Welcome to this week on the art/life trail ride…in our third week of the 30 day emotional heath and well being challenge let’s be bold as we celebrate curiosity and possibility.
Last fall while writing the 2016 Lifecycle Forecast I realized that the word Koyaanisqatsi, which roughly translates to: life out of balance or chaotic life, would be a fit for our creative direction.
We’re more than half way through the Growth moon/month and events both within and around us offer a rich blend of…
Choice and Opportunity
Do you feel victimized by situations, circumstances, relationships, challenges and even routines? This week discover and uncover the treasure of emotional balance that can lead to creative heights.
The challenge: address afflicted emotions like fear, confusion, anxiety, immobility and overwhelm one day at a time. Seek beauty and the gold within during this 30 day emotional health and well-being challenge. Notice that like water emotions are ever in a state of flux.
My grandmother had a Buddhist site meditation in her curio cabinet…I was drawn to it from an early age:
Speak No, See No, Hear No Evil
Now when I see three friends I’ll ask them to pose:
Speak NO, See NO. Hear NO, Drozda, Charles Taylor Art Center, 2014
Here’s additional support:
The Criteria of Emotional Maturity
The ability to deal constructively with reality
The capacity to adapt to change
A relative freedom from symptoms that are produced by tensions and anxieties
The capacity to find more satisfaction in giving than receiving
The capacity to relate to other people in a consistent manner with mutual satisfaction and helpfulness
The capacity to sublimate,
to direct one’s instinctive hostile energy
into creative and constructive outlets
The capacity to love
William Menninger, MD
Part of emotional health and well-being is to actively celebrate organic growth… even within the small world of your studio…it’s possible to have a big experience that changes everything….again and again.
This entire Natural Year offers choice and opportunity. You can choose to work with grace, tenderness, empathy, humanness, benevolence, and kindness as though these qualities are workable in your hand like clay.
In the Buddhist tradition, a year such as 2016 calls forth Metta/loving kindness meditation.
This moon/month the challenge is to engage in conscious reflection and to actively seek out (rather than shy away from) the ways in which life is out of balance and in chaos in and around you. This week as the moon is in her full phase you cn see your shadow, you can feel your own tension…negative stress or creative stress…choose.
Chaos = first stage in creation process
Once upon a time when I moved and began to reconstruct my work in the world it was deeply confusing. I found the Laurie Anderson Sharkey’s Day Today lyrics “I turn around, I turn around again, nobody knows me, nobody knows my name’ playing in a loop… so I sought support. My exceptional mentor and coach helped me in very specific creative ways to remember that chaos is not to be feared. Her guidance got me outta the poison ivy and tangled briars and back onto the art/life trail.
Keeping the keyword Growth in mind we deal with the fact that weeds take over every chance they get! Every gardener knows there is a need for ‘bucket o’ weed’ vigilance. Think of cultivating YOUR physical, emotional and intuitive balance. Think about how you leak YOUR power like an old crimped garden hose. Unbend and get some duct tape on that baby. Get flexible…be an open channel…step onto your pollen path.
Consider the emotional clues, your warm waters, that lead to YOUR treasure. Explore your inner wild and connect with what you will ultimately leave as YOUR legacy:
Last week we explored the concept of empowered thinking. Continue to imagine this as an appropriate time for looking at how YOUR thoughts make YOU feel.
On the trail ride we practice ways to achieve healthy organic Growth. We keep coming back to the center, to the place where sanity lives. We celebrate possibility. We connect with the adult within, the wise Spirit Self, and we look to where the beauty trail leads…following your own pollen path.
During this fast moving and exciting summer time consider your thinking patterns and how they make you feel. Don’t like what’s going on up there in the cranium? Make the switch to thoughts that point you in the direction that you want to be going and growing!
Can you feel it? WE are lit up this month with ideas of how our thoughts filter down into our emotional body. We’re growing UP^ and taking responsibility. Feelings when witnessed begin to flow, weed thoughts are removed, we feel spacious. We wiggle our roots and get dedicated to creative healing by uplifting the self.
Still Life, Wren House Studio, Drozda, 2016
Encourage yourself. Be confident. Notice how capable you are to conceive the work of beauty, goodness and compassion that only you can bring into the world.
Oh beauty before me,
Beauty behind me,
Beauty to the right of me,
Beauty to the left of me,
Beauty above me
Beauty below me,
I am on the pollen path.
Navajo Prayer
This week in the studio I’m working on my Reclamation series inspired by my monthly time off the grid at my retreat tree farm…
Work in progress, Wren House Studio, Drozda, 2016
As well as having fun hanging out with 10 young artists at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art. We’re creating mono prints exploring a new technique each day.
Magical Mono Print, Student work, Drozda, 2016
See you next week on the art/life trail ride…we’re reading sign posts for sanity and creative brilliance…a sometimes messy process that expands in the best way when we encourage one another in our Growth.
I hope you’ll find one person this week that you can champion!
Donna Iona Drozda, Wren House Studio © 2016
