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