Just popping in quickly to let you know that rubedo, the memoir I self-published in 2016 is on a countdown deal with Amazon this week. Totally forgot all about it, as I set it up a couple of weeks ago and then time got in the way. This is probably the only time I’ll be offering any discount deals on this title, as I work on the next instalment.
Get your copy while it’s cheap. Happy reading.
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. …No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
—Martha Graham, from The Life and Work of Martha Graham
What is my visual journalling? Why keep a creative sketchbook? What does it mean to me?
Visual journalling is a practice which I started two years ago taking inspiration from Lisa Sonora’s online course, Dreaming on Paper.
My visual journal is my method, my way of remaining open to the life force, that creative energy that flows through me. When I enter my journal with paint, image and text, I am acknowledging to myself that I am paying attention to me.
Many moons ago I was introduced to Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages. Taken from The Artist’s Way , this is three pages of long hand writing as soon as I wake up in the morning. This is me getting whatever is in my head; worries, feeling, thoughts, moans and groans onto the page. Once out of my head, there is space for the good stuff to come through. My writing. My creations. My dreams.
Two years ago, my Morning Pages were not enough. Words had become my enemy, they were tricky and taboo. I was afraid of the blank page. It also become evident, that when I did write, the words themselves on the page where not enough. I wasn’t feeling the joy I once felt from just writing. My soul wasn’t being filled with light or colour. Everything seemed flat and lifeless.
While on holiday in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, relaxing away from it all, I found the space to play. Taking Lisa’s course enabled me to break through barriers and fears. I started listening to my instinct instead of adhering to any external rules and I began to smear paint on the blank page. Red, yellow, orange, blue. Any colour that took my fancy, mixed with others. This movement of colour inspired me. Loosened me up. Gave me permission to start feeling I was enough. I was ready then to add my dreams, plans, wishes, and worries also to the page but it felt safe. I felt safe by getting more and more in touch with my internal voice. With my authentic self.
Mixing paint, colours, images, photography, words, quotes within my journal means I’m listening and observing, paying attention to what is pulling my soul, what is calling me to bring to life. What needs to sing?
I could not think of my life without my visual journalling now. I am completing my Creative Journey Facilitator Training with Lisa Sonora at the moment, so that I can go deeper into this process as well as practice the tools and skills I’ll need to share my love of visual journalling with others. I’m so excited about taking this next step.
the snow is pristine
the water is cold
the silence is rippling
she does not come here to talk. she does not come here to appease. she is here to connect. to the Earth. to the Sea. to Herself. so she does not take kindly to the wide vacant stares that question her presence. she uses the solid rock of the mountains and the copper grasses peaking through the cracks as a special welcome just for her.
So things have started with my self-imposed residency of being an artist on hiatus. The aim is not to engage in anything creative. To try and not feed my artistic tendencies but to focus all my attentions on my paid work and not my creative work.I am finding this residency difficult as I realise I need colour in my life daily in order to live. In order to get out of bed and feel alive, I need colour within my life. It is my buzz. So deciding to wear a different coloured nail varnish each week to work is I think exercising my creative gene ever so slightly.
This colour fix is also evident within my work planner. So that every day is not a dull day, I pre-prepared each page within my planner with paint, with colour and inspirating images. I did this so that even if I am locked into the system, working 9 til 5, I can still dream, I can still scratch my creative itch.
All this sounds as if I’m not trying in this hiatus residency. But really I am. But at the same time, I am finding out more and more about what makes me tick, what makes me happy, what makes me, me. And I’m okay with that, with this residency. I am taking each day as it comes, and I know I am happy in what I am doing each day. So I am going to continue as I am doing.
I have even inspired others to re-engage with their creativity, with their dreams, through just showing up to meeting using my self-created planner. This colour focus is catching.
I’ve started a portfolio for Iceland. It seems an age since I was last there, but I am making plans to return. Bubbling under the surface of everything else that is happening in my life, is the body memory of how I felt while I was there. How I felt I opened up like blossom to who I really was inside. That I thrived on the silence and solitude and the beauty of the landscape. Some how the serenity and honesty of the landscape, reflected something inside me. I recognised myself there, and I want to capture that feeling again as well as replicate it here, in my every day life.
How is the question?
I need to return to find out.
Dancing the Dream – the seven sacred paths of human transformation, by Jamie Sams
This is the new book I’m reading at the the moment. And I’m trying to take my time, to savour it and let the lessons sink in. But it’s not going that way. Every page that I’m reading, I’m nodding my head in recognition of the wisdom, of the truths that are being mentioned in terms of the energy that connects us all together. Our thoughts, feelings, judgements, our internal landscapes create our outside worlds. If these are full of negativity, this is the energy we are putting out into the world. And what goes around comes around. We are all connected. We are all one.
I made a promise to myself while reading this book to not write any notes. To just absorb the initiations. I intend to go back and reread the book after this first reading and actively work with the lessons. So this post is me marking this promise and making sure I follow through on it. Thank you.
It doesn’t feel like six weeks ago we broke up for the summer holidays from school.
We were so looking forward to the break, to having the time to just chill and function to the beat of our own drum rather than to some school timetable.
We have had a good time. Going out as a family, spending quality time with each other. But there’s always that nagging doubt that says, could we have done more? I especially get this feeling when I’m knee deep in winter, battling through the family and household schedules, juggling work commitments and making ends meet. Oh I wish it was summer again!
I have spent a lifetime wishing my life away and/or wishing it back. Holding off doing something, living until a certain event or date happens. Or looking back at events and happenings, wishing I’d done then differently. Wishing them back to redo.
What happens to the present moments, times and events while I’m in other time modes?
Well, they are present but go unnoticed. Go unmarked. Go unfulfilled. That’s a waste. They are missed opportunities of creative life force. Of positive energy. Of living.
So into the last week of the summer holidays, I’m going to try and not wish the time away by thinking of getting back into the school routine. And I’m not going to wallow in regrets of we should have done more with our time off. What is, is. That’s life. And I’m grateful for that.
I’ve been on a journey. Some days it feels like to hell and back. Other days, it seems like I went dark. I ventured into the underworld to the Dark Goddess. I’m not sure what or who the Dark Goddess is but I do know she is within me. She has always been within me, but I have failed to acknowledge her, or feared to spend time with her.
Over the past year or so, I haven’t had a choice but spend time with the dark Goddess. Associated with death and avoided, She also holds the power for life, and transformation. Before this can occur there has to be death. The natural cycle of every thing is life, death, life cycle.
Anyway, I’m working through things at the moment, working to become more empowered from within and part of this journey does include embrace the Dark Goddess, my Dark Goddess. I chose to document this process and share my practices through poetry. The Dark Goddess is the focus of my next full collection of poetry. What shape this will take is left up in the air. I jut know in my core that this is the path I must take.
Here’s a poem that I think will fit well within this collection.
Forecast
I had a friend once, Fresh, who could talk to the weather.
She tuned into their energies or something.
She could persuade a seafret to stray away from the Scottish coast,
turn back a storm before its even thought about which Caribbean isle to hit next.
She had a certain way when she looked at you,
numbed you to the core,
yet when she smiled it was like the sun glistened
through her pores.
When it rained, she’d be out there for hours arguing
about which was the best colour of the rainbow.
And when a wind blew she came into her element.
She grew in size, raised her arms in welcome
blustered through the cracks of light and disappeared.
I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I’m not even sure if ‘they’ would call it art.
I just know I’m having a good time.
I love colour. Always have. As a child, I would fill a piece of A4 white paper with doodles. I would colour the whole sheet in with colour. Different colours, All the colours I had in my colouring box. And then I would give these creations away.
I loved to give them to my Dad, as a sign of love. I wanted him to these creations to the bookies with him, to show to all his friends. To show how proud he was of me. To show them ( and me) how much he loved me.
I’m not sure if he did show his friends my colouring in. I just know I gave them to him, wanting him to be proud of me. To make him happy. To make him love me.
These days, as I sit quietly, swirling bright marker pens across a sea of white I feel a giddiness in my core. The fluttering of excitement starts in my belly and travels towards mt throat where it has to erupt into ‘aarrr’ or laughter. I experience pure joy at the sight of rich ruby red taking over white. Shocking pink crowding out white. Turquoise swimming into white territory. Witnessing colour moving into the blank spaces and taking over, talking and mingling with each other is a pleasure that I want to repeat again and again. Like an orgasm. I want more x
Living Wild Studios 