Mastering The Art of Life

FIVE STEPS BETWEEN PARADIGMS: CREATIVE PROCESS

2012-01-02T12:44:00.000-08:00

Royal Couple in Chief

There seems to be a lot of people talking about change of paradigmsthese days, and I have to admit that I am one of the loudest. When I wasteaching in the art department at a local preparatory high school I had a boxcalled New Paradigms, into which we all dropped ideas that were beyond thecurrent models. As I endeavored to create context for my students, I believedthat artists would be among the first to embrace innovate concepts. I mostlygot eye rolls from these Ivy League bound students. This was more than adecade ago and the main thing I realized working with young people was that beforenew concepts can be considered, first one must fully recognize and understandthe prevailing paradigm. For me, as our social structures reflect the morepervasive entropy, the gap between unsustainable and sustainable becomes evermore apparent. So how do we get from dysfunctional paradigms to optimumparadigms?

For me, there is pretty much onlyone way to get from here to there, and that is through the creative process. Ihave never been able or willing to keep it solely within the studio. And when Iam doing a lot of creative work it persistently seeps into to every aspect ofmy life. I have found myself coming home from the grocery store with all myvegetables bought by color, regardless of season or whether I like to eat them. I even found myself thinking that if alast minute dinner party that I put together doesn’t work, I’ll just paint overit. In the past, incidents like that unnerved me. I thought that I might be losing my grip, but as I study thescience of the new cosmology, the more that I am beginning to think that notonly is creative process one of the best models for moving into a new worldview, but it is an attitude that does not take your own life overly personal. As JoelPrimak infers, we are each at the center of the Universe, one which continues moving awayfrom our point of perception. We are the point where change begins with thecorresponding change of consciousness. The following five steps are not myinvention, but I will give credit at the end.

The first step, absolutely essential for any kind of creativity, is tobe able to know when to turn off the brain’s automatic pilot. The firstdiscipline of all traditional Japanese cultural arts, whether sword work or teaceremony, is to quiet the mind. Itis not possible to stand authentically before the paintings like we do inpainting circle if you do not have some way of calming the mind. You need to beable to step aside from the on-going commentary, especially of the critic. Itis a muscle that can be developed, unless it is there is no hope of playing inthe way that creativity demands; with curiosity, no attachment and simpledelight in process.

The second step is – trust in the process. That isspecifically the creative process, but in general is a belief that the processof life works. From my experience of the evolution of the universe, somethingbeyond all impossible odds, is working. The Universe Spirit people call thisaspect a Learning Universe. Every single aspect is positive, even when itdoesn’t work and is recycled. Can you imagine how that attitude would changeyour life? There are no failures, no regrets, even bad days or decades areperfectly acceptable. In art work it is often those disasters that create thenew series. Do your trust the greater process of life? A great place topractice is in the studio.

Fox Spirit with Dream Drum

The third step is to be in gratitude. I remember late one night in the printstudio, during a period when I thought that I had to work for 8-12 hours in arow to do anything interesting, I was working on a large monoprint with layersof ink, different viscosities and textures. I was exhausted and the large plate still neededto be printed. I took a break and swept the floor, which was strewn with fiber,clippings and dirt. And in spite of all the lengthy and meticulous set up, as Istood there with the full dustpan, I found myself sprinkling it across thelayers of ink. All I could do was laugh in appreciation that it could possible be a choice.When I printed it, all the stuff from the floor blocked the ink and was whiteon the print, which ended up giving me an idea for a series that went verywell. Creative process, as with ALL processes of life, can turn on a dime, ifyou are willing to hold the reins loosely and appreciate the process.

These three steps prepare theway in for the fourth step, which isto connect to inner knowing. It is asking for guidance, and recognizing it assuch, then following the guidance.In the creative process this is the point when you make the leap to the nextstep, even if you do not understand it. It cannot be planned or figured out inadvance, it is an intuitive knowing that we all are capable of it and use it morethan we realize. It is often the leap in art that may take time to get used to, and which we gradually learn to rely on. Oftenin an artist studio there are a couple of new pieces with their face to thewall, which may be a whole new series or way of painting that just emergedwhich the artist has not quite caught up to. That happens to me quite often.When you start making decisions from this place it can be very uncomfortable.Usually you cannot see from one step to the next and do not know where it isgoing. The brain is helpful and necessary in much of this three dimensionalreality, but it has limited application in the new metaparadigm that science isrevealing. As Einstein so famously said, problems cannot be solved with thesame consciousness that created them. We need to move to another level which these step can provide.

The last step is to take thenext step, make a move. All the creative process in the world is for nothingif it is not realized. You have to try that swatch of yellow, you have toOccupy Wall Street if you are called to do so, or the step after that has nochance of manifesting. That I believe is the way that we make it into the newcosmological paradigm – step by step, being the evolutional impulse rather thanbeing in it through creative process.

Jo Dunning was theinspiration for this article from her Five Steps to Enlightenment: http://www.jodunning.com

The first talk for the Painting Seminar Series, isTuesday January 3^rd, 7-9 and Talk/Art Participation Event is at theTannery, Wednesday January 25^th, 7-9 Majio

Follow up on Workshop: PAINTING into the SACRED FEMININE

2011-12-10T13:23:00.000-08:00

The centerpiece for this workshop was the Zulu story of the feminine that must decipher her true instincts in the face of competition, manipulation and betrayal. She takes a journey into the underworld to be empowered my her compassion and protected from the false masculine who devours the feminine instead of balancing and protecting her.

Through the painting process we experienced, as in the story, the constant need for commitment, adjustment and surrender which arises continually in the creative process. We were introduced to the concept of makeweight from a quote by Carl Jung where he talks about what is at stake now for the modern individual and asks if he or she knows that they are the makeweight that will tip the scale,which will make the difference to avoid catastrophe.

The makeweight concept was a jewel of the workshop for Ellen and I, the dictionary definition:

It is something put on a scale to bring the weight to a desired value, something of little independent value which is added to made something complete, or it can be something thrown in as a space filler. All of the meanings infer an impact which pointed us to more awareness in our story of the creative process and our journey in the Sacred Feminine.

On Saturday evening of the workshop we invited everyone to take a extra piece of paper home to sleep on it as the makeweight for their painting, in relation to our Zulu story and their current life story. An old fashioned scales was brought in Sunday morning to enact the weighing. There were variations of interpretation of make weight as: what is missing, the shadow that I afraid to include, what will make it work or a single color or word. In some cases inspiration came from dreams and reflection, in others just the physical material imbued with intention was enough to stimulate a new dialogue. The inspiration was contagious, with little dialogue the painting spokes for themselves in a tremendous leap in energy.

This kind of painting arises from seeking personal expansion of awareness and meaning making, from a position of being. The discipline is to stay out of doing; it is not about making a product but more like a journal on a pilgrimage. And as in dream group work each persons contributions becomes a part of the journey andas their images and stories weave into our own. It reminds me of what happens when a painting is so personal and potent that I can not see it in terms of aesthetics. It is interesting to note that a few individuals independent from each other have mentioned that they feel that their appreciation of art dramatically changed as they engage this painting process, feeling more response from the body in a way that connects and makes sense on a personal level.

All in all, it was a successful beginning to this series with Ellen O'Hanlon on the Sacred Feminine. Watch for the next weekend workshop in February. Below is a note from Ellen to participants and to all of us around the planet, male and female, who are engaged in honoring and celebrating the Sacred Feminine;

a deep breath of gratitude to each of you,

as i recall

eating from the alter of the Goddess,

a scent of rose water, a shake of the rattle

witnessing your stories, feeling your heart, trusting your resistance

watching you dance, seeing you paint,

hearing you laugh, sharing your offering,

feeling your love

all bring me back to Her.

thank you,

2011-12-01T09:00:00.001-08:00

PAINTING into the EMERGING COSMIC MYTH:

Majio The Bridge, Da'at

We are living in a time of unprecedented potential to expand our understandings of ourselves through our relationship to the Universe from which we have emerged. Unprecedented, as the frontiers of science push closer and closer to the origin of our Universe, the human race also presses to understand its own ontological experience in relation to the newly revealed universal principles and the obvious responsibility we must claim for our planet. It is a time of great change, and opportunity, as well as uncertainty, which demands a corresponding reconsideration of our dominant myths. The new mythology must encompass a much more complex array of confirmed facts and information, and yet deliver the fundamental benefit always provided to society through core myths. It must accommodate a 13 billion-year-old Universe, 13 trillion galaxies, the role of quantum physics, a ravaging technological environment, with the meaning of human existence, love, and the human spirit. This is the challenge before us all, and the goal of Studio Anavami is to begin to bridge the gap separating old stories from the new through the creative process. How do we propose to do that?

All of us, including the participants in the ongoing Transformational Painting Circles, feel this is a critical time for our planet. We have used the studio creative process to understand and project into the new frontier of growth our old and familiar archetypes and now long for a theme that we can really sink our teeth into, both in terms of our daily life and in terms of understanding what is going on in the world.

The old metaphor of being at a crossroads has changed from a choice of paths to fleeing the raging fire we have set at our backs. Like tribesmen rushing toward a broad and churning river, we are forced to consider an unfamiliar and threatening challenge in which we have no experience. We must be willing to discard our old and ineffective tools, and adopt new perspectives and knowledge, in order to cross the river. Perspectives can be changed at the individual level by confronting the new element and learning to swim, at the group level by constructing vessels, or at the level of society by constructing a bridge or device to crossover. It is important to consider our own individual predispositions and expertise in order to make the best possible contribution to this process. We are nearing the chrysalis stage, where neither the caterpillar nor the butterfly is recognizable. We can see little in our history to explain or understand the function of this metamorphous. Our traditional geocentric or earth-centered coordinates can no longer guide us as citizens of the cosmos. A greater cosmological order of the Universe is being revealed in the new orientation on the other shore.

At Anavami center we had a rich and lasting experience in the yearlong seminar with Susan Heinz on the Qabalah, which was evident in the exhibition at the Dascom Building. We celebrated the culmination of our eleven large paintings by each creating an art piece: book, shrine, installation, screen or sculpture incorporating the images that emerged from our own journeys. It was immensely satisfying in terms of experience and also the resulting art pieces. Many artists who saw the work wanted to know how the participants produced the body of work. Most of them were not academically trained in art, but each reflected an incredible vitality, individual approach and intrinsic meaningfulness. There is a yearning present across-the-board for a greater vision, one that has synchronistically arrived both at my door step. . .and now yours.

My understanding, experience and even definition of art was radically reshaped through my apprenticeship experience in Japan where artisans embody art as spiritual practice, as a discipline that aligns with James Joyce’s idea that anything that brings you to the center of your being is art. As a visual artist I have found creative process a means of reaching those far shores which demand a fierce imagination, where common sense and intuition, if they are tied to past experience, can only narrow the vision. It requires a transformation of perspective as jarring as the Copernican revolution, displacing the Earth as the center of the Universe. The thrust of our work is to bring all of the creative arts to bear on this transition, to promote the growth of human potential, to broaden human vision, and to spark insight, passion, and intuition.

I worked with Pamela Eakins in the Fool’s Journey, prior to my experience with Susan Heinz, and met Brian Swimme in my graduate studies at Naropa campus in Oakland. When I later sat together with the two of them as they talked about working together, I was thrilled to the core to understand how their ideas dovetailed with those of Joseph Campbell to re-myth the world. Brian Swimme has produced DVDs and books on Journey of the Universe and Powers of the Universe and Pamela Eakins’ will soon be publishing The Lightning Papers.

In the meantime, Rev. Pamela Wylie, Cosmological Mythologist, has created her own work that focuses on the heart of the evolutionary intelligence of the universe, the relationship between the evolving cosmological sciences of our times, and the wisdom of ancient spiritual traditions. Pamela’s work is based on her collaboration and studies with Visionary Cosmologist Pamela Eakins Ph.D. Pamela Wylie will be offering two yearlong groups in Santa Cruz in 2012. One in Painting Seminar Format is a talk each month by Pamela, and in conjunction with Anavami Center, the ideas will be explored with small groups through paintings -- please come to the first talk on January 3^rd RSVP for directions. The second one, The Emerging Cosmic Myth of Our Time is more of an in-depth study of the Ten Cosmic Spheres of Time and how they connect to the Ancient Mystery School’s text and inform our daily lives. Invitational speakers will participate once the foundational principles are established. Talk and Art Participation Series will take place at Art Space Tannery in Santa Cruz. Ellen O’Hanlon and I will support this experience with an experiential theater component beginning in early spring with informal events from January.

Director of Anavami Center Majio

Majio Far Shore

Rev Pamela Wylie, Cosmological Mythologist, began her journey into the symbolic languages and mysteries of Universe under the direction of sociologist and visionary cosmologist Pamela Eakins Ph. D. at the Pacific Center western mystery school in 1994. Pamela holds the degree of Qabalah Master with a focus on the unfolding cosmology expressed in this ancient tradition. She is completing her degree in Visionary Cosmology and will be the first graduate as well as a contributor to the Pamela Eakins Pacific Center for Visionary Cosmology.

Ellen O’Hanlon, is an artist and has a 16 year private practice as a holistic health practitioner, transpersonal hypnotherapist, with a background in modern dance at both Hunter College and Cooper Union in New York City.

Resources for this work:

Pamela Eakins https://lightningspiral.com/10Powers.html

Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams http://viewfromthecenteroftheuniverse

Brian Swimme http://www.brianswimme.org/

Bernard Haisch http://www.iamplify.com/enlightennext/product_details/EnlightenNext/Bernard-Haisch---Mysteries-of-the-Universe-Dark-Matter-and-Dark-Energy/product_id/6003

DEVELOPING ATTENTION TO THE EROS OF DAILY LIFE

2011-11-03T16:11:00.000-07:00

From Plato’s ordered system of ideal forms, Eros corresponds to the subject's yearning for ideal beauty, as well as the harmonious unification not only between bodies, but between knowledge and pleasure.

Hierophant

So how’s your EROTIC LIFE? Notice what comes to mind. I am speaking about EROS here, not about classy porn. We are a Puritan culture, including the shadow that comes with it. I am addressing the passionate, mysterious, connecting, often transcendent, deeply human….yes arousing experiences of daily life, which involve the senses; those experiences which take you out of your head, into your body.

I want to share my investigation of EROS with some stories that name and define a relationship to Eros which many us habitually ignore. Two things began this inquiry: the first one is the theme of Sacred Body which we are exploring in the Painting Circles and the other is the book How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci. In the book, Michael Gelb delineates Seven Davincian Principles, which support and nurture what I am calling the EROS of LIFE. They are: demonstrazione---experimentation without fear of failure, curiosita---curiosity, sfumato, Italian for smoke---the enigmatic mysterious quality of life, arte/scienze or whole brain thinking, coporalita---embodiment, connessione---inner knowing, and sensazione. Sensazione, or sensuality in the English dictionary gives the first four definitions as negative: licentious and lustful, while the last one is of the senses.

Hermit

Living in Paris in my twenties, was a training ground for arousing the harmonious union of not only the body senses, but the knowledge through pleasure. It probably helped to be conversing in sensuous language of French, the common language of the foreign art students that I spent my time with. Sitting in outdoor cafés, the smell of bread, a strain of music, taste of espresso or wine brought the body alive. We spent most of the day reflecting and responding to the stimulating foot traffic: an interesting outfit, a captivating walk, bits of a conversation between a child and parent, a look between lovers, a pair of shoes. Everything we witnessed was registered in the body and was fair game for a new investigation. Many of you may have lived something similar in your youth, but you do not need to me in Paris or Athens. Now, how do you cultivate the erotic part of life in a culture that dampens down our arousal unless it can be captured in the commercial market place?

An intensity of focus with an availability of response is required for the experience, as well as an element of peril, even if it is existential. The danger element can be as subtle as the possibility or walking off with a stranger.

This brings to mind an experience that I had sitting in my garden watching a bee which landed on me. Instead of shooing it away, I followed it as it explored my foot, slowing me down time and increasing my tactile sensitivity. The bee began to investigate the space between my toes by backing into the each space one after the other. Some were roomy and others a tighter fit. It was an indescribable experience, almost some kind of interspecies exchange. For the duration of that experience I developed an acute awareness of the senses, through my curiosity, and vulnerability.

Do you remember, an experience in the last few weeks in which you were engaged, connected and transported in a way that took your breath away? When I asked my mother, who is an artist and writer, and also eighty-eighty years old she responded with this story:

Creating the Red Ladder

Just this last week I saw a very realistic painting of a tiger that brought back an experience which I will never forget. In the original experience I was in a zoo and somehow caught the eye of a Bengal Tiger. Our eyes locked and his gaze went right through me like electricity, my stomach up into my mouths. It brought back t have had that experience to some extent with other animals. It was like he created the pathway for the other experiencess. It was filled with mystery, otherness but blatant sameness, tenderness and at the same time threatening. This relates to deep inner connection, sensuality and openness of curiosity.

When I shared this story in a painting circle, a young woman responded with a story not so unusual, but I had never thought of it in this context. She and her siblings were present at her dying mother’s bedside. Everyone was tense and exhausted, her mother did not want to go. And when she died the woman experienced an incredible joy. She said that she herself was suddenly filled with light and it was as if all the weight had been lifted from her. No one else in the room felt it, but for her is was somehow confirming and uplifting to the degree that it changed her. It transcended her social conditioning of death as separation, lost and grief. This experience too represents many of the Davincian principles, but in particular sfumato, enigmatic or mystery of life with the willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty that I would call transcendent.

This last story is an example of the Plato system of union of knowledge and pleasure. I had recently arrived in Japan, speaking little Japanese language and because little English was spoken in this pottery village of Shigaraki, I had no idea what was going on and what was expected of me as I sat in a small thatched roof building which served as a teahouse. While the sons of the potter were having a tea ceremony lesson, the hum of the cicadas and distant temple bells made it feel like I was in a samurai movie, complete with shafts of light coming through the high woven bamboo window onto the tatami mats. The tea instructor folded the traditional red silk cloth in her hands to wipe the tea implements. Sitting there mesmerized I was transported to a deeply peaceful state of well-being, followed by a state of ecstasy stimulated by sips of powered green tea. The interesting thing was that I made a connection that the many Catholic masses which I sat through as a child were designed as ritual transformation, although it was not my experience. Later I found out that the tea ceremony had some abstruse connections to Christianity. The principle that comes up here for me is in Italian, Corporalita, which I translate as embodiment, as well as, Connessione, inner connectedness, or system thinking.

So I invite you to consider this well-spring of life that feeds your creativity, empathy, connection and passion with nature, others and even things, Try paying more attention to what I am calling the eros of life, because there is a transport through arousal which returns you to yourself. I am continuing to hear extraordinary stories of daily experiences which brings new insights and connections to life in a body. You are welcome to share your stories; majio@anavami.com ,

December 2011 Workshop on Sacred Feminine

2011-10-22T15:21:00.000-07:00

PAINTING into the

SACRED BODY

with Ellen O'Hanlon and Majio

2-1/2 day - Intuitive Painting & Process Workshop

Large Format Acrylic Painting, no experience necessary

Painting by Ellen O'Hanlon

December 2nd-4th

Fri.6-9pm, Sat.10-5, Sun.10–3:30

@ Westside studio—Santa Cruz

Sliding Scale $225—$325, Included $50

materials & Digital photos fee

In this Workshop you will:

Invite in the Sacred embodiment of your inner feminine.

Open to creativity as you paint from the psyche.

Immerse yourself in the feminine spiritual experience.

Be initiated into your body in a ever deeper way.

Using Ritual, Story, Sacred Witness, Sound & Movement we will

paint into discovery, surrender, compassion, and offering, as we

Honor our Feminine Essence.

Information or to Register:

transformationalpainting.blogspot

www.anavamicenter.com (831) 425-3103

Ellen O’Hanlon has 16 year private practice as a holistic health practitioner, Transpersonal Hypnotherapist, with a back ground in modern dance at both Hunter College and Cooper Union in New York City.

Majio is a mixed media artist with 15 years experience in intuitive painting workshops, a certified Transpersonal Hypnotherapist, with a Masters Degree in Creation Spirituality from Naropa University.

There is only one temple in the world

And that is the human body.

Nothing is more sacred than that form.

-Novalis

OPEN STUDIO 2011 at Mission St. Industrial Studios,

2011-09-25T20:38:00.000-07:00

Majio 2581 Mission Str. off Swift, October 1,2,15 & 16, 11-5:00

Contemplating archetypes of place and home in TRANSFORMATIONAL PAINTING Circles over the last few months, in addition to the new studio space, has changed my relationship to OPEN STUDIO this year. A different approach to the story of the artwork is required. Beside the rapture, enchantment and seduction of art, for all of us, it is the story. On the eve of stupendous changes in the collective, it is good to go out and look to the art, music, poetry and theater to help articulate and clarify our personal stories.

Let’s backtrack a moment, for place has a powerful impact on everything. There was a dramatic shift was from my upstairs garden studio in April with loquat trees, sounds of backyard pre-school and view of the rising and setting sun and moon to being wedged between three carpenters and a blacksmith on Mission Street. It also is been different from offering OPEN STUDIO at my home in the Tannery with spacious hall space.

It was quite an adjustment for those in Painting Circle too, to go from song birds and children’s voices to power tools. We at last settled in when Free Cycle supplied the carpeting to enable us to sit and work on the floor again. I love the crafts person and artist community here and the 30 foot ceiling. Most of us have begun to incorporate the sounds of the industry of construction into our routine. In fact in these tenuous times I am grateful that on some front life it is moving along with normalcy. Things are being remodeled, designed and made to function in the physical world. Surprisingly often, in the short time space in which groups paint in the studio it is blissfully quiet.

Lila Klapman’s sculpture and new paintings fill the front studio, initiating everyone who passes through on their way back into our painting space. Her exquisite bronze figures capture the human body in time, while her new pieces are rougher and more shamanic, demand more participation from the viewer. Upstairs there is an additional loft area with a peak of the ocean for an encaustic work space.

It has been interesting to pick out the common thread of the paintings that want to be shown in this year’s OPEN STUDIO. There are the constant archetypal figures and animals: raven, red nine-striped armadillo (common in all of your dreams, right?) snakes and red fox-coyote-wolf figure. Some of the paintings are spanking new, others are older and some are on the until-now-too-personal-to-show list. In dream work we say that dreams have a long shelf life, meaning they stay pertinent for decades. In this kind of painting, it is also true. I have beat a couple of paintings back into storage several times only to find them smiling at me from the walls. It seems the subtitle of ANAVAMI STUDIO in this year’s OPEN STUDIO is TRANSFORMATION, whether you want it or not. Participating paintings:

The Hierophant, represents the inner guide, student/teacher, who accesses information for herself. Her totem, the swan, is an ancient symbol which bridges new realms and new powers. Swan totem carries energy of the child: mystic and dreamer, who uses beauty medicine as power

Raven with Doors: Raven, the trickster, harbinger of messages from other realms represents the experience of a change in consciousness, the mythic personification of synchronicity. She is the instinct within all of us to consolidate an axis between ego and Self. To do this requires some deflating of ego. The trickster is the archetype of where consumption of the ego, union of opposites and transformation of meaninglessness into meaningfulness can occur.

King and Queen as Partners: how is it that partnership is so unusual for this couple, could it be that they are a part of a greater domination model. Here they are in cahoots, in a secret alliance governed by electric inspiration of the heavens and perhaps the impetus to start a royal family.

Majio

Creative Process: ARCHETYPES & SHAMANISM

2011-09-05T17:43:00.000-07:00

STORE FRONT SHOW on 533 SEABRIGHT Ave. in SANTA CRUZ

Creative Process & SHAMANISM

Shaman, acrylic on canvas

The SHAMANIC impulse is experienced in our daily life, from praying, investing objects and places with power to many other kinds of creative activity which interact with the unseen world. The visual arts can offer connection to the essential parts of ourselves that want wholeness, integration and meaning beyond cultural norms and beliefs. We use storytelling and image-making to obtain guidance, information, and to update or re-negotiate our belief system. Just as animal figures in children’s stories and fairytales offer dialogue with the instinctual, TRANSFORMATIONAL PAINTING brings to consciousness the edge of awareness to challenge our growth.

These SHAMANISTIC paintings come from a world that is more real than everyday life because it reveals truth and creates meaning and understanding beyond the limits of the rational. Participating with the SHAMANIC archetype in the collective unconscious allows us to re-contextualize problems, trauma, and possibly societal madness. It deepens healing to remember that individual experiences of trauma simultaneously reflect the greater challenge resonating throughout the collective field. This kind of realization allows one to move beyond the moment of crisis by experiencing it in a greater context.

ARCHETYPE

All great myths and stories are about the ARCHETYPES and how they function. We experience ARCHETYPES in movies and novels. We experience them also in our own lives in conflicts, love and religious experiences, in fact, in all the experiences of our lives.

At the base of all existence are energy clusters of ARCHETYPES of innate character, energy and function arranged around Self... the central ARCHETYPE. Surrounding the Self in pairs of opposites are the other primary or basic archetypes of the Feminine, the Masculine, the Adversary, the Heroic, Death-Rebirth and the Journey.

An ARCHETYPE is an innate pattern within the psyche and within all life. We see the ARCHETYPES play themselves out, mostly automatically in our lives.
In wars and conflicts there is an enemy and a victor. Male and female embody opposites to each other. People go through a developmental journey process all their lives yet also fall into crises, death-rebirths, and new directions. And at times of real clarity and growth we choose to integrate and transform our lives, as is the nature of the Self.

Strephon Kaplan Williams Jungian-Senoi Dreamwork Manual

From Warrior to Magician

Magician, acrylic on canvas

In this painting, the MAGICIAN is reaching out for the tools of the trade, as the sword hangs suspended in air. The archetype of the Hero as Warrior is being spontaneous updated here and in the collective. Throughout history, medicine men, wizards, shaman, witch doctors, brujos, scientists, doctors, and inventors, have been connected to the archetypal pattern of the Magician.

Popular Culture is often on the edge of conscious change. The tradition of the mythical Warrior’s heroic journey is being challenged, as well as the paradigm which holds it in place.

Whereas the Warrior uses physical strength and power-over, the MAGICIAN understands the mysteries of nature accessed by inner truth. You may have noticed how wizards, witches, inventors, scientists and shamans are appearing everywhere, in movies, video games and literature, with the stance of the Hero.

Unlike the Warrior, who struggles to overcome great challenges, the MAGICIAN believes in infinite potential and possibility. Rather than struggling against the current, she flows with it.

Fool of the West

Almost all cultures and traditions have a FOOL as jester, sacred clown, truth-teller, blundering innocent or trickster. The FOOL is seen as key to community’s survival both physically and spiritually. All indigenous tribes utilize the FOOL archetype to bring balance and perspective. The Greeks, Romans, Chinese cultures and royal courts in Europe utilized the FOOL’S participation to insert doubt, misgivings and possible challenge into what was considered off limits.

The FOOL is often an orphan, this one reminds me of the old red-haired cartoon character, Little Orphan Annie and her dog Sandy. Perhaps she expresses a FOOL who is asking for an update. In the comic strip her savior is Daddy Warbucks, the idealized capitalist who made his money in munitions. Annie as FOOL wanders vagabond-like through a corrupt world, fearless, generous, compassionate and optimistic.

The FOOL archetype in this painting is dressed as spirit of the West. If she is heading off a cliff, as the traditional Tarot FOOL is, it is into the Pacific Ocean, edge of the Western world. She reflects the health of the FOOL archetype as an American; innocent, lofty, yet often inflated. A Californian Fool, her hat symbolizes how her thinking takes precedent over the order the celestial bodies. Her cowering dog a figure of loyalty and instinct is imprinted with a squalid tenement building, as much of our resources are tied up in poverty. He is not the robust companion that we need. She carries a dowsing rod rather than the staff which infers connection to the unseen order and so aligns herself with the Magician.

EMPRESS: Doorway Through Masculine Rule to Balanced Partnership

EMPRESS/Queen is the archetype of the feminine in a position of power. In this painting she is the entrance into the liminal, the space in-between which we enter as we leave old ways of being behind which do not serve the collective, and yet have not found the new.

There comes a time, when the one who has been in charge, the Emperor/King archetype must step aside to let a new force lead. The problems that have been created cannot be solved only with masculine energy only, but require feminine principles for a balanced perspective.

The positive of the feminine in power is generative, creative and caring for community with sustainability. The EMPRESS is archetypally Earth Mother, the Anima, the Feminine Principle, Demeter, Kuan Yin and the Goddess of Fertility. She is ruled by Venus, the planet of love, creativity, fertility, art, harmony, beauty and grace. She reminds us that there is always enough, if we address the systems and policies of distribution.

TRANSFORMATIONAL PAINTING

I had no idea where these paintings might go even though each began with a theme; an approach which artists have used throughout time. The emphasis of TRANSFORMATION PAINTING is on the journey, not the destination, on the process rather than the product, because it is an engagement with the psyche, which brings forth information and personal realizations. TRANSFORMATION PAINTING has the potential for those involved in the creation or viewing to be transform.

This process feeds all creative activity, no experience in the arts is necessary. It is supportive to work in PAINTING CIRCLES, which are small and take place in a safe environment to build confidence and trust in one’s authentic self. Since it is not about the product, there is little technical instruction, allowing for a playful, meditative and experimental approach to create the journey that is needed at the time.

This kind of painting taps into the ARCHETYPAL REALMS and is fundamentally SHAMANISTIC, as is dream work. In neither case is there traditional reference or training involved because SHAMAN is used in the archetypal.

The Arts as Education of the Archetypal Realms

2011-08-26T18:17:00.000-07:00

Lover at the Edge, oil paint & mixed media on canvas Majio

In July and August the Painting Circles have been investigating the archetype of place through painting. It has been an interesting endeavor to view our everyday surroundings in an archetypal context. We have experienced how physical place overlaps with emotional, historical and mythological place, similar to nighttime dreams when a character is father, boyfriend and serial killer, all at the same time.

In the realm of the psyche, unconscious archetypal aspects of place merge to shape the container

of the rich and complex world we create in our lives. In the Painting Circles we use process painting to make conscious dominant archetypal pattern in our personal mythology. All of the arts, however, lead us into a deeper experience of our interior world. This stretching of our personal connection to archetype as soul tending, has called to our attention the works of Thomas Moore.

Thomas Moore in The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life, talks about how care of the soul requires education in the archetypal realms. He says that we learn from art what earth-centered cultures have traditional acquired through “ritual, story, sacrament, sacrifice, icon, temple, sculpture, and

dance.” Probably, like you, I have had to invent ritual with sacrifice in the desire for sacraments, not available in my community. The arts nurture, guide, support and inform us of the mysteries of life, allowing us to enlarge our immediate cultural context; revealing to us our soul life.

Moore compares psychology to allopathic medicines, which numb our pain instead of intensifying the exploration of mythic process. The arts provide a viewpoint fundamentally different from the one that shapes most modern psychology; as through the artistic imagination we are liberated more by entering into our experiences than by being led out of them. It can be deeply moving or sometimes profoundly disturbing. Unlike modern allopathic therapies, which tend to numb us to the pain of our predicaments, the arts sharpen the emotions and intensify the crisis of meaning; for me the arts have always been an engagement of the psyche, it was new to think of them as an education.

I feel that recently I have witnessed an inordinate amount of calamity in my P: a close friend is recovering from emergency cancer surgery, another’s kitchen floor has been torn up because of structural water damage, a painter was notified that the inheritance she planned for retirement does not exist and my mother in her mid-eighties fell and broke her hip.

UCSC Organic Farm

I contemplated my mother’s fall as an ax stroke through her life, not only for her every day routine, but a cut to the quick of her being. In her term of rehabilitation for her hip replacement she felt humiliated, ignored and diminished. For someone who with abundant humor and trust in her connection to other human beings, she was shaken to the core. I began to frame these catastrophes as a severance of well-being, like a visceral ax swing From the many years splitting huge quantities of wood for a wood burning kiln, I can easily recall that ax swing in my body. I felt it every time I heard a siren, projecting that someone’s life was coming apart. Intellectually I knew there was a more expansive way of viewing this but it felt like a wrenching betrayal, a severing of wholeness and well-being each time. I yearned for an experiential example of the instinctual or soul education of which Moore speaks.

An example did come to me and through a poem that I had read many times before. But this time I heard it in a new way. In Billy Collins’ poem, Splitting Wood, in the last few stanzas he uses the metaphor of the two halves of a split log wobbling in place like two naked lovers exposed to the light. I had that experience recently also; the shock of being pulled from deep intimacy into separation. What also comes to mind is my daughter’s birth, both were a severance, but they sponsored something grander, just as splitting of the wood to fire the kiln transforms the fragile clay into durable ceramics. It was an experience that went directly to my psyche. It did not go through my brain until later when I looked at the current tragedies and could see them as part of a greater cycle of life.

It was graphic how art, in this case poetry, takes the understanding of the mysteries of life through the archetypal realm of the psyche inviting a deeper grasp of birth in death. Through exposure to the archetypes that shape our lives and seize our emotions, the arts contribute powerfully to the enchantment of everyday life. We live in a culture dominated by logical and quantitative analysis, one that has forgotten the many alternative means of dealing with experience---ritual, storytelling, community participation in grieving and celebrating artistry in everyday tasks, and personal poetry of life. The arts speak to our instinctual imagination, in a sense to our primitive natures, and so attend the archetypal dimension of our thoughts and emotions. Majio

Last stanzas of Billy Collin’s Poem,

Splitting Wood

I want to say there is nothing
like the sudden opening of wood,
but it is like so many other things—

the stroke of the ax like lightning,
the bisection so perfect
the halves fall away from each other

as in a mirror
and hit the soft ground
like twins shot through the heart.

And rarely, if the wood
accepts the blade without conditions,
the two pieces keep their balance

in spite of the blow,
remain stunned on the block
as if they cannot believe their division,

their sudden separateness.
Still upright, still together,
they wobble slightly as two lovers, once

as two lovers, once secretly bound,
might stand revealed,
more naked than ever,

the darkness inside the tree they shared
now instantly exposed to the blunt
light of this clear November day,

all the inner twisting of the grain
that held them blindly
in their augmentation and contortion

now rushed into this brightness
as if by a shutter
that, once opened, can never be closed.

Musings on Relationship to Place

2011-06-05T15:15:00.000-07:00

Even though place is fundamental to everything in our daily life, our collective and personal mythologies around place are often unconscious. First step is to get in touch with our values is to notice our decisions. A former UCSC student told me the price to ‘stay on’ in Santa Cruz after graduation was in the arena self-image. For her, it meant buying clothes from the Thrift Store instead of Banana Republic. “Keep Santa Cruz Weird,” as a motto gives a certain kind of permission.

How do you define place? Is it connected to experience in the past or a vision of the future? Is it rated on usefulness at the time? Is it geological, historical or emotionally tied to stories of personal mythology? What is the charge of the place you are living in now? How does it reflect your inner life? Is this place a stop-over or is it the container for a life? Does it challenge your daily values?

Traditional Japanese wisdom says that you don’t choose place, it chooses you. Many people that I have talked to in Taos, New Mexico would agree, as they each have a story of how they were chosen. What does it mean to be chosen by place? Is there something specific that you need to do in that place? When place is done with d you do you have to move on? Can one be between places or in no place? What is the difference between place, land and landscape for you?

Lucy Lippard, art critic, curator and author, distinguishes between the intimacy of a lived-in landscape, which becomes place, and landscape seen from a single static point of view. She calls the latter a set of surfaces, a backdrop in the viewing. This is interesting in that the genre of landscape painting fits this definition quite literally. So often landscape paintings feels like a scene devoid of content, intimacy, without a component of heart or time. Although landscape, still life and nude models are used as an exercise in learning about space, color and technique of the materials, it has often served underlying themes of ownership and/or objectification.

Not only does this view of place call into question our fundamental relationship to nature, but also our relationship to our selves and each other. Art history demonstrates social trends of attitudes toward women through representation of the female figure, as it at the same time depicts the desire to conquer or romanticize the earth. Indigenous cultures, traditionally integrated with nature, create their mythology from the land. Group cohesion, coherence and sustainability are directly connected to their relationship to the land. Our depiction of the land often demonstrates alienation, expressing materialistic and sentimental values.

Karl Marx in Kapital, talks about labor being the mediator between nature and culture, “countryside” forms a barrier between “civilization” and “wilderness.” Mircea Eliade maintains that the “sacred” is an element in the structure of consciousness, not a stage in the history of consciousness.” The archetypal forms and patterns of the human psyche then are mirrored in the world of nature and how we perceive it. For me that resonance is the sacred organizing principle of life.

The idea of that where humans meet nature is a buffer zone, suggests that landscape is where what we control meets what we want to control, which underscores the ‘not belongingness’ that we have created. The liminal is that space in-between, a place of transition and transformation. It can be confused with the marginal, which is the projections and shadows that we don’t own, but see in others. Examples of the marginalized are criminals, homeless, insane, handicapped, aged or anyone viewed as not-me. The liminal is the edge that is evolving, sometimes over laps with the marginal.

How does this relate to your relationship to place? Most of the places we interact with daily have been designed for the expediency and profit of business. Perhaps that is why the current interest in feng shui,the Chinese brand of geomancy. We are desperate to be actively involved with where we live, if not in the design of place, then the energetics. This may also explain widespread interest to indigenous ritual, healing and world view's which find personal meaning in nature.

Visual artist, musicians and performers are exploring relationship to nature, place, and each other in more innovative and creative ways with interdisciplinary and multimedia which invite participation. Those in the arts have been interested for a long time in the question of relationship to place? People in general are looking for new perspectives on daily life which includes a healthy function of the cultural arts. Touring Europe as an extension of Disneyland is no longer satisfying. People want a different relationship to things and places which demands new ways of perceiving the world.

How we perceive ourselves in our place of being has tremendous room for creativity. Just as each of us is being called to become aware of the myths that sponsor our lives, we are also being called to create, as artist, our relationship to the world we live in. Begin with your awareness as to what place means to you and how it expresses your values.

Suzie Gablik writes, “a central aspect of new paradigm thinking involves a significant shift from objects to relationships… the emerging new paradigm reflects a will to participate socially… There is the aesthetic perspective orienting us to the making of objects, the ecological perspective connects art to its integrative role in the larger whole and the web of relationships in which art exists. A new emphasis falls on community and the environment rather than on individual achievement and accomplishment…”

Most of the neuroses and the vacuum of meaning from which we suffer result from an isolation of the ego-mind from the archetypal unconscious according to Carl Jung. Art as meaning making is a collective involvement in a cultural activity which nurtures, sustains and renews a society, involving everyone. Our immediate challenge is to reveal the sacredness within our everyday lives, to maintain connection to and care of soul. Majio

Photos from the EDGE, Art on the Westside at R Blitzer Gallery

2011-05-24T11:46:00.000-07:00

Photo by www.stevelaufer.com

Artist Reception and fundraiser for MAH Children" Art Program was well attended.

Both Openings, music by Amanda West & Pete Solomon, professionally wrestling with warehouse acoustics: http://www.amandawestmusic.com/

With the click of Steve's camera, Majio remembers another life in another country, when fashion shoots financed painting trips. Still the red shoes endure.

Music with Jayme Kelly Curtis http://www.purrgirl.com/ Rob Blizter, and Ukulele Dick http://www.grazianoukuleles.com/uke_dick.html

For youtube of First Friday on the EDGE by Rand Launer & Mandie Hall

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI3JY90EWDQ&feature=player_detailpage

DREAMING into the LAND, 5 Day Residency, Questa, New Mexico June 21-25 2011

2011-05-22T18:38:00.000-07:00

Great Spirit of the East, Place of the rising Sun, Who counts the years of our lives! and the opportunities of each day. Strengthen us that we may not neglect our gifts, nor the hopes of each day and the hopes of each year.

Great Spirit of the South, whose warm breath of compassion melts the ice that gathers round our hearts, whose fragrance speaks of warm days, kindle our love into growth of true and living realities. Teach us that who is truly strong is also kind, wise, tempers justice with mercy, courage with compassion.

Great Spirit of the West, the land of the setting Sun, with Your soaring mountains and free, wide rolling prairies, bless us with knowledge of the peace which follows effort of striving and the freedom which emits like a flowing robe in the winds of a well-lived life. Teach us that the end is better than the beginning and that the setting sun is glorious and our lives not lived in vain.

Great Spirit of the North, who brings wisdom with age and time Bringing the waters of the air Who covers the Earth with a sparkling crystal above whose deep tranquility every sound is beautiful. Temper us with strength to withstand the biting blizzards yet make us thankful for the beauty which follows and lies deep over the warm Earth in its wake.

Great Spirit of the heaven, above, in the days infinite light and amid the countless stars of the night remind us that you are vast that you are beautiful and majestic beyond all of our knowing or understanding but also that you are no further from us than the tilting upwards of our heads and the raising of our eyes.

Great Spirit of Mother Earth beneath our feet Master of metals, Germinator of seeds and the Storer of the Earth's resources, help us to give thanks Always for Your present bounty.

Great Spirit of our souls within, burning in our heart's desire and in our innermost aspirations, speak to us now and always so that we may be aware of our greatness and goodness of spirit, This gift of life and be worthy of happiness Our priceless privilege of living.

Innvocation of Seven Sacred Directions

Potty Training or How to Change Paradigms for the Evolution of the Planet

2011-04-27T14:51:00.000-07:00

What, I call the Japanese Diaper Trick is useful for changing habits. I discovered in Japanese while potty training our daughter. It is one of those things that is incredibly obvious when it is spelled out, but much trauma and shame is traditionally connected to the process, which reflects how we treat, not just our children, but ourselves

You begin with a child whom you think is ready to potty train; You say to the child: “Tell me when you notice that you have gone in your diaper.” It is mentioned casually and when the child does, you respond with praise; “You are so smart. You know that your diaper is wet. Do you want to have it changed?” If she does, fine, if not then, later. As the child is ready, she or he eventually comes and tells you that the diaper is soiled.

After a week or so when that is going well, you say, “Lets see if you can tell when you are going in your diaper!” And again, no pressure, just responding with acknowledgment; “Good for you, you can feel when you are peeing.” Let them experience the process, praising her and giving her the option to change out of the used diaper when she wants to.

The last step is to say to the child; “Lets see if you can tell me before you go in your diaper. Your body is pushing out what you don’t need and you might be able to feel it before it happens” Then again, it is important to just respond with feed back; “Wow, you could feel it. Your body is telling you something is going to happen before you can see it..” And you let her go in the diaper, don’t rush her off to the toilet, let her practice noticing what her body feels like before it needs to eliminate. When she gets comfortable with that you ask; “Oh so you can feel that you are going to pee, do you want to take off your diaper and go in the toilet?” She has become aware of body function, and now has a choice.

Many of you may have experienced the challenge and frustration of the battle between a thoroughly ingrained habit and desire for change. This is an example of the Transcendent Principle which Einstein refers to when he said that, “A problem cannot be solved on the level in which it is created.” It requires a new perspective to be recognized, which offers a new choice, resulting in a higher value, raising the bar on how I see myself and my responsibility.

How many of you are familiar with the word paradigm? Can you define it? Or give an example? One way to talk about it is to say that it is a matrix in which we are embedded. It is like the proverbial fish in water. Just as the fish cannot separate himself from the water, it is hard for us to see the belief with which we are identified. Often you must somehow get out of a paradigm to discern it.

I would like to appeal to your imagination. Take a moment to imagine yourself back, deep in the middle ages, in European Christiandom. You live in a small village with thatched roofs, rutted roads, where no one you know has traveled more than 30 kilometers from your village and lived to tell about it. You picture yourself on a flat world plane at the center of the Universe. Metaphorically and literally the matrix belief, amplified by the church, is that if you go too far, you will fall off. That fear of falling off the edge follows you into your nighttime dreams in which you tumble regularly into oblivion, waking before you land.

Most of the population lives in filth, illness, early death and hard labor. You would be hard pressed to come up with another workable model. You might look to the landholders or those better off than yourself, but on closer look they are certainly not exempt from accidents, disease, human foibles and death. Let us say you are a bright lad or lass and have heard some talk that astronomers say there is an entirely different picture of the cosmos than what you have always imagined. Let say that you are standing now looking out to sea, trying to image a different shape to the earth. You have noticed the round sun and moon, you have observed that the sailing boats seem to disappear from the bottom up as they go towards the horizon, but it is hard to imagine too many new elements at one time. Then you look down and see an ant making its way along the surface of a large rounded bolder. This gives you pause to consider that what if the scale of the earth was much larger than you thought. From the ant’s point of view, his little patch is flat, as it is for you. Bingo, an idea, which begins the possibility of new model, which will challenge all your constructs of thinking.

Let us come back to our time, when quantum physics is having the same effect on us now, as astronomy did on the Middle Ages. Most of us do not fear stepping off the edge of the known world literally, but I sense in my self a belief just as crippling. It is the mind construct of polarity. It echoes the ancient cosmology of heaven and hell; good/bad, right/wrong, win/loose. These metaphors are inherent in our language and our thinking. We have created a world of duality which is so inclusive that it is almost impossible to imagine another continuum.

I want to share a personal experience I had in regard to a relationship, which broke apart a paradigm in a moment, but however, is taking years to realize a new one. I remember it so clearly, because it was a time when our country was entering yet another war, so the question as to why we keep creating war was on my mind.

I am standing before someone that I had loved for a long time, in fact I still love him, but I cannot access that at this moment. I am hurt, feeling abandoned and betrayed. I am in a deep trance of my history, my childhood, reliving similar experiences. I look for evidence of how this person in front of me is wrong, and I find it. Standing in front of him, I do not see him, or hear him, The dazed person in front of me is also reliving his past. Neither one of us is present.As I stand there, a thought slips in sideways; if I look at this one I have been so closed to without seeing him, NO WONDER WE HAVE WARS!

This is enough to break the trance and bring me back to present time; in a flash I know that I have created this entire story. In this moment of realization I sense my alienation from him, is really alienation from myself. I feel a choice, that I did not have seconds before. He somehow miraculously witnesses my shift, which at first lowers his defenses. Then I see him go into confusion. In his acute discomfort, he turns to flee, but then looks at me. We smiles in some bizarre recognition, as if we were both caught in a joke. It is a life-changing event that allows space for a new paradigm to develop for both of us; to live life differently, make new decisions.

Since that time I have not had the luxury of enemies, I have found unequivocally that my charged reaction to a situation or someone is 90% -100% my projections. This is not the end though, having these realizations does not mean it is an automatic shift. It takes awareness for old habit and beliefs to be made conscious. We are all learning at this time, how we have fouled our nest. It is time for us to potty train, which the parents among us know, can be a challenge. The Japanese Diaper Trick is a strategy that is supportive for changing old belief habits that no longer serve, but it only works if you are lovingly self accepting all along the way.

Group Show: EDGE, Art on the Westside

2011-04-24T16:47:00.000-07:00

R. Blitzer Gallery May 6-29th, 2011
450 Natural Bridges Dr. Santa Cruz, CA

OPENING RECEPTION: First Friday, May 6th, 6-9 PM

ARTISTS' RECEPTION: Saturday, May 21st, 4-8 PM

$5 donation requested. A majority of proceeds will be donated to MAH's children's education programs.

GALLERY HOURS: MON-FRI 9AM-noon; 2-5PM & SAT-SUN 11AM-5PM

ARTIST STATEMENT

Hermit's Hand

If the subconscious takes up about 99.9% of the mind on a day when we are fairly clear, recording all of the past and source of most of our fears, desires, dreams and decisions, then it makes sense to be in conscious dialogue with that part of us which is below our level of consciousness. For me the creative process is about meaning making; not in an analytical sense, but mythically and poetic. Similar to nighttime dreams, it informs my world. My paintings begin in a fluid relaxed state of presence and only later, as in dream work, do symbols and metaphors begin to inform the journey.

Right now, my subconscious is apparently filled with a metallic shine. Perhaps it expresses the alchemic process of transforming lead, or excrement in Jungian terms, to gold. Turning loss, struggle with daily survival and failure into renewed commitment to life purpose is a metaphor present in most of our lives at this time. It took me some time to recognize the two archetypes which appeared on the gold fields of my two larger paintings. Even with their separate feminine and masculine energy, they are androgynous. The Hierophant and the Hermit have come to work in partnership together in my life for the first time.

Hand of Hierophant

Partnered energetically, for me, with this Inner Guide is the Hermit: seeker who holds the power to fulfill one’s self. He is self acceptance and self love. His leaning forward listening to spirit or to the object above the hand disguises his age. Into the Hermit painting, before I knew that owls were connected to the Hermit came a Barn Owl, symbolizing wisdom, prophecy, and willingness to keep silent. Together these figures create an alliance and example for me of how to be in the world at this time; trusting inner guidance to bridge to the needed new models that are being called forth.

Hands of Hierophant and Hermit’s Hands: two small, two-sided paintings on wood explored further the imagery of the large paintings. Hands are a symbol in my work of interaction with the inner and outer worlds: giving blessings, using energy and materials and handling the world. Hierophant’s Swan Amulet/Race Car Driver, two-sided painting goes with the Hierophant painting, but not necessarily hung together.

Detail of Owl Rattle in holder

BIO:

Although my formal academic and studio art education includes the California University system, Naropa Institute and studies in France and Spain, I feel my serious studies began grinding calligraphy ink at Daitokuji Temple in Kyoto, Japan. With apprenticeships in ceramics, papermaking, and extensive study in the traditional cultural arts for twelve years, I began to perceive my relationship to Western Art and to use creative process as personal practice. Painting, for me, links imagination to personal and collective healing, reflection, integration, and community vision building. Just as poetry at best expresses truth beyond everyday language, images also can introduce a greater reality. My aspiration is for my art is to be an integral part of my daily life, a tool for navigation and communication with myself and others.

PAINTING into AWARENESS through EMBODIMENT, PARADOX & EXPERIMENTATION, New Mexico Summer 2010

2011-03-20T18:44:00.000-07:00

Notes From Workshop

This particular workshop is designed to encourage us to experience new frontiers in our personal creative arena, as a journey, not making a product. You are released in this moment of the expectation that you will produce something to carry home with you. It is about developing skills and perceptions that are sometimes hard to realize in the world that exists around our process. We enter into this safe and supportive collective as an opportunity to release the dominate voice that runs how we approach process. Like myself I bet you often don’t realize how deep a rut is until you climb out.

In my training at the Marin Institute for Projective Dreamwork, Jeremy Taylor spoke about an archetypal dynamic that we all have the opportunity to face numerous times in our lives. He uses the metaphor of life as finding our way through the forest. There always comes the time when the Captain who has been leading the expedition successfully up until now must step to the back of the line because she is leading us around in circles and everyone knows it. If the Captain archetype has been intuitive then she needs to hand the helm to the rational navigator and visa verso. It is often the least valued part of us who must now lead. This could be the ratty flea bitten stray dog that trails behind, even though the Captain kicks him and harangues the cook for giving him scraps. Like in nighttime dreams all those in the expedition are parts of our self.

Often the new part that must step forward is a part of our self that we don’t recognize. This part will show up in our dreams as the shadow: teenage hoodlums, terrorist or unconscious blond. They also appear in our charged reaction to others we name inconsiderate, irresponsible, arrogant, goody-two-shoes or free spirits. These are all parts that we have disowned in our selves. So there comes a time when the lowly of lows is the only guide that works to find our way out of the woods. Often at the Y in the road, it doesn’t matter which fork we take. But there is a time when one choice takes us to the high path while the other leads us back to the same choice in the midst of a different content.

The one-capable-of-leading the expedition ‘out of the woods’ is our fully embodied instinctive intelligence. This part is connected to making changes through the vertical rather than making ‘good-time’ in the horizontal that goes nowhere. She works out of the box and may not step forward unless severely pressed. An example is in the book, Mutant Message Down Under, when Marlo Morgan, on a walk-about with Aborigines, is informed that it is her turn to guide the group to the next water source. She has no experience in this and knows they are set to follow her wherever she leads. Their life is in her hands. Somehow eventually she does find the water. To lead takes awareness of all the senses, physical and beyond. And it takes ability to hold an expansive whole systems mind beyond ambiguity, dichotomy, and paradox. It takes developed confusion endurance. In this workshop to support our guides to find higher ground we will experiment with and cultivate various modes of being in relation to our painting process.

The studio move is complete! New Studio is Up

2011-03-03T08:45:00.000-08:00

In the wildness I forgot to publish this.

New studio first Painting Circle

Anavami Center has moved from Chanticleer Ave. to 2581 Mission St. Extension. Good bye to that sweet dream studio: upstairs, carpeted, windows viewing the rising and setting sun, moon, planets, stars and local fireworks with garden below.

Boxed up to move.

It is time to move from the last traces of rural Santa Cruz to industrial lands of Westside Santa Cruz to create a new dream amongst the constant sound of carpenters to the sides and iron worker across the way with their various choices of music. Yet it is a creative hive of artists whom I admired and have been following for years. It was a blessing brought to me by Lila Klapman. We are sharing the space and if you do not know her work you might want to come by for a look at her her bronze sculptures and new paintings.

With carpeting

Through Felicite, Santa Cruz Free Cycle and Laura's help with truck we have managed to get the studio carpeted so that we can work on the floor and even roll around it we like. Cozy in exactly the right description with 30' ceilings, but it changes the the acoustics and makes it warmer.

In May there will be a show at R.Blitzer Gallery, featuring artist from the Westside of Santa Cruz organized by Lila Klapman and Barbara Downs.

Last Saturday in March there will be a free preview of the Painting Circle Process. Contact anavami@cruzio.com to register.

Part III Looking towards a New Paradigm in Art Participation

2011-03-01T08:26:00.000-08:00

Hierophant

The well known quote attributed to Einstein, “you can not solve a problem on the level it is created,” is another way of saying that two seemingly incompatible options, through a transcendent principal, can be elevated to a complementary relationship. For our consciousness to grasp that we were not living on a flat plane but on the surface of a sphere, was to access a huge perspective change, akin to transcendent principal. Concepts in quantum physics today are altering our basic constructs of knowing, in comparable ways.

There are opportunities in our lives daily which challenge us to expand conventional practices; understandings and visions beyond what our parents, friends and even society is rooted in. Ecological concerns alone have insisted on an understanding of systems that force our egocentric practices into a greater context of responsibility which most people refused to acknowledge. In this transitional time, how many people do you know who have been forced to step out of the standard medical model, to engage in the process of participating in deep personal healing? Encounters with different cultures, extreme challenges in and of nature and experience in other states of consciousness are reflected personally and through popular media, as preparation for the ‘raising of the ceiling’ of old beliefs.

It does not matter how imaginative you are, projecting a new perspective with all its encompassing implications is grounded in our experience of what we know. Science fiction writers exaggerate aspects of what is familiar to create unearthly places and life forms. There are facets of the new paradigm which many of us have been participating in for years, and yet the whole model is not yet conscious. My vision of the new cultural arts paradigm finds scaffolding in three components: first is a major leap in value which honors the cultural arts, offering participation for everyone, second, introducing a universal archetype to serve as guide for the unification of the third aspect, which is a structure of consciousness traditionally perceived in separate parts.

The value of cultural as an expression of society requires authentic connection and reflection of society with dialogue of standards, rather than being controlled by the experts. It would require early participation and education which would probably change the structure of the entertainment industry. Joseph Campbell spoke of the Hero archetype, no longer belonging to a few adventurers, but one we all need to explore individually; the same is true for the Shaman, an archetype which has collective significance in our psyche at this time. We are each invited to experience facets of the shaman-guide, seer, healer, holder of experiences outside of everyday life and artist, as an integrating archetype seeking the next edge of being.

Shaman is a Russian word describing a person among Siberian tribes who is a seer, healer, and medicine person. The word comes from the ancient Sanskrit, sramana, meaning one who goes beyond in order to know. This beyond conveys a universal schema of worlds which not only belongs to indigenous cultures, but in some form to most spiritual models, and to our psychological framework. I have experienced these worlds in several ways; as artist, nighttime dreamer, living in a Buddhist country and leading trance journeys into the subconscious. This archetype and the understanding of the psyche are central to art which serves the collective.

The three realms of consciousness which roughly correspond to spirit, ego and soul, are referred to as the upper, middle and lower worlds. In the new paradigm, personal archetypal guides like the Shaman/Artist lead us personally and collectively between these worlds. I suspect that they will overlap more and more as our awareness expands and the model of duality gives way to a new consciousness of wholeness. Bill Plotkin, in Nature and the Human Soul, Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World, succinctly describes them in relation to human developmental stages:
.

Upperworld denotes transpersonal states of consciousness identified with spirit and characterized by unity, grace, bliss, transcendence, emptiness, light, enlightenment, the celestial realms, and pure awareness. This is where we disidentify from all personal and cultural beliefs, goals, desires, and attachments. The conscious self is transcended.

Middleworld is the realm of ego growth, which includes the healing of emotional wounds, the development of personal bonds, the cultivation of physical grace and emotional expression, and the blossoming of empathy, intimacy, and personality level authenticity. A healthy ego is skilled in imagination, feeling, intuition, and sensing, in addition to thinking.

Underworld deepens individuality through the discovery of our ultimate place in the world…through individual discipline such as trance dancing and drumming, council work, storytelling, symbolic artwork, soul-oriented poetry, and shadow work….It is associated with soul characterized by darkness, demons, the daemon, the subconscious, sacred woundings, dreams, the unknown or not-yet-known, shadow, death, and visions of personal and cultural destiny.

The shared purpose of transcending the conscious self (the upperworld), differentiating the conscious self (middleworld) , and deepening the conscious self (underworld) is personal development or maturation, which fosters cultural vitality and evolution which in turn promotes ecological and planetary vitality and evolution.

Our society has fostered an egocentric model of the middleworld which ignores or does not integrate the other two. The archetype of the traditional guides of these realms throughout history has been the shaman as priest/priestess, healer, seer and artist. But access to the upperworld and underworld is not specialized like it once was, it is the providence of us all. In these times with or without guidance most of us are activating our inner archetype shaman-like-guide in order to find our way to vitality, purpose and maturity in our lives.

The shaman as artist can be seen throughout art history. Many well known artists are given much deeper understanding in the light of the archetypal Shaman. Visual artists include: Van Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse, Klee, Munch, O’Keeffe, Kahlo, Chagall, Picasso, writers; Nietzsche, Herman Hesse, Fedrico Garcia Lorca, Rainer Maria Rilke, musicians; Egberto Gismonti, John Coltrane, Keith Jarrett, Jimi Hendrix, and performers; Sha Sha Higby and Joseph Beuys. There are many more, dancers, movie directors, entertainers, leaders and popular-culture icons who are shaman/artist guides for the collective.

Traditionally the shaman goes into different levels of being in order to balance, heal and understand a greater perspective of the middleworld. Painting, as creative process, is a vehicle to this end, as well as, a tool for reflection and personal record, to expand individual and collective boundaries of the middle world. It is a way to dream the world into being, equal to creation mythology, which has held cultures together throughout time. Anne Wilson Schaef in, When Society Becomes an Addict, talks about the peril of the middleworld being so isolated from the other two worlds that instead of using everyday life for maturation of ego, society creates a world of adolescent adults.

The art-making process in our painting circles is in the stream of art history, but is not defined by it. To think of it as separate from monetary value, and not reliant on outside judgment, gives us freedom and a place to be authentic. This does not mean that it is disconnected from the viewer, in fact, relationship to and participation with the viewer is important, because the dialogue that is established with the viewer is crucial to our health and vitality for ourselves and our world.

Part II: Looking towards a New Paradigm in Art Participation

2011-02-24T09:08:00.000-08:00

Hermit

Through culture we express our basic need to represent our experiences and perceptions of life, using any means available. All of the arts, although I am especially interested in the visual and plastic arts, reflect people’s values, edge of growth, collective struggles and vision. Participating in culture with creativity and imagination is our personal and communal contribution to and reflection of our society. A symptom that the art world does not belong to society is when the balance of gender and full spectrum of diversity is not reflected.

The stunning quilts of the Afro-American women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, after generations of working in isolation, were acknowledge as art by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in a show in 2006. Small groups of neighborhood women after the work day ended would sing and sew late into the evening, inviting and encouraging younger members to each find their unique expression in fabric. These large colorful abstract designs told a story of innovation through used clothes. There have been others; graffiti artists, self taught artists and those from various institutions who have been accepted by the art world, stimulating the discussion about the definition of art, which has remained controlled by the curators, collectors and art critics.

There is a critical distinction between the art of the established art world and art of personal and collective involvement with meaning-making, around the activities of generating and participating in art as culture. Those of you who have created from your life experience or appreciate others with creative interaction are aware of the general social attitude, that art is self indulgent unless you are a super star. The same authority which decides quilts can be art, also determines the value in the market place. Children in elementary school experiencing bamboo brush calligraphy query me, “If it is good, does that mean I can sell it ?” We all want to experience more meaningful and creative expression in life, not by getting into the MOMA, but by opening a dialogue about a vision of involvement and relationship to our diverse and shared experience through acts of creativity and imagination.

There has been, however, in post modern art a widening gulf between viewer and viewed which leaves out the person on the street. Although historically art tells cultural stories reflecting our inner and outer worlds, much of the contemporary art in museums and galleries is outside the context of meaning for many people. It is an interesting symptom of our times that modern art has become a form of elite entertainment, owned by an industry that does not attend to the function of culture for the greater populace.

With all this talk about moving into new economical, educational and governing paradigms, what might a shift in of authentic culture look like? It is truly staggering to attempt to perceive a paradigm outside the ones we are emerged in. One needs to experience getting out of the embedded social standard to even entertain the possibility. There are accounts of people in life threatening situations or with severe disabilities that nurture and express a depth of being that is breath taking to the rest of us. There is the heart opening story of holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl who found methods for finding meaning, in even the most intolerable forms of existence, in order to find reasons to continue living. These are the people who have given life to possibilities that most of us can not imagine and yet we may find ourselves in untenable situations if we do not create a greater vision of participatory culture.

I sometimes use the metaphor of living on another planet with reference to my life in Japan because it was so completely out of my box. The longer I was there, the more deeply I was emerged in language and therefore relationship, the more foreign I perceived it. It forced me to challenge unconscious values and perspectives. There is a occurrence among foreigners in Japan, where; even though we are speaking in our native language together we find ourselves using Japanese words, because there is no way to articulate the concepts we want to express in our mother tongue.

There are many worlds side by side within complex societies, which is why I could choose to avoid modern Japan. Japanese friends did not want to plant rice by hand and laughingly said I was living in the feudal age. My life style in Zen temples and in the country outside of Kyoto connected me to traditional Japan which people in the industrial cities rejected. But even with the Western influence there was incredible coherence, because of a belief system that holds a vision of a greater whole beyond the seeming contradictions. Suzi Gablik’s comment that our soulfulness is blocked by “modern traditions of mechanism, positivism, empiricism, rationalism, materialism, secularism and scientism---” is not foundational in Japan. There is an undercurrent of knowing in that society that daily life is merely a game played out in a greater field of life; this is a paradigm that can hold, so far, the incredible transformations we have witnessed in that society.

With the medieval paradigm shift from the concept of a flat world at the center of the universe to a spherical world rotating around the sun, a ceiling in cosmological belief was lifted that did not change the average person’s life, at first. With time, however, the underlying fear, literally and metaphorically, of falling off the edge of the earth was released. I project that with our paradigm shift we will lift the fear based paradigm of heaven and hell, symbolic of duality like the above mentioned paradigm shift there is an entire change in language which had to occur. Because our Western languages are rooted in duality reinforcing our ego-centric world view, it is extremely difficult to perceive a cosmological shift from duality to wholeness.

As a painter I use contrast of color, value, shapes, lines and textures to develop the pictorial frame. With my painting circle participants I make the distinction between contrast and polarity in an effort to the hold duality in a context of wholeness. We do not have to choose sides, elements that appear initially to be opposing become complementary or perform a service for greater coherence. The trick is to let go of the qualitative scale, which is easier in painting than in daily life. It is, however, a practice which influences everyday life.

The canvas is an apt metaphor for life when the engagement is in process, not product. We can easily become so identified with the outcome that it defines our self worth. I am reminded of an ex-gang member who loved art class but was thrown out for violence when he reacted to being ‘dissed’ by another classmate. He saw no choice. When we identify with one part to the exclusion of others we go into separation, which threatens the whole. Separation keeps dualism in place. Manifesting struggle and suffering in life is mirrored in creative process. I ask myself and my painters to hold the process in a unity beyond good/bad or liked/not liked. It is not easy; we have to develop the muscles for it, but it is a safe place to practice participating in the vision of a new cultural relationship.

NM 5 Day Residency DREAMING into the LAND

2011-02-06T12:16:00.000-08:00

An Exploration of the Archetypes of Place in the land around Taos, New Mexico in a five-day Painting Residency

June 21-25 2011

TRANSFORMATIONAL PAINTING is a large format Creative Painting Process in acrylics on un-stretched canvas that incorporates techniques of Projective Dreamwork & Awake Dreaming. In the last 20 years, I have noticed how much place influences the dreams and creative activity of people who visit and live in the Southwest this residency will focus on how the land, including local cultural, historical and geographical archetypes of place influence our psyches.

As an experiment in our changing cultural paradigms the Residential Workshop will have a base cost of $625 which includes five nights, food and materials. There will be an invitation of an anonymous dana offering to express personal value. It will be paid forward to make the next workshop possible.

Part I: Looking Towards a New Paradigm of Art Participation

2011-02-02T20:01:00.000-08:00

In this country we use the words society and cultural, interchangeably with the connotation that part of the spectrum is not available to most of us; as in high society and level of sophistication, as in cultured. I want to make the distinction between the word society as social structure, bound, by similar traditions, and the word culture, as the cultivation and expression of humans need to represent their experience and values in life through acting with imagination and creativity.

Although it may appear peripheral to much of the population, it is significant to each of us that the art world, meaning the gallery, museum and collecting industry, does not serve us as culture. Part of it is because it is big business, which does not want our participation; the other part is because we, as a nation do not provide education for the appreciation or value of art as cultural function.

For this and many other reasons the institutions in our civilization are showing signs of fragility; forward thinkers are grappling with how to create paradigms that are appropriate for a new relationship, to our selves, each other, and the planet, experiencing how the old paradigms of economics, education, religion and politics are not ecologically sustainable in the context of the individual, the collective, nor the planet. Our cultural institutions have to a large extent been co-opted by a branch of the entertainment industry and financed by the market place. Art, literature, performance, music and the visual arts, call for collective participation because, at its core, it is a meaning making process, which defines our relationship to reality. Art in terms of relationship is in dire need of revision. It needs to be demystified, that is, taken out of the hands of the elite and put back into the hands of the people.

The post modern assumption of ‘art for art’s sake’ is grounded in the idea that art in general has no useful role to play in society. Part of the mystification is that art, with a specific message, is not high art. To move from the subjective individualism of the current western populace to a value-based art that relates to context as a whole, is a challenging shift. It requires a re-mything, on a collective level, demanding a transformation of understanding as radical as the concepts in quantum physics that are shaking the world of science. Art critic and social thinker Suzi Gablik determines that we need to step out beyond the “modern traditions of mechanism, positivism, empiricism, rationalism, materialism, secularism and scientism---the whole objectifying consciousness of Enlightenment---in a way that allows for a return of soul.”

In the art world and very likely in many other institutions there are two counter movements in response to the dysfunctional paradigms; one is deconstructive and the other is reconstructive. The seminal art theologian, Jean Baudrillard, maintains that the first revolution in art, in the twentieth century was the deconstruction of the image and the second, the deconstruction of meaning. David Salle is an example of an artist who claims that his images are without reference; his paintings deal with ‘spectacle’, not with meaning. Barbara Kruger is an artist who uses art to reconstruct; she reflects with irony back to the consumer culture with photomontage and slogans on rented billboards, exposing advertising ploys like: BUY ME, IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

Reconstructive postmodernism theory in art challenges the materialistic worldview in an effort to awaken the sense of responsibility and participation; it seeks to engage in possible solutions. (See article by Denis Dutton on Leo Tolstoy’s What is Art?) Gablik describes reconstructive art as having a desire for “re-rooting ourselves in the cosmos, realizing the bodily unity of ourselves and the world,” she offers that deconstruction and reconstruction cannot remain polarized but must find a way to work together. For a glimpse into the world of reconstruction art, ending ironically, with a graphic vision of how the current art world functions, see the movie Exit Through The Gift Shop.

The holistic paradigm is revolutionary in that it focuses out to the edges of duality into a context of wholeness. In classic art, through post modern era, there is a gulf between the observer, who does not participate, and the object of focus. Through quantum physics and spiritual practice we are coming to understand that we are the world even as we create it, and it is no longer possible for the viewer to be separate from it. Our social reality reflects what we carry within. Society is just as creative as we are and we can no longer pass it to an elite board of representatives; be it medical doctors, museums curators, art critics, corporate executives or members of congress. Right now we are especially in need of innovation to re-create our social fabric.

The art industry is possibly just another branch of the capitalistic patriarch, functioning in domination, which makes it almost impossible to give rise to a visionary voice from within. The new paradigm of art reflects the need to change from object to relationship. Art with social value includes art related to ecology, politics and social issues. There are movements outside the art world; one is by self taught artists, called Art Brut or Outsider Art. Some of this is folk art, but there is a wide spectrum including the art of inmates, institutionalized patients and other marginalized populations. Gablik maintains, however, that these are only a sideshow because healthy functional art movements are not possible without a re-structuring at the core.

Gablik also asserts that there is now no functional avant-garde of counterculture which challenges mainstream thought in relation to art, but is merely one of the many side attractions. The New York deconstuctive artist and art critic Ronald Jones contends that no real change can occur in the art world while the art industry controls it; it even controls the illusion of change. Gablik speaks with irony in saying, “commodity fetishism is the distinguishing mark of our culture, and the artist’s consciousness has been fatally enriched with this knowledge.” Object as commodity has relationship to the market, but not to the world, in our society, culture just may have become a commodity, a situation referred to as cultural inauthenticity.

Part 6 CALLING FORTH & Part 7 INTEGRATION OF SPIRIT and the Physical

2010-12-23T14:43:00.000-08:00

Skeleton Woman Story as Creative Process

The fisherman has snagged Skeleton Woman from the depths and inadvertently brought her back home with him. He has untangled and ordered her bones, wrapped her in furs and fallen asleep. She creeps closely and drinks from the single tear forming in his eye as he sleeps. reaching into his chest she extracts the drum of his heart to beat bringing flesh once again to her body. They spend the night in love making and were consistently well fed by the creatures she had known in her life under the sea.

PART 6 CALLING FORTH the HEART of NEW LIFE, Drum of Transformation.

In Skeleton Woman, the heart is lent in order to create. We begin our painting in the sacred way of drumming, prayer, meditation or trance. As we paint we sing up the flesh, we summon the physicality of the psyche.

Giving your heart is the willingness to descend into the realm of feeling. The heart of the archetype of Birth/Death is the greater container of Life. Eckhart Tolle calls it, singing up new life. We stumble on to the quest, then the chase of blind terror begins, eventuating in clearer vision, followed by the discipline of concentration of sorting out the small self and the large self-the ego mind and the Divine. Then comes surrender to trust and developing presence. None of this is creation until the Heart is used for manifestation. Heart symbolizes essence. It is what enables us to love in innocence.

The agreement that Skeleton Woman makes is to create a life bigger than daily life. You must, however, free yourself from separation by making her ally, lover, teacher. She will guide us through our wounds if we give ourselves wholeheartedly. The drumming and singing in the story and painting in our groups is preparing the vehicle for the inspiration and transformation.

In Painting Circle we participate in the magical activity that converses with the psyche. In that sacred space healing, integration and innovation are birthed. Song and music are of the same timeless catalyst of image making that touch the soul and as in the story transcend the obvious.
In the story of singing up the flesh, the whole woman is brought into being, not just the approved of or glamorized parts. Just as in our paintings, no mental judgment or aesthetic preferences decides what shows up on the canvas. There is an entirety that is called forth in our paintings; warts, woundings, shadow and all

PART 7 INTEGRATION of SPIRIT and the PHYSICAL, Dance of Body and Soul.

We arrive at the last phase of our story and also the creative process. It is different from the beliefs of popular media in that deep sacred union takes place when all other stages are complete. It is the satisfying exchange that yearns for a greater completion or perfection. Intercourse is synonymous with communication, communion and consummation which all speak of an urge towards union. It is not forgetting yourself but joining another in a way that changes you, brings about new life. To join together as one is to really understand one another. The desire to know and be known is what Aphrodite archetype generates. This desire leads to physical intimacy, impregnation so that new life may flow. This union of mind, heart and spirit, creates new growth in the psychological, emotional, spiritual or physical spheres.

You may try to go from the finding of accidental treasure to love making, but you really cannot skip the chase, the untangling, the tear and the fleshing out through heart. You cannot go from concept to product without passing through the maturation of your history, vision and values. To enter breath to breath, skin to skin contact with loss, pain, disappointment and failure is the path of life and also the path to meaningful artwork. It is the story of Skeleton Woman.

The story has progressed like many fairy tales from an untenable condition; in this case a masculine energy does not honor and understand the feminine and so throws her back into the primordial matter where her reality is dramatically altered. She becomes related to the sea world of the unconscious and it changes her and in turn will change him.

Note it does not destroy her although it may look like it from the old perspective. This is the initiation that art requires again and again, in an unimaginable variety of ways. You would be right to say that life requires the same thing, but our culture conspires to put us in denial of the dynamic of death/birth in our daily life, as well as, in the greater field of life. That is changing with Eastern and Indigenous spiritual influence and the Consciously Dying Movement. So often, however, people go into their grief of a loved one shocked and stunned, even when it was an obvious and inevitable loss. The death dynamic of the creative process can not be denied as it is in your face, unless your head is in the sand. If you do not acknowledge it your creative work will not be consummated.

In the Skeleton Women story we may well consider the question, who is the artist? Is it the lonely fisherman who, although he was originally terrified, entered into relationship by putting her bones right and covering her gently with sleeping furs. Or is it Skeleton Women herself who uses his heart to re-created herself? Of course, as with ourselves, it is both of them. We are the alienated masculine principle and the crushed feminine principle who together transforms the seemingly dead end into new life. They both risk. They both in their way draw from imagination and inner vision, all apart of the artist/shamanic skill of trusting in transformation through the greater cycle beyond death.

The Archetype of Adjustment is Explored through Painting Circle

2010-11-12T18:14:00.000-08:00

From ATONEMENT to AT-ONE-MENT

The Archetype of Justice is explored through Painting Circle

It is intriguing that the Justice card on the Qabalah Tree of Life is the pathway between Geburah, the destroyer, one who ruins or makes non-existent and Tiferet, love and beauty. The ultimate duality is brought forth in the classic image of Justice standing with the scales to balance what is right/wrong, true/false, worthy or not. Sound familiar? It is very much the common image of God as a proper noun in Western culture.

We are for the first time as humans on this planet a force of nature that could destroy the balance of life as we know it. The attitude of conquer and utilize is no longer sustainable. The attitudes behind this stance are called into examination. The parent/child relationship to nature or to God is being upgraded to co-creative. We can no longer be naughty or rebellious. We are responsible for what is manifesting in our world. The causes of the trauma on our planet which we are experiencing directly reflect of our inner attitudes.

In the Painting Circle exploring the archetype of JUSTICE conversation came around to our failing institutions. The example of our judicial system arose to expose communal values and beliefs in need of a deep-seated over-haul. It is a retributive system, literally from the Latin to pay back. It does not change criminal behavior but fosters it. This is a mirror of our inner constructs and the shadow we project. Somewhere we have internalized a similar reward/punishment model that I suspect relates to our subtle and not so subtle beliefs from religious structures.

Aleister Crowley, creator of the Thoth Tarot makes a shift from calling the Judgment card Adjustment, suggesting that the essence of this card is to bring polarities into balance. But how is that balance achieved is the question. If duality is not addressed it is simply rearranging the furniture in prison. When we transcend the place in which conflict is created by witnessing rather than identifying with the polarities we begin to sense our innate wholeness.

The separation is maintained by inner negative and positive judgments of the external. When we shift the internal dynamic, the outer world which we created will also shift. Even by choosing the positive side of the opposites we are tied into acting out polarity, for when we identify with one, the other gets projected. When we make the commitment to shift into awareness of our innate wholeness we cannot continue to sweep the negative under the rug. It will not stay there and though temporarily it is out of sight our rugs get higher, lumpier and dirtier. Like the proverbial ignored elephant, it turns up in our courts, schools and government. We need to surrender both sides to ascend to the bridging principle that has the perspective of wholeness.

No matter what these times are bringing to us, most of us would agree we are all a part of an extremely privileged collective in the world. We are in a place to challenge the archetypes of the organizing principle of our civilization that no longer serve us or the well being of the planet.

It was a delight to observe and personally experience the transition from judgment to adjustment and then to atonement, which a painter pointed out was at-one-ment. Painting intuitively is a way of allowing an image to develop which is very different from thinking it through. This kind of processing is poetic, creative, imaginative and adventurous because it takes one into unchartered territory. It is also very personal, but also most often relates to the collective.

Post Open Studio Tour Notes

2010-10-26T15:25:00.000-07:00

Post OPEN STUDIO Notes

Thank you to all of you who had the opportunity to come by the Tannery for the Open Studio Tours. There was an abundant turnout through the first weekend of sunshine and the second one of rain. I had some fascinating conversations which strengthens my view that the arts like every other institution in our country and eventually the world are on the brink of some radical shifts. And as you know if our conversation drifted in that direction, I believe, people want the art process back in their personal lives. Those of you that read this newsletter or blog and/or came through on the studio tours are already in the choir.

Often, however, we do not realize the stimulus that is needed until after it happens, like the incredible creative growth that was stimulated by the Beatles' burst into the music scene. This time it may not be the content delivered by superstars, but a grassroots movement that is budding. We are going to experience some extraordinary changes in the art world in the next few years. They are already afoot so look at your own life and dreams to see how important the mythopoeia process is in relation to who you are becoming.

I want to thank all of you who made a point of responding to me personally about my painting images. It was hugely important to me, as I tend keep my work in my own little world. Thank you to those of you that bought sale paintings! With that specially earmarked money I have a good beginning to again explore the world of monoprinting and will keep you informed about that journey.

CULTIVATING AWARENESS of WHOLENESS through PAINTING New Mexico July 13-15 2010

2010-10-25T10:53:00.000-07:00

The assumptions at the core of all mystical traditions, is that we are already whole and complete. We have all experienced the paradox of absolute wholeness in spite of fact that everything in our incarnation and culture reflects separation. This is the reason that those experiences of wholeness can slip by us or be forgotten so easily. Painting for me is an apt practice for re-membering wholeness. The essential key to this process is imagination. To cultivate imagination from a place of whole being, rather than mental faculties means letting go of mental chatter. As the imagination grows and ripens we are able to engage reality in a fuller context. I am not speaking of fantasy but consciously inviting the soul energies to be expressed through the personality by allowing imagination to transcend the polarities that are known.

The imagination is a means to tap into the not-yet-recognized dimensions of our being as we cultivate awareness of unity which includes diversity. It takes practice to bypass the rational mind, materialistic orientation and fear-based defenses. Imagination as a practice in Transformational Painting brings awareness to the blueprint of Oneness even as we experience the illusion of duality.

There are many ways to develop the imagination and tend to the deeper relationship of our wholeness: storytelling, dream work, soul-orientated poetry, shadow work, trance dancing, drumming, ritual, nature, active imagination, symbolic artwork and many others. In this workshop through TRANSFORMATIONAL PAINTING we focused on those below.

• Our dream life is one of the most intelligent dimensions of our lives. To become more conscious of our dreams is to integrate, heal and engage in a dialogue with the soul through metaphor. This kind of painting in its purity is ‘awake dreaming.’ We use dream techniques to go deeper into our imagery; not in an analytical way but to stimulate our process, making new connections and revelations.
• We cannot help but paint our personal mythology. Our journals with reflections and digital images of the paintings stages track the limiting story as well as the evolving story that wants to break through our illusions.
• The many voices within our selves seem real, as they sometimes take over our feelings, thinking and expression. It is important to establish a baseline. The practice of clearing and opening to the not-yet-known material through active imagination is a major component in this painting.

PLACE plays a powerful role in inner development, calling forth collective archetypal energies from the land to meet the individual with new perspectives and visions. In this New Mexico workshop, near Abiquiu on the Chama River we painted for three days in a private adobe studio where creative practice emerged with the mystery and enchantment of the Southwest. Many of the painters claimed breakthroughs and new insights in their works and personal life. In time the muscles of a soul-personality dialogue develop as we meet the tremendous challenge of discerning between personality and our greater self.

OPEN STUDIO TOURS October 2010

2010-10-04T10:47:00.000-07:00

OPEN STUDIO TOURS 2010

October 9,10 & 16,17

HUGE SALE! 40 Large PAINTINGS ON PAPER must go to Finance the Dream of a large bed press (44" X 30") for Monoprinting, starting at $100.

Meeting

Making a Red Ladder

Fairy Tales and myth are the language of the soul. Knowing the tales you are living shines the light of consciousness on the beliefs that sponsor our daily stories. Sometimes sadly we are the last one to get the drama that is so obvious to others. Speaking of...........

I have a huge stack of large paintings on paper that need to be stored flat. They take up a lot of room and have found there way under my bed which is now four feet high. I have a high ceiling, but it is ludicrous to need a step ladder to get into bed. So this is how I found myself in the tale of the Princess and the Pea wanting to change my bed of paintings for a press bed.

Princess Bed #1

Princess Bed #2

In the story, the Princess comes to the castle in a storm, wet and bedraggles. Her true value is not recognizable so she must be tested. She sleeps high atop dozens of mattresses but notices that something is wrong, she is not comfortable.

I too have not been sleeping well, dreaming about making images in a new way, monorprints. Monoprints in them self is a kind of Fairy Tale contradiction in that prints are usually multiples and mono is one of a kind. I long for the immediacy that opens up space for spirit to intervene in the monoprint process which is so different from direct painting. The Universe as magical element is involved as I have received a stack of large sheets of printing paper, perfect for this process.

The high bed in the Fairy Tale is connected to an impossible task, of sensing something out of order. For me the task is to convert the product of creativity to the means of creating something else.

Warrior

It is time to make room for new work.

Different images emerge from different formats and materials. Painting is my passion and I will continue to paint even with the press. I am also still excited about the format of the tall two panel screens, which seem to be multiplying when I turn my back. I love the double sides and edges that invite embellishment of objects and silk ties.

The paintings that I have been sleeping on are up for sale, very very reasonable, to facilitate the purchase of a press, inks, rollers, etc.

I will be moving my teaching studio from Live Oak to the West Side in November which is another reason to grant these images permission to find their new life. It does seem true that pieces of artwork have their own destiny like characters in a book that begin to dictate the plot. These paintings on paper have been murmuring to me at night like teenagers sneaking out the window at night. They want to go and are ready to set off in tothe world. So I must loosen my apron strings and see them off even if it means selling them for what you can pay. I need your help in this adventure otherwise I may turn to that Gorilla Artist tactic of leaving art around town as a random act of...

All these paintings are on industrial or printing paper, mostly around 3' X 4'. Some are in an ingenious frame at the top and bottom for hanging without glass. The frame is extra. These are some of the images, make an offer and get this wild princess free from court life and back into printing.

Tryst

Raining Face

Bear

Hierophant Scale

Shadowing an Angel

Three Sale Paintings on Paper with Frames

Making Sacred

Hopscotch Deva

Skeleton Woman Part 4 & 5 UUNDEFENDED LOVE & EMOTIONAL PRESENCE

2010-09-29T10:50:00.000-07:00

Skeleton Woman Story
as Metaphor for Creative Process:

In the Inuit story the fisherman has snagged Skeleton Woman from the depths and inadvertently brought her back home with him. He has untangled and ordered her bones, wrapped her in furs and fallen asleep. She creeps closely and drinks from the single tear forming in his eyes as he sleeps.

Part 4 UNDEFENDED LOVE, Surrender

In this stage in creative process we must surrender our innocence to be renewed. Sleep in fairy tales represents trusting in the deeper meaning. Things change in sleep. We can rest assured that things take care of themselves; we do not have to track and translate anything. Sleep is a practice for death, the place of no time, dreamtime. It is a return to innocence or to the deepest level of being. In the process it is a turning off of the conscious mind to be present in another way. Sleep is rebirth. You can not fall into sleep on demand but must release unto it. This stage of the story calls for letting go to what may be. Slumber, bound up with innocence, requires trust to sleep in someone's presence. It is the same in love, without surrender there is holding back and being held back. This is an important aspect of the creative process. In our invocation and meditation in painting circles we call forth this sacred place of resource.

The Latin word, intimus, means about one's nature. True essence of who you are is what is required for Transformational Painting to be transformational. Undefended is vulnerable and intimate. We can only remain there with an open heart. We are asked to let go of mental ideas of what we want to create and draw from our a deeper experience. Only then will the painting paint itself, not in a trite or secondhand way but with personal power. As the fisherman begins to trust in who he is and who she may be, he invites a genuine exchange.

This part is essential for the engagement in the story and also in painting. It is not so much a labor, but surrender, letting go. It is the opening to release the traditional control of painting or poetry, believing in the birth/death/birth cycle. It is a learning to trust our imagination, our hands and our heart. Trust is the muscle that develops as you continue to return again and again to call forth images of the psyche and then surrender to whatever shows up.
Surrender is necessary for emotional presence. When our commitment to knowing and revealing ourselves is greater than the call to hide or defend, then what keeps us isolated and disconnected falls away. Surrendering the attitudes of self-defense is making space for creative encounters. Authentic emotional freedom is to no longer need validation and agreement from another to be who we are. We have such profound yearnings for closeness and yet hesitate to be closer to ourselves. Painting is a way to open to that love of self that is the deepest core of who we are. How we love our self is how we love others. Painting is a way of loving self.

Part 5 EMOTIONAL PRESENCE, Realizing wounds to call forth New Vision

Wearing our personalities lightly, we experience everything more directly, more profoundly, and more intensely.

Jett Psaris and Marlena Lyons

In myth and fairytale, the tear holds creative power. Tears heal, reunite, bring nurturance and call in spirit. It is the tear that begins skeleton woman's transformation. So in our painting it is not enough to engage with full presence, riding out the cycles of disgust and delight, something deeper is called for here. The act of external creating is not enough, for the wounded cannot be bandaged from the outside. We are required to put our true longing on the table, naked and raw. It is being vulnerable, not only in the creative process but also with the lens of the group. There is a safety net in that we can decide how far to go, but unless we are willing to not defend our self in the face of Skeleton Woman and shed the tear, the transformation will wait until another time.

The Quest for Vision is a way to practice emotional presence; to develop as Psaris and Lyons say in their book Undefended Love, "the capacity to be non judgmental and motiveless..."Most of us did not have this modeled by our parents. We may have tried as parents with our children to just be there for them without making things all better or judging them, but most of us have not experienced it our selves.

Painting in a safe environment to feel what is going on inside and yet still stay in relationship to the process is a challenging practice that is supported by the group. So often participants that have been traumatized around art find total release and confidence with others who are in the same process. The buoyancy of the painting circle brings delight and confidence initially, which is sometimes followed by judgment of self, others and facilitator. The empowering experience can quickly become a disaster. Good! We are moving into the real work. We are beginning to develop the muscles that we came here to use, that of emotional presence.

It is the willingness to stay with what is going on, that is, not dramatize it or amplify it, but witness it against the backdrop of being. When the mood of the class is successful there is an over all texture of being in a greater framework that allows the small self to feel what comes up and let it flow through.

When we can release to the thirst of our own pain and passion in our creative process something ALCHEMIC TAKES PLACE. Tears are magical in myths and fairytales. In Skeleton Woman the fisherman is feeling his loneliness, his acute sickness for that psychic place, for that wild knowing. Our healing tears come natural when we step into the creative process we have felt bared from.

Skeleton Woman Story Part 3 Concentration

2010-08-23T14:59:00.000-07:00

Part III Inuit Skeleton Woman Story as Metaphor for Creative Process:

Concentration
...untangling takes a heart willing to die.                Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Website Gallery I: Couple

To untangle Skeleton Woman is path of soul and to soul; the strengthening and nurturing of heart. In terms of our metaphor, it is also to understand that art does not belong to the professional, nor is it an accumulation of techniques. It takes picking through the smelly tangles of ego gratification, the festering wounds of conditioning, and the illusions and forms of duality to discover the power of being. The untangling is the painting of the painting, the doing through being, with suspended motive and judgment. The Death figure looking over your shoulder in time transforms into personal coach making you accountable for your authenticity.

TRANSFORMATION PAINTING invites participants to become the fisherman by stepping past terror of identification and begin untangling the bones of Skeleton Woman. Being in a painting circle with this kind of spiritual-creative process supports success with a collective engagement, but it can also amplifies confusion and stuckness. The practice of continuing to painting into the same piece develops a conversation that extends to other aspects of life. Painters have shared a greater easy in holding their life in a larger context, knowing it is in constant process. Like the fisherman in the story it require a special kind of concentration suspending the observations of the small mind.

The poet Jane Hirshfield talks about concentration as a particular state of awareness: penetration, unified, and focused, yet also permeable and open. Her Buddhist background comes through when she says it not an act of will, but more a cultivated state. She mentions in Nine Gates, the different definitions of concentration which relate intimately to mythic alchemy of the Skeleton Women Story and to creative process. In the story it is the engagement of the fisherman to sort and organize her bones that initiates transformation. In TRANSFORMATION PAINTING it is applying the paint from a place of concentration which brings forth images and information beyond the personality.

"To concentrate" means come to a common center. There is a unity intimated, a drawing inward and toward coherence. In this kind of painting it is a trusting the unknown within as well as the unknowable. Another aspect of concentration is that it calls forth clarity, as well as a precise connection which in turn grounds. TRANSFORMATION PAINTING cultivates awareness, being presence to what is.

Concentration, comments Hirshfield, also implies strength or density, as in a salt solution. This meaning suggests a potency, like critical mass, which begins a new stage of the process. The last meaning of concentration is one used to translate dhyana, the Sanskrit term---source of the Chinese chan and Japanese zen---that describes the one-pointed mind of meditation. This is really the essence of the cultivation that this particular process is based on. In the story, the fisherman sings repeated sounds like a chant in order to concentrate his doing, to open to the organizing principle of the Greater Field of Life.

Skeleton Woman Story Part 2 Mindless or Mindful

2010-08-23T14:56:00.001-07:00

Part II Inuit Skeleton Woman Story as Metaphor for Creative Process:

Mindless or Mindful

Website Gallery V: Da'at, Bridged

In the East, Mind is a field of intelligence which includes the entire physical body. the word mind is used as distinct from brain. Mind, like nature is vessel of being. Mindful is an engagement of knowing, feeling and sensing beyond the five senses. It can also be an engagement of the unknown. Mindless is an automatic reaction rather than response, because the mind is not embodied.

To return to our story, of Skeleton Woman and how it relates to the creative process. The snagging the of treasure begins the roller-coaster chase of delight and terror, the classic theme and traditional myth of creativity. To stand in front of your painting or in front of a blank canvas with emotional presence is the opportunity to be transparent in this adventure. The ego will ask who is the most beautiful, the most grand, or even the worst, always making comparisons to others. The small self does not want to know about the full cycle of creation which includes destruction. No, the slightest whiff of Death sends even the bold of heart into panic. It is no accident that the Buddha, archetype of lucidity, was said to have been tested with images of terror. Often in painting circle, the shadow is the first edge to surface, dragging in tow frightening stories that have been tucked out of circulation for years.

The part of us that we are least conscious of is the shadow. It is so fundamental that it is an aspect of every archetype. In painting circle I have seen how the shadow can shift an entire painting locked into conservative progression into the arms of the gambler who will throw it away in a moment bravado. Our most profound doubts of ourselves surfaces as we quickly project them elsewhere so that we can flee. Like the fisherman in the story who brings up the potential treasure, we don't recognize what we have snagged as we take off running.

A painter in one of my classes did very well in the engagement of the process, but then rejected the final painting, and began taking techniques classes madly. She ran from the simple language that her soul offered because it was not what she expected. She returned eventually, however, looking for the the lively images that she had discarded. Sooner or later, one must kiss the beast most feared. The fisherman is our model of entering into relation with Lady Death to find right order. To do this we must stop reacting in blind terror fueled by fears of the past and future.

To be present in the moment means to surrender: not to abandon, give up or give away, but to trust deeply yourself, NOW. Eckhart Tolle says NOW is the only place you can experience the flow of life, so to surrender is to accept the present moment unconditionally and without reservation. It is a place of acceptance, without judgment. Judgment strangles the creative process. You find quickly in process painting that when you are doing rather than being the life of your painting slips through your fingers. In the state of being you know immediately what needs attention. This painting process develops the 'muscle of being'.

Deena Metzger contrasts poem and story, describing poem as a penetration into the essence of something. A poem expresses the inexpressible. She says good poetry goes deeply. Jane Hirshfield says poetry's work is the clarification and magnification of being. This kind of intuitive painting, which embodies creative process is vertical in all its implications. Story and prose, Metzger says, spreads out, wanting to speak to the mind, to the intellect. The horizontal gathers information, technique, momentum, while the vertical is out side of time, it changes your life as participant. Poetry evokes, as does the process vertical creative process.

Skeleton Woman Story Part 1 Invitation

2010-08-23T14:55:00.000-07:00

THE INVITATION, synchronicity, dreamtime & imagination

Part I: Inuit SKELETON WOMAN Story
as Metaphor of Creative Process

Website Gallery I:

An ancient Sufi adage says, Trinkets can be easily bought in the market place, but for treasures you must dive into the depths.

The treasure you receive from creative process is equal to your willingness to enter into the depths of the psyche. The portal into our essence demands the discipline of curiosity and wonderment of the unfolding images of our deep being. Like the fisherman in the story, (see Introduction to Story of Skeleton Woman) we are unaware that we do not know. Also like him, we are hungry for relationship to our creative self but may not recognize it as we search for a way to coast for a while. We think that we can play around, unaware of the profound journey that awaits us. There may be a ticket in our fist at this very moment, that must be paid for even though we have no idea of what or how or when we signed up for the ride.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes talks about three different attitudes in fairy tales of the one who happens on to treasure. The first is the seeker, who does not believe in the nurturing of the soul because of other priorities. Like the guest who politely indulged painting before a birthday dinner but dropped into an exquisite soul process. And he was the one who wanted to continue painting instead of going to dinner.

The second attitude, like the fisherman, is that of the bumbler; the one who comes across treasure while hoping for something else. We have all been blindsided when our deepest desire sneaks upon us. We are just going to take one class. We have no intention of turning the hallway into an on-going mural, or the bathroom in to a darkroom. This was how I traveled to Japan seemingly by default. A journey that ended up being a turning point in my life.

The third is the sacred approach of the one who is looking for a path beyond the borders of what is known. Those that are looking for divine connection, but not sensing perhaps the new demands that come along with it. Luckily enough, however, whatever your attitude, the path of adventure is open to you. When you come upon accidental treasure it will propose choices that you could not have envisioned. Often synchronicities are the clues in the treasure map.

SYNCHRONICITY

The difference between coincidence and synchronicity is that the latter is related to our soul path. David Richo

Happening on to a treasure is not an accident, but an act of destiny. And as with dreams, if it is not acknowledged, it can stick fast or return again and again, until you pay attention to it. If it is still ignored, calamity will be arranged. Carl Jung coined the word synchronicity, which brought articulation to a variety of experiences that are well integrated into Eastern philosophy, whereas in the West the same experiences have jockey between superstition and divine intervention. Most of the population of the world is aware of signs that speak guidance, warning, or send information for the soul. Synchronicity can be used as a powerful tool through journey of the physical world. The more conscious we are of synchronicity the more is appears and the more useful it is

DREAMTIME

Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing
                        There is a field
                         I'll meet you there

Rumi

Dreamtime is outside of psychological time. Waking dreams, nighttime dreams, myths, the arts, or being present in the now are portals that offer access to the greater realm of existence. If existence means to stand out, then Dreamtime is what stands behind that. It is the background which becomes another kind of vessel. This other vessel, Dreamtime, is traditionally anchored in our cultures stories, traditions and mythological origins. It is the rich body of experience passed on through generations which gives value and understanding of relationship to each other, nature, and place. When a culture is lacking that resource they will borrow or create it through popular culture. For lack of this resource there is a current movement to work the edge of the much needed evolution of our civilization by creating a feminine power model. Others, like Andrew Cohen, are extending the traditional model of spiritual enlightenment to include social evolutionary edge. What Dreamtime do you function from?

IMAGINATION

The soul journey requires the constant use of imagination...

for without imagination, there are no relationships, no
creativity and no soul.

Andrew Scheider

Imagination is an essential aspect of knowing the world, inner as much as outer. Of the four aspects of learning, our culture tends to over value thinking above the imagination, sensing and feeling. All four are critical to a balanced function for learning about our place in the world. Imagination is necessary to access and retrieve images. Our ego function is confused by imagination, especially when it is not honored in the culture.

Images from Dreamtime are the language of the soul. If you have spent time with your nighttime dreams, events in life that feel like waking dreams, synchronicities or images that spontaneous emerge from writing or visual arts activities, you know that what seems bizarre and ridiculous at first, always has some kind of pertinent guidance. I don't mean wrenching out some far fetched message, but an actual body 'aha' will arise that makes a difference in daily perceptions. The Universe is constantly in dialogue with us. One way of understanding metaphoric language is to imagine that all parts of the dream, poem, Skeleton Woman story are aspects of ones self. Often the role of the soul is personified helping us to experience our innate wholeness.

Introduction of Skeleton Woman Story as Creative Process

2010-08-23T14:49:00.000-07:00

SKELETON WOMAN:

Creative Process as Riding Life's Cycles

Corslet of Death

The archetype of Death and therefore Birth is misunderstood in our culture, as the process of creativity. Lady Death is the elemental feminine nature which demands our 'instinctual participation' in the only story there is, the story of Life.

In the Skeleton Women story she is the disused and misused Birth/Death/Birth force. In her vital and resurrected form, she governs the intuitive and emotive ability to complete the life cycles of birthing and dying, grieving and celebration....She can tell when it is time for a place, a thing, an act, a group, or a relationship to die..." She knows of endings and beginnings of life.

In the Inuit story of Skeleton Woman, a young woman has been thrown into the sea by her father, and in time has turned into a tangle mess of bones. She is hooked by a fisherman who thinks that he has caught a great fish. When he turns back from his net into her mossy bald skull terrified he starts out paddling for his life, he hits land, running until he reaches his village. Clutching his fishing pole the whole way he hears her at his heels. When he finally dives into his snowhouse he thinks that he is safe at last. But as he lights his lamp he sees that he has brought her home with him.

As he gets over his fright, for some reason in the soft ight, he begins to set her bones in order and wraps her in warm furs singing as he works. He crawls into his sleeping furs and falls asleep. In the night, she comes close to him to drink his one glistening tear to satisfy her many years of thirst. She then reaches into his chest taking the drum of his heart to sing on her flesh, and "all the other things that a women needs". She returns his heart, undresses him and joins him as men and women do. They spend the night together and it is said that they were prosperous and happy together all their living days.

The enormous misunderstanding of our civilization is that DEATH is not followed by more DEATH, but by LIFE!! This understanding changes the way we look at everything beginning with polarity.

Skeleton Woman story is an invitation to resurrect your creative self inspired by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Jungian analyst and storyteller, I believe corresponds to aspects of Transformational Painting or any other creative process.

Introduction of the Inuit Story of Skeleton Woman as Model for Creative Process: riding life's cycles
Part I The Invitation: synchronicity, dreamtime & imagination
Signing up to paint. Part II Initiation: mindless or mindful
Process throughout.
Part III Concentration: authenticity & creativity
The Painting.
Part IV Undefended Love: surrender
Release the past.

Part V Transformation through Emotional Presence: transmutation & synergy
Deep engagement
Part VI Calling Forth Heart: Developing a new center
Fleshing-out your wholeness
Part VII Alchemy of Spirit: Spirit & Material Dance
Recognizing the Journey

As the Tibetian Buddhist say, we are here to practice transcendence and if we do not take the everyday opportunity to meet our small deaths we will not be prepared for the journey of our birth. I encourage you like the fisherman in the story, to align the scrambled structure that supports feminine creativity and let her have her way with you by initiating you into the true cycle of Life, which is the cycle of Birth/Death/Birth.