Butterfly Mandala

Another day and moment by moment I am feeling better, day by day.

So the butterfly has become the focus of my newest mandala.  It is the perfect symbol for the healing journey that I am on now, as I heal from major surgery.  This is the begining of the mandala, done with white prismacolor pencil, using the scale of light on black paper.

                                   

      The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.  ~Rabindranath Tagore

Overwhelmingly, cultural myth and lore honor the butterfly as a symbol of transformation because of its impressive process of metamorphosis.

In process, the original drawing begins to change and it seems as if the antenna are forming arrows, but that doesn't feel right, creating to static a pattern.

                           If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies.  ~Author Unknown

Imagine the whole of your life changing to such an extreme you are unrecognizable at the end of the transformation. Mind you, this change takes place in a short span of about a month too (that’s how long the butterfly life cycle is).

                This mandala feels more about spiraling into expansion for me so I changed that part of the mandala.

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.  ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

The butterfly unquestioningly embraces the chances of her environment and her body.  This unwavering acceptance of her metamorphosis is also symbolic of faith. Here the butterfly beckons us to keep our faith as we undergo transitions in our lives. 

This point in the drawing process starts to become fun, when I enhance the each image with the scale of light.  It is drawing the light around and within the images, bringing the light of energy and direction into the mandala.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. 

~Maya Angelou

So it is our responsibility to make our way in faith, accept the change that comes, 

and emerge from our transitions as brilliantly as the butterfly.

The essential core of the mandala is complete now

The fluttering of a butterfly's wings can effect climate changes on the other side of the planet.  ~Paul Erlich

Here it is for now, the next step is the leap into adding color.

At first when I began with the orange butterflies I was disappointed.  It is always a big risk to add color to the black and white image.  It is like diving into the unknown, with the part of myself who wants safety, and to be close to shore, resists, diving into the deep of risk and transformation.  Once, I begin, though, there is no turning back and I am forced to move forward until it comes together.  

The blue green into purple in the negative space around the mandala changed everything, and I am now in love with what is happening.  Who knows what will happen next.  I will keep posting this ongoing mandala journery as it emerges.  Until next time...

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.  ~Chuang Tzu 

Recuperating....

Exactly two weeks ago today, I had total hip replacement surgery on my left hip.  I had the right one replaced 4 years ago.  So, the past month of my life has been  a busy 2 weeks of preparation for this surgery and then....the surgery, return home and then recuperating.  So this blog has been totally on the back burner of my mind and my life.

Now I am finally beginning to feel rather like myself and with a successful surgery behind me, that will make my life transform in terms of physical limitations.  I am moving daily into more and more gratitude.  I went into the body shop and had a part replaced and now it is time for self nurturance and healing.  Art has always been a healing, transformative activity for me, and now more than ever, I find myself longing to get back to drawing.  So...

Prior to my surgery I painted background pages in my most recent journal. About a week after surgery I spent time here and there doodling and working randomly on a few of the pages, moving energy and letting artmaking begin to be a part of my daily recuperation schedule.   

So as I doodled two of the  themes that emerged, were  butterflies and mandalas.

                                          Here are some other  pages that I worked on.

 

                               Windows opening to other windows....possibilities, new ways of looking at things

The movement and energy I need for healing, instinctual energy, wild ness contained and focused.  

The image of flowering came up for me during a hypnotherapy session before my surgery, as here it presents itself to me in my journal process.  Reminding me that healing is a growth process and happens naturally, just as the process of drawing unfolds naturally.  So, yes healing happens. 

     Each of these pages, were instinctual, spontaneous drawings, that unfolded as I went back and forth from one to the next and back again.  My mind roaming, my hand moving, and my energy begining to move.  Now a week later, and two weeks exactly from my surgery, I have taken the butterfly and began a new mandala.  Using that symbol as a healing image to help with my transformation to health, vitality, freedom of movement and the ability to walk with ease.  I will post more of how my art and healing merge in the days to come.  

Almost a Month....since Last I posted.

It has been almost a month since I have last posted anything here.  Creatively I continue to flit from art process to art process.  My encaustic painting has for the moment, fallen by the way side, in favor of mixed media collage.  I have been making cards, working in my various journals, doodling around collages and just plain playing with the art process in small doses.

I love to work small on card stock, begining with  a loose watercolor, or cutting up and old watercolor that never really worked.  

Then looking for images that seem to fit the background, adding them and then doodling around them in pen, ink and rubber stamps.

One thing leads to another and I play with them until I am satisfied.  Then I glue them onto a blank card form and walla....art with a purpose, a card to send someone or a small collage to be framed.

Occasionally I fold up one of my watercolor rejects and collage on them as well.

They take on a life of their own, becoming whatever they turn into.

Then I doodle around them as well.  What a wonderful soothing past time

for someone with energy to burn creatively, without worry about product.

I spend many an evening in the studio, chatting with my husband, on the phone or visiting with friends while I do this.  Serious art, NO, but fun, soothing and Happy Making. YES.

Sometimes I stop before I go to far, letting these small card collages be sweet simple 

statements, that can be sent to friends or maybe sold on my etsy shop.

Other times they become enigmatic visual storylines, that please me just for the sake of being.

Or they are just ways to reconfigure images that live in my expanding image bank....

in my journals awaiting more work to be done on them.  So this is what I have been up to this month, as well as being a bit addicted to my facebook mandala page where I have been posting mandala images almost every other day.  

All of this work is simply self soothing, life enhancing, art making, that takes the edges of off my day, and fills me with joy.  

Happy Artmaking to All!

Imagination is the true Magic Carpet....

As we open to the energy of spring, it is important to remember to use its energy to open to the imaginal realm as we create our visions for our lives.   We create it whether we want to or not, know it or not, believe it on not, so why not create consciously.  This is a thought that comes to me again and again as I step into the greening of the spring.

As I travel through my day, I have found myself imagining the green of the earth, the grasses that are sprouting all around my house and my life, growing up into my body and invigorating me with their life force.  Health, vitality, new growth streaming into my body, teaching me how to be in my life with newness and a sense of possibility.

Pay attention to what is right in front of you, take the time, even if its 30 seconds, to cherish the moments of your day, simple, complex, frustrating, and the  challenging as well as the sweet and tangible ones.
These are my spring thoughts, my prayers for balance and a renewed physical engagement with life.

Build a structure of belief whether you believe it or not, let consistency be the ritual that transforms the day and the world into one that fits my dreams.   Send these thoughts on wings of dreamy reverie, put the postage stamp of approval on them, open, hope, suspend judgement.

Honor the imagination.  As Einstein said "Imagination is more important than knowledge"

Because our imagination is like a magic carpet that can take us away, and fill us with hope, and reframe the present so unlike a bitter pill, life is much easier to swallow.

So as the landscape of this season unfolds in my creativity and my dreams and my fantasies, I offer these images and thoughts for bringing spring into your life .

                                               Happy Spring Dream Time to all...

New Look for my Blog.

Well, I have been messing around with my blog settings and have lost my old settings, so I now have a new look to my blog. Not sure if I am totally happy with it, but this is it for now.  Let me know what you think, if you even think about it, or view my blog on a regular basis.  It often seems like I am  rambling off to the universe, and I am never sure who views it or if it touches anyone.  Although I often get lovely comments, so I do know that people can be impacted by my images, if not my words.

I recently watched the film Julie and Julia, and became motivated by it to set some new intentions for this endeavor.  My original intention when I first began was to share my students work, my art and anything that inspired me.  Art Full Musings... ta dah!  But since I lost my teaching job, I have been trying many different ways to bring in monetary reimbursement for my creative engagements, besides facilitating workshops and doing art sessions with people.

Many years ago, I realized that I was rich in images, ABUNDANTLY SO, so now I am making a new effort to move my images out into the world and have them do their work and pay their way.  So, in that light I am going to begin to showcase some of my art here that I would love to sell and send on their way into the world.  I will begin with my encaustic paintings that lie hither and yon around my house, so I hope to weekly begin this project, showing, sharing, and hoping that someone out in the great web of this inter netted universe might love to send some money my way for my art.

The first piece I am sharing in this light is a sweet little (5"x7") encaustic mixed media collage painting called...Flowering Sea.

This is an earlier piece, that integrates collage imagery and alot of carved texture.  The wave of course is familiar to many, but hopefully repurposed, recycled into a new statement.

I love the full moon over the water, and the flowering sea.  I am reminded of the flowers floating in the sea of Hawaii, the scent of ceremony and ritual honoring, filling the night sky.

This piece will be offered up in my etsy site for purchase, or you can contact me here as well.  It is painted on hardboard.


Many blessings...

On-going Journal pages....Show and Tell

I haven't been posting much lately,  because I have been trying to focus on doing my taxes in bits and pieces, as well as just starting a new art therapy journaling  group for teenage girls, so my time and energy has been diverted a bit.

However, I still have been working in my on-going mixed media collage journal.  I love how I can sit for 15 minutes or more and embellish. doodle around an image, add words on glue a border piece or new image on and feel the satisfaction of the process.  So here are some pages that have changed, evolved, reformed or are in the process of being birthed in the journal I am putting energy into these days..

So here is a little show and tell just for the sake of it..

I often Dream of Release.......

As I began this journal, I began to collect quotations that spoke to me in the moment, so many of these mixed media collage pieces incorporate the quotes that fit them.

Trusting, trusting the process, trusting life, trusting the universe, trusting myself, seems to be an important musing that comes up again and again.  

The Geography of the Heart III

I love how this process evolves and becomes more than I ever imagined in the beginning of the process.

                                              "To Be an Artist is to Believe in Life"  Henry Moore

I love this quote by Bertole Brecht....

Unfortunately the colors on these images have not come through very well, maybe if I make the size of the image smaller....

And to end this series is the thought that it is all about ...believing in yourself.  
Believe in Your Self!!!

Happy Valentines.........

                                                            Some Kiss We Want 

There is some kiss we want with our whole lives,

the touch of spirit on the body.

Seawater begs the pearl to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately it needs some wild darling!

At night, I open the window

and ask the moon to come and press its face against mine.

Breathe into me. Close the language door and open the love window.

The moon won't use the door, only the window.

by Rumi