passing through

the expression continues
comes closer to home

in the world 
my mother's voice is strained
in my inner world my heart is straining 
to express

in relation to her
the care
the helplessness.

words don't quite hold
all the feeling
the open door lets the conditioning pass through.

grateful for paint today.

a new beginning

I am beginning a new painting, meeting the brown man that appeared many paintings ago. Love is flowing, and curiousity. 

Dot after dot. 

Touching, touching, touching, touching. 

Breathing.

the fullness of giving way

giving way to the process

i pass through layer after layer 

of experience.

not knowing the outcome

allowing the not knowing

being the not knowing

i let go 

to the color and shape that has a will of its own

every moment.

this is the first painting i followed through with "on my own."

my classes with Barbara Kaufman are completed for the time being

and i lean into the wealth of gifts received in my time shared with her.

as i learned

in her company

 to listen to my own inner voice

feeling the questions

meeting the conflict that arises within

discovering its innate creative tension

as life itself,

 i give way to the fullness that always waits to be expressed.

with a full heart i continue to paint and live, 

supported without a doubt by this widely shared gift 

of meeting life through process painting.

jai ma!

gesture of gratitude

there is a gesture
from inside
that is so grateful for this process

more than ever
just to do something
to express myself in the moment
with a red line
a pink line
a black dot

the process unfolds me to myself
it enfolds me in presence

i want to keep posting on this unveiling
and it is so profound
and about nothing and everything
that i'm kind of quieted
and eased.

and i'm eased into a real life
with real challenges
and i'm feeling steady and ready
for more.

a kind undoing and joining

Damn! I am just amazed.
To begin this painting with the entry point and to think that I knew what even THAT meant!
Oh, the mind is quite the spinner of the dream. It wants to be the creator, so badly, and it will use the slightest breath of a thought to stay in control!

The heart is the true weaver.

As I finished the previous painting, I could sense that something new was waiting to become known. I was willing to paint to know it. I could see that however I was painting, was the way I would know it. And yet, I could feel that the ways I knew before were not opening the painting further - I tested them but the flow was not there. So, that must have been a sign that it was finished.
The new could not move in the confines of my trying to open the way for it.

As I look at the new painting above (still in process) I can see that the whole appeared out of the womb entry, and in deed, I was born through and as my own form. The vulva and fallopian tubes begat children, pleasure, my self, and unknown galaxies....

I am being new born this spring through my own living process, finding a new strength in my legs. I am standing on my own two feet, in my center.
I am seeing through what comes up within and meeting it.
In the past few weeks I have felt such a new shift in my perspective...from the center everything looks just the way it looks, not more or less - friendly, above all, friendly and kind.

I'm just amazed, again and again for mind to be seen through - through paint - uncovered.
I continue to be in awe to watch knowing be dispelled so generously by this painting process.

Today I learned to hear the difference in a question from the soul and one from the mind.
The question posed by the mind gives me work to do and it does not open any door; it does not open me.
The question the soul asks awakens the dormant life force to come out and play, to join in, to participate.

This dormant life force is also me.
There is an including of myself that is occurring through this process in paint, in meditation and in daily life.
I am learning how to participate in my life.
When there is less of me in the way, there is more of me to smile to listen to pause to respond to paint to write to live and to meet life.

Barbara Kaufman has played such a valuable role in my seeing through what my mind says is so or should be so. She has been my sounding board, my projection, my friend, my mentor this year. I have a long held condition of bowing to authority - that whatever the other presents, I am lead to be that, too. And it is so impossible to be other than myself. I can join in the conversation now, as I am.

This is such a wonderful surrender and homecoming all rolled into one.
Again and again,
and again.
I send out my gratitude to Michelle Cassou for putting her experience and love into a form that we can all receive the best of, for ourselves.
It is a win-win, and that makes the world go round so well. This is the same world we all live in.  We can help one another see our blind spots when we are willing to have the conversation about what is true, through the heart.

It was a long journey to return to the friendly world of myself.
I am no longer an outsider.

life desires to be known

So a few weeks ago
Turmoil was boiling in me
I was pushing up against her every where I turned
The old ways of shutting her down appeared uninteresting
And I paced the rooms
She wouldn’t leave me alone
I was cornered.

The form this cauldron had taken was a painting
A process painting
A painting whose only purpose is raw and infinite possibility.

And I was reaching a new edge
What used to open all the doors
Connecting the dots
Finding more and more layers of connection
Wasn’t the way this one was going.

So I paced.
And paced some more.
Then I went directly to the book of questions.
I had to find my own way into this source,
to the doorway of the secret waiting to be known.

I wrote down what I was feeling:
I didn’t know what was happening
In the painting in my life.
I felt turmoil.

The path in is always at the point of what is appearing.
I asked myself what would I paint if it was ok to feel turmoil.

The hint came by noticing my resistance to this state I was in.
I didn’t like it.

What would I paint if it was ok to feel turmoil?
My answer was great desire.
I sensed, that this pressure wasn’t turmoil, that is what I had named it.
It was great desire pressing to the surface for air.
Great Desire.

And what would I paint?
A penis emerged out of a black hole that had appeared earlier in the painting.
It had no meaning, no reason to be there, and now it was the place for this emerging energy to be given a form.
The pleasure in process is the letting go of meaning.
A form has a life of its own and I just get out of the way.
And more and more and more penises emerged out of the black holes.

My desire had been met, honestly.

The next painting I began with a great deal of openness.
And the head of a child began to take form and then another figure.
But when BK asked me what is one thing I would paint from the last painting,
I knew it was the penis emerging out of the black hole.

So I began again.
One big emergent penis.
For no reason but to express my desire.
Oh, yes, my mind had a field day with the form it took.

Then flowers filled the space around the tall presence of desire.
And again, my mentor asked...what was I feeling before I painted all the flowers?
I knew exactly what I was feeling. I had been stopped.
What was I supposed to do with a penis?

My mind was happy with all the flowers. I was at ease with them. I liked the story about devotion and the lingam and shakti. I also did really feel that the penis was inside me. And there was an innocence to the flowering.
But of course there was more to this than the idea of shiva and shakti.

Something more than stories feeds my soul.
Something in my own life was waiting to emerge.

And I began another painting of a tall erect penis.
No black hole this time.
And when the penis was complete, I waited.
It did not take long for the vulva to begin to wrap itself around the head of the penis.
The doorway was the womb.
I am living in the body of a woman, after all.
And this is really not about penises or wombs or vulva.
And I am present to the connections these forms offer me to meet.

All this
(life-painting-writing-being-learningloving)
is taking place through a body and I am at my own doorstep now.
I can feel that I am painting in a new less exacting way, that what I painted before is done, the paintings of this past year were the stepping stones to now.
I am at a new edge and I can feel the urge to shut down and turn away.

Process painting can be done alone but one won’t go as far as is possible without the support of another.
The best other is one who has already passed through so many doors that doorways are all she sees now.

Door upon door upon door.
And the wonder of unlocking the next one,
in whatever form it takes.

it all comes back to her

When you let go of control in process painting, anything or anyone can and will show up to join you.

The first time my mom came into the painting I discovered the gift of form. I was feeling a lot of mixed emotions after spending time with my family one summer vacation. My parents are both very elderly. And the fact of life, which is death, loomed large in my awareness.

I began the painting with a large black spiral. Around and around it went in the center of the paper, and so did my emotion, caught in the spiral jetty I had made. When BK came around to see where I was at, having told her I was going to paint my mom, she asked me why I hadn't painted my mother. Not like I was avoiding something.......eh?

As soon as I let my brush paint my mom's face, all the black swirling stopped inside me and I just felt the love I feel for her. From here, the painting continued to take form, keeping me in contact with what I was feeling in relation to my mom, and life and death.

Sometimes I begin a painting from a thread found at the completion of a previous painting. But for now I am glad to have myself to begin with. Any form will touch me. I might as well start close to home.

the touch of mystery

When can I say this all began?
How did I get where I am today?
Who am I?

I love these questions and today I am feeling how they have become my life, how they live with me, how they carry me along into the mystery, day by day, moment by moment.

This morning the mysterious process of creative living was underlined once again by the wise words of Julia Cameron.
Bless her heart. Bless her work. Bless her for writing and listening to her process.

It was her book, The Artist's Way Every Day, that still sits by my morning side, which I read through the fifteen months of my woodland time out. I know that those months are the ground for all I do, now. It was a time of such deep questioning, stopping and listening, and is indeed, how I arrived here. Its mystery is woven into me and is why I can write at all, now, and actually let my words be released, trusting them to be strong enough to fly.

Julia Cameron writes, "Mystery is the heart of creativity. That, and surprise. All too often, when we say we want to be creative, we mean that we want to be productive. Now, to be creative is to be productive -- but by cooperating with the creative process, not forcing it."

"Creativity requires a respectful reticence. The truth is that is how to raise the best ideas. Let them grow in dark and mystery."

Today I am celebrating every step through the "dark and mystery" that brought me here. I feel all my questions and how they have settled down into my body from my mind. I feel all the waiting, all the wondering, all the aching, all the confusion as I faced the mystery and found myself in relation to it.

Today I wanted to acknowledge all the hands that kept taking form in my process painting this past year.

They were reaching to touch me: red hands, black hands, pink hands. 
I was reaching to touch me and they were in service to this longing.

How strong the impulse was that it needed such strong colors! Yes, there were moments of judgement. Oh, the black hands! Oh, the red hands! So dangerous my mind said they were! But over time they no longer carried a story, they carried feeling, only feeling. They were necessary.

Yesterday the hands came again and took on a recently mixed soft pink color and they were my own hands, touching my mother's face and hair. I had begun to paint myself and could not ignore the resemblance to my mother. To allow both these realities is the way I came in touch with myself and what I was feeling. Mother is where my life, with all its needs and joys, began.

The mystery of process will bring more surprise to life through this painting.

I'm so grateful to life and the process that has brought me into such intimate relationship with the mystery.

That mystery has taken the form of many women who have supported me along the way. Most recently those women are Barbara Kaufman, the director of the Center for Creative Exploration and Julie Daley, the creator of Writing Raw and Unabashedly Female. Both these women live, work and play in San Francisco, CA.

I can't say enough about process painting or writing raw.
The mystery can never be fathomed, nor can we.

my new job:
wake up
feed the birds
make tea or coffee
ponder
be inspired
don't even try to fit this into words
write
or paint
do whatever comes first.
love being
such a mystery.

the tenderness of our creative potential

Today my painting felt like flow and I named it as "my flow."
Then when I made a move that I considered not to be in the flow, well, the painting process showed me even more about flow.

The process is the teacher. And oh, am I the student.
The ways of forgetting that are as subtle or as shocking as the ways I remember.

So, here’s the story behind that observation.
I began painting myself on a half sheet which is 20x26 inches.  I had just completed a very large painting 65x40 inches, which I look forward to write about as it held me through some very rough energetic seas and gifted me in the completion with an experience in paint, of the flow of giving and receiving and how they continually dance.

Of how giving becomes receiving and receiving becomes giving. 

It is amazing, to watch that occur and then it disappears into memory. 
It is more than a memory though I couldn’t say what it is, but I was a part of the experience. 
And that is so wonderful, to include oneself in life at the level of creation.


As I painted, I noticed the judgment that I would need to paint the whole figure didn’t land anywhere, nor did the thoughts that I really don’t know if I was doing this right - beginnings can be awkward. The feeling of not knowing and wanting to know, to catch the way it was related to what came before, it all flowed along as the shapes and colors appeared.

What I also noticed was that it reminded me of a few very early paintings from my first year in college. At that time, I did not want to paint the way I painted. In my mind it (I) was unsophisticated. I wanted to paint the way everyone else painted. I wanted to do it like they did. This belief was my conditioned destiny. It caused the tension I lived with for years.

If I had known that doing it like they did, which was basically aimed at belonging - and wanting to be myself - were two opposite wishes, I could have asked for support to find the way to paint my paintings.

It’s ok.
I learned other good things and am still finding my way to own my way.
Which after 40 some years of painting (and 62 years of living) is a good thing to be able to say.
I have not given up.
I wouldn’t stop process painting for the moon.

In process I am able to see so directly what I do to protect myself from the tenderness of being myself (as well as not knowing myself) 
and how I shy away from experiencing the tenderness of creativity itself.
What I saw myself do after I began the small painting today was to overlook this tenderness.

While I was mixing paint for tomorrow, I tested the blue. Boldly I painted radiating stripes from behind my head.
The beginning had not even had a night to rest before she was over shadowed by this willful move of mine. And I put a strand of pearls on her neck!

Where was I? Had I moved out of relationship so quickly from the previous hour that I moved in to use her for my own agenda, to test a color, to make a bold radiant background?
Could I have held in awareness the possibility, instead of filling up that empty waiting space?
If I had held to the self identity (am I looking for a rule here or a good direction….) If I had held the identity of myself with a bit more care, would I have moved so boldly?
My answer is that I was not in relationship to the painting.
Whether the image begins as myself or not, the main thing is to be in relationship to the painting.
It is, after all is said and done, only me, realistically and spiritually speaking.


I am breathing and writing through this and asking myself for some compassion.
I saw what I did. It was a conditioned response. And thank goodness no harm was done! I’ve been known to be more foolish in real life. But my stomach did feel the difference when I saw the first photo at the end of the day.

Until I made that comparison I was unaware of how my will had moved into the process and moved me out of relationship.
Then I judged me.

I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
I love you.
Thank you.

How many times will I be called to forgive myself?
100,000 times or more.
To see again how hard a judge is and always is.
To see that some judgements flow by, and I breathe easy and others find their hook and settle in, inviting me to breathe deeper into not knowing.

A beginning is something new.
I learned quickly through this painting, how I want to bring more attention and care to a beginning. 
To let it unfold slowly. 
To stay in relationship to the empty spaces, too.

There is nothing to gain in barging into a beginning with such bravado.
And the process let me see that, and to even question that statement!

Tomorrow I will step in to what is there, and come back into relationship to the potential that is waiting to unfold.
The process also lets me step out of the control I wish I had on the painting, on myself, and yes, on life.
Oh, there is the idea still alive and well that mistakes are mistakes and not opportunities for learning.

Again and again, the love I have to paint has found a way to be of service to self knowledge and to my own gentle and colorful surrender.

Processing Life in Paint - who's processing who?

After I titled this blog Processing Life in Paint, I began to ponder  -  of course.

I am not saying that I am processing life, surely it is processing me.
In fact, in a very real way, it is processing me right out of the room,
leaving me as a quiet pulse of human being,
with or without a paint brush in her hand!

I've made a few attempts to see if I could change the title.
Glad to let it go, to let it be, not to get it right.

It doesn't matter what I call this blog.
I'm glad to have it to express and share what happens to me as I enter this conversation with myself, with the unknowable, with my true self.

What is true in me doesn't look like the painting.
The painting is given its freedom to be itself in the process,
and this is also the gift of the process to me.
There is a simplicity in this.
True self is beyond ideas of great or grand.
It is just real.

There is no mistake in whatever we are called to do, in love.
It will undo us,
drawing us closer and closer and closer to the truth  of ourselves,
in and as each unfolding moment.