A new year, a full cup

 

                                                                       

                                                                             One full cup  

                                                                  oil and cold wax on canvas

                                                                                    9x12

I've spent the past week reading a lot of writing I have done over the years. I was struck by the flow of language and my response to living and making that I was engaged in.  What is most interesting about looking back and reading and feeing again what I was expressing - is how everything changes ...life happens.  It seems that the depths become deeper, the findings become memories or are forgotten and somehow the seat from where I sit and see and think and feel still seems to be me, but even more so as time goes on.....

Sometimes my experience  is changing on paper or canvas in paint. 

Sometimes it is changing as good ideas come to plant seeds that grow me in new ways. 

And sometimes it seems down right surprising that a sense of self that was so curious and joyous and courageous can be blanketed over or even cracked by life's experiences once again...

amazing......

So, here I am, again. Sitting at a keyboard, preparing to put something into words in relation to this creative process I continue to move with and be moved by. I was curious to read the AI search for this writer part of me, it made me want to read what this woman was living with and expressing. I can't even remember the name of the other place I was writing from. Two blog spots and one other - oh yes...Wordpress. That one was called woman happy to be painting and musing. My last post there was in 2018. Yep. That's me. Even through the most challenging experiences of this year I was amazed by all the layers, all the feelings of being a human being woman. WOW. And honestly I am not much of a reader. I like books with pictures. Paintings. Collage. Color.

How many times can one be taken apart -- to find, once again, what is still truer about really being --about being oneself....in relation to what seems to be indescribable, ever changing and ever present....

Let's see if I can finish this with some kind of intention ....where do I want this to lead ? 

How do I want this to feel?

Am I committed to writing and how often?

I don't know. I'm quietly reconnecting with my creative process with an openness that I have not experienced before - it's like I am beginning a new relationship with myself, and in relation to what I create with and maybe even, for.

 I'm also experiencing less comparing how others do this. It's almost like what I imagine freedom to be.

I'm quieter about naming this ...there is a new trust that carries less of the excitement of earlier years when I was amazed to put any of this into words as well as into paint. And I still am in awe of the process of living, of being myself. I think that's life. How can it not be this way no matter what is happening? There is a gift here and we get to unwrap it ourselves in the midst of the whole nine yards of the world. 

My intention is for trusting the depth of feeling I carry within me to receive and the natural response to share the beauty it reveals.

All goodness is wished from here for you in our world as we begin 2026.

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.

the upper hand

grateful

for 

mind and heart

in process

heart's longing is getting the upper hand

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

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.

the power and gift of process

Process
That is my key word
That is the word that alerts me to life
Not what I want life to be
But what it is.
Kind of like, a lot like, Reality.

The heart of the matter is change
held in something that never changes.
Process is development, life and death
and the surprise of the phoenix.

Process painting is undoing in the guise of doing.
Life is slippery for the mind to grasp,
That is its power and gift.