Where it started today

This morning really early we started to paint on the pavement on the Warmoestraat. Which is the main street in the Red-light district of Amsterdam...I've been participating in this street painting project today. A project that was created by a large group of artists with the purpose to bring the people who work and live on that street closer together, to bond. The people are working and living here had been asked to write a story about their lives, to share something personal about them with their neighbors. The stories were made into drawings and then translated into a huge stencils, this was done by various artists who have been working for several months now on this project. I was asked to participate to paint the street because there were too many last minute cancellations to do this part of the project.I was very happy to help. It was not only a very fun day...but also nice because i saw lots of familiar faces from fellow artists again after many years, from the time we went to art school together..

I have made lots of pictures and won’t  put them all in one post...it would be too much. This is the early morning preparation part of the day, before we painted anything yet..

              

                              

                               

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Assimilating with my animal guide

The painting of the white horse journey is coming to its ending faze. I had some struggles with it because I had real trouble letting go of attaching to an end result. I was very focused on giving an accurate description of my journey, and wanted to paint just that. That was before I understood a tiny tiny little more of what shamanic painting is. Like the aspect of letting the painting talk to you essentially.. But hey, let’s not leave the impression that I know anything about shamanic painting now.  What I try to say is that I understood even less then nothing a few weeks ago...

You know I hope I don’t bore anyone because I really need to write all this stuff down right here on my blog.  Because doing that leads me to see connections from a different perspective then when I would write it down in a dairy form and just for my own eyes to see. I am discovering all sorts of new connections though writing for you. I have always wanted to write a book when I would grow up..Well maybe this blog is a start.. 

But okay,  back to the journey. What I wanted to talk about is that I had this really weird experience with the white horse after I took my journey.  The day I took the journey was the same day I had my first session with a teacher to lift my energy work up onto a more professional level. I wrote about that fabulous learning experience in this post.  Anyway, back to the white horse... that evening I did a guided mediation for the learning session with my teacher and in that mediation the white horse re-appeared. But in  a totally unexpected way. 

During meditating I felt my legs change into horse legs, white horse legs. But i also changed in my upper body, I wore a red Capulet. And I felt I was looking like a person from the middle ages. Could not quite figure out if I was male or female, I tend more towards male, but with a feminine kind of boyish energy. It was so so weird, I have never had something like a change of body occur to me during a meditation before.  And then on top of that I did not even change into a another human but into a half animal half human.. Actually when I write this down I changed into a centaur when you consider I had (white)horse legs. And wow, now that I think of this I wrote a post a few days ago about the cornflower. Which has been my favorite flower  for as long as I can remember, so I researched its symbolic meaning and learned that this flower has as Latin name, Cyanus, which has come from the centaur. Wow, is this what it feels like?? When the subconscious starts talking to me through its web of archetypical symbols and images to give me messages about who I am and where I need to go to be on my true path??  

I feel that the main message I got from the white horse Is I that I should release all tendency towards wanting to control situations that are tender and purely made out of emotions. Just leave them as they are, leave them be and go with their flow...without wanting to be the driver of those situations. without attachment to a certain outcome and trying to steer the car that way! In surrendering my desire to steer not only will my physical health improve but also I feel clearly that my emotional health will benefit. And I also believe that any situation will flow, where it is supposed to go. For me this is a tough one to live by. As I always was the one in the driver’s seat. In earthly (money/work) matters I still feel I have to take charge firmly. Maybe that needs to change as well, to leave air to breathe for me and let more abundance flow in to my life naturally.  It’s just so hard to live in faith and surrender when you feel like ( like I do) that you have always had to do everything by yourself. I realize now that I took the drives seat as much as I could to create a sense of safety for myself. Safety has always been a scares state of being in my life. Originating where it originates from for everybody, early childhood. 

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Ready for my next journey

Yesterday i had a break-through in finishing this painting. The painting felt stuck for a while. I layered over layer to get into the heart of it, but it failed to work for days..  And there it was suddenly flowing again.. No reason what caused it externally. And today it has flown into be finished :-)  It's a painting with many layers, with many truths, with many intentions and thus with many stories.. It's original reason for me to paint it has turned into another. This one is about my first shamanic journey. It's not about the energy of someone else. 

It’s become about my own energy... 

I feel happy when looking at it....Not just for the visual way it turned out but for the energy i know is in there, between all the layers.

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let the struggle be...

I was, and still am, struggling so much with this painting. This is has not began out of one of the shamanic journeys with Pixie Campbell in the course Visual Quest i'm doing. .  I started this the same day I took my firts journey.  I started it parallel to the one about the journey. 

This one is, or was, (i still dont know), supposed to be a gift for someone. Someone I like but have never met in person. I wanted to see if i could paint that persons energy. But the more I work on it the more it seems to be about the journey i took. 

It’s so weird how painting has a flow of where it wants to go of its own, and letting that process just be is beautiful. That’s one of the many things about painting I need to learn. 

Pixie Campbell’s’ wise words help me a lot in my process of letting me come through in my paintings as opposed to letting my intellect and what i learned in art school come through into my work...

Painting and using ones intuition....

Bring it all out, lay it all on the canvas. This can bring up what sucks or what still hurt, stuff that’s eating at us, what’s bothering us, what’s glugging our pipes, what’s creating resistance.  Which obviously not limited to painting. Our discomfort, our anxieties comes up.  So you know what your struggles are about. The best therapist we have is to create.  To follow that energy into the painting.  There is always an opportunity, it’s to look where we can affirm and reassure, the opportunity is to let it be, to let it flow.  To practice acceptance, sit with the discomfort., and at the same keep moving through it. Painting is about being brave.. flow at into the emotional waters of yourself.

-Pixie Campbell 

These two creatures are probably the only elements i was content with in the older versions of this painting. I dont know what they are, but i like them..

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Painting in the dark

                 

I was very unhappy with the way this painting had turned out in the 'face-part'. Each time my eye caught it i felt a stab with discontent in my body. I did not know what to do with it, its been bugging me for a few weeks now.

Yesterday evening i finally mustered up the courage to paint the face away. By the time i started this it was already pitch dark in my balcony painting studio. I li a candle and ignored the lack of light and started the 'work over' anyway. Thinking it could be intesting to see what happens when paint a painting in the dark.. I wasnt worried to ruin it because with this painting i did not have much too lose anyway.

Maybe it's time to experiment some more 'candle light painting' :-)



The words of wisdom from John O'Donohue are perfectly describing in what mood i was painting this one when i initially painted it a few weeks ago...


“All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul. You are here to realize and honor these possibilities. When love comes in to your life, unrecognized dimensions of your destiny awaken and blossom and grow. Possibility is the secret heart of time.”-John O'Donohue

                          

                 By daylight this morning...i like it, maybe it shoud stay this way, 'a face in the clouds'...

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Maturity

Painting by Alexandra Duprez

I want to ‘grow up’ in painting. What ever that means! Maybe for this to happen i need to grow up first in real life, ha!

I just know maturing has something to do with not ‘fabricating’ a painting... I want to be able to release control and let it flow naturally from me to where ‘it’ wants to go. But then how do i cope with that 'breaking-point'? There always is the arrival on that one frustrating point in the painting process. And I am right there NOW!  Yesterday I knew already i was close to that ugly moment, especially when I looked at the pictures I had posted on my blog of my most recent painting. Looking at pictures in the middle of a painting process makes me able to find myself at more distance This distance is where I can ‘see’ if a painting is going where I want it to go...See there is that stupid need to control again.

Maybe i should put it this way: when i saw the pics i took yesterday I felt not connected to the painting the way i wished i would?  I had a pretty good idea of what feeling I wanted to come forward  in the painting about the woman I am painting, well not her literally, but her energy.  But looking at the pictures made me realize I wasn’t there yet, not even close... And this frustrating feeling stays with me all day (and night).. I feel like I need to grow up in my paintings, but what is that??? I just have this vague notion of what that is when I look at other peoples work. I just don't know how to do it myself.

In the pictures below I try to explain visualy my feel of  what a‘mature’ painting looks like.

 Alexandra Duprez

 Caroline Gaedchens

Katia Monaci

 Katia Monaci

 Katia Monaci

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Painted energy no2

This is the start faze, or i think it's more in the middle faze now, of another painting i am doing for someone that i don’t know in my daily life, I never seen her, just talked to her through email. She doesn’t know I’m doing this, it's a gift for her. She has an energy, a vibe that i find very appealing to paint. I truly hope ones she gets it she will recognize herself on some level in this painting.. This is a new way of painting for me and you could call it channeling someone’s energy in paint. I would like to expand this and get better at it and I also hope this will grow into a means of living for me..   

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Landscape research

 Right now i was doing some research in finding landscapes pictures that resonate with me for a painting i am working on. I found some really nice pictuers and thought i would share them here..

       

                         

 

The sources of these pictures can all be found here 

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I am on my way!!!

Paiting by Katia Monaci

I feel so good after my firts shamanic journey yesterday. I feel like i don't know where i'm going, but i'm on my way...

Yesterday i did my firts shamanic journey. I was a bit nervous before hand, but it wasn't scary at all. I got back just fine and I did not have the feeling any second that i might get lost somewhere in the lower world. These were my initial fears, but they weren't legit at all. Today i want to feel out how to translate what i saw onto a canvas.. Let's see where that will lead. 

What felt and saw:

• white horse
• black eyes
• blue-ish around the eyes
• Release message: to let go of control
• Message: to flow
• soft green landscape
• wide 'french' farm landscape
• blue sky
• calmness
• warmth
• smell of august
• harvest time
• big feather
• Round  reddish brown sign drawn on my skin around my heart 

Some other stuff that came up later yesterday and i think has something to do with the journey:

• full moon
• Women feet and lower part of the legs turning into hooves of a white horse
• Polish medicine women
• arrow
• my feet as white horse legs
• red capulet
• vulcano
• dark female strenght

Card i pulled for myself for today is called 'the feathers of the firebird'

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Real hands and real skin

This morning started with finding a piece of wisdom from Jada Pinkett Smith. I found it on my Facebook timeline. It felt like it was speaking directly to me. I feel lots of resistance when thinking about what it said, because it's NOT what i want to look at in myself. But on the other hand I know it’s the only way to go. I have to look at if i am true to my own heart right now.  

After i was alone i started to prepare for my 1st shamanic journey, like i planned for today and I wrote about in my previous post. I prepared doing some sage burning rituals. But i somehow never got to make the journey because there was an unfinished painting on my table and it kept pulling my attention. I just could not look away. So i decided to finish this first and maybe do the journey tomorrow.   

The painting made me feel very emotional and i felt it strong because of that first piece of wisdom i read this morning, (the one from Jada). My process when I am painting is much about an intuitive flow, and I pick up from what surrounds me, and all that needs my souls' attention finds a way into my work.

So today was about this deep sadness i been feeling and that has been excruciating for me. I want to be lifted from this sadness.. Even if this dream I been having never comes true for him and me, the dream i been whishing for for 10 lonely months now. I don’t know what to do about that anymore to let it come true... I just know I desperately want to feel happy again.

Words in the painting:

*Please black Obsidian, I need your power.

*am I somebody’s dream, (woman)??

*My tears are connected to heaven, my blood is the rain in your heart.

*are you my spirit, Horse?

*NO! I don’t want to be looked at from nehind glass and from a 300 miles distance anymore..I want to be touched, I want to be held, I want to be loved by real hands and real skin.

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Inspiration

Respond to every call that excites your spirit

-Rumi

If you look for the source of the paintings or the artist who made them, look in my Pinterest

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