Playing in the Studio..

I facilitate a women's art support group twice a month at my studio....it's called the Medicine Art Group.  Art making is a medicine when we open to its ability to transform and soothe our souls.  

We have been working on intention setting since the begin of the new year, using art as a way to visualize our intentions.  This past week we moved into creating Affirmation Cards as a way to support our intentions for the New Year and as reminders to hold positive thoughts.   It was so much fun, I plan to keep making them myself, perhaps a whole deck of them.  Here are the ones I created on Friday.

I am facilitating an Encaustic Weekend at my studio, next Sat. and Sunday, so this past weekend I have been having so much fun getting prepared for it.

I have been cleaning wax off of brushes, rearranging,  making encaustic medium and altogether having a great time, priming the pump so to speak. It seems like part of my creative process is to periodically, organize, revision, clean and renew my enviornment.  

 I am excited by the possibility of doing more encaustic classes, and am begining to see myself moving more and more into my artist life, now that I am no longer teaching at the JC.  I am beginning to revision the layoff as a positive...an opportunity to really live my dream and make a financial success from it.   

My affirmation cards, tie into this, by opening to abundance coming to me as I grow my dreams, out of the simple pleasures that fill my soul....all the while allowing for Great  Mystery to provide the details.

I will post photos from the Encaustic workshop next week, so stay tuned. 

Encaustic-ly Speaking - Pushing the limits of my creative process.

i have been struggling with another encaustic ...which started out with high hopes and has shifted quite a but through the process.  Here is the background I began with....planning on transferring an image of a suspension bridge that I photographed this summer up at Howards Creek Ranch .  A magical place I love to stay at,  up on the Mendocino coast, in Westport.  

It reminds me of a pregnant spirit of some sort.

Here is the photograph I tried to transfer.

The resulting transfer reminds me of a tower, golden, and lighted, but its wasn't the image I was working toward. I realized there was too much dark, not enough contrasting light, and I had to presss and scrape and still didn't get an image that in any way resembled the bridge or what it was I was trying to convey. I also realized my background wasn't light enough....so ...

So I decided in the process of scraping off the ink transfer with a bone folder, to keep playing, and I transferred a tree and a bird over it, began scraping into the dark transfer grasses and the textured became as important as the image.   This is where I am so far, taking it into a new direction.  I am liking it, and plan to paint more encaustic into it, and rub some inks into the scratching and see where it goes... This is what I have been up to, following  my process and seeing if I can take this somewhere new.  Learning all the while. 

MANDALA - IN PROCESS -

The weather is perfect for drawing mandalas, working with prismacolor pencils on black paper is soothing, and puts me into a very calm place.  I began this mandala during our New Years Intention Setting Mandala Workshop.  I haven't worked on it very much since.  Perhaps I was waiting for the rains, we need them so much and now slowly they are appearing.

Here is the original mandala I did that day, in just the black on white.

My focus was paying attention and walking through the open doors...however the full moon that day really influenced my work, hence the moon is the portal to possibilities in this mandala.
Sinking deep roots into my source as well as my skills, ancestors and visions, while expanding my reach and begining to set leaves of growth towards new directions......

It felt important to sink my roots in the greening of the earth

This mandala is still in process....As I expand beyond my boundaries into new directions...More to come

View in my studio.....

The other day I began taking radom shots of my work spaces in my studio of what I was working on and just everything around me.  So I decided to post those shots today.

Here are some encaustics that I reworked and are just sitting around...
This is the beginning of a New Years Intention Collage that I started in my every other Friday Woman's Art Support Group.( Medicine Art Group)  ...it is in process, not sure where I am going with it yet.

Random collage goodies....

An altar to Frida

and more collage pieces.....thats it for today....its a beautiful day and I want to get out to the studio as well as go for a walk...TA DA....