An Artist’s Musing – 2/01/10

A lotus, burning bright like a jewel, bursts open in the temple of my heart, unfolding the deep mystery through the light of love.

An Artist’s Musing – At One with the Sea – 1/24/2010

I am one with the Sea, floating in Her bluegreen softness, my hair streaming out like seaweed.
The sun, lighting my mind’s eye, while casting honeycombed patterns on the Sea floor.

A Painting in Process

Here are 4 different stages of a painting I started a few weeks ago.  Though it makes me feel a little naked to show unfinished work, I hope sharing my process will help to demystify the artistic process and help others struggling with their creativity.

You can see how the star shape from the first one got lost and is reappearing merged with the figure.  Stay tuned to see what changes are coming next.

An Artist’s Musing – January 11, 2010

My consciousness resides in the moments where time disappears,
Where my skin tingles with the space around me.
Thru painting, in painting, when painting
I move outside of time.

The Magic of Art – An Artist’s Musing

Art satisfies the desire for something magical, something wonderous. 

Try it out for yourself.  Discover the magic as an image emerges from the flowing and mixing of colors.

New Year Intentions

It’s hard to believe that it’s a new year and a new decade!    On one hand it seems like just yesterday we were beginning 2009 and then on the other hand so much has happened that it seems like long ago.  Time is a strange concept for sure.

First I want to send everyone positive intentions for a year full of love, harmony, prosperity and adventure.   We certainly face many challenges right now, but we each can choose how we react to whatever situation we find ourselves in.  May we all find the strength to choose love over fear.

It’s my intention to pay more attention to my blog this year.  In addition to longer reflections on art related topics I plan to post “An Artist’s Musings” – something like an online sketchbook/journal.

Plus I invite you to join me on a painting journey, which for me is a spiritual journey.   As my process almost always becomes a courtship between control and letting go, I’ll share it with you by posting images of paintings in progress.  On this journey you’ll discover that there are no mistakes; that painting, like life, unfolds magically as we open ourselves to the flow of the source.

And so here’s my first of
An Artist’s Musing

The sun shines in my mind’s eye
Creating
The ever present pattern of glowing interlocking circles
The Seed of Life becomes
the Flower of Life

Beauty and the Beast – The Transformative Power of Love

What is the heart?  Western science considers it to be a mere muscle which is vital to life functions.  Ancient Vedic traditions sees the heart as the mediator between heaven and earth; in Chinese medicine the heart is the center of wisdom.   Now researchers at the HeartMath Institute are confirming what mystics and poets throughout the ages have known; the transformative power of love is real.  Their experiments prove that the impact of love is real and measurable.

Beauty Loves the Beast - the Transformative Power of Love, oil on canvas, 36" x 48"

The story of Beauty and the Beast is a beautiful illustration of the transformative power of love.  In this fairy tale Beauty is forced to live with the Beast after her father picked a rose from the Beast’s garden.  Though the Beast appears to be a monster, he treats Beauty with kindness and love. Every day he asks her to marry him but she, being horrified by his appearance, refuses.  Finally he allows her to return home with the promise that she will return to him in a week.  She becomes delayed.  A magic mirror he gave her allows her to see that he is dying from a broken heart.   She rushes to him and, as he lay dying, she realizes that she loves him, for his heart is pure.  When she professes her love, he is turned back into his true self, a prince. By her love, he is transformed.

Quantum physics  continues to show us that everything is connected.  The observer affects what is being observed.  Love is a universal pattern of resonant energy; focus on love and both you and the object of your love are changed.

Try it out.  See what happens if you focus on love.  Start with small things.   See what happens next time someone is rude to you and you respond with kindness instead of anger.  On the freeway slow down to let someone merge.

If you have an experience of the transformative power of love please share it with us here.

Trees – An Enduring Symbol of Life

Trees, trees, trees – I seem to have become obsessed with trees.

A couple of months ago a collector started me on a journey into the life of trees. He had written to inquire about a piece of mine that had been in his family for fifteen years called Into the Woods. Seeing that piece from so long ago made me realize that over the years I have painted and drawn many trees. I decided to explore the tree of life symbol even more fully in my work.

Throughout human history, trees have been powerful symbols. Most all creation stories include a tree of life, which often allude to the mystical concept of the interconnectedness of all life. To me personally, the single tree represents the enduring, cyclical nature of life; woods or forests are symbolic of the mystery of primordial life. Human beings resonate deeply with trees, who like us, reach down to the ground and up to the sky at the same time.

Recently people have commented that many of my tree images look very female or anthropomorphic. Upon reflection, I can see this is true. I spent a couple of days this week down at the Rio Grande drawing the Cottonwood trees in their annual display of golden finery. After five or so hours of staring at, and drawing a tangle of Cottonwoods, I began to see the actual trees as human figures. The almost black trunks became graceful dancers against a backdrop of golds, greens, and blues.

In Sacred Geometry there is a concept called  “squaring the circle” or “the marriage of heaven and earth.”  Here the circle, representing the spiritual, is surrounded by a square, representing the physical.

To me, tree symbolism expresses this same concept.  The roots reach down into the earth, the physical, while the branches and leaves reach up to the sky, the spiritual; heaven and earth are married in the body of the tree.

On the physical level, trees provide us with so much.  They are the lungs of the planet, breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen; they provide shelter; they provide food; they provide shade; they provide fuel.   Mystics and cutting edge scientists agree; the physical is a manifestation of the spiritual, the unified field.  We’re all connected.  Perhaps my desire to work with images of trees at this time is a physical manifestation of humanity’s spiritual need to reconnect with the natural world.   At a time when the old paradigm has brought us to the brink of destruction via global climate change, war, and disease, trees are a good reminder of the sacredness of Mother Earth.  Hug a tree; plant a tree; love Mother Earth.

To view more images of my work with trees visit http://judithshawart.com/portfolio/trees-flowers-and-nature

My Heart Opens – A Feminine Perspective on Artmaking

While showing my work at an art festival, a man stopped to look at my painting, My Heart Opens.  He seemed to be taken with the piece and it’s thick texture.  He was very intent on telling me about materials I could use to build up texture before beginning to paint.  No matter how much we talked I couldn’t get him to understand that the texture is a result of my process, created through a  courtship between control and letting go.  A random splatter of paint reveals an eye.   Scratching into the paint with a palette knife defines a hip.  A scumble of light color plays over the splatters and scratches, creating a texture of depth and light.

My Heart Opens, oil on canvas, 36" x 24"

“Who but a woman would think to put red down on top of that lavender?  Certainly not me,” he concluded.

Though he understood that there is something definitely feminine in my work, what he  couldn’t realize is that thought was not the main actor, either in the build-up of texture or the application of red on top of lavender.  Most of my painting decisions are a result of a feeling.  This approach arises from a feminine world-view which acts from feeling and intuition.  He’s cut off from this feminine perspective, not because he’s a man, but because we live in a patriarchal world which demonizes and belittles the feminine.  We are stuck in the rational, mechanical world of our intellect.  Perhaps women can connect with their feminine more easily than a man can, but it’s there within us all.

As our world careens into climatic and economic chaos, now more than ever, we need to reconnect with the feminine nurturing principle, reconnect with the Goddess, in our understanding of the divine. Worshipping only a male God cuts us off from our source, our wholeness.  We have lost our balance as we kneel at the altar of patriarchal rationality and control.

The male principle initiates action and movement; the female principle nurtures and is responsive to those actions and movements. Together and in balance they work together to create a world of compassionate abundance.   Together and in balance they work together to create a world where the divine is both transcendent and immanent, is embodied, is in the small myriad moments of every day.

When painting, instead of asking myself, “What should I do?”,  I find my question is more often “How does this painting want to be?”    And usually the painting is a reflection of how I want to be.  The painting, My Heart Opens, is a perfect example of that.   Though most of my work is textured, this one is extreme.  I feel  this painting took a long time to reach its conclusion because living with an open heart is a lifelong practice shaped like a spiral.  I reach one level of openness and a painting is finished.  With time the curve of the spiral moves up and out.  A new level is sought and a new painting struggles to be born, seeking a balance between the male initiation of action and the female responsiveness to that action.

Reflections on Katrina

This past weekend was the 4 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s catastrophic effect on New Orleans.
In the last days of August, 2005 I watched and listened in horror as the tragic drowning of my hometown took place. My sister called me to give me a link to a New Orleans website which was airing footage of our old neighborhood, close to Lake Pontchatrain . Our family home was less than a block away from where there was a break in the London Avenue Canal. We saw the shots taken from the helicopter of the home we grew up in, with water up to the roof.

Then over the next few days my horror and grief turned to disbelief and anger at our government’s lack of response to the catastrophe. In memory of the lives lost and forever changed due to Katrina and to the increasing and urgent need for change in how we live on the earth, I send out this prayer I wrote to Mother Earth during the unfolding of the tragedy in New Orleans.

Dear Mother Earth,

"Giving Thanks" - this expresses a feeling of supplication to a greater power.

I am so grateful for the abundance you have bestowed on your children for so many millennia. Through the use of your rivers and seas, your minerals, plants and trees, we have lived and died, creating empires and wealth.

I am so very sorry for the arrogance and greed with which we have used and abused your body.

I am so very sorry that we have valued our own comfort over your protection.

I am so very sorry that many of your children have used your wealth to hold power over and to oppress your other children.

And now we see your anger as you rise up. Your rivers, oceans, valleys and mountains are on the move. As you move, seeking a lost balance, you destroy our cities and kill your children, who have abused you for so long.

The pain and destruction, the misery that your children have wrecked upon each other and upon your body, weighs heavy like a stone in my heart. A river of tears washes over me as your waters wash over my hometown, drowning her in a toxic flood, a cataclysm of natural and manmade orders.

We beg for mercy.
Be as gentle as you can as you cleanse your body of the toxins we have stockpiled here.

For those of us who are sacrificed in these times of great change, please accept our bodies back into your deep womb. Nourish and enlighten us to a rebirth into a new way of being and living in harmony with your rhythms.

And for those of us who survive, please provide the means through which our hearts can open to love. Help us to find our way out of the desert of greed and selfishness and into a new dawn of compassion, harmony and peace.