Healing heART - waxing poetic

This past week, I finally got into my studio and began to do some encaustic painting, 

after a very, very long hiatus. 

 So much has been going on, with my dear friends decline, and trying to fit life into my life, that making art and especially cranking up the hot plate and doing encaustic painting, has totally fallen by the way side.

 But it was exactly what the doctor ordered, so to speak.  I decided to create some loosely related Valentine encaustic paintings, with the thought of having some of it   being  included in a group show.   around Valentines Day,  but what really happened was my opening up to HEART energy.

 Working on these pieces, had the effect of not only opening my heart, but soothing my heart, which has been in various stages of grief for over 6 weeks now.  I lost track of time, slowing down and being engulfed in color, image and playful exploration.  Trying to get in touch with what was I trying to say, or express and then letting go.  To say it way healing for me is an understatement.  I found myself in bliss, happier than I had been in months....at the very least.  I loved what I was doing, and found myself returning to the studio even in the evening, when it is cold, cold, cold out there.  Happy as a clam ( a clam being enclosed in a protective shell, which is what I was doing with my art making...)

This final one, of the series so far, really brought me in touch with release, letting go and letting love guide me.  I love how each of these is so filled with vibrant color, which of course is one of the beauties of encaustic paint, as well of how much they speak to what is going on for me right now, as well as love in all its varieties and depths.

No one has to remind me of how creating art is healing, but I had to remind myself again, as I became immersed in this process, finding happiness and joy in the moment, self soothing myself through color combinations, and the placement of images that called to me.  I am thankful and can't wait to get back into my studio again this week, and let the molten hot colors take me away to another land, a land of joyful creative abandon.  Blessings to all... Ciao

My Deck continues to Grow...

"I am the one who steps into the healing pool and 

is renewed and energized."

Here is the SoulCollage® card that I made last week, using the Citra-Solv page as a back ground.

At first it was too spacey looking for what I was trying to convey in the card, but with some white pen and gold markers, I grounded her in the healing waters and sent light and healing to her from the sun.

I really look forward to using these amazing abstract pages for more S.C. cards as well as in other mixed media art processes.  Wonder how these would work with encaustic, saturated in beeswax?

Hmmmmm?

MORE CARDS

 Now I have 2 SoulCollage® groups going a month, and I am excited that my deck is continuing to grow.  I am also facilitating readings with friends  as well, and am amazed at how potent and powerful they can be.  So this new endeavor, which pulls together all the elements I have used before in my art therapy practice, but in a succinct and structured format, takes on a magical energy when all put together.

Here are 2 more cards that I made last Friday in my Inner Muse Card Making Group.

" I am the one who soars towards my dreams, with childlike enthusiasm.  I am the one who holds the foundation for these dreams to become a reality.  I move towards the light as I follow the path of my life and my right livelihood to the unknown."

"I am the storyteller, the weaver of images and fantasy.  I clear the Open Meadow of your mind to allow the stories to emerge.  I encourage your Inner Child to play in that field of plenty.  I am your grandfather, telling you stories of the old country, making doll houses and murals and stirring the seeds of creativity in you, that will last throughout your life."


More to come....until next time... Ciao.

On this journey called life .....Just Trust Yourself

"Just trust yourself, and then you will know how to live"  Goethe

In my ongoing expressive art group a week ago, I began a mixed media collage.  Having fun with it for days afterwards, I created this  this.  I love maps, they elicit so many fantasies, and memories for me as well.  I used to spend hours drawing them as a little girl, and then pouring over them with dreams of travel as I became a young woman.  Even, now maps  continue to hold a power over me, but in a different way. They are guideposts, signs leading to inwards reveries and imaginings.  So, they often find their way into my art these days.    

There are many art therapy directives that integrate maps and mapmaking into the art process, creating maps of your inner landscape, maps of your spiritual journey, maps of your life's path, maps of your journey in  overcoming challenges.  Creating mandala's is another ancient mapmaking process,  the experience of finding your center, creating a way to orient to your own personal true  north...and of course,  just the experience of drawing a mandala is a map of the cosmos, both inner and outer.   Oh how I love maps. 

My newest fantasy is to make a series of envelopes from old maps.  We shall see if I follow through on that one. If so I will post them here eventually.   Maps are a call to the journey towards the self.   What do you do with maps?  Show me!

Once again getting excited...about SoulCollage® Training in June.

 Last weekend I led a introduction to SoulCollage®, for a group of my old colleague's, that I  worked with at Santa Rosa Junior College, for over 25 years.  We are now meeting monthly, to keep the connection we developed going.  Some of us, have been laid off from the college, (myself), others continue working there, and others are now retired.  We all enjoy the memories of the incredibly rich, humanistic program that  we worked in and developed together, with others.  It heartens us in these challenging times to reflect on it , and saddens us to know that what we worked for has been decimated by the California budget crisis.  Ahhh, but thats a whole other story. The arts by the way, were the first to go.

I loved sharing this process with my old friends, and everyone who came, really dove into the process and loved it.  Here is Tana, cutting away as she creates one of her SoulCollage® cards.  I only wish I had photographed everyones cards, but I was having too much fun doing my own to stop and take photos.

So, I am getting excited about doing the training in June.  The last time I was about to go, in March,  I had a freak accident the night before and had to cancel.  I am hoping that nothing unusual will befall me before this next training. (Actually that is a belief that I need to release.

I am also excited because I am starting a SoulCollage® Inner Muse, monthly open studio at my studio in July, and people are already interested.  This will be a wonderful art process, to add to those that I already offer through my studio art practice.  If you live in the area, and are interested, please do get in touch!

So in the light of show and tell, which is really what I love about this blog, I am sharing the three cards that I created that day.

"Mirrors are used to see our face, but art to see our soul..."

~ George Bernard Shaw

Bird Medicine repeats itself again and again in all my art.

And lastly, this card, which I shared in my last blog post, it is  the card that really speaks to me right now.  The limitless blessings spilling over from source, again and again, never ending.  But it is opening to the awareness of its presence that is the work to be done.

Blessings to all.

Back to Encaustic in the New Year

Something shifted for me on New Years Eve and Day, I found myself actually cranking up my hot plate and electric skillet filled with encaustic medium and losing myself in the dreamy process of painting in encaustic.

It has been months, and months since I last felt the urge and acted on it.
Once I started playing, I went back to the process every day for four days in a row.  What a joy.  One thing led to another, and I wound up expressing some ideas that have been stirring for a while.

When I first began painting with encaustic, I was drawn to its textural possibilities, but lately my draw has been what happens when the densely colored  paint blends and merges as it is fused with the hot air gun.  I am in love with the sheen, and the smooth glasslike glow that emerges when it is polished to a shine.  Each of these pieces began with alot of encaustic medium and color that was played with and coalesced into a brilliant explosion of color and organic form.

Then I took a bone folder and  burnished  zerox transfers of photographs the I have taken over the wax,  and embellished it with more paint and mixed media to create each of these paintings.

I am in love again.  What a way to start the New Year.  Ya Fatah!

I can't wait to continue on this theme, with my paint, but this Sunday, Patricia and I are facilitating a New Years, Mandala Retreat Day,....so I need to put away my hot plates and paint for a bit to set the studio up for the 12 people who are coming to draw and open to the New Cycle with us.

So next time I plan to post photos of that workshop.  But you can be sure, that soon after I will set up my encaustic supplies and dive in.  I am also planning on doing another encaustic workshop sometime in February.  Life is good.  Blessings to all. 

Gathering with my Tribe @ the American Art Therapy Conference

Well its been a few weeks since I last posted here and I have been quite busy since then, journeying a bit on both the inner and outer level.  This past weekend I attended the American Art Therapy Assn. conference ( ATA) in Sacramento.  The 3 days were a whirlwind of inspirations, connections, networking and mini epiphanies.   I sold some of my art at the Arts and Crafts marketplace on the first night, which allowed me to sit in one place and have people visit me and see my art, and talk about my work.  I was happy to see many old friends and make new ones as well, and to attend quite  few exciting and inspiring workshops that speak to the power of making art in a studio based setting.

ONe of the compelling things I participated in was an introduction to the Soul Collage cards with Seena Frost, in a key note lecture and a hands on workshop.  Above is the card I created in the workshop on Saturday.  

The interesting thing about this work, is not that it is new to me, but that it is something I have been doing for years,  that combines my early work with the tarot, my gestalt jungian bent in my art therapy practice, and my ongoing involvement and love of collage.  It is a great fit for me, and I am planning on taking the facilitator training in the new year.

This card speaks to me saying:  I am the one who calls to your sense of adventure, your longing for a deeper journey, standing as the gatekeeper, calling you to the next step, helping you to find that inner map that leads to another part of your souls calling.  


So  I am sharing this with you all, a little wary of putting this out there before I act on it, but the image calls me to this as well.

Along the collage path, I am participating in an exciting Art Post Cards exchange, through Art Therapy without Borders....I will post photos of my cards and more of that whole international community art process in another post..  

Shrine Making -Visual Feast

I have been facilitating a women's art support group, every other friday morning, for the past 20 years.  The name of the group has morphed and changed over time, along with all the wonderful women, who have made art in the group.  For a while it was called the Art Spa, because everyone always felt like they had gone on retreat and been renewed from it.  But the name Medicine Art Group is the one that has lasted the longest.  Obviously, the name reflects how artmaking is a deep medicine that is available to all of us.  How doing art heals, and how being in community with others, excelerates the healing process.   

In past month we have been creating Shrines in the group. The focus has been to create a shrine that honors an aspect of ourselves that we want to bring energy to, allowing that part  to come into our lives and to celebrate it joyously.

I love what is happening in the group and how powerful the process has been for the participants, so I though I would share some of the shrines here that are now in process.  Unfortunately, I don't have photos of everyones shrines, but here are a few of them, for your viewing pleasure.

                                                            Shrine to Inner Wisdom

                                      Shrine to My Inner Healer and Inner Wise Woman

Roberta's Shrine to Joyous Living

 

                                 Here is the back, in process, it has changed quite a bit

                                                       Marcella's Transformation Shrine

Each of these shrines are in process and I hope to post several others at another time.  They are made with foam core, that has been cut, covered with rice paper and then painted and collaged over.
Aren't they visual feasts for the eye.  More to come, with more photos and perhaps a story or two.  so thats what I have been up to.

Finally back to Encaustic Painting...

Once again, I am lax in posting on this blog.  Life has a way of taking me away from the computer.  Then its just like getting in touch with a real old friend, so much catching up that it seems over whelming to even begin.  Another thing, is that I feel I need to be significant and post something meaningful, rather than the facebook like updates that we are all so accustomed to.  So, I put it off and off, and then bite the bullet and post again.

I have been back at working on my encaustics.  I set up the studio and had a studio day with an art therapist /friend and that primed the pump for me and now I am in the mode again, and excited.  I have begun working on a piece, exploring map as art, or my life as a journey...I did a series of mixed media map collages...that I printed up on tracing paper and adhered with encaustic medium to a cradled hardboard.  As a jumping off point.

This is the beginning of the process.

The piece began taking on geographical significance for me..  Their is the Sea of Sicily, where my family is rooted...and Chicago where I grew up, all peering through the encaustic medium.

One of the things I found frustrating is that, the encaustic medium adhered wierdly to the underlying tracing paper background...but I decided to just go with it.


And continued to over lay collage imagery on top of the piece.

I then began to paint in areas, forming land and sea.

I also began articulating a series of
diamond shapes.  I love to make triangles in repeated patterns..something so satisfying in that for me..

A ship traveling across the safe waters, brought up lots of wonderful metaphors I thought I could add, ie the winds of change... being one that became a refrain in my mind as I worked.  A moon or a sun and a house to place at the center of the Heart Land, came next....

It still however, looks chaotic and disjointed...but is moving along.

So I added more collage elements, to bring grounding to the land, sea and sky as well as delineate the land and sea masses, using color.  Still the medium and paint, pool on the tracing paper, even with adding layers of medium inbetween colors.  But there is nothing else to do except go with the process, and see what emerges.

Close up of the Sea of Sicilia...

The land mass....

and sky line .....So this is as far as I have come with this piece.  I am sitting with it, planning on carving in, bringing in more contrast and pulling out more words, and perhaps revealing some of the maps in underneath.

So far so good.  I am engaged and excited by the process.  More to come.  I hope to get into the studio today and do more on this piece.  Have a great Sunday.  Ciao.

Revisting Some of my Encaustic's-La Finestra Primavera

Before I had my surgery, coincidentally, I brought home many of my encaustic paintings that have been hanging at Art and All That Jazz in Healdsburg.  Due to the economy, the owner was revamping and changing the focus of her gallery.  My work has been there, selling and being seen, for about 5 years.

La Finestra Primavera

The springtime Window

11"x14" on cradled hardboard

Soul Arte Eclectica

Now that I am getting better, I have the time to unpack these pieces and decide what their next step in the world will be.  Shaun McNiff, a wonderful studio based art therapist, believes that images are like angels and that they have a life of their own, and stories to tell.  That has always resonated with me, and I have felt that my art has work to do in the world and it is my job to get them out there.  Some of these pieces are being hung all around my house and studio, and others left stored.  So in that light I have decided to show them here, prior to posting them on my etsy store....while I open to another new venue here in Sonoma County, where they can be seen.  

I love the texture in this piece.  It is an homage to Italy and all things Italian.  The archway reminding me of the narrow streets in Italia, the flowers under the window box...and birds...I have em bedded an antique map into the beeswax on the lower left which is decipherable  among all the colors.

I will continue revisting my early encaustics over time.  This painting is available for sale at my store at.  

SoulArteEclectica

Please go visit them at my etsy store, for another viewing.  Ciao. Caterina

More Journal Pages and On going Recovery

I often feel  the need to express my ongoing journey with the unknown, wide world out there.  That healing itself is an ongoing process of being in the moment and responding authentically to what is happening inside and out of me. Which is exactly the same process that occurs in the act of creative engagement....the ART PROCESS.  . ...being in the moment, paying attention and letting the story unfold.

I continue to play around in my journal and love to watch the images that show up, so I am honoring them as part of my process, without judgement, and with awe and intrigue.

In my journaling process, it is as if I first set the stage, by painting the backgrounds. In this particular series of pages, I used varying watercolor washes.

Once the background is laid into the paper, the curtain is pulled back, the window opened so to speak, and I  begin to collage around the backgrounds, creating a mood   or a feeling with the collage images that are applied.

Next step: PLAY.. I play around with media, pens, prismacolor pencils, words, letters, rubber stamps and then, more watercolor, until something comes together. Going back and forth from one page to the next, responding visually to what I see and what I feel.
Once INSPIRATION arrives, it is just a matter of filling in the spaces, doodling around and emphasizing one part over another, and I arrive  in   
The Mythic Land of image into story line.
It's that ah ha moment, that is part of the creative process, the part that we seem to long for, but have to muddle through unknown lands,  and critical inner demons to reach.

That is when I really begin to feel nourished by the process, it is as if

CREATIVITY MAKES THE MEAL  

The process is like a baby bird playing with a ball, dancing in air.

Using blocks of incongruent connections to make a whole feast of possibilities.

This is the gift of the imagination and the creative process, to nourish us and give us the opportunity to create a Retreat into our own Souls Language, to help to make us whole.

The Art of Encouragement..     

To encourage is to give active help or to raise confidence to the point where one dares to do what is difficult.

And so the images lead us places, open doors and windows, by providing new perspectives, and

posing enigmas..

And the healing journey in my life and art continues to hearten me and offer guidance, even if at first I can't read the story line or understand the purpose.   

To hearten is to put one's heart into or to renew someone's spirit (:heartened by the news of his recovery), and to inspire is to infuse with confidence, resolution.

Ciao....Caterina

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...