daily painting | meanderings

Categories: UncategorizedTags: · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Graphite crayons, oil pastels, pencils, chalk pastels and crayons are in the top tray of my art therapy toolbox these days. I love how the marks wander through a square of white paper. They are helping me walk through unknowable mysteries of intense emotion.

I’m reading a book called The Dog Stars by Peter Heller. I have an assortment of books lined up by my bed, waiting for me to discover their magic. Having books I look forward to absorbing is like having money in the bank — I know I can relax because great reads are piled up in my fat book account. I’ve had Dog Stars for awhile. Heller is one of my favorite writers, so when I go to Walden Pond Books in Oakland I head for the used book shelves in the back corner and see what they’ve got (Louise Penny always, Louise Erdrich, Heller; his book Celine is an all-time fave). Last summer I pulled Dog Stars out of my stack, but the description on the back had the word “pandemic” in it and at the time I thought better about reading a post-apocalyptic story. Too close to home. But it’s perfect for today. Heller’s books have themes of grief and loss running through them, but they are not dreary or bleak. Just the opposite — he writes of connection and humanity and love and beauty in the midst of loss and sadness and I find his words especially comforting in these times. The protagonist, Hig, makes no apologies for his feelings — or his weeping — and I’m attracted to that kind of fearlessness. I aspire to it. So today I follow my own inner knowing, my deep need to allow mourning to take me down her river. I know I will find dry land again. I’ll be OK. And I have a fierce desire to be true to my heart, for that’s where wholeness is. Isn’t it hard to give ourselves permission just to feel what we feel, regardless of what it is? To make room for it? I find it takes terrific courage and trust. And it is often quite isolating. But for me it is as essential as breathing. Today, I follow this encouragement by Eckhart Tolle: “I relinquish all resistance to the present moment.” That brings me peace, even in pain. Thank you for witnessing my journey.

9.25″ x 9″ oil pastel, chalk pastel, pencil, ink, crayon on paper = $110

 

 

 

daily painting | headlong

Categories: UncategorizedTags: · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Lately I’ve been obsessed with making marks on paper with chunky graphite pencils, crayons, pastels and big fat oil pastel sticks which are vibrant and messy and slippery and full of pigment. This one also has ink, watercolor, and acrylic paint. It’s an abstract smorgasbord. Using all these different media (mediums?) is great fun, and takes me out of my thinking brain and deep into my instincts, intuition and emotions; I let the artwork guide me, and it tells me what it wants. These processes of creating art, as I have said a million times ’til you are bored to tears, dear reader, are essential to keeping my head on straight, a challenge more pressing than usual right now, grief being the gorilla sitting on my chest most days. Sometimes she weighs me down so heavily I question if I’m mentally unhinged. And then she lets up some. Or maybe not until the next day do I feel it’s OK to still be breathing. But I know it will pass and it takes time. Months. Years. Read this last night in the book, The Dog Stars by Peter Heller, a favorite writer: “Grief is an element. It has its own cycle like the carbon cycle, the nitrogen. It never diminishes not ever. It passes in and out of everything.” I’m cycling through, wishing it was on the gentle setting instead of heavy load.

6.5″ x 6.75″ ink, watercolor, acrylic, pastel, crayon, oil pastel, pencil on paper = $60