Posts Tagged ‘meditating’
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!
Meditating and a Happy New Year!
Sometimes I think I would like to be the sort of artist that did organised coordinated artworks; large series of matching paintings, but the truth is I am not like that! I sit down to each new blank canvas or sheet of paper like it was the first I had ever met. I allow whatever it is at that moment to reveal itself whether it be a meditating man or a bird of prey or whatever comes to the surface. I meditate most days and after I do the attempting to really meditate bit which only lasts 10 minutes I allow my mind to ponder on some of the more creative ideas and images that are floating through.
Allan Watts who gave lectures on Eastern Philosophy talked about how we are not the same person throughout the day: it is not the same person that walked up the stairs earlier this morning that now writes these lines.” Spring does not turn into Summer, but Summer comes after Spring”. I feel this very much when I make art; there are many moments compressed together to form a chain, without each link the chain could not exist. I might like to do a series of meditating men or women but when I sit down at the next blank canvas who knows who I will be!
Wishing you all a very Happy New Year from The Secret Gallery!
Studio doings!
This is a little collection of what I have been up to lately in the studio. The brown paper Poppy seed head I wrote about in my last blog, it is the one that I stitched. The drawing is of how my heart felt while I was drawing over and over again, I had just been meditating! The most resent things that I have done are these long boxes on the left and below. I rescued them while I was doing the recycling, originally they had tubes of oil paint in them, it seemed fitting to make them into art! Inside are rolled up thick paper napkins. I have written things like memories and happenings that I consider to be precious. One of them is about the little things that happen to lead us to certain places.I like the idea of them being stored carefully in these boxes. It was as if they were made especially to fit them, and I just happen to have two of each!
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