trying new things and being still

(my first journal page background courtesy of art journal love letter's tutorial with Connie)

i am 45

i guess that makes me an old dog

but i am proud to say i am still trying new tricks

with Connie at DirtyFootprints Studios i am exploring more BIG painting - we are looking at balance in painting - and then exploring balance in work.....

i am also part of her ArtJournal Love Letters

With Connie and her open heart, and the members of "the tribe", i am constantly trying new things - some of them grab my heart, some of them slide right by....

I want to honour that by opening myself up in this way, i am still learning, not barricading myself up in the fort of what i already "know".

This keeps me alive.

In Big we are looking this week at space... having been so sick and feeling so weak has meant i have had to look my busy-ness in the eye...

i didn't like what i saw.

mostly i was busy scurrying around doing things for other purposes.

the driving force i have to create and learn and experiment was being elbowed to the side by duty and shoulds.

I know with my deepest wisdom that in order for me to create something truely soulshifting i need to be quiet.

i need to be in nature.

i need to relax.

and instead, all i do is bustle-bustle-bustle......

mostly to show that as a "nonworking" mother, i am still valuable.

so i say to that busy-ness "This no longer serves me".

i am committing to quiet, to creation, to honouring what is deeply moving me.

after all (and i found this quote this morning)

It is because of its emptiness that the cup is useful....

My committment and Louise Nevelson

As part of BIG - Connie has asked that we make a committment to ourselves and our participation in this course.

So in front of you, my lovely friends, i make the following committment.

"I, BIG JUICY JANE, MAKE A COMMITTMENT TO MYSELF, TO EXPLORE MY JUICE AND MY HEART'S SONG AND MY POSSIBILITY."

This committment feels right and timely and clean.

I love that i am in the space to make it.

But with it comes whispers of the snivelling smallmaking inner critic who warns me about the outcome of opening to BIG - i will (it seems according to the inner critic) now be faced with the future of running to Acupulco and living in a cat infested shack never to be allowed near my children again...

(yes my critic does have a dramatic streak, but she knows that the urge to break all kinds of boundaries holds me in small)

but i will trust myself to be BIG and wise all at once....

I know that just because i open to creative juice doesn't mean the rupture of the family unit, or life in this house, or life in this body...

i want to see that it is possible to be big and juicy and alive and still be a mother and a wife and a sane member of the community...

So i am investigating artists.

I am opening my heart to the vision and words of others - hoping to listen to the whispers and nudges of my own angels...

And i met Louise Nevelsonand Louise said this

"After a tree is ut down, it is assumed that the tree is dead. It may be the finish of that life as such. But even in that state of matter there's activity, livingness. So there is no death in that sense. There's transformation...Patterns of life change, but the life doesn't change. Life is forever life. Livingness."

i think Louise was talking about her timber... but to me she is talking also about my life... the things that have to die in order for BIG to come alive....


I have been scared, embarking on this committment to myself but i know that even if there is death in this opening of the heart and life, life is forever...

invented mothering

preliminary sketches

it is no secret that i have mother issues

ha

i have been through long periods of berrating myself about not being able to fix it

not being good enough

not being mature enough

of being petulant, wounded, mean and self denegrating about it.

i have to cut her out of my sphere, even when i am in the same room with her and talking to her - i just can't look at her.

but lately i have come to the place where i see her from a distance.

Like looking down the wrong end of the binoculars - seeing this unending dance and seeing the immense sadness and waste of it all.

but not being too wounded.

and certainly not tearing myself down over it.

I still have grief about not having someone to turn to - an older woman with whom i can be myself and share things safely.

But i am still mostly whole after an encounter with her.

This constitutes a massive victory.

i am tooting my relationship vuvuzela.

As part of my BIG creative leap, i have been making time for meditation - this is a true act of self love and never fails to deliver bountiful juice...

and last week, my meditation gifted me the idea of creating an artwork which allowed me to have a sense of the mothering i wish i had, the mothering i long for...

i saw i could make a mother for myself

and by creating her i can have her there to draw on and nourish me...

part of me feels like a dick ... i mean, inventing someone to be kind to me - what kind of a wierdo am i???

Obviously, i am a weirdo who is willing to fight for the mothering she needs...

and that's ok with me.