emelgy

where do you go from here?

2011-09-10T15:17:00.001-04:00

Hello beautiful person! Thank you for finding this blog. I'm so glad you came.

I am slowly moving all of the original content from this blog to my new blog, here. I hope you'll check it out. It's all about eco-friendly cleaning, organizing, healthy living, art, design and my life.

Peace out.

ordinary mandala no. 1

2010-03-29T22:55:00.006-04:00

Okay, so Saturday afternoon I was taking some photos for another YouTube video, and I noticed that I was seeing a lot of circles in the pictures. I started photographing every circle I could find, thinking I would later put them together in some sort of video. This is that video.

Most of the photos were taken tonight at my parents' house. I called the video "ordinary mandala" because all the circles remind me of mandalas, only the subject matter (the photos of the household objects) is ordinary - not what you'd normally associate with spirituality.

But then, I've always loved the simplicity of the ordinary...

spaghetti squash

2010-02-07T19:42:00.003-05:00

I took these photos today after scooping the seeds out of a spaghetti squash, in order to cook the squash. I thought the yellow-orange colour of the gunk from the middle of the squash looked neat against the blue of this bowl.

united way fundraiser

2009-11-02T12:22:00.010-05:00

As as personal fundraiser for the United Way this year, I am selling posters of some of my photographs, with inspirational quotes on them. Prints (laminated 8 1/2 x 11" colour photocopies) are $10 each, and PDFs (electronic versions of each poster, which can be used as desktop backgrounds) are $2.

Text on the above poster: Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you. (Oprah Winfrey)

Text: In spite of illness, in spite of even sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintigration if one is unfraid of change, insatiable in curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways. (Edith Wharton)

Text: You never grow old; you become old when you stop growing.

Text: Play nice.

Text: Remember your humanity and forget the rest. (Albert Einstein)

Text: Sleep when you're tired.

Text: That it will never come again is what makes life sweet. (Emily Dickinson)

Text: Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. (William Morris)

Text: Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it. (Greg Anderson)

Text: Earth laughs in flowers. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Text: There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. (Owen Meredith)

Text: One must ask children how strawberries and cherries taste. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

Text: The flower offered of itself, and eloquently spoke of gods, in languages of rainbows, pefumes and secret silence. (Phillip Pulfrey)

Text: Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door. (Emily Dickenson)

Text: Now Autum's fire burns slowly among the woods, and day by day the dead leaves fall and melt. (William Allingham)

2009-10-20T18:56:00.001-04:00

Just found this awesome collaborative animation on YouTube. I am so inspired now...

my new art journal

2008-11-09T06:24:00.010-05:00

I bought this awesome 100% recycled-paper Ecojot journal at Dandelion Mud Pie yesterday.

I love the sturdy coils and thick, cardboard covers.

Last night I started prepping the pages - randomly pasting in scraps of coloured paper and ephemera. Later I wrote notes to myself on some of the pages.

This morning I finished the inside front cover spread. The collaged paper on the right side was actually the first page, describing the journal. I ripped it out and tore it and pasted it back into the journal on one of the sturdier note pages.

This is the second spread that I completed this morning. What I love about this journal is that it can stand on its side, which will allow me to display one page at a time. I'll have to remember that when I'm composing future pages.

more recent sketches

2008-07-19T17:00:00.007-04:00

Most of these were created the same weekend as the ones in the previous post. A lot of these sketches are spontaneous images - suggested by colours or forms that I've pasted on the blank pages. I rarely start with an image in mind, but let whatever wants to unfold happen. All images created using collage, Crayola wax crayons, coloured pencil, pencil and china markers.

The above image started as an exercise with Crayola washable markers.

recent sketchbook spreads

2008-07-08T06:44:00.007-04:00

I haven't created much art lately, being too busy with my new job. But last weekend I took a much-needed break from working, and spent hours with my sketchbooks, just playing around. All images are collage, with Crayola wax crayons and occasionally pencil, coloured pencil, or china markers.

green stars #2

2007-08-01T16:07:00.002-04:00

I think this drawing (from one of my art journals) was actually created before green stars #1. The image is made with Crayola wax crayons and black china marker.

I love working in an art journal, because as I write and draw on future pages, the colours from earlier, adjacent pages become imprinted upon each other, adding to the visual complexity and rhythm to the images.

increase

2007-07-30T08:09:00.002-04:00

This is another drawing based on an I Ching reading. The image was created the same way as that in yesterday's post.

unity

2007-07-29T07:29:00.002-04:00

This is one of the earliest drawings I made in my first art journal. I was very interested in the I Ching at the time, and decided to "draw" my reading - the hexagram called "Unity." I started by scribbling blobs of colour on the page, and then drawing an outline of the image that was suggested by the shapes - in this case, a bird diving downwards.

The drawing is created with Crayola wax crayons and black china marker.

illustrations for my green cleaning blog

2007-07-28T10:11:00.003-04:00

These collages are part of a series of illustrations I've created for my eco-friendly cleaning blog, the greener cleaner. Like most of my recent drawings, collages and illustrations, these illustrations are created with Crayola wax crayons and china markers in various colours.

peace

2007-07-27T07:46:00.001-04:00

I am so disappointed with my scanner. It just doesn't seem to be picking up pale yellows, greens or pinks. I almost didn't post this image, but I think you still get the idea, even without the proper saturation of colours.

The collage includes a scrap of paper which is a list of my kitchen dishes before my last move. I then coloured the image with Crayola wax crayons. I was inspired by a website I discovered this morning:

http://www.attractworldpeace.com/

apple #3

2007-07-26T12:43:00.001-04:00

This is one of my all-time favorite drawings of mine. I don't normally like to make overly realistic drawings, but sometimes everything just works. That apple on the left looks like it wants to pop right off the page. I can almost feel its texture against my teeth. I can taste it...

The drawing started out with some colour laid down with Crayola washable markers. I sprayed the ink with water to make it run, and after it was dry I went in with coloured pencils and added all the details.

mangoes

2007-07-25T10:56:00.001-04:00

This drawing actually started out as a watercolour painting. After doing an initial wash with some yellow and red, I let the painting dry and then went in with coloured pencils and added cross-hatching and other details.

pear

2007-07-24T08:01:00.001-04:00

Another from the coloured-pencil fruit series. This is one of my favorites, because of the deep, saturated colour of the pear.

grapefruit

2007-07-23T15:00:00.001-04:00

I did a whole series of coloured-pencil fruit during this period, but these are some of my favorites. The drawing was done on the back of a recycled photocopy, and the dark areas of toner can be seen through the page.

banana

2007-07-22T07:07:00.001-04:00

I've found that bananas are one of the hardest fruits for me to draw. Perfectly yellow ones don't have a lot of colour gradation for me to play with (my selection of green and yellow coloured pencils is pretty limited), and once bananas start to brown they're too complicated for me to be interested.

This drawing was made with coloured and soft graphite pencil.

tumbling fruit

2007-07-21T07:08:00.001-04:00

I went through a period of drawing lots of fruit with coloured pencil. This is one of my favorite works from that time.

self portrait #2 - photoshopped

2007-07-20T08:09:00.001-04:00

I don't normally do much manipulating of my images in Photoshop - just some basic cropping and colour adjustment. But one day I took this drawing (first seen in yesterday's post) and had some fun playing around with Photoshop filters. The end result reminded me of a Kirlian photograph.

self portrait #2

2007-07-19T10:05:00.001-04:00

This drawing was done during the period of the green and purple men's faces. I look kind of like a hobbit, but I love the sense of joy and playfulness in my face.

Again, this drawing was made with Crayola washable marker, then sprayed with water to make the ink run.

art cards - florals

2007-07-18T08:07:00.001-04:00

I created these original art cards a couple of nights ago to send out to friends. In total I made ten unique cards - easy enough if you do it assembly-line style. I worked on all the cards at once, completing each stage on all of them before moving on to the next stage.

For most of my art cards I first print out the contact and bio information on sheets of white cover stock. Then I fold the page in half widthwise, so that the entire outside spread or "cover" of the card can be worked on as a unit (I like the images to flow onto the back cover of the card as well as the front cover).

For these cards I first drew an incomplete Spirograph "flower" with coloured pencil in varying shades on the front covers. I then chose cancelled postage stamps that matched the colour schemes suggested by the Spirograph flowers, and glued two or three on each card - one or two on the front cover, and one on the back.

With an HB pencil, and using my non-dominant hand, I drew the stems and leaves underneath each stamp, plus a few extra stems to make a row of flowers.

With coloured pencils that matched the colour schemes of each card, I drew in the tulip heads. Then with varying shades of green coloured pencil I re-drew some (but not all!) of the stems and leaves.

With Crayola wax crayons I "scribbled" colour fields over the flowers. I like to stick with pale colours that let the other lines show through, but sometimes (depending on the individual card) I chose darker colours and simply coloured in the tulip heads.

Afterwards I went over each of the cards with china markers in red and green, picking out certain lines in the tulip heads and stems.

woman's face #1 (brown)

2007-07-17T08:30:00.001-04:00

This drawing was created a couple of years after the previous two, but is in the same style, with the same technique. I used a Crayola washable marker and sprayed the drawing with water to make the ink run. I love the dreamy expression it gives the woman's face.

man's face #2 (green)

2007-07-16T07:39:00.001-04:00

Here's another drawing from yesterday's series. I love the laughter in this face. It was drawn with a Crayola washable marker and then sprayed with water to make the ink run.

man's face #1 (purple)

2007-07-15T07:50:00.001-04:00

Here's the original drawing from which my last post was created. It was made with Crayola washable markers, and then sprayed with water to make the ink bleed.

man's face #1 (black and white)

2007-07-11T06:20:00.000-04:00

This is actually a black and white inkjet printout (on watercolour paper) of a drawing I originally made with Crayola washable markers. The marker ink will run if you wet it, so I made a series of drawings which I sprayed with water to make them look more like watercolour paintings.

This image was a controversial one in my family. My father really disliked it (and others of the same series) because he found the faces macabre for some reason. I was really saddened at the time, because I thought they were some of my most beautiful, sensitive and haunting work.

tomatoes

2007-07-10T08:58:00.001-04:00

I created this journal entry after admiring some tomatoes that were sitting in a bowl on my table. The collaged scrap of paper is a printout of an online map. The image is coloured with Crayola crayons and china markers in various colours.

summer end

2007-07-09T10:06:00.001-04:00

I'm getting really frustrated with my scanner. It just isn't reading many of the pinks and yellows that are part of my artwork. Weird.

Anyhow, this is another page from one of my art journals. It includes a collaged scrap of paper that had some Spirograph "flowers" drawn on it with coloured pencil. I coloured over the image with Crayola crayons, and china markers in red and green.

happy flowers #2

2007-07-08T07:21:00.001-04:00

This is the other page from the journal spread that includes yesterday's page. The collaged wrapping paper was from a gift that a client gave me. Also collaged are some used Post-it Notes. The image is coloured with Crayola crayons.

happy flowers

2007-07-07T06:18:00.000-04:00

You must transform yourself into the person for whom the possibility of great things happening increases.

Deepak Chopra

The only collaged element on this journal page is the inkjet printout of one of my favorite quotes. The other half of the open spread that accompanies this image contains a scrap of floral wrapping paper that was my inspiration for the floral theme.

The image is coloured with Crayola crayons and china markers in various colours.

blue tulips

2007-07-06T09:42:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I love how really random scraps of paper ephemera can suggest a colourway, or give a punch to what might otherwise be a pretty uninteresting drawing.

Here I've collaged the label off a skein of knitting yarn and a schedule of choral anthems from my former church choir.

The image is coloured with Crayola crayons and china markers in various colours.

pink angel

2007-07-04T09:04:00.001-04:00

I don't normally like to scan partial images of my artwork, but I'm really fond of this collage and scanning just one page or the other didn't do the entire image justice. Unfortunately it didn't scan well anyhow - the original is full of rich yellows and pinks that didn't translate accurately in the scanning process.

When I create images in my art journals, I usually make them without any plan ahead of time, instinctively drawing what feels right in the moment. In this case, the combination of colours really pleased me, and I often keep this particular journal spread open and displayed in my apartment so I can enjoy it.

The collaged papers are old notes to myself and an old greeting card envelope. The image is coloured with Crayola crayons and red china marker.

leaf #2

2007-07-02T08:12:00.000-04:00

This leaf was drawn at the same time as the one in yesterday's post. Slightly more realistic, again in Crayola washable marker with coloured pencil.

happy canada day

2007-07-01T11:50:00.001-04:00

I drew this leaf several years ago. I started by outlining the leaf shape with washable Crayola markers, and spraying the page with water so that the ink bled. After the image had dried I then went in with coloured pencil and added details. The paper is a used photocopy from a child's school handout.

my green life

2007-06-29T06:39:00.001-04:00

This is a page from one of my art journals. I pasted a used greeting card envelope and scraps of other paper to the page, then coloured everything with Crayola crayons. A scrap of graph paper with a floral illustration sits inside the envelope.

yellow stars

2007-06-28T08:06:00.001-04:00

This collage is from one of my art journals. The Post-it Notes contain lists of people I had to call. The image is coloured with Crayola crayons and black china marker.

starry sky #2

2007-06-26T16:29:00.001-04:00

The curious child's eyes began to droop, and the Grandparent gently carried the curious child to bed.

This illustration changed part-way through its creation. I started with a magazine photograph for the grandparent's face, but didn't like it and pasted an inkjet print of one of my drawings over top (you can just see the remains of the first face in the upper right corner). The star is a scrap of envelope. Everything is coloured with Crayola crayons and black china marker.

starry sky

2007-06-24T21:30:00.001-04:00

The curious child stared up at the heavens and asked, "Are there more?"

The child's face is a photocopy of a magazine photograph, and the stars are drawn on scraps of paper. Everything is coloured with Crayola crayons, plus black and white china markers.

neptune

2007-06-21T21:28:00.001-04:00

The Grandparent replied, "There was another planet named Neptune that was discovered with a telescope in 1846. It was named after the Roman god of the sea, because it was so blue. It is the eighth planet in our solar system."

Neptune is a scrap of blue construction paper, and a scrap of photocopied music makes of part of the sky. The image is coloured with Crayola crayons and black china marker.

grandparent

2007-06-20T21:46:00.001-04:00

The curious child stared up at the heavens and asked, "What are the names of the other lights we can't see with our bare eyes?"

This collage contains scraps of construction paper, a photocopy, and a magazine page. I was getting tired by the end of the story (I created most of the illustrations in chronological order), and started getting really inventive with my colours (hence the brown sky).

I love the elderly woman's face with her kerchief tied around her head. She has timeless eyes...

grandparent and child

2007-06-15T20:22:00.001-04:00

The curious child stared up at the heavens and said, "Grandparent, there are fast lights, bright lights, reddish lights, and large lights... but are there slow lights?"

This image contains a scrap of a photocopy (the face, from a photograph in a book), and an old Post-it Note. The background of the grandparent figure is blue construction paper. The head of the child and the hands are scraps of white paper. Everything is coloured with Crayola crayons and black china marker.

It was important to me that the figures of the grandparent and the child not be gender-specific. Sometimes they seem to be female, and other times male. Curiously, most of the children I taught assumed they were male.

jupiter #2

2007-06-14T06:37:00.001-04:00

The Grandparent replied, "That is the largest planet, named after the kind of the Roman gods, Jupiter. Jupiter is so big, it is more than twice the size of all the other planets put together. It is the fifth planet in our solar system."

Jupiter's face is an inkjet print of an earlier pen and ink drawing of mine. There are scraps of an old poster (the green background) and some gold mylar (Jupiter's crown). The image is coloured with Crayola crayons and black china marker.

jupiter #1

2007-06-13T17:27:00.001-04:00

The curious child stared up at the heavens and asked, "Grandparent, and what is that light over there?"

This illustration contains scraps from magazine pages (Jupiter and the grandparent's face), and is coloured with Crayola crayons and black china marker.

sun and mercury

2007-06-12T19:00:00.001-04:00

"There is a light that moves quickly across the sky - it is the planet Mercury. It lives closest to the sun, and it moves so quickly because its year - the amount of time it takes to travel once around the sun - is so much shorter than our earth year."

This illustration contains scraps of construction paper (Mercury and the sun) and is coloured with Crayola crayons and black china marker.

the earth (everything)

2007-06-11T17:44:00.001-04:00

I was visiting my sister in Smithville, Ontario this weekend, and she played me a song which I can't get out of my head - Everything, from Michael Buble's latest CD Call Me Irresponsible. (Listen to a sample here - scroll down to track nine.)*

It's a real feel-good song; I was dancing around my sister's kitchen with my five-year-old niece, swaying with her and spinning her around.

The chorus goes, "And in this crazy life, and these crazy times it's you, it's you. You make me sing. You're every line, you're every word, you're everything."

I remembered the lyrics incorrectly, and thought it said "in this crazy world." Which made me think of the earth... which made me think of this illustration.

It's another one from my solar system series. The earth is made with a scrap of Ontario roadmap, and the moon is a scrap from a magazine ad. It's again coloured with Crayola wax crayons and black china marker.

In a funny (strange) twist, one of the students in the class looked at the illustration and said, "That's where my cottage is." I hadn't picked the Parry Sound area on purpose - I just wanted a piece of map that included land as well as water. In an even stranger twist, when I showed the illustrations to my friend Mary Hamilton, she also commented that her cottage was in that area.

*And in an even stranger twist, when I Googled Michael Buble to find a link for the song sample, I found his homepage - where Everything was the track of the day.

sun and planets

2007-06-07T19:19:00.000-04:00

The Grandparent replied, "Not all of those lights that we see are stars. Some of those lights are called planets, and they also spin around the sun - the star at the centre of our solar system. The planets are like mirrors, reflecting the light of the sun, and so we can see them."

This illustration contains scraps of map (the earth), pink construction paper (Mars), and a used Post-it Note (on the sun). Again coloured with Crayola crayons, and china markers in black, green and red.

sunset

2007-06-06T16:36:00.001-04:00

They watched the sun slip below the horizon, and slowly the lights of the night appeared.

The curious child stared up at the heavens and said, "Grandparent, tell me about the stars in the sky."

This in another illustration from my solar system story. There are many collaged elements: an inkjet print of an old drawing of mine (the sun/face), a scrap of magazine page (the blue advertisement) and some yellow construction paper (the star). Again the image is coloured over with Crayola crayons and black china marker.

the sun #3

2007-06-05T18:57:00.001-04:00

This illustration is the title page for my solar system story. There are collaged papers (blue contruction paper and a scrap of a map) coloured over with Crayola crayons and embellished with black china marker.

the sun #2

2007-06-04T08:00:00.001-04:00

Another illustration from my solar system series. This image includes a collaged scrap of manila envelope and a torn photo from a magazine. I coloured over the entire page with Crayola wax crayons, and emphasized the shape of the tree and the outline of the sun with black china marker.

the sun

2007-06-02T05:49:00.001-04:00

This is another illustration from the series I did for my solar system art class. It's the last page in the story, when daylight again returns.

The image began as a collaged scrap of brown kraft paper on the page. I wrote the text from this page of the story over top of the kraft paper, then coloured over everything with Crayola wax crayons. Black china marker emphasizes the outlines of the shapes.

apple #2

2007-06-01T07:44:00.001-04:00

This apple was actually created before apple #1; if you look closely, you'll see that the apple image in the latter is actually a computer-generated print of this drawing. I frequently use a print of this original image on the front of my handmade art cards.

The drawing was one in a series of coloured pencil works I did of fruit. I stopped half-way through, unhappy with the way I'd rendered the reflection in the lower half of the apple, and made notes to myself about what I would have done differently.

glenn gould

2007-05-31T06:22:00.000-04:00

I was a huge fan of Glenn Gould in my late twenties. I had just started to learn the piano, and went looking for recordings of Bach keyboard music because I enjoyed the "List A" pieces in my conservatory piano books.

I found something called the Goldberg Variations, and played it on the stereo one night when I was alone in a huge, empty house. Part-way through the recording I was frightened by the sounds of a male voice mumbling nearby. I got up and looked out the windows, peering into the blackness unable to see anything, my heart beating rapidly.

Then I realized that the "mumbling" was coming from the stereo speakers. I later read that Gould always sang as he played, and his singing is audible in all his studio recordings.

The Goldberg Variations (especially Gould's 1981 version) became one of my favorite works, and when my sister got married I suggested she use the quodlibet (variation 30) as her wedding march. (Listen to it here - scroll down to track 31)

I did a series of sketches of Gould performing at the piano, using videotapes of his recording sessions and TV shows. Gould was an eccentric musician, constantly swaying, rocking, and conducting himself with closed eyes as he played. There was something restless and driven about him, and I like this particular drawing because it seems to catch him in a freeze-frame.

self portrait

2007-05-30T20:31:00.001-04:00

I remember a drawing instructor once asked my class, "Why are there so many self-portraits in art history?" We tried to think up intellectual reasons - something along the lines of "the self-reflexivity of the artistic process since the renaissance," and were brought up short when the teacher pointed out that the artist is often the cheapest and most convenient model for him- or herself.

I went through a phase where I drew my face, hands or feet incessantly, and after a time I could even recreate my face from memory, without consulting the mirror.

This drawing is created with black markers in varying thicknesses, as well as soft (dark) pencil.

old woman

2007-05-29T08:10:00.001-04:00

When I studied visual art at the University of Western Ontario in the early 90s, I developed a fascination with images of elderly people, especially old women. For my fourth-year painting class I did a series of eight huge canvasses, each containing eight life-size images of naked, elderly women. I spent a lot of time sketching lined, wrinkled faces and bodies during this period.

cardigan on the floor

2007-05-28T07:59:00.000-04:00

As a child I loved reading Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy books. They were delightfully illustrated with quirky ink drawings, and I would pore over the pages for hours, trying to figure out how to draw like that.

In my early twenties I experimented with line drawing, and some of the stronger pieces came from a series I did of clothes thrown on the floor. I remember this particular cardigan; it was a label called "Non-Fiction," and I bought it myself with money I made working as a lifeguard in the summer. It was a pink sweatshirt cardigan, and was stereotypically 80s: oversized and boxy.

toe shoe

2007-05-27T20:14:00.001-04:00

Like many little girls, I was fascinated by ballet. I desperately wanted to take lessons - not necessarily so I could dance, but just to wear the beautiful costumes and shoes.

Luckily my high school offered a dance program as an alternative to the standard physical education courses, and I was finally able to indulge my dream of wearing pink satin shoes.

Eventually I came to realize that the physical demands of ballet were unnatural, and harmful to my body. But for a few short years I delighted in living my dreams.

This line drawing was done in black ink on paper.

crow

2007-05-24T05:52:00.001-04:00

I have a special fondness for crows. During my university years in London, Ontario, I enjoyed seeing a family of crows return every year to the same stretch of trees that lined the long driveway leading up to Brescia College. I would walk past them on my way to class every day, and their large, bold black figures fascinated me.

Years later I was walking through an older neighbourhood in London when I suddenly felt something land on my head. I immediately stopped in shock, and moments later the crow that had alighted on me hopped down onto the sidewalk in front of me, then turned and cast me a curious eye. We stood together for an endless moment, staring intently at each other, before the bird casually flew away and I was left to continue my walk, bemused.

Shortly after this I began taking singing lessons, and eventually came across a song that I loved to sing. It was a German Lied from Schubert's song cycle Die Winterreise (Winter's Journey), called Die Krahe (The Crow). Click here to listen to a recording (scroll down to track 15). The song tells the story of a man near his life's end, followed ominously by a carrion crow as he walks out of town.

I was terribly upset when the crows began dying in southwestern Ontario, victims of the West Nile virus. For several summers the skies were empty of their raucous cawing and sweeping black forms. Sometimes I wondered if they'd ever return to visit me again. I'm happy to say that I often hear crows now, as I sit working at my desk near my open apartment window.

This is another drawing made with Crayola washable markers, sprayed with water to make the ink bleed.

eider duck

2007-05-23T06:34:00.001-04:00

This drawing was inspired by a dream about a waterfowl (an "eider duck") on a distant planet. The image is an abstracted duck as seen from above, sitting on a rock with its head tucked under its wing.

The original Crayola washable-marker drawing was embellished with coloured-pencil shading and cross-hatching.

green man

2007-05-22T15:37:00.001-04:00

Another drawing in my Jungian dream work series, this figure is again created with Crayola washable markers and sprayed with water. The drawing was made on the back of a recycled inkjet print, and the text just happened to bleed through the paper at the figure's abdomen.

dream woman

2007-05-21T13:52:00.001-04:00

This image came from a bodywork session I did with Mary Hamilton. I lay on the floor, and in my mind's eye I saw different colours flowing through my body. Mary asked me to make drawings of my experience, and this is one of the first in a series that explored this particular bodywork session.

The drawing (using Crayola washable markers) started as a picture of my head, and the purple near the bottom of the page was an energy I saw moving through my throat. I wasn't happy with the image, so I drew the woman's figure on top of the drawing of the face, then sprayed the entire image with water to blur the ink. The drawing was created on the back of a recycled fax, hence the print visible through the paper.

fire man

2007-05-18T05:48:00.002-04:00

Another drawing in the Jungian dream series, this image is of a being with a flame burning inside. Again, I used Crayola washable markers and sprayed the image with water afterwards to create the watercolour effect.

bird man

2007-05-17T07:20:00.001-04:00

This drawing was created when I was involved in Jungian psychoanalysis in the winter of 1997/98. I had a dream about waterfowl on a distant planet, and when I did some work with the dream upon awakening, I envisioned a blue liquid seeping through me/the bird.

The drawing is made with Crayola washable markers. If lines are drawn and then sprayed with water, the ink bleeds like watercolour across the page. I had a lot of fun using this technique during this period.

christmas cards

2007-05-16T16:12:00.001-04:00

I make my own Christmas cards out of recycled commercial Christmas cards. I solicit donations of used cards from friends and family.

I love choosing the combinations of trees and backgrounds. Each card is unique, yet based on the same simple design. The tree image is cut and sewn to the background with a straight machine stitch, and the background is sewn to cardstock with a fancy machine stitch.

I usually print a verse inside that reads: The tree of life my soul has seen/Laden with fruit and always green.

art cards

2007-05-14T18:46:00.001-04:00

I've been creating handmade art cards for years. I give them to friends and family with gifts, or as hasty notes and thank yous. I like to combine collage with drawing, and sometimes include quotes or inspirational words. Often the front cover ends up being some sort of floral design.

peaches/apricots

2007-05-13T08:03:00.001-04:00

Imagine a puddle of peaches on a countertop. The blushing warmth of skin. Their roundness. A heat that is the colour of my heart, and a vision that makes my heart ache...

Pick one up. The weight and heft registering against palm. The gentleness of fingers not wishing to bruise. The stroke of a thumb against velveteen...

Lift to your nose and close your eyes. A fragrance of lightness that vanishes if inhaled too deeply. A vision of tiny white flowers that evaporate in a rainbow’s end whenever you get too close...

A sudden bite, and an explosion of sweetness. The ache of blushing colour now turned juicy. Inner flesh that melts under the tongue. The swallow...

The end is dripping stickiness, and a ragged pip that’s hard as rock...

(plant it, and another tree will grow...)

Friday September 3, 1999

This drawing was inspired by a bunch of apricots I had bought at the grocery store. The colours were amazing, and I wanted to capture some of that gorgeousness in a picture. I used watercolour to rough in the shapes of the apricots, and then finished with coloured-pencil cross-hatching and shading. The poem was written as a gift to a friend who liked poetry.

lizard

2007-05-12T17:50:00.003-04:00

This collage was a variation on a lizard-like animal I had previously drawn in another series of collages. Magazine pages were collaged in large colour fields, and then cut to fit the image.

abstract landscape #4

2007-05-07T09:37:00.001-04:00

Here's the third of three abstract landscapes I created during a collage workshop last fall. (See the first and second ones here and here.)

abstract landscape #3

2007-05-03T21:37:00.001-04:00

This is the second in a series of three abstract landscapes I created during a collage workshop. (See the first one here.)

starfish

2007-05-02T19:13:00.000-04:00

This was one of my early collages made from magazine pages. The entire image is two pages wide: this is the right side. I used Sharpie pens to make the black lines, but quickly tired of this technique, since the solvents in Sharpies give me a headache.

I have an obsession with stars - they're in a lot of my drawings and collages. Fish, too.

apple #1

2007-04-30T17:10:00.000-04:00

I started this blog fully intending to post daily or near-daily, and now it's been six days since my last post. Life has intervened, I guess. That, plus I felt too tired to post whenever I thought of it recently.

I just completed an ongoing art journal and started a new one. This collage is from my new journal. The apple image is a colour inkjet print of an old drawing that I often use on my handmade note cards. My printer's yellow ink was running out, so the image ended up magenta. I hate to waste anything, and added the misprint to this collage.

I'm toying with the idea of creating a bunch of fabric patchwork pieces right now, and I find that every time I draw, I start creating large blocks of colour - hence the patchwork-y nature of the colours in this collage. The pencil text is part of a journal entry.

The journal was originally an art project for a first-year studio course I took at university, and I've ripped out some of the pages to make room for the collages (if you don't rip out pages, the finished book gets too thick). I've left some of the pages behind, and the phrase "a Book of Shadows" comes from the original art project. I created a book of children's rhymes and "spells" for a performance piece, and read from the book during the performance.

hands #1

2007-04-24T22:12:00.000-04:00

Over the years there have been a few motifs that have appeared again and again in my artwork. Hands are one of them. I love tracing my hands and sketching my hands... and I love the shapes that hands make in their various positions. I once wrote a very personal fairy tale that included a maiden who gives away her hands to a wicked sorcerer. Maybe when I figure that one out, I won't need to draw hands anymore...

This has a scrap of brown paper and a bit of a journal entry, and is coloured over with my usual crayons.

uranus, neptune and pluto

2007-04-23T18:59:00.000-04:00

This is another of the illustrations I made for the solar system visual art class. The black lines are made with china marker, one of my favorite drawing tools. I love them because they come in many colours, and you can make marks on top of wax crayon with them. This collage has scraps of magazine pages, and some handwriting in pencil in the background.

abstract landscape #2

2007-04-22T21:07:00.000-04:00

Another collaged fantasy landscape. I love the colours in this one - something about it reminds me of the hills in Scotland and England. The collage contains papers torn from magazine pages, as well as some torn tissue paper.

pluto

2007-04-21T23:08:00.000-04:00

This illustration is from a series I did on the solar system for an art class I taught at an elementary school. The class was learning about the solar system, so I incorporated their science learning into a creative visual art lesson. Each child was asked to illustrate one page from a children's story I had written about how the planets in our solar system got their names. I made a master set of illustrations myself, as preparation for the project. This is my illustration for Pluto.

The collage contains a large scrap of a business-reply envelope, and Pluto is torn from a magazine page. The colour comes from pencil crayons and wax crayons.

For the entire set of illustrations I created a simple "grid" of two lines intersecting at right angles somewhere on the page. The point of intersection was never the same place on each page, but moved about in a kind of progression from one page to the next. The point of intersection became the focal or "visual tension" point on each page, and helped me vary the size and scale of the planets in an interesting way.

starflowers

2007-04-20T06:54:00.000-04:00

This is one of my favorite art journal pages, and I've used the floral motif in a lot of my handmade art cards. The background was a sheet of graph paper on which I had made a list of phone messages. I later scribbled on the paper to try out different colours of crayons. Finally, I coloured the entire page with crayons and added the flowers.

green grasses

2007-04-19T21:57:00.000-04:00

I have been feeling much better in the last couple of days - probably due to the sunshine. What is it about springtime? You can't help but feel happy with green things growing...

The blue paper in this collage came from a concert program that had featured my singing teacher in London, Ontario. After pasting it on the page I wrote a journal entry in pencil, and then added the crayon. The blobs of colour were chosen instinctively. This is one of my favorite ways to work - not knowing ahead of time what I will create. I let the process unfold the way it wants to. Sometimes something really striking results.

labyrinth #2

2007-04-18T05:21:00.000-04:00

This collage began as a drawing by my niece, which I embellished and coloured over with Crayola wax crayons.

green stars

2007-04-16T14:49:00.000-04:00

I got addicted to Sudoku puzzles a couple of months ago, and used to do two or three of them per day. The finished puzzles got added to my stack of paper ephemera to use in collages, of course!

abstract landscape #1

2007-04-15T19:06:00.000-04:00

This collage was a lot of fun. I created it at a collage workshop I attended in the fall of 2006, and the assignment was to create a landscape with torn paper. I used strips of glossy print ads I'd pulled out of my recycling bin, with the occasional bit of construction paper or tissue paper. I loved the various tones of light and dark I was able to come up with, and these are some of my favorite shades of green.

labyrinth

2007-04-14T19:40:00.000-04:00

I have longed for some time now to walk a labyrinth. It's my dream to someday own enough property to create a small one of my own, which I could walk every day if I wished.

This is one of my favorite collages, because of the rich colours and the bold graphic design. It's hard to beat red and green together.

blue flowers

2007-04-13T18:54:00.000-04:00

I'm feeling a little better today. I'm a great believer in the power of positive thinking, so I'm taking advantage of this difficult time to put some of my beliefs into practice. A couple of my favorite e-newsletters are great inspirations for me. Check out The TUT Adventurers Club and Abraham-Hicks Publications. Both of them offer daily inspirational e-mails that I love.

This is another drawing from my afternoon with my niece and nephew. I think it's my favorite of the "abstract flowers" ones.

sunbird

2007-04-12T17:49:00.000-04:00

I have an uneasy relationship with my faith - Christianity. I live for sacred music, but being an intelligent, educated woman, there are parts of the doctrine that - out of concern for my own sanity - I tend to block out of my mind every Sunday morning as I sit in church.

Still, I look to the faith for spiritual nourishment, and I'm always trying to reconcile myself with the symbol of Christ, and its meaning. My long-time interest in Jungian psychology tells me that every symbol lives in each of us. If I can't wrap my mind around the idea that a literal Christ died to atone for my sins, I can at least try to see the transformative power of the Christ-image in my own life.

These have been difficult weeks for me. Since my boyfriend and I broke up, I wander through my days with a low-grade ache in the centre of my chest. The colour seems washed out of everything. I'm restless, and I don't want to be alone with myself. I can't concentrate on my writing. Nothing seems worthwhile.

(And I just spent an ill-advised afternoon listening to Jann Arden. How much worse could my despair get?)

There is a MacKenzie-sized hole in my life right now, and it's all I can do to keep reminding myself that every end is a beginning, and new life will follow the death and decay of the old. I was sitting on my toilet in the dark just now, blowing my nose after a crying jag, when I had a sudden vision of Mary Magdalene sitting by the tomb, weeping.

I could imagine her pain - feel her despair. She'd already watched her teacher die on the cross; now she had lost his body. I heard her beg the gardener, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away."

And the gardener was Jesus. She didn't even recognize him.

How often do we mourn what is lost, not realizing it has been transformed, and stands right in front of us?

This collage is from 2005. The image came to me spontaneously - a crow flying towards the sun. I love crows - they are amazing, intelligent birds. One of my favorite Lieder is the Schubert song Die Krahe (The Crow), from the song cycle Die Winterreise (Winter's Journey). For many summers I was heartbroken at the disappearance of crows from my hometown of London, Ontario, due to the West Nile virus. (The crow population is now slowing increasing again.)

The man's face was cut from an issue of Runner's World magazine, so I know he is a runner, but have no idea what his name is. I liked the gold colour of his face, and thought he would make a good sun god.

the owl was a baker's daughter

2007-04-12T14:56:00.000-04:00

This is one of my early collages, from 2005. The image was inspired by the title of a book by Jungian psychoanalyst Marion Woodman. Woodman, a former high school English teacher, was searching for a metaphor to describe the internal distress that is particular to women with eating disorders, and found it in the description of Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet.

In the play Ophelia cries, "They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at your table!" Later, Ophelia is held up, "mermaid-like," by her garments as she drowns herself - until the weight of the water pulls her down into the mud.

I combined the symbol of the owl with a mermaid's tail. The collage elements are photographs from magazines - primarily fashion magazines, which I like for their bright, crisp colours. I went over the collage afterwards with a thick Sharpie pen, to add detail.

fishies

2007-04-11T06:21:00.000-04:00

The background of this collage began as a piece of construction paper that my niece "wrote" the alphabet and numerals on, using a plastic template. She was only three at the time.

I was obsessed with drawing fish during the period when I made the collage (summer 2005), so some fish ended up in this piece. When I scanned the image, some pink crayon marks that had been on the large fish didn't come through. I've realized that my scanner doesn't like pink crayon for some reason. (shrug)

gratitude

2007-04-10T07:23:00.000-04:00

Former clients gave me a small journal when I moved away from my hometown. I decided to use it as a gratitude journal, although I keep forgetting to make entries in it.

This collage has bits of wrapping paper and a scrap of a pastel drawing. Sometimes I print out the gratitude lists on the computer and then paste them into the book as collage elements as well. Creating the book is a three-step process: I paste in random collage elements ahead of time, then write the gratitude lists day by day, then go back later and colour over the lists to finish each collage.

picasso quote

2007-04-09T18:03:00.000-04:00

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

Pablo Picasso

This is another drawing from my afternoon with my niece and nephew. The crayons were awful - normally I use Crayolas, but my sister must have acquired some weird, no-name cheapie ones for the kids at some point. They didn't spread well over the page, and I remember being frustrated at they way they were blending with each other. I was afraid the paper was going to tear, they were so "sticky."

easter hangover

2007-04-09T07:47:00.000-04:00

It's not a real hangover. I don't drink.

It's not even a chocolate hangover - I don't eat chocolate.

It's the feeling of letdown and restlessness after several days of intense spiritual and physical activity. We can visit the world of the numinous, but we don't live there. The symbols and rituals bring us into communion with the divine energy of the universe, but we can't hold onto the experience.

As I try to absorb everything I've been through since Thursday evening, I feel overwhelmed.

Happy Easter.

The drawing is one I made while colouring with my niece and nephew a few weekends ago. I love putting huge blobs of brilliant colour on paper; they were neatly colouring their colouring books. As I finished page after page of my blobs, I noticed a change in their attention. They pushed aside the colouring books and begged for some of my loose sheets of paper. Then they started making their own blobs of colour. I felt my work as a colouring anarchist was done.

shopping at IKEA

2007-04-07T09:43:00.000-04:00

I've decided that my favorite time to shop at IKEA is first thing in the morning. Especially if I have to shop on a Saturday. (If you've ever shopped at IKEA on a Saturday, you'll know what I mean.)

I arrived at the store about eight minutes before they officially opened, and when I saw other customers walking in the main entrance, I followed suit. I didn't want to browse through the showroom - I was on a mission to get a new plunge-pot coffee maker - so I headed straight for the Marketplace. Nobody stopped me.

It was amazing - so empty of people, so full of all the beautiful, simple IKEA things - I felt like I was in heaven. I picked up my coffee pot and then wandered through the rest of the Marketplace all alone, enjoying the absence of crowds. In the rug section I stopped to look at some merchandize, and an IKEA employee called over to me as he passed by with a huge cart of goods.

"Ma'am, how did you get in here? We don't open for five more minutes."

"I walked through the door."

He shook his head and continued on his way as I laughed to myself. How did I get in, indeed? If they didn't want me in the Marketplace, they should have somehow prevented me from getting in there...

The drawing is a page from one of my art journals from last October. It didn't scan very well - the colours are much more saturated in the original, and there were some gorgeous pinks that didn't show up at all. (I tried to fix it in Photoshop, but that didn't help much.) I often make notes to myself on yellow Post-it notes, and I love putting the used Post-its in my collages.

i broke my bodum

2007-04-07T07:51:00.000-04:00

It was sitting in my sink this morning, and I accidentally hit it while drying the dishes. My mother bought it for me from IKEA, and I treasured it because I used it every day to make my my herbal tea. Just checked online, and the closest IKEA is open this morning at 9:00 am. Gonna be there.

The drawing is from my art journal sometime in March. I paste collage elements on the blank pages of a book, several pages at a time, and then later go back and write, draw, and colour over the pages - usually with children's wax crayons. This page includes a scrap from a bill envelope, and a bunch of doodled circles in pencil. The embossed rectangles are the impressions from collaged papers on the reverse side of this page.

loss, and freedom

2007-04-07T06:07:00.000-04:00

This post was originally published in one of my other blogs, an organized existence, which is about my life as a professional organizer.

I have frequent insomnia, and I often think up blog entries when I'm lying awake in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, many of those ideas have nothing to do with professional organizing, and then I realize I have no forum in which to share my nocturnal inspirations.

So I've started this blog as a repository of everything that won't fit in either of my other two blogs (the second one, tell it well, showcases my professional writing samples). I thought the following post would be a great place to start, since when I wrote it, I almost didn't post it to an organized existence - it's so personal.

The illustration is from one of my art journals, and it dovetails with the post because all of the collage elements have something to do with the Gilbert and Sullivan show, The Gondoliers, where my relationship with my ex-boyfriend began one year ago.

If you've read some of my earlier posts (look here, here, and here for some examples), you'll know that I encourage people to get in touch with their deepest dreams and desires. Sometimes it's not until we know what we truly want that we can make decisions about which direction to take in our lives.

The cyclical nature of life means that for every birth there is a death - but also for every death, there is a birth. It's no mistake that Christians, for example, celebrate Jesus' birth in the winter (when everything in nature seems to have died), or his death in the spring (when everything in nature seems to be coming back to life). When we live our lives in sync with these natural rhythms, the pain of loss can lose some of its sting.

My boyfriend and I just broke up. We remain great friends, and love each other deeply, but we are moving in different directions. For either of us to give up our dreams for the sake of the other would mean a loss of something so intrinsic to ourselves that it's unimaginable.

And yet I am almost paralyzed as I sit between two extremes: the pain of losing him, and the joy of finding myself.

I thought I knew what I wanted, but what if what I wanted isn't what I really want? (And I just went looking for some food to stuff into my mouth, which you KNOW can't be a good sign.)

Sometimes we can't know. Sometimes we're walking blind, and when we hold out our hand to find a wall or a piece of furniture to orient ourselves in the blackness, we hit instead a knife blade that slices deep.

But what if the blade cuts things not apart, but together?

I am in the first year of a kind of bodywork training called the Alexander Technique. Without getting too esoteric, the technique is about becoming aware of your habits of poor psycho-physical use, and replacing those habits with better use.

I've discovered that letting go of old habits and discovering something new is very frightening and disorienting. One of my instructor's favorite commands is to "not know."

"Don't KNOW," she intones with discouraging frequency as she works on me with her hands. (Discouraging only because it means that for the millionth time I've been trying too hard, and cutting myself off from true knowing in the process.)

"Don't know, don't know, don't know," I direct myself with fathomless panic inside my head, until suddenly her hands, in cooperation with my open mind, find new freedom and release within my body.

Don't know.

It reminds me of the Rainer Maria Rilke quote from Letters to a Young Poet, where Rilke says:

"...have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.

"Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything.

"Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

Loss, and freedom. Perhaps deep down, they are really the same thing...