonder and delight in the young at heart.

Candles shining in a still, dark church as voices unite and rise in songs of joy and adoration.

All are mere reflections and whimsical mimicry of that first night of wonder so long ago. It’s what brought us, and still brings us, to our knees when we realize all that childlike wonder and delight, humility and awe, generosity and love and innocence, lies deeply embedded in each one of us.

It signifies a promise of hope, salvation, and wholeness. Of identity with out own Christ-like nature, our own unity with the divine.

We are that shining star in a dark night.

We are those humble shepherds and adoring Magi.

We are that infant cradled in the holy Trinity.

We are that promise of hope and salvation and holiness.

Christmas is the Christ, and a bright star in a dark night is what leads us to him, to our own humble rebirth full of awe and wonder: the recognition of the Christ in each of us.

May the peace and power and glory of the Christ be with you all this Christmas.

Walters, “The Adoration of the Shepherds”

 

From “Christmas throughout Christendom – The Christmas Tree”

 

Waking Up in an Alternate Reality

Tags

2016 Election, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Hope, inspiration, personal, Politics

From Paradise Lost

I woke this morning feeling as if I had  been tossed from the real world into an alternate universe–where Trump had become president. I kept grasping for something that would allow me to return to that safer and saner world where Hillary had won.

How could a man who had said such vile things about women and immigrants, who had mocked the disabled, insulted POW war heroes, bashed Gold Star families, and belittled worthy adversaries become the leader of our nation and the free world?

How could the most qualified person ever to seek the presidential office, who had worked her whole life to help children, oppressed women, and working families, who would in turn break a long-standing ceiling to become the first woman to hold the highest office in our land–how could she lose to him?

I felt sure there must be another reality in which she had prevailed. So why had I and so many unwilling been tossed into this one? Was there something here I needed to learn?

So I grasped at straws, hoping this new reality under a Trump presidency wouldn’t be as bad as I feared.

Perhaps Trump the con artist, playing to the crowd all along, didn’t believe the worst of what he had said and would not pursue the worst of his claims. Perhaps now that he had won and didn’t have to fool anyone any more, his once liberal leanings would emerge–a way to pay back all the Republicans who hadn’t supported him or believed he could win.

Sadly, the belief that this all had been a scam to win the biggest ego prize ever was the only source of hope I could muster for a while. I just prayed that despite this he would keep his promise to help those who have felt left out of the American dream. I hoped he had enough integrity to do at least that much.

A faint hope, but it was all I had.

Until I heard Hillary’s concession speech. And then I cried tears of gratitude. I had never been so proud of her–and of us, as Americans–as I was then.

She said:

“We must accept this result and then look to the future. Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.”

“Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power,” she added. “We don’t just respect that. We cherish it. It also enshrines the rule of law; the principle we are all equal in rights and dignity; freedom of worship and expression. We respect and cherish these values, too, and we must defend them.”

“This is painful, and it will be for a long time, but I want you to remember this: Our campaign was never about one person, or even one election. It was about the country we love.”

“To all the little girls watching this, never doubt that you are powerful and valuable and deserving of every chance in the world.”

“Never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it.”

I knew then that hate hadn’t trumped love, as I had feared when I woke. Even in this seemingly alternate reality where Trump was president.

If this brave, strong, and loving woman could keep an open mind and look with hope and optimism to the future–despite her tremendous loss, then so could I.

Maybe that’s what I needed to learn.

Thank you, Hillary. I can feel my heart starting to heal already.