Posts Tagged 'art'

310. A delicious drama

And suddenly it was finished.

I was still trying to see more colors in the two upper leaves on the right side, as the knowing that the painting was finished started to occupy some space in my being.

This also was the time when the name came. You cannot give a name to a piece before it is finished. Well, maybe in most cases.

Sometimes you know the name even before you start. It is a strange thing, the name. It is the “what is it about” of the piece. Sometimes it happens when you recognize something special about it. In other times it is an interesting feeling that you have even before you start, and are curious enough to explore it with the art.

In any case, what has given the name immigration to this piece?

For me it is this strange line that crosses through almost everything else. Here you have this plant or whatever is depicted as the main subject, and with no logical reason, in comes this beige line, wrapped in orange, and dares go through the leaves that have color, the thick beige trunk and the empty leaves, as if it has grabbed the right to come in at the level of its choice and disregard the prevailing order.

You could even say that this stranger has cut through the old and established areas and it is aiming at the most vulnerable but alive green. Isn’t that green the best of all places in the plant, where life is experienced in its strongest impulse to grow, and its boldest claim to the adventure of being a body in space? If you had to choose a place to experience life, where would you go?

And yes, the plant was just all right without this beige and orange intrusion. Everything was just working fine. But coming in, as this new line did, has just given the most interesting and the most intense experience to this old plant.

It has introduced drama to the composition. How poor would the composition be with only all that is okay in it? Now something is breaking the routine. Something is happening, sweet, tasty, maybe even spicy.

You really need to look at immigration from a composition point of view, to see what it means to everything that is involved.

A delicious drama, this is what it is about.

289. Encumbered flow

FullSizeRender 5

My mood improved this morning when I gave a name to the painting of yesterday. The name is Encumbered Flow (I wrote this a week ago).

I had a not-so-good feeling about this painting and I thought about different ways to change it by adding more things.

I didn’t.

Maybe I could change the contrast between the brush lines and the squarish shapes of the colors, by painting the background. This would leave the drawing’s flow more clear. But I would loose the truth of the picture. So I left it as it is.

Eliminating the white ‘windows’ inside of the flowing shape was another possibility. It could let the drawing flow better too.

Do you see this?

The white little spaces are like interesting out-of-context things that attract you to them while making the complete flow less important. So the flow feels hesitant.

Maybe it is not important to finish the flowing shape’s rout? This may even be a good thing, when, for example, you walk in a new place and the interest in the local details causes you to not finish the rout that you decided to take.

But a painting is a whole route thing, isn’t it? You have to see all of it if you want to feel the composition. The composition is the most important thing in a painting.

And maybe this is not true any more? A person can choose to live in one interesting place all his life and never visit any other towns or villages, and he can have a fascinating life. In the same way, he can define his own little composition in a part of the painting. It all depends on what interests him and what he wants to do or be or experience.

You see? This is where this painting is coming from. Everything I thought before is being challenged now.

Not that there are right things and wrong things, and my job is to find the right ones. No, there is not even one right thing. There is not even one wrong thing. There is the choice. So I chose to leave the painting as it is. By giving it the name Encumbered Flow I acknowledged what I did not like about it before. Now I like it for being a truthful description. I don’t fight with it any more. I am at peace. And I am free now to start another painting.

287. Only light

New

There is

no shadow under the bed

in my new room

No shadow

beneath

the table.

Only light.

281. The beauty of the cloud of anger

A vague Anger

I have learned so much. I have painted so many paintings and read them. But I’m going to skip all of that and be current. I don’t like going back.

The last two paintings are about being fascinated by things that block the mind, the imagination and the openness. I am showing here one of them.

They tried hard to teach us this kind of attention in the meditation retreats. They would say: If you experience being blocked (which is what the subconscious does sometimes, to protect itself against change), do not fight it. Instead, become interested in what is in front of you. Look at that blockage. See what it is made of. Examine. Touch, smell, and experience without language.

It is not easy to do, when you feel being blocked. All you want is to break trough and this cloud is in your way, obscuring everything.

But how about using art?

In this painting I described a vague anger that I felt. I was taking some medication against the pain, so I could meditate (so I could sleep too). It was not a first solution. I meditated and worked with the pain without medications for many years until it became too strong to bear. The medication made me dull and vague. I could not dive deep. I did not feel the subtleties of the energies. And I was frustrated in this vague way, as everything was vague. Painting this anger became my way of coming out of vagueness. It is not that it is important to know exactly how the anger is experienced. It is the state of being interested itself that made the difference. To be interested, to be curious, is to participate in a characteristic of the true self, and this is what made me feel better and this is what opened a window in that inner blocking cloud, to let some fresh air blow in. Now I became aware of the space. I had a chance to make it my home again and what was in front of me became beautiful to me.

What is important in the painting is how the movement goes. It is slow and sticky. It does not burst out but bends and looses power by having parts fall off it.

 

266. Just reading

Craving roots

There are many ways to read art. This is one of them: Just start writing and see where it takes you.

You can also say: Start to describe what you see. From there you start to be guided by your interests, associations, and yes, the universe supports you, based on your inclination at the time. We are always supported.

The painting is from June 5th and I wrote this on June 6th. Other things came in the way and I did them, but now I want to share this.

The first thing that came to my mind was that it came out alive. It means that the power that was used in order to create it is still in it. And what is the power? It is a thought, expressed in space and time.

When you look at it, your energy field responds to the experience by arranging itself into an energy structure. To you it feels like a feeling that you may have a name for. Then your thought processes become engaged and a new adventure starts in your story of your life. It may be big or small. Maybe you immediately turn away, smile, have a cup of tea and look at birds in the sky?

Here is what I wrote:

It feels like this: a number of shapes in different colors bump into each other in the middle (These are the colored shapes). The feeling is of an argument or at least a disagreement (Purple, orange, brown and blue). But it does not come to fighting.

There are three shapes who are out of the group. They haven’t come into touching relations, like the four others. So maybe they hesitate to join? Maybe the yellow on the left and the pink on upper left were kicked out of this society or could not join in as there was not even the slightest invitation extended to them. Or, maybe they stopped before they came too close, so that they can take a good look at what is happening.  Maybe they want to check it out before they join? And the cloud, the third of the outsiders, is the one who cares the least. He seems to have more power than all the rest. He has his own behavior and his own field of reference, which is the weather system in the area and the world. As such he is much less a participant in the meeting. But because of him, the perspective of other, bigger systems, is added to every part of this picture.

Then there is the earth with an orange border. But this element is cut abruptly on the left, without too much drama.

This tear-off breaks the impression of a stable earth. This earth can shrink to nothing. Don’t rely on me, it says. Look somewhere else for your stability.

Now the purple and the brown seem to connect with the earth, in spite of it being ephemeral. The orange and the blue seem to be okay with just floating in the air. Or maybe they are not so okay with it, and this is why they come to mix with the earthlings.

So here is a kind of a summary. There is a little drama here. Like in a country, or any society. People collaborate without agreeing with each other. There are some small areas of overlapping and you can say, some form of compromise and collaboration. The others are in differing degrees of separation, deciding not to get involved. But they are close anyway. They are human too and they don’t want to give up on their belonging to this group.

These are the energy bodies, operating by the hidden assumptions that bring about what seems to appear in reality, which is the drawing in green lines.

The green lines describe little separate forms that together create the pattern of what appear in this world of time and space.

So when you wander in this world and see all these forms around you, know that they come from a deeper, usually unseen, layer of energy bodies, coming into being from thoughts and ideas.

All comes from thoughts.

As in a known Zen story, in which some students, looking at a flag that moved in the wind, argued about what truly moved. Is it the flag? Is it the wind? And the master said: Nothing moves, except for your thoughts.

And how could I forget the red part of the lines, in a little area in the right? There was some drama in the reality of the picture.

This red part is indeed a part of the reality that I created with my thoughts. But I gave it the red color to say that according to my beliefs this is a violation of some sort.

Now imagine that you are an art therapist and this is the first artwork that your new client made. Do you see how much can be learned from just the first painting?

And if every one of us has a such a collection of thoughts with him at every moment, can you see what the fabric of our humanity is made of? If we want to have any measure of freedom, we must come out of this state, in which we are controlled by our assumptions, and look at it from a deeper perspective.

265. My heart has been here already (the door)

You will have to imagine the picture for this entry.

Imagine a few wide horizontal lines, painted with a soft pastel in brown, any brown that you like. The lines overlap and, together, create one thing that travels now and now and now. It travels joyfully, like a dolphin in water. Sometimes one of the lines becomes bigger. At other times another one does it. Sometimes the colors change. Let it be painted by your heart.

Now in words.

The big picture:

I hear a bird outside. I don’t recognize it. But somewhere, in a deep place in me, Of course I know it. And I think: this bird sings from my heart. Then I think: everything that happens in this world comes from my heart. The buildings, the people on my block. There are many of them. I live in New York City. The street here is like a canyon. The precipices on each side are made of some eight floors apartment buildings that are more than a hundred years old. The number of people who live on my block is probably 300 times greater than the number of people who lived in the village of my youth.

And everything, all these people, the dust and soot, the funny and strange cars, the way the sunlight manages to come in and paint parts of the walls, all are coming from my heart.

This is the big picture for our purposes now.

The small picture:

What do I want to do?

For 14 years I was a designer, and changed to an illustrator. Then, after 17 years I changed to an art therapist. Now, 13 years later, I’m changing again. The change happens by itself. Usually people don’t let the change go through, because, logically, it does not make sense to start everything anew, when the old thing is working already and even gets you some recognition and acknowledgement.

But I learned not to stand in the change’s way, because I suffer if I do not follow my heart.

So the new thing was here already and was doing itself. It did not come from any ’sense-making.’ But I did not recognize this clearly yet.

At first I thought I wanted to live like an artist now. The studio was calling me. All the paints were getting excited.

But I also wanted to write and make books and children’s books. My life would be too bad without making them.

And what about living on the path that leads deeper and deeper into the truth of everything?

And what about sharing what I find with others who are interested? This is one of the most beautiful things that I can do. What else is there to do here, on earth?

And I wanted to make music.

And so went my thinking and I did not know what to do.

I’ve learned that when I have such a weighty question, it is best to keep it as a question and since this is after all a matter of the heart, I’ll invite the heart to answer. It always answers in its time. So every time the question came, I gave it to the heart: Here, this is the question I am looking for an answer for.

And one day, when I was in a short meditation, and the question was tickling, the answer came:

The blog.

I ‘work on myself’ all the time and the blog accompanies me as I go. I use artmaking and reading the art as my main method, so I have the art and the writing. It is already like a book. I can, at some point, collect some entries according to a subject that I’ll choose and make a book out of them. Or even more than one book. Sometimes it has illustrations too. Everything that I do from love and interest is already included in the adventure of the blog making. I have a conversation with other people too.

Everything that I did in my life was always about these same things, about development, freedom, beauty, living meaningfully. It is as if I have been doing this blog all my life.

And for income I can exchange the art that is created along the way with money that will pay for my life. It’s all very flexible. Things can be added, directions can change.

And in this way, with all these thoughts coming in very fast and quietly, everything fell into place.

When this clicked into place I felt a huge relief. I knew that everything was okay. And there was no need to change anything, as I was already there. For a while i made sure that I did only what I wanted to do. Tis opened the door for my heart to choose for me, and I was already where I wanted to be.

In my meditation when this knowing appeared, I saw an image in my imagination. I saw a few wide lines made with a dark brown soft pastel. The lines overlapped, just as the colors usually overlap in my paintings, and became one expression. This is the essence of this blog.

So I answered, for those who were interested. And now, back to life.

252. Self-love

p1000396

I thought these lines would be the skeleton, to which I’d add pencil lines of many details. But it looked finished and full of mystery.

If I saw a big painting like this in a museum, I’d be very enthusiastic. I’d stop, breathless, right there and take a picture, write the painter’s name, add the date..

Then I’d look him/her up in Google and probably see more samples of his/her work. Then I’d know that he/she is a favorite of mine. I’d follow him/her from that time on.

Maybe I’d meet with him/her one day and he/she would laugh, because he/she is in me always.

And I had to go to the museum and search in Google, for what has forever lived in me.

Or maybe I have lived in it?

190. What is the belief behind the pain?

Sometime during the night and early in the morning I painted the pain. Here it is.

Pain

Pain

Then, in the morning, I heard a program on the radio in which a social psychologist (Ellen Langer) talked about her finding that it is our beliefs that determine the outcome that we experience. For example, if I do some physical work and believe that my work is actually exercise, and of course if I believe that exercise helps me loose weight, then just by doing my work I’ll loose weight. The weight is lost not by the work but by my belief. This indeed is also what I believe and this is the basis for all my work on the pain. (Remember the “About” page?)

I was not satisfied, leaving things as they turned out in the pain drawing, because every time I looked at it I remembered the experience of the pain.

I decided to do another drawing and the idea came to me to ask intuition directly: What is the belief that stands behind and drives the creation of the pain?

I have done this kind of asking many times before. You ask your question and just do an intuitive-flow drawing, in which the thinking process does not participate, and the answer comes through the art.

Here is the painted answer.

The teeth that never bite

The teeth that never bite

The zigzag lines in light and dark blue and in reddish purple look like wild animal teeth that come to bite the little pencil scribble in the upper middle. They look angry and threatening. In the beginning there was no pencil scribble there at all. It was just a small, empty space. I added the scribble in the very end of this drawing. I call it the dust ball. I think the drawing could work without it too, but it is there now.

Every set of teeth has some cloud or layered clouds behind it. The clouds are where the anger is stored and from where it comes to the teeth. And of course the anger is against this little dust ball. Or maybe it is against nothing at all?

Such a big anger against such a small and insignificant thing does not make sense. And why don’t the teeth come all the way in and eliminate this little dust ball? They can. But the fact that they do not do it shows that they consider the dust ball to be much stronger than the way it looks. If it provokes such a big anger, it must have a lot of power. Does it make sense to you?

The clouds and the teeth believe that this little dust ball has done something that is enraging and it deserves to be punished. But they stop short and don’t even touch it. The little dot feels all that anger turned directly at him and he turns into a dust ball, ashamed and guilty. That’s why I called him a dust ball. He agrees with them.

And this is how things are for years and years, for ages and ages. How come?

To help us there are a few more details in the artwork. There is some open space where there is no anger. The dust ball cannot go there because there are a few zigzag lines in the way. But this area is quiet. There is no struggle there. And there is a figure there. This figure was the one before the last element that I placed in the drawing. I felt there was someone there, watching and being unaffected. It feels like someone with a childlike curiosity and playfulness. This figure is a result of having developed identification with awareness. There is always, in all situations, a knowing that all that happens is being witnessed with clarity. This clarity is the real me.

So what does the witness see and understand?

The conflicted situation in which there is a dust ball that provokes so much anger, that he feels afraid and ashamed, while the endangering teeth never bite, this is the formula of the game that I am playing this life, or at least a part of my game. It has to stay like this, if I want the game to continue. If the teeth bite, the game will end. If the dust ball blows up the teeth and the clouds, the game will end too. So to keep the game going, they keep this dance. Of course, the dust ball is me. The angry teeth and clouds are me too. It is all an invention of a conflict. It is a choice that creates experiences. The figure in the open space knows this.

But there is another way. I can change the rules. I can smile at the teeth, for example. What will happen then? See how you feel when you read this, and you will know what will happen. It will be a different game, won’t it?

153. Right behind it is you

 

Upside down moon

Upside down moon

In this upside down world

Where shame is king

And the beauty of the evening moon

Breaks your heart

Isn’t it natural

That we choose to make art?

There is a mountain range up in the sky

And there is a mountain range down

We are just waiting for the bird

To sit on a bough

The bird who’ll come to laugh at me

For going again

In the same old rout.

This is about automatic behavior. An old program kicks in. You find yourself angry at someone and afraid. You desperately seek your connection to the eternal, but the subtle and kind all-that-is will never push his way in. You have to open the gate.

And you have done just this so many times already, but there is still some more. And right behind it, lo and behold, right behind it is You.


Awards

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 372 other subscribers

My Pages

The healing process

Entries 1-58 show how I use the method of Intuition Through Art to heal myself from Peripheral Neuropathy.

Archives