As I have mentioned in previous posts, I get up very early in the morning...before the Sun rises.  I typically will go and sit outside for a few moment and take in those glorious moments before the dawn starts to shine her light.  This mornng as I was sitting outside holding my cup of coffee, I was watching the play of light and shadow and  remembering the dream that had come in the night.  This particular dream came on the back of another dream that I had received two days prior.  I have been "calling" for a dream.  I did not expect to wake from that first dream gasping for air and desparately looking around trying to determine which reality was the one that I found myself in.  It was a "shock" dream.  One in which you have no choice but to acknowledge or "wake-up" to the message that the dream is trying to convey.  I am usually very skilled at dream interpretation, especially my own, however, this one left me shaken and unsure of aspects of its meaning.  

If you have been following these posts then you may remember the one in which I shared the story of the painting The Creation of the Firmaments.  The dream that came the other night had some of these elements...a completely white building perched on the end of a vast and expansive sea.  The arrival of a great whale...except this time the whale arrived transported in the arms of a massive and swirling storm.  I am still unravelling the message that were sent in that night vision. The dream that came last night provided a clue or a further unravelling of the first one's meaning. 

So...back to me sitting with my coffee, watching the veil between night and day shift and looking up at the night sky.  As I was sitting there wandering in my thoughts and the waking of the world, it happened - a shooting star went streaking across the sky.  In my life story, shooting stars have historically signalled that a large shift and/or transformation has begun.  One night, a long time ago, as I laid on a pile of wooden boards in a small rural village in New Mexico, it was a shooting star that was the final determining moment that precipitated my move to that land of sky and sand. So, this morning, I watched as that streak of stardust tore acrcoss the sky.  I have felt its coming for some time now - its arrival confirmation for what I could feel but struggle to have words for.  What I still struggle to have words for.  What I do know is that I am changing.  Of course we are all always changing, for how could we not be, but I am talking about the kind of change and transformation that you can feel occuring deep below the surface of your skin, muscle and bones.  The kind that is like a wind which can steer the vessel that you move in in strange and unexpected ways.  You know that you are being set on a course.  For me, this always simultaneously occurs with a feeling of uncomfortable restlessness. 

My most recent painting, The Becoming of Persephone also speaks to this feeling. ​ 

This was not how I originally envisioned this painting.  In some way, shape or form, all of the paintings are autobiographical - how could they not be.  It is not unusual for the paintings to take on a life and/or will of their own, but this one snuck up on me.  I am typically working on more than one painting at a time.  This number can range from 2 or 3 up to about 9 or 10.  At some point while I am working on all of them one will jump to the forefront and let me know that it is ready to be completed (at least in regards to my role in the process).  If you would have told me that when I originally began this painting I would later title it, The Becoming of Persephone, I would have been extremely doubtful for I never envisioned it/her becoming what she did or having the feel that she does.  This is not one of my facorite paintings.  On the day that I completed her, I found myself choosing colors that I would not typically combine  in order to convey the feeling of unease or uncomfortableness that I was experiencing as I watched her morph from the original inception that I had for her.  

There are certain paintings that have marked a transition or a moment when my painting style shifts or changes, or when I am in the process of incorporating some new aspect of working with the paint, brushes, my soul and the images.  This is one of those.  She is what I think of as a transitory painting; a painting "in-between" larger movements of my life.   What will follow...well...I do not yet know.  I do understand that it is about rhythms and cycles that are at play.  I do know that in order for her to return in the spring she must let the previous season sleep, become the compost that will nourish the new growth of the following season.  

What will I do now?  I will go after the riddle.  I will spend time researching the images that swim through the dreams, I will research Persephone in all of her various forms throughout time.  I will look for the clues that have been left for me to follow.  What else will I do...keep painting and keep dreaming...

In Love, Gratitude & Art,
~Heather

OK. I lied. I made a post/announcement that I would not be doing the scheduled blog post today.  As I stepped away from the computer and walked through the house and returned to my thoughts - the ones that have been turning over and returning for the last couple of weeks I rethought my previous statement.  

If this blog is what I say it is - a journey into artistic process and the life and art of one woman - then writing about these thoughts and the artistic shift that I can feel is in process, perhaps writing about it is just what I needed to do.  I feel certain that there are other artists out there...and other human beings who do not call themselves artist (a point of thought that I also think about often)...who know exactly what I am talking about.  Those periods of time when you can feel something shifting on an internal level but where it is going, where it will lead is unclear.  I dreamt of snakes last night for the first time in a long time - I know when this happens that there is a change coming - a shedding of the skin so to speak.  

So what does this "feeling of change" look like in my world?  It kind of looks like the photos of my library above.  Typically my sleep schedule will change and I will find myself waking in the early hours of the morning, like at 2 or 3 am.  I then began prowlling through the house with a cup of coffee in my hand and my thoughts roam and settle, roam and settle.  I often get much done during these wee early hours in the morning.  I also love the sensation of walking through my home with a few small lights on and watching the light shift and change as the sun rises.

I am fairly certain that the 2 main creative projects that I have committed myself to in the last months have led me to exactly where I am currently at.  NAKED: The Art of Exposure and Vision Shift are projects whose inherent nature were intended to reveal and transform my experience of myself and the world around me.  So...I suppose I should have expected a shift in artistic direction to arise.  The unsettling feeling is that of not knowing exactly where it is leading.   But then do we ever really know where life is leading?  We can move through our daily life with set intentions and goals, but I believe that part of living life artistically also means watching were the flow of life is changing and being open to what you had previously not seen. I spoke with an artist friend of mine the other day.  She too mentioned experiencing a similar feeling.  When she said that she thought she might be going crazy I laughed and thought - well, we are both in good company then.  

This morning I was doing the early morning task of responding to emails, messages and social media scheduling and I was drawn to an article that anothet artist had posted on facebook.  The article was from the NY Times and was titled Is the Age of the Artistic Recluse Over?  This is one of those topics that have been milling over in the melting pot of my brain.  The vast majority of pantings that I have sold over the last years have happened as a result of social media.  It is an interesting time to be an artist.  Unless you are in the big leagues and/or are dealing in the world of galleries, in many ways social media is a necessary vehicle for getting your work out into the world.  Although in many ways I would be content to do what I do and not have it be public - that does not pay the bills and I also believe that sharing your work with the world at large is part of the definition of being an artist.   So I am both grateful for social media and I also find myself feeling ambivalent about it.  As much as it can be a useful tool it can also be a sucking vortex of time.  I also do not want to live a life in which a social media persona becomes my identity.  Who someone is on social media can be a very far distance away from who they are in person.  Not to mention that spending any time watching or waiting for LIKES and SHARES begins to feel like a strange way of determining any sort of value for your work, time or effort.  

So...where does this leave me?

Well...walking around the house at 2 or 3am...at times contemplating becoming a sculptor of fine chocolates and then laughing because knowing me I would begin to sculpt chocolate nudes - but that is a whole additional topic for another time!  Other contemplations include my beliefs that the way I, or any of us, lives our lives is a fine art onto itself.  Sometimes I wonder if I could disappear from social media and still accomplish what I believe is my purpose.  But in this moment in particular I am curious.  I want a conversation with other artists.  I am curious regarding who amongst us is also feeling a shift of undetermined origins?  I want to ask you my fellow travellers how you really feel about social media?  

So today's blog post is a bit of insight into the ramblings of my mind and soul.  It is also an invitation for my fellow artist (and any other human being who does not think of themself as an artist) to comment, leave a message and let me know how you feel about feeling or knowing that a shift in your work is in process but not yet realized.  Are you wondering around your homes at 3am too?

Perhaps by the next blog post I will be back to the regularly scheduled programming...but I have my doubts.

In gratitude, love and art,
​~Heather

There is a space and time that exists only before the first rays of the rising sun can be felt and seen.  This is when I wake.  It is the pause before the world starts to stir.  It is the pause in which what has come in the blanket of the night begins to turn and retreat into the richness of the shadows.  It is the space  before the stillness has been broken.  This is when I most fully know myself.  This is when I am most able to hear, see and touch my soul.  This is when I consciously engage in communion with the source of my existence.

Prior to August of this year, I had experienced a period of time with a multitude of major life transitions.  Throughout this period much of who I had known myself to be was called into question.  The voice of my Mother as she prepared to leave this earthly plane formed swirling eddies out of what had  been flowing rivers in my identity and psyche.  Her words and thoughts of who I was or was not swirled with all of the other changes that had so recently occurred. I found myself struggling to hold on to who I had conceived and believed myself to be.  Time and life continued to move in an erratic and previously unknown way over the next six months.  There was no "normal".  There was no getting back to "normal".  Normal would never again be what normal once was.  

​I found myself and my identity being furthered called into question by the relationship that I had begun ten months prior to my Mother's passing.  The truth is that I was not who I had been before.  The truth is I was exhausted; physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  I needed time.  I needed space to sit with the parts of me that remained.  I needed time to grieve the loss of the parts of me that no longer knew their own name.  I needed to enter the silence and sort through the rubble.  When asked to prove that I was still who I once had proclaimed myself to be; I could not, for I was not.  The relationship ended and I began. 

In those early morning hours, before the light reveals the day, I began the long walk home.  Who was I when I was stripped bare?  Who was I when I turned off the cacophony of sound, stimulus and opinions of the world and those who believed that they knew me?  Who was I when I stood naked in the mirror and saw myself through my own eyes and the eyes of my Creator?  Could I dissolve my own entrapment?  Could I set myself free and welcome the form that I would take?  In solitude, could I reach into myself and find my truth, my beauty and my soul?  

​In the solitude I found myself to be spiritually pregnant.  Once again I began to hear that music, the hidden song  that my soul was revealing.   A deep and lavish richness is gathering within me and within my hands.  It is from this palette that I shall paint.

In Gratitude, Love & Art,
​~Heather

I am not who I once was. I am who I have always been.

Those of you who know me on a personal level have probably on occasion heard me say, "both of these things are true simultaneously".

A few days ago a strong storm came through where I live. I woke up feeling like the storm that had passed through during the night had somehow become part of my internal landscape; a disturbance of the normal condition of the atmosphere, manifesting itself by winds of unusual force or direction. Throughout my life there have been periods of time when I have been deeply aware that I am in the middle of a significant transformational shift. I believe that for the most part we are all in a constant change/state of transformation (if we so choose, welcome and allow). What feels poignant about certain periods of transformation is my level of awareness regarding the shift that is occurring.

I could feel the storm inside me. I could feel it changing, rearranging, cleansing, and breaking previously constructed parts of my identity. I cannot say it is a comfortable feeling. It can be rather unsettling, especially when the feeling is particularly strong. It feels like an electrical storm deep in my core. I have had similar experiences before but this felt different. I believe the difference lied within the sharp level of my awareness regarding the significance and impact of my choices on where this transformation would lead.

​What did I wish to leave behind? What was no longer mine to carry? What had I forgotten and sat aside that I needed to be willing to pick back up and walk with? What parts of me had formed around others beliefs about who I am or who I should be? Could the storm that I am feeling assist me in shaking loose what was not solid and core? Could it move away debris and reveal what is strong, rooted and growing inside of me? There has been one other time in my life when this feeling came on with such intensity. I started pouring through my journals to try and connect the pieces. Eureka! I found it. It was 10 years ago and it was one of the most prolific years of my life and artistic practice. It was also when I was working on a piece that I called Remembered Pieces.

​Interestingly enough, I never considered this piece completed. It had always been my intention and desire to construct a room out of the panels of canvases. A room that when constructed would create a universe and beyond.
​

A Prayer of Re-membered Pieces

Beyond the Veil of my human existence
deep in the Ancient Womb
where the creative Soil is rich with the dust of a galaxy of Stars

I Cry out to the Divine

on tears formed from the Waters that rise and fall in my body
rhythm takes form and my Soul begins to Sing

I am a song of Re-membered Pieces

my Humanity
aches
to know
to touch
to contact
to remember
my Divinity

the Call is returned, whispered on the Winds
moving the delicate strands of the Web
with the echo and reverberation of the Voices of the Holies

I Cry out to the Divine

on Winds formed from the direction and intention of my Breath
Life takes form and is carried from one Being to the next

I am a Story of Re-Membered Pieces

my Divinity
aches
to know
to touch
to contact
to Re-member
my Humanity

buried deep within this Temple of Skin, Bone and Flesh
a powerful medicine is known
cooked by the Fire that in its hunger devours all illusion

I Cry out to the Divine

Mountains and Valleys sculpted by the heat and movement of my Blood
a landscape of great Beauty and forgotten history

I am a body of Re-Membered Pieces

my Humanity
aches
 to know
to touch
to contact
 to remember
my Divinity

on the other side of the mirrored Looking glass
the Eyes of the Snake are clouded
preparations are being made to Shed its Skin and cross between the realms

I Cry out to the Divine

milk of transmutation moving, warmed by swelling breast and beating Heart
nourishment crossing the physical Boundary of skin

I am only part of the Re-membered pieces

my Divinity
aches
to know
to touch
to contact
to remember
my Humanity

Worlds touch
contact occurs
the interface is Created
the Veil shimmers and the illusion falters
Re-Membered Pieces merging in a Symphony of sound and color

I Cry out to the Divine

​All Life Answers

Change can come in an instant, forever changing the landscape that is familiar and known. Change can be subtle and unseen, moving under the surface undetected until it is ready to show its new form, its tender untouched skin.

Prior to 2012 I lived in the same location for 15 years. I had come to know this place and I had come to know my place within it. In the five years that followed, I inhabited and/or established 12 different dwellings, 12 different homes, 11 of which I personally lived in for various moments or lengths of time.

The cycle of the last 18 months, a year and a half as we currently mark the passage of time has been one in which unforeseeable changes, transitions, beginnings and endings have continually rolled over my internal and external landscapes with the unpredictable movement of a great and massive body of water, like the coming of a storm that lingers, shapeshifts and takes new and uncertain forms.  I said goodbye to my father as I knew him in this world to be. Five months following his passing I would care for my mother as she too took her leave of this earthly plane. I have walked and lived on the desert sands of the southwest and I have stood at the shores of the Mother Ocean and tasted her salted memory. I have returned to the land that birthed and raised me: revisiting what had formed and began my construction as the being that I had come to know myself to be. I lived through the season which I have come to call My Winter in the House of Ashes; four containers of those who had passed grouped in passage in their respective urns. I welcomed a new love into my arms and I opened my arms to release a love that I no longer knew how to hold. I have watched as one of my four legged companions, a teacher and a friend diminished quickly from this world, leaving another void and space that echoed with what once was. I lost and found myself, unsure of what remained, forever changed by the movements of lives and the marching of time.

I am inhabiting a new place, a new home once more. One previously unknown to me. I am in many ways unknown to myself. I am a creature who deeply inhabits, one whose foundation reaches out like the roots of a tree, connecting to the soil in which it has grown, from which it has come. What happens when the soil is scorched by the cleansing of a great fire? What happens when the forest burns and your roots, your foundation no longer stands as it once did? What happens during the period of time when the landscape lies dormant in appearance, cleared of what had once grown? Is it possible to become quiet and still while the life underneath connects to the nutrient rich ashes in order to begin to push up and live again? I have asked myself if I can be comfortable not knowing what that new form, that new life will take.  

Under the Sheets of Rain was the first painting that I completed after my Mother's Death.  The paintings always come first.  Until a feeling or experience has been moved through me by means of image, color, paint, I often struggle with "words" for they are not my first, best or preferred language.  Under the Sheets of Rain was painted while I lived in the home my parents' had built a life in.  A period of time which is included in a chapter of my life that I think of as the Interstice - an intervening space, or an interval between spaces and times.

As always, I thank you for the moments you choose to enter my world.   My Hands, Your Hands,

In beauty, love and art,
​~Heather

Following "The Dream of the Painted Face"​ it would take another 9 years before I began engaging in a sustained practice of painting.  On that particular day in July of 2004, when I sat in front of the canvas and held the brush I  considered the act of painting to be medicine.  
​

In Gratitude, Love & Art,
​~Heather

For the last year the water in my dreams has been steadily rising.  Even when the dreams have been rooted in the sands and surroundings of this desert home, they have been messages speaking of the water's arrival.  The rising of tides.  The dry riverbeds of the arroyos flooding.  In this nightly realm, even when the speech and messages have spoken to the absence of water, they have spoken about the events that will occur upon its arrival. 

What of the last five years of my inhabitance in this desert landscape has been or has served a purpose of "drying me out"?  An evaporation or hollowing, a burning away of what is no longer needed or necessary for me to carry.  Old ways of thinking like ancient aquifers that no longer reach to the places in need of irrigation, baking in the sun to dry and crumble and once again return to the earth.  What if I have been training on how to survive and thrive in conditions such as these?

As of late, the liquid landscape of the dreams has been increasing in intensity.  Their message growing in strength, and speaking of a quickening.  What if the magnificent Ocean Mother has been calling to me?  Letting me know of our meeting or perhaps more appropriately of our reunion?  When I made the journey to this arid land that has been my home for the past five years I thought then that I would root here for the remainder of my life.  I had been called here in dreams by the voices of those whose legacies and lives have been seeped into this ground.  This beautiful, rugged, wild and carved landscape has taught me much.  She opened her arms and embraced me, and then, as she held me tight, she began her tempering.  One lesson after another...parasitic infestations...the plummet of financial instability...near death by carbon monoxide poisoning...lessons on love and betrayal...a touch with bubonic plague...boulders falling from mesas and destroying my transportation...a swarm of locusts devouring the fruits of the garden...the list goes on and on...

I wrapped my arms around her neck and held on tight, praying that she would change her embrace.  I prayed that she would kiss me gently, whisper in my ear and speak to me of our love for one another.  There were moments of such tenderness.  Moments when she and I held hands and matched our footsteps to one another.  But as a lover she would not marry her hand to mine.  As is the case with lovers who sometimes magically enter our lives, the passion and the desire for union was intense, beautiful, epic - they teach us much.  They hold a mirror of reflection up and we are blessed to see more clearly our own faces.  She has done this for me.  She has revealed pieces of my landscape that I had yet to know, that I could not see, that I refused to look at.

As the marking of time passed and the events and happenings of the previous year drew to a close, an unexpected man entered my life.  He arrived in this desert land with the whisper of the Ocean.  The smell of her wind and body carried magically and embedded in his skin, being, words and way of existence.  Recently I have found myself wondering if she had sent him to carry me in his arms to her.  The cargo is being prepared.  The route is being mapped and the sailing crew is almost assembled.  The voyage from this land of sand and sun will set sail on August 20th, making a voyage that will lead to the waters.

Mother, I am coming home to sit upon your shores and fulfill the promise that we spoke of in the watery realm of the dreams.

If you would like to leave a comment or have thoughts to share please click on the word COMMENTS below.

As the old rocking chair continued making its grooved motion back and forth and I thought of all that had recently come to pass...how those tectonic plates of my foundation had shifted and come to rest in new and previously unknown locations I wondered.  I wondered, did I have it in me to rise one more time?  My life and story have kept time and space with ancient creatures and their multitude  of representations.  The Phoenix.  Dragons.  The Ouroboros.  The threads of their mysteries are woven throughout the images of my artistic and spiritual practices and the worlds in which I inhabit.  Like the ancient snake circling around to eat its own tail (tale), was I ready once more to let go of what needed to fall away and shed my skin?  Like the magnificence of the firebird, was I ready to step from the ashes of what had burned and what remained into a new form and spread my wings to fly?  Those who have known me or who have witnessed my story's unfolding have at times spoken about the colorful and seemingly dramatic rhythms of my life: the glorious rises, the plummeting falls, all the mysterious events that seem to move through the passage of my years. 

In my newly found willingness to share my stories and thoughts with the world beyond my own skin in a written form, I offer my deepest vulnerability.  Please allow me a moment for further explanation as to why it is important for me to say this out loud.  I am a painter.  As I mentioned in my last communication this identification and knowing, this act and process of painting, well...this is my terra firma...my solid ground.  I do not question it.  I never have.  Whether or not a painting sells, or whether or not I receive affirmation or acclaim for the act of painting or the corresponding result in many ways is inconsequential.  For me there is no choice.  I was born to hold a paintbrush.  I was born to swirl colors into formation and images.  It is as essential to my being as breathing,  I do not mean to say that I do not embrace or welcome the monetary benefit that could result from the engagement of painting.  Nor do I mean to convey that when a person witnesses or is moved by one of my paintings it is not appreciated or beneficial.  What I am saying is that if those factors ceased to exist you would still find me holding a paintbrush and mixing paint.

In this act, the process of painting, I am incapable of lying, withholding, or telling someone what they desire to hear or see.  Painting is my truth.  At times this truth is raw, beautiful, ugly, not easily understood (even by me), simple, complex...whatever it is...it is a piece of my internal landscape, my mystery, my magic, my soul, my story.  At times people have suggested that I paint images that are more easily understood or embraced  by a wider public.  These suggestions have come with the best of intentions and perhaps a desire for those who care about me to have the joy and experience of seeing a lifetime of work begin to "pay off".  I understand this logic and reasoning and yet I am incapable of doing so.  To do so would be a lie and a coercion of some core part of my existence.  I know for some this will sound dramatic, but it would be the beginning of the death of a part of my spirit. 

So why?  Why do I share this with you?  Why do I share with you this insight regarding my feelings and thoughts around what it means for me to bring an image onto the canvas?  Because the same promise and process exists within my commitment to sharing these written words.  The truth is I have been writing for years.  There are books upon books, pages upon pages of my thoughts.  I have been asked by numerous and various people to share them before but it has never felt right to do so...until now.  Perhaps it has always been too close to the bone. 

And so...back to that glorious old rocking chair.  Back to that moment when I rocked back and forth and I asked myself the question - Do I have it in me one more time to rise?  You see, as I rocked back and forth I honestly did not know.  This time it was different, everything seemed different.  The driving energetic force that had always propelled me forward had shifted along with those tectonic plates.  I kept rocking back and forth and a thought began to creep in.  What if...what if instead of shedding my skin and feeling as if I had to protect that oh so tender new and exposed skin, the skin I did not yet know...what if instead of rising from the ashes of what remained into a new form...what if I chose to step fully into the skin that had been being formed around my blood and bones?  What if I  began moving from the inside out?  Perhaps this seems easier for an outsider looking in to realize, but for me it was revolutionary.  In that moment, in the rocking of the old chair, I understood that I had to think about it differently.  This time I could not shed or rise.  This time I needed to step into and inhabit who I am becoming. 

The old rocking chair made the sound of of its bones creaking as I continued to move back and forth and I believe the friction of its' moving sparked a small and delicate flame.  That flame flickered and I was moved.  What if like a painting, this was an offering from my soul...what if I shared the experience of my inhabitance with you?  You who might be interested in what I might have to say.  In that moment I made a decision to fully inhabit my skin and a commitment that I would share what I had been previously unwilling to do so.

Here is my promise to you whose eyes are moving over the formation of these words - I will be honest and I will paint now not only with images but also with words the picture of my soul.  The same rules will apply...I will not make a portrait of myself that is easier for the masses to embrace or one that is an inaccurate depiction of who I am or understand myself to be,  I offer you me, as honestly as I am capable of seeing myself as I begin consciously inhabiting the skin around my blood and bones.  I have always believed that we grant each other permission.  What do I mean by this you might ask.  Well, I believe that the more capable you are of being truly and authentically who you are and the more you live or inhabit this authentic truth, the more you allow or give permission for others to do the same.  What I have to say and what I will write is in many ways an invitation and one I offer with and in the deepest of love. 

So...it is time for us to pull up our beautiful, old, creaking rocking chairs and let us sit side by side.  Let the stories begin.