diving in and through

    first day

 several days later

I had hit a real snag and my mind was holding control of my process.

It was holding hard and tight.
I painted the sharks, the thoughts, and this hairy being swimming for her life, away~

The story exists when it does and the hold it can have was felt anew.

It was a means to an end.

I paint to discover what lies beyond the mind's control.
Then the trust appeared again, the going in, the letting go, the curiousity, the willingness not to know where this was leading.

Feeling what I was feeling was the way in.

The paint continued to carry me through, literally through, all the thoughts.

It works.
It is meditation in action.
The process clears the mind which enables the heart to breathe freely as it is meant to be.

"In my end is my beginning" Eliot wrote, "In my beginning is my end."
This painting is a celebration of life death life. 
It leaves me quiet, present.

painting through the story

i'd been painting lines, alive lines, for months and then in this painting they took a form.
the form they took appeared before my eyes,
i could see the form before the paint landed.

this creature took form.
a wild thing
a small wild thing,
i call it wild maybe it is not wild, just hairy and unknown!.


given some wiring i have about authority
those who know
those who lead
and my wiring for giving authority to others
i felt into painting a large figure to the right of the painting
in relation to this small hairy figure.

a story appeared immediately that she was going to control the wild thing
put it back into its box.

which was a story,
i could feel immediately how it locked me into what to paint next to fulfill this story line....
and i let myself paint it as it came

so i listened and i painted a box
then i noticed
i didn't know if it was coming out of the box or going into the box
so i painted more about the box,
feeling the wall and the roof and the protection/separation inherent in the box

painting through a story called on my self trust,
to keep painting as the story kept forming
to know that i don't know

then i noticed the possibility, the feeling, that this large figure was actually not controlling the wild thing but assisting it out of its box.

well, that could be as true as the story of control, and actually that felt, well,
 like, why not?

there was a benevolence to the sense of this possibility in comparison to the known story i've always held about the authorities in my life.
where does all the negative wiring live, is it as real as the benevolent truth behind all stories?

when i asked if anyone else could join the painting, i was first feeling this eye to belong to the other side of the woman's face, and it became a being in its own right.

perhaps that's what is happening,
i am becoming a being in my own right.
the gray figure
bodied by the house and open doorway
might be the ghost of my former self,
holding that wild thing inside for so long....
that's one way to analyze it.

the unconscious gives me images
when i dream in paint
i am more often able to name them.

the benevolence here is the key.
michelle cassou wrote that the creative process is benevolent and i have always felt how important that is for me to remember.
the stories I tell myself are so often harsh and limiting,
it is time to discover a new story line, based on a felt sense of what is true and good.
we need that kind of empathic story line to take on greater meaning...

in the end, beginning now, i don't know what any of this means,
it could mean this, too
 shame,
unworthiness
and it's out now.
seen.

tender
 it is tender and new
i don't know why it appears so hairy, but it is!

this is a mystery
and it is interesting to me not to know
but to trust this as a process,
revealing what lives
beneath the story lines.

I trust my intuition.

lifedeathlife in process

i'm in a quietness.
i was asking the mother of all
what to do, how to bring form to what i do, in relation to others
how to do this sharing of the heart's gift?

i have a note on my dashboard,
one of those prayers that came spontaneously from the deep...

'let me be your doing'

will i begin to let this be the way i live?
i notice i am still confusing myself, looking for results that appear long term...

like, oh. this is what i do. and this is how it is received. and there it is. like that.
sounds like something that would fit into a box!!

after i asked how to bring my gift into the world and how and where and when.......
in the next moment i had received a mail from a friend whose husband is dying.
she asked me to come over if i could.
this is not like my dear frightened friend who was wishing he would die.

this man, 

he is dying. 

i do know the difference. 

and it brings the deep up to the surface, to share...

i can
sit in the quiet
near the unknown
with another.

i can paint there, too
and offer that to others
celebrating all it brings into form,

together and alone.

but what is being asked
seems to be
to be quiet.
to sit with.
to be with.

something greater than i know
is showing me what to do, to be her doing.

i'm in practice with lifedeathlife herself.

jai ma

freeing the birds

30 x 68 inches

This painting began several months ago and had several pauses in its process. I kept taking it off the wall to make space for the process of others. As painters came to paint, I would begin a new painting as they began to enter their own process.  

But this painting deserved my full attention, which I couldn't give it until recently. 

It called me back into my process. 

Late last night the birds were freed from the inside of the inside, beyond my knowing mind. 

I feel graced to be part of my own painting process again. And today I am inspired, through the community of painters who go beyond the known and write about it, to let these birds take me further.

hands, holding and reaching out

There is a rhythm in process.


Not knowing what is happening sometimes looms larger into view when the inner current pulls the creative impulse deep below the surface, out of sight.

The last two paintings were like that, unfamiliar enough to open me to the doubting mind. Even when familiar imagery of embryonic spheres appeared, I did not feel connected as I have in the past. Something new is taking form and I can't see it yet.
I'm listening to the body's anxious responses to the unknown. Taking care not to abandon ship nor to retreat to the back of the boat.

And then the hands began to appear again. 
Red and blue, holding and reaching out. 
A lightening heralded some breathing room.

The process continues to unfold.

not needing to understand frees the paint brush

I've mentioned that I am painting alone with the process right now. It's like walking a very new path and all my senses are alert. I found this question today in Michelle Cassou's Book of Questions, it made the way feel wider and I moved with the flow it invited.

"What would I paint if I didn't have to understand what I was doing?"

risking failure for the beauty of living

As I painted an abundant and floral field today, an oil painting, I met the voice of the judge as the physical sensation of holding back and being too careful.
This sensation brought me directly into the field of process painting - my body.

listening in process - hearing the judge - taking risks

This has prompted me to write about something I think we all know well.
The judge thinks it has the keys to keep me safe from risk. The risk may take many forms: receiving a negative evaluation of my new work, the risk of failure, the risk of over stretching and snapping the connection with what guides me.
I have been process painting now for a year.  The benefit of taking a risk has been experienced many times, consciously. I have been witnessed and supported in doing so because process painting is not done alone. Taking a risk is like walking through a door that is too narrow for the truth.

Every moment is a doorway.


To paint without controlling the image allows me to connect with the unknown and its inherent life giving energy.

To paint without needing to produce anything is priceless, as it slows me down to sense what is the next true impulse.

To paint without having to burden the experience with meaning is a breath of fresh air for my complex (and wonderful) abstract mind.


Now the question for me is how to continue to paint and exhibit, with these same guidelines.

Here is where I am stepping into new territory.
Here is where I am finding what really matters to me and why I continue to paint, write or speak about the creative process.
Here is where I am following through.

As I painted I suddenly felt that I was afraid to be led into this floral field, not knowing where it would lead. Before process painting, I might have stopped or pushed myself through, without really paying attention to the sensation.

I could feel that I did not know where I was going, a fact of process painting I am very familiar with now.

The unknown is the ground of process painting.

I could feel that I thought I needed to know, if I was going to put this on a gallery wall in a few weeks.
The feeling of wanting to bring black into the field was coming up. I hesitated and listened to all the inner considering that arose.
What if the painting isn’t resolved before it is due to hang on the gallery wall? What if it I fail? What if I ruin it?
Wanting to follow my impulses, I knew I was either walking the gangplank or entering another doorway. All these thoughts were swirling in my head and I dove below them and followed the impulse.
Continuing to follow more impulses, I experienced myself entering the flow of the river in creative intimacy.

I could feel the judge trying to hold me safe from risk.
And it no longer felt like a place I wanted to be painting or living from.

The resulting black marks in later sessions became the invitation for another mark, and although meaning is eschewed in process, I am happy to see what feels and looks like butterfly wings, softly touching into the grasses and blossoming field of myself.



The new paintings in this mini show are recent. Some of you may have visited my studio in River District Arts and saw them last November. But that one painting is inviting me further, past it's first blush of a beautiful impression.
I am willing to risk it’s failure for the experience of painting beyond what I know. It's a little risky to even consider exhibiting again, but I am.

Life is an ever authenticating process 
and I am in process.

I hope the new paintings have a sense of stepping just a bit beyond what is known,
or of leaning inward to listen,
toward what is unknown and beautiful.


If the ground shifts under our feet, it's a call for our senses to sharpen.


Friends, my hallway is filled with large unfinished paintings of trees and fields and of shapes that have no names, from my studio in Germany. There are more paintings of fields and gardens that I have begun recently leaning on the wall in the corner of the living room I call a studio. I study my life everywhere, in all the rooms of the house. It is looking as if my work has begun long ago and all I am invited to do now is to follow through.

I have never known the feeling of really following through with my work as a painter. There has always been someone else to give my loving attention to. There is a satisfaction in this focus that is new to me. And this is where I am now.
I’m not going anywhere, I’m home. I’m not looking for a better place to be.
I have developed a relationship with the unknown that I am beginning to trust.
I have taken risks to know that this trust lies in me.


I could call my mini show The Nature of Risk.
I learn from nature, she is my teacher.
It is late afternoon now, and she is calling me to a walk in the sun.



Be well
and keep your fire tended.
we need it,

Barbara

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.

and that's what it's all about....

I thought to just ramble a bit in this post, about this process of Spontaneous Painting I am enjoying so much, trusting that one's joy song is everyone's joy song, even though the words may differ. I'm honored to be a part of your world in this way.

Spontaneous Painting is your direct experience of being in relationship to the unknown and giving it form, painting it - literally.

When we are honest about the unknown, none of us knows what is going to happen next.
We may have a plan, but we really cannot know how that plan will fulfill itself.
Our plan will be challenged by life and when we can remain open to the unexpected, our plan is often fulfilled beyond what we could have imagined.

We’ve all experienced that kind of outcome I'm sure, even in our day to day lives.
I am curious about feeling lead from within, beyond what is imagined, in a way that one experiences more joy and ease in relation to life.

I have a little book on Zen by Cheri Huber called Nothing Happens Next.
This is a wonderful koan.
Everything is only ever happening now.
Process Painting is a tool, a support, a means, into the direct experience of Being. Here. Now.
 
Process Painting gives us an arena to test these muscles of ours and to see where those conditioned muscles of control can be given a little more space, to relax.
It is not about becoming a better or even a more spontaneous painter!

It is a practice of discovering and exploring what lies underneath the grip of control, underneath the ‘me’ plan.

I’m going to be painting with some 4-H kids this month for Living Sky Foundation in Sperryville, VA. I am looking forward to the natural spontaneity that children bring to painting.
But I do have a mission.
The more time the young mind lives in the world, the freedom of that unselfconscious child is slowly put to sleep. Many succumb to the world’s expectations and demands on their creativity and time. It is part of the process of "growing up" in the world as we know it. It is the process of growing into the individual that we all must pass through.

But what if a child didn’t lose contact with their creativity?
What if they were taught that it can be trusted and that they can be trusted with it?
That it was in fact, their (your) birthright, their (your) connection to who they (you) are and why they (you) are here?

Spontaneous Painting is an exploration of those conditioned responses we have placed before the unknown for the sake of feeling safe, comfortable, right and in control.

Are you willing to leave that paper open and empty, just a bit longer?

Are you willing to paint without knowing where it is going or what it is about?

Are you willing to give yourself the space to find out that you honestly don’t know.
Are you willing to be with how that feels?

Are you willing to be with yourself as the conditioned ideas of ugly and beautiful, of wrong and right, of good and bad - all your stories - rise and fall away in you?

As the painting brings what is unknown in you into the light,
are you willing to be gentle with yourself at the same time?

So, my friend, Spontaneous Painting is not about the painting that you will take home with you.
It is about who you are when you go home, having let go a little bit of the product maker.
It is about what happens while you investigate this quiet, deeply interior well of creative possibility within you, with paint as your flashlight of color.

Don't forget the  simple joy of color !!

Everything is happening for our awakening.
There is no hiding from it.
Awakening doesn't take us away from life, but into it.
This is the Age of Aquarius, my friends!
It is time for our uniqueness to live as the heart and light of our humanity.
It is a time of synthesis, of knowing that spirit and matter are one.


Let’s rock this boat and free the slaves
(they have served us very well)
Be liberated and astonished
By your very own true nature!


Painting and Writing are my passion.
Process Painting may help you reconnect with yours,
if you sense the connection is calling for some support.

And it's fun, it is really fun.

 

not knowing what a single thing is

I was painting
in process
which means watching what I feel and think
while painting...

already one breakthrough
and a plateau had been reached
small marks
reenter the bodies

then I could feel the energy building
and I asked what wanted to join in
and the sense of the three bodies being embraced came

and it came from far away in the mountain
like a tail of a snake
and it moved behind the bodies
but when it came around the right side
it wasn't a snake any more
it was just a black ribbon like force of nature

or whatever

it was just what it was
and it entered one body
and exited here and entered there.
it was free to move in and out.

then the openings and exitings called my attention

and that was what i wanted to write about
that i painted these entrances and exits
not knowing more than that,
that they were entrances and exits

I painted with a care that I hadn't known before for something that I didn't know what it was.
that's all.
just that.

a new experience of not knowing as loving.



Da Free John, the Heart Master had a lovely little book for children called What to Remember to be Happy.
it was kind of like our bible while the boys were growing up.

No one,
not your mother, your father,
a doctor, a fireman
a priest, a teacher, a lawyer
or people who are working

No one knows what a single thing is.
this is the Mystery
this is the secret of being happy
from the time you are small
to the time you are old.

No one knows what a single thing is.
to be happy
to keep on loving and
to not be afraid
keep on remembering and feeling
God or the Mystery.