Archive for October 2009
Remembering to Soften my Gaze
My days of meditating have come to a stop, for the moment anyway. Doing something everyday without a break can get a bit much sometimes. I don’t like relaying on meditation to keep calm and aware, though it was great and I will probably take it up again today, after saying that! One of the tools that I found helpful was to soften my focus, this immediately relaxes my facial muscles and in turn the rest of me.
When we are making visual art or viewing it, our eyes go in and out of focus. Sometimes I like to paint or draw with my eyes totally closed. When we close our eyes our other senses become more sensitive. When we create art we don’t just use our sight even though it is very visual, we allow the other parts of us to be expressed in a visual way. Things often appear in my art work that my conscious mind has had no idea of at all about, but sometimes a while later I can see what it was about! It is all very very weird and spooky !! I wonder what the art made today will reveal in the years to come.
Happy Halloween to you all!
Look The Moon Is Out!
I listen to some Reggae music, it is so great! “They say that the earth is spinning around, I say the world upside down” Joe Higgs.
Sunset from the Secret Gallery, looking at the Aran Islands, Photograph Marianne Slevin
A Lovely little Shadow! photograph by Marianne Slevin October 2009
Creative Anytime
How do I fit the creative hour or two into my day? many people say. Well it can start anytime anywhere, you don’t need to have a studio or lonely garret to make art. I am not staying that it does not help, but it is not essential. I am not saying that this doodle in pancake batter is great or even good art, but it is practice in allowing the creative process into daily life, it is a start. Yesterday while I was weeding the garden I practiced being more playful with my weeding method, I would have looked quite peculiar to any an lookers, I am sure. Making art can have many elements involved, basically the whole of the person or people who are making it. Being mindful and being playful are two of the element that come to mind but everyone’s list will be different.
You don’t have to call yourself an artist to let some creative play into your day.
A Horses Heart Weighs 9 Pounds
So I just read that “a horses heart weighs 9 pounds”on one of my web wanders. There is just so much to take in, jumping from Blog to Twitter to Flickr to Facebook and Google searches and now there is Google Wave too. I think my head might actually blow off.
I took this photograph of Maya just after I witnessed her laying flat out snoring. That is why she have wood shavings on her ear and she is looking very sleepy. This little sweetheart is the main reason that I have not be posting so often. l intend to start writing this blog more often now she has got settled in to her new home.
I think that having a heart that size is pretty amazing, but it makes sense that these great animals would have big hearts. Trotting down the road this evening was like sitting on a bouncy ball with split second responses, just kept together. It is fascinating to get a feeling of some of that raw and instinctive prey animal’s spiritedness. Communicating with a different species, Pat Pirelli says that one of the keys is that the horse becomes a little bit more human and you become a little bit more like a horse. Just hope I only get a little bit like a horse!
Breakfast without electricity
James and our two children made me breakfast on the fire the old fashioned way, it was delicious! fresh bread baking over the embers filled with egg, no electricity just candles and fire. We used turf our friend gave us from a nearby bog and charcoal that was left over from our Wedding feast.
The lanterns were all made for our wedding too. They are recycled tins that have been drilled into to create the holes for light then either wrapped in tissue paper with p.v.a. glue or painted with house paint. The jars are recycled or salvaged from the garden then painted with nail varnish ( the old salvaged ones). The more modern ones are wrapped in a layer of pink tissue paper. We had a lovely lighting ceremony one night in the garden, I will post the photographs James took of it, sometime soon.
Happy Breakfasts!
The secret gallery's blog 