Let's Inspire each other to be Creative

thenewme

Truebff,

Wow!  Is it watercolor?  It's beautiful!  It brings to mind a silk batik painting lit from behind. Was it inspired by something in particular?

truebff

Hi! Thank you so much!  I am an artist and much of my work is mythic-abstract. I also like playing with motifs and making them my own, in my own style. (I love light and translucent color.)

Anyway, this piece is from a painting in my Heart Series. I turned it into an archival fine art print and a project I call my "Thousand Hearts" project.  It's an edition of 1000 that I created to say Thank You to special people and to share and the rest are to raise money for childrens' causes.  The piece is called "Three Hearts" and is about how we connect heart-to-heart-to-heart.

(I tried to post it before but had trouble figuring our how to paste it onto and from photo site, so voila! figured it out finally! :-D)

I just noticed that the page turned, so I'll re-paste it here so people don'thave to scroll back.

"Three Hearts"

barbe1958

True, very nice, what is the medium??

truebff

Barbe, Thanks! It's waterbased paint - I mix my own pigments and binders - on paper.

beth1965

I am loving all the pictures in this thread wonderful talent!

I am an artist too i am hoping so much that i will be able to continue it will be what makes me recover faster. As well as it is my business and my income.

I am trying to post a picture not sure if this will work

http://canadiancreationz.etsy.com/

Anonymous

truebff

WOW!!!  Even MORE impressive!  Amazing 0 where do you get the pigments????  Is it like water color, or more like guache?

Beth - going to look at your etsy site now! ;-)))

beth1965

Still trying to do this right

truebff

Sunflowers, Thanks! Pigments are a long, complicated love affair from many sources, some, many I age. (Mad scientist artist here!) I love to invent and play and experiment.

This is a great thread, so glad you started it.

So much talent and inspiration here. Beth! Impressive! 

And, like you, I believe in the healing of art - just working/playing in it connects us to Source and wholeness is restored there. For my own healing goal, I got myself off my pain meds three weeks ago so my creative brain could function again and, later this week, I plan to sweep my house free of cancer and illness and winter and reset up my work spaces for both art and writing and live in my "Life" again! Yeah!!!

BTW, I made some self-portrait drawings during radiation - not certain I will ever share them, but they seemed necessary to my handling the horror of that treatment. Anyone else do that or something like that?

beth1965

Here are birds and pansy planter

barbe1958

Very nice Beth!!!

beth1965

Thank-you

I am really enjoying looking through this thread -amazing talent!

Thanks so much for starting this thread sunflowers

Anonymous

truebff

I know just what you mean about creativity and healing.  There's a non profit in Northampton MA, the Cancer Connection, which offers so many different kinds of groups for people with cancer.  Many of them are art based, creative, music, just a wonderful resource.  Wish every town had something like this.

I've always wanted to focus on drawing, learning to paint.  Now being retired has made it all possible. BC was QUITE a shock, I'd just moved to where I am now & didn't know anyone - but that was almost 5 years ago next month - and I can FEEL the words you've written - I've SWEPT all the extraneous out of my life, and focusing on HEALING has been wonderfully freeing.

Not at the phase where the final "product" is what I want it to be, but the JOY of the process makes it such a gift to finally be able to use my hands ( neuropathy was awful for a few years) and enjoying the changing seasons of my rural area invites journaling....and when you say "Source" , I think of Carl Jung, and all the wonderul work I've done helping me connect to that place, I call Self ( but sure it could also be called Source)

Anonymous

truebff and beth - beautiful!  So different from each other but each is wonderful to look at.

Phyllis

Anonymous

Here are a couple of images I took the weekend before I was diagnosed with FC.  October 1, 2011 in SW Nebraska.  I was out driving the back roads and enjoying the beautiful sunlit day.  I stopped for this flock of turkeys:

 

but the real image was across the road with the sun skimming over the dead weeds. 

I LOVE dead weeds, dead grass, dry corn, dry wheat.  These were just snaps and I haven't done anything but resize them. 

 

I'm hoping spring and the end of chemo will get me moving again soon.

Phyllis
Diagnosis: 10/3/2011, IDC, 2cm, Stage IIa, Grade 3, ER-/PR-, HER2-

SoCalLisa

I have decided that no matter what the reason for breast cancer patients to get together be it for a group Pysical Therapy or Art  or even lunch etc (other than a support group) just is a good way to help heal...

Wren44

Phgram - I love weeds also. And the pictures of the sky. I grew up in Oklahoma and feel crowded by mountains. My husband grew up in mountains and says his eyes hurt without something to rest up against.

Anonymous

Here is another storm over dried wheat and grass near Idalia, CO.

truebff

Phyllis, beautiful and poetic pieces. Very quiet. I imagine you must be very nice to sit with. It reminds me of the feeling of a book by Judith Duerk: Circle of Stones/Woman's Journey To Herself. It's a beautiful book. Have you ever seen it?

SoCalLisa, illness and treatments and stress can take too much away - creative connection and work can bring us back into balance and joy. I find I need to put my hands in it, my heart, and there, I can let go and Let God.

Sunflower, Carl Jung (after Margaret Mead) was an early influence.  I have also worked with dreams all my life.

I agree that process is as valuable as the end result, sometimes, even moreso, and especially important to remember in a society that seems to be all about end results. When we only focus there, we may lose our joy of creating and being connected to the creativity of Self, Source, universe, etc. where healing and renewal is infinite.

Anonymous

truebff, Thank you!  No I haven't read it but will definitely look for it.

Here is my attempt at a non-abstract abstract image.  It is the plywood patchwork front of an old hangar.  Visually it reminds me of a newspaper page...and it probably has as many stories.

Anonymous

PHYLLIS - I am in AWE of your photographs.  I can feel Barbe thinking what I am, looking at the storm over dried grass - GET ME TO MY PAN PASTELS.  And, the first think I thought of, was a newspaper page, when I saw the hangar.

Truly inspiring.  I too love all the seasons of Nature - there is something amazing to me, to see the browns of dried grasses, an know that in their own time, they will become green, and beautiful in a different way.

AH, "Circle of Stones" - YES, YES, YES.  One of the things that inspired me, while healing from the bc treatments, was Sue Bender's "Stetching Lessons."  She often refers to M.C. Richards, and if anyone hasn't (yet) read MC's book "Centering" - you have a treat in store for you.  There was a 25th anniversary edition published a few years ago  - as with Circle of Stones...

real classics...

Wren - just read your "tag line" WOW, thank goodness for a good doc making sure of clean margins!  phew....reminds me, I had a Bilateral by "choice" - and they found "bad stuff" in the "good breast" not visible on mammogram.....phew, indeed!

barbe1958

Yep, pan pastels hovering over paper!!!! Great shot Phyllis!

Anonymous

Thank you!  It takes me to my happy place. 

Anonymous

Phyllis - THANK YOU...inspiring, really.  Is that part of CO very close to where you are in NE.  I visited NE years & years ago.  A friend lived there, and as I come from the Eastern part of the States, I always wondered what those "white spaces" were on the map of NE ( this goes W-a-a-y) back to the 1960's.  Every place on the map in the East had a 'name' - you couldnt' really be not in a town by a name.   Heck, some towns have signs "est. 1760" - stuff like that...

SO, being a total dummy, I couldn't figure how someone could get mail if they lived in a "white space."  Had never heard of RFD.  SO, flash forward, I'm visiting NE, and riding in a friend's car- she stops, asks me to get out, stand by the side of the road, so she could take pic of me CUZ, I was standing "in a white place."   AH, the old days....I know about RFD now....

Anonymous

Beth - those are so lovely, I kept going back to see them again,  the hummingbirds are perfection.  Glass is a difficult medium for painting, isn't it?  Don't know since I am not really a painter but I try.

Phyllis - love  the storm picture, the movement over sky.  I love the dried grasses too, love when there is front or snow on the fields, such an art from nature.

I paint on mirrors and old windows.  Do some photography, but mostly I am a writer.  My stories are what make me feel most alive.  One day soon, I hope to feel and remember enough to actually tell stories again then begin the novels I have inside.  May I share one of the stories since there are no pictures to show here.   http://www.womens-fiction.com/dense-observations/mamas-sweet-time/   

This story is called Mama Sure Is Taking Her Own Sweet Time Today, a story about my pet skunks, Newfie and my smartass 24-year-old cat. 

Did take this pic of Blossom (HoneyBunny) our pet skunk.  She is in the story, many stories really. 

I love days like that, writing and laughing as I work.  

You guys are right, need to do list - creating what we love!

Anonymous

Essa

love the picture.  "deperfumed" I guess  I saw the MOST gorgeous all white skunk outside my cabin last year - looked like an angora cat, just magnificent.  I stayed inside, it was late at night, and she (he?  naw, too pretty to be a he) was scratching for grubs in the earth...lots of ledge around here so earth not too deep in many places, skunks LOVE it. grubs very near surface...

Off to read your writing.  THANK YOU for posting...hope someone also posts a link to music - two areas I haven't done much in ...yet?????

barbe1958

RFD, wouldn't that be Rural Fire Department?

Sun, I've done the music thing...the acting thing...

chabba

barbe - RFD is a postal address for Rural Free Delivery for areas without a post office.  When I was growing up most of my relatives lived in North Dakota on farms that were usually at least 20 miles from the nearest small town.  Their addresses all included a RFD route number.

Anonymous

Yeah, chabba!  I was amazed that people could live in places without names ;-)  But then, I was from CT - and had never been west of New York City....ah, youth.

Barbe - music????  what did you, do you do???  Oh, I have ALWAYS wanted to be able to sing - a pure monotone...sadly..

barbe1958

I can only sing in tune if someone beside me is in tune. I sang in HS choir and a production of Jesus Christ Superstar (in high school). I played the flute, piccolo and guitar and have played solo in front of as many as 750 people. Don't think my reflexes are good enough anymore to perform though, but at least I have the memories! I have always pushed my comfort zones over the years....

Anonymous

tee hee...barbe

is that a new tag line?  Or did I forget, or not notice the wonderfulness before...tee, heee......

"sometimes you're the fork, sometimes you're the road"  I LOVE IT