"Chick-a-Boom", acrylic, acrylic "skins" on w/c paper
10"X11"
|
|
| Imagine With Art Newsletter |
|
|
I welcome your comments!
susan@imaginewithart.com
707-824-8163
Table of Contents:
Book Club
Art Play
Paint With Me
Art and Wellness
| |
|
 Dear Friend,
Some people may be worried that I've gone "chickie" (another version of batty), what with all the chicken and other bird paintings on my walls lately. But truly, there are other things in this world that inspire me as well!
May got too busy for writing a newsletter, what with my son Andy's graduation, three workshops and preparation for Art at the Source Open Studios. But I've been thinking of you and all the things I want to share. So I'll do a bit of catching up, sharing new books, a new art play technique, and opportunities to join me in the coming months.
And hopefully you locals will be able to drop by for the second weekend of open studios June 11 and 12, 10am-5pm both days at 2550 Lewis Dr., Sebastopol, CA. I'll be doing mixed media paintings demos in the studio on Saturday the 11th at 12noon and Sunday the 12th at 11am and tempting you with paintings in a wide range of sizes and prices to add to your art collection.
Cheers,
Susan
|
|
|
| Book Club: Following Your Bliss
At one point last month I realized I was reading two books with the word "bliss" in the title. The first was the Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiness Place in the World by Eric Weiner. This one I recommend as fun summer reading as a way to travel to many of the world's most exotic places like Bhutan and Qatar searching for truths about what makes us happy (if not exactly finding them). I mention it here probably because of the part about Iceland where just about everybody pursues some creative outlet without the fear of failure that we are so inhibited by. I actually have a paper weight in my studio which says "what would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" What's your answer to that one? Personally I'd like to write a song, music and lyrics, but first I need to get back to playing guitar or piano, both of which I abandoned years ago, probably because I'd failed to live up to my own standards.
The second book was Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation by Joseph Campbell. I remember watching Bill Moyers' interviews with Joseph Campbell many years ago and being very moved. I don't know if Campbell originated the phrase "follow your bliss", but he was a champion of the idea that we all have the capacity to recognize which path leads to an experience of the transcendence in this life, if we only listen deeply to what moves us and go with that.
He believed that we must find our own mythical metaphors or symbolic wisdom to support us on this path and to evoke "a sense of grateful, affirmative awe before the monstrous mystery that is existence". In modern life we must draw as much from the arts, and I believe also our own art making, as from religion and mythology to guide and support us on the path.
Campbell in fact boldly addresses the role of the artist in myth making.
"The artist is meant to put the objects of this world together in such a way that through them you will experience that light, that radiance which is the light of our consciousness and which all things both hide and when properly looked upon, reveal."
Next time you do a painting, an other art piece, or engage in music, writing, or dance, consider it as a vehicle for the expression of bliss, a metaphor which communicates the transcendent aspect of life directly into the moment.
And then there's what Campbell has to say about venturing into this realm of myth creating adventure, that the dangers are always there. "There's always the possibility of a fiasco. But there's also the possibility of bliss."
|
Art Play: Acrylic Skins
Most of us have had the experience while working on a painting, of looking over at the palette with all it's loose interplay of colors, and wishing that were the painting instead! Well, this technique of collaging acrylic skins, which I learned at the Bob Burridge workshop I attended in April, is an appealing way to utilize palette serendipity. Actually you can create the skins "on purpose" by squirting different colors of acrylic paint onto a plastic surface (or any non-stick surface) and spread it out thinly, mixing colors as you wish. With the above sample I just took a roller on a run through the wet pigments so they blended. Let the paint dry, overnight is best, and then peal it off in a sheet or pieces. (This is the super fun part.) It will stick to itself so you may want to lay it out on wax paper til you use it. Now you're ready to collage it onto a painting, cutting it up in whatever shapes you need. I've been using it to decorate my Party Birds in colorful feather boas, but you may see flowers or just colorful abstract shapes. Glue it on with gel medium. I find that skins add an element of spontaneity that rescues paintings from the "ho-hum". |
|
Come paint with me this summer!
Whether you're a beginner or advanced painter, Imagine With Art workshops inspire and connect you with your playful expressive art self.
|
|
Inks and Textures Galore!
You'll love the way the fluid inks combine with thicker gessos and other textures for surprising effects. Free yourself from the rules of traditional art instruction and learn to express your inner voice in this playful mixed media workshop Your imagination will take flight as you paint, draw, stamp, comb, and splash colorful inks onto collage textured papers.
This workshop may be taken either as an introduction to the Muse Group art journaling process or as an abstract painting class.
When: July 16, 17
Time: 10am-4:30 pm
Cost: $160
Location: The Studio in the Orchard, North Sebastopol
Barnyard Sketching
Put on your straw hat and pack your sketchbook and watercolors for a day of sketching the chickens and goats in a magical garden sanctuary. Instruction in quick capture sketching with pen and loose watercolor applications will embolden your sketches and bring freshness and movement to the page!
When: August 27
Time: 10am-4:30pm
Cost: $85
Where: The Rose and Thorn Gift shop/garden, 10050 Bodega Hwy., Sebastopol
Art Journaling in the Muse Groups
There are openings on three dates this summer for you to drop in on a Muse Group. These are laboratories to spark creative expression, mini-workshops to explore new painting techniques and learn a practice which captures your thoughts, feelings and intuitions in a playful visual format.
Sundays: June 19, July 10, and Aug. 14
Time:
10am-2:30pm
Cost: $45/drop in session
Location: The Studio in the Orchard, North Sebastopol
To register for workshops and Muse Groups contact Susan.
|
|
|
Art and Wellness
Last month my fellow Muse and teaching partner Shawna Swetech invited me to a nursing conference where we set up a display. Included were her fun materials for the Art at the Bedside project she has started at Kaiser Permanente hospital in Santa Rosa, as well as our art journals and information about our upcoming workshop for nurses titled Wellness Through Art Expression.
Shawna is a medical/surgical nurse, Vision Quest guide, Integrative Wellness practitioner, nurse educator, visual artist and poet. From her personal experience of healing through the practice of writing poetry and art journaling in the Muse group she has created a program for patients to taste the benefits of these practices as a healing alternative to other therapies in the hospital. Patients who are able will now have access to several different art kits, including a journal book and pen, collage materials, "worry doll" making kit, and crayons and coloring book of healing images.
One has only to engage in creative processes like art making and expressive writing to experience the surprising benefits to the healing process on not only a mental level, but physical and spiritual as well. Caregivers like nurses are particularly vulnerable to the stress of caregiving and to compassion fatigue and burnout. So we decided that a good place to start was to provide an opportunity for nurses to experience the benefits of art and then to be able to identify patients to share this with.
July 15 Shawna and I will be offering a rejuvenating day-long workshop Wellness Through Art Expression for nurses at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts. Let your nurse friends know! 6 CE hours will be offered. For more information and to register contact me.
|
|
Viewing Art Like Being in Love?
And in case you think that you have to DO art to experience healing, get a load of this new research:
"In a series of pioneering brain-mapping experiments, Semir Zeki, Professor of Neurobiology and Neuroaesthetics at University College London, has revealed that viewing art can give just as much pleasure as being in love.
Zeki concluded that viewing art triggers a surge of the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine into the orbito-frontal cortex of the brain, resulting in feelings of intense pleasure."
Read more from the article here.
Of course I suppose it matters what sort of art you are viewing. . .
|
|
|
|
So keep arting it up, creating new mythology for yourself and to share with others.
And please come visit me in my studio next weekend, Saturday or Sunday, 10am-5pm and bring your friends. My website has not been updated yet, but you can see all the latest paintings I'm showing here on my blog.
We're promised sunshine this weekend, and my Passion Vine out front is all geared up to show off its blooms, upstaging my art. Nevertheless hopefully there will be some dopamine surging effects on viewers of my paintings. . .or the like, and you will be welcomed!
Cheers,
Susan Cornelis
Visit me on my Imagine With Art Facebook page  . To share this formatted newsletter with friends, use the Forward email button below.
|
|
|
|
|
