Compassion

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I made this image yesterday as a reminder to myself.

The day before I discovered my only Sister is to have a mastectomy. I was shocked and saddened by the news and immediately offered to cut my travels short and be with her if she needs me. I imagined myself in her position and my heart hurt for her gorgeous children.

Yesterday I was behaving very erratically, flying into tempers over trivial things and crying about anything. Any kind of song had me oozing, and the Winnie-the Pooh story my kind hubby read to me about Eeeyore’s birthday had me positively blubbing.

I consider myself pretty sensitive to the emotions of others, I’m naturally attuned from childhood and my training as a psychotherapist developed it. But I can be pretty slow when it comes to defining and responding to my own feelings. This ‘bizarre’ behaviour brought my family of inner critics marching out in force accusing me of weakness and craziness and so on and so on.

It took a while to realise, doh!, I’m sad, and maybe I need some compassion too. It’s relatively easy to self love when behaving nobly and selflessly, but it’s harder when thrashing around in wordless pain. That’s when it’s most important to wrap yourself up in love and hold yourself in kindness until the hurt diminishes and you can see straight again.

Have a compassionate day.

Recycling Your Art

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Here’s a little trick I use a lot, it’s a handy way to recycle your art and to turn something previously unpleasing into a visual delight.

I often take photos of my sketchbooks, sometimes the whole page, sometimes focusing in on an interesting detail or texture.

I then print out these images and continue to work them, that might mean adding some fine details or radically transforming the whole thing, splodging paint and getting wild.

You can really have a lot of fun with it, putting bunny ears on your boyfriend or writing an inspirational quote over an interesting texture. There are no rules and there is no wrong, it is a particularly permission giving technique because if you really make a royal mess, you still have your original photo so you can have another go if you like (though I personally believe the royal messes are often the most interesting!)

 

This one for example is a photo of a not particularly interesting collage in my sketchbook, you might just be able to make out the dancing woman in yellow on the right. I printed out the photo and finger painted with red and yellow paint creating more layers. It lacked any focal point so I drew the dancing aboriginal over the top and added the white dots. It is probably complete, but who knows, I may take another photo, paint another layer, like creativity itself, the possibilities are endless.

Have a go, have fun!

30 Days of glorious Goddesses

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I’m excited to announce the glorious 30 day Goddess course is up for grabs. It’s a truly fantastic opportunity for deep creative learning with some truly luminous teachers like Patti Digh, Julia Cameron, Sark and… me!

I show you how to make a beautiful personal table top shrine, it’s very accessible and easy  using materials you probably already have knocking around in your cupboards.

If you’d like to make this excellent investment in your creative and spiritual well being, just click the Goddess circle badge on the right and it will take you where you need to go.

I really do recommend it, and I will get a percentage if you purchase so THANK YOU!!

One week 7 pictures

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Hello, and g’day to you.

I’m in Melbourne at the moment, 7 months in to our year long travel adventure. Like anywhere you go in life or in the world this trip has it’s rough and it’s smooth, it’s troublesome and it’s silly. Here is a selection of my photographs and sketchbook images to illustrate my week.

I caught the drops on this fountain as the sun was going down and the beautiful low light I call angel light, made rainbow from the drops.

This is a collage ad painting of a Shaman, I’ve been looking at aboriginal images and inspired how they can magically manifest the power of their anscestors.

I love street art and Melbourne has a fine ever changing gallery.

Some sketchbook art therapy born out of frustration of feeling invisible and diminished.

Bouncing over the bridge.

Can you spot the Bride and Groom in the background?

I hope you’ve enjoyed my week in pictures, I’d love to hear from you, it makes such a difference.

Love Fran

 

Closer to your dream

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I just came across a really interesting exercise to get a better understanding of your dreams. First you put in a request to the Dreamaker before you go to sleep, ask for a dream you will remember.

I tried it last night and I got a net full of extra ordinary rich and varied dreams and rich symbols. They came in several chapters varied from the sacred to the sexual (very rude!) I’ll just share one of the ‘chapters’  of my dream here and give you a taste of how the exercise works.

‘I was walking on a well populated walking track with my husband it was a beautiful open space, big and expansive, possibly heading for the sea. We stopped by a monument, which I was suprised to see was dedicated to Leonard Cohen. My husband was stopping random walkers and pointing the monument out to them, I was quite shy and pleased at how interested and respectful the strangers were.’

Now,what you do is write down the nouns in the dream, the objects, the people, and then you free associate any images, feelings and associations you connect to that noun, don’t judge, just connect, no matter if it sounds a little bonkers. Like this…

Husband: companion, support, familiar

Walking track: unknown territory,freedom,journey

Leonard Cohen: soulful, poet, connection

Monument: Recognition, respect, concrete manifestation

Random walkers: strangers, people to be shy of, journeyers

Then you re-tell your dream story, but this time inserting the associative words you came up with. In this example it feels to me that LC represents the poetic part of myself that I am frightened to make manifest (the monument). With the support of the support I realise that unknown travelers on the journey may well be interested, some times they just need their attention directed by a supportive companion when I’m too shy to connect.

This gave me a big AHA! I hope it may help you to get closer to the gorgeously rich language and wisdom of dream land.

Eye Candy

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This is my creation from yesterday, I used two photos from my archive. The background is of a close up from my paint palette, some gorgeous deep blue made these patterns with PVA glue. I thought it was so beautiful I took a snap of it and thought it may be useful some day. I made a mask in photoshop and layered the buddha head. I love the serenity and mystery of it. I’ve just put it in my shop over at Red Bubble if you like it too!

http://www.redbubble.com/people/spiralfran

 

This is a photo I have diddled about with a bit, it’s little shrine I made on Valentines day. The ‘Amor y Paz’ (Love and Peace) card is from Mexico, as is my old lady paddler, the two fruit are passion fruits given to me the day before by a little old lady in a cafe in New Zealand… maybe a love witch?!

 

This is Fergus, he is one of the animals we have been looking after during a series of house sits in New Zealand. He’s a noble looking boy but he was a bit erratic, he loved a bit of affection until, chomp, that’s enough!

This is my ‘studio’, my travelling art bag, this together with my camera, my computer and my sketch book is how I make art wherever I am in the world.

Here and Now

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Being here, now.

 

What could be simpler?                                                                                                        It’s often so hard.

Being in the most beautiful place can be messed up if you have a headful of chasing, anxious thoughts. And the opposite is true, the most mundane and ordinary can be radiant and serene if we can quiet our busy, blaming brain.

Travel provokes a lot of envious reactions in people, it provides a focus for a lot of escapist fantasies about ‘getting away from it all’. But of course ‘it all’ comes with you in a suitcase wherever you may go. If you’re not able to deal with family fuck-ups, low self-esteem and communication problems back home, you’re not going to be able to half way across the world either.

I’ve been having a difficult time enjoying (or feeling like I deserve) some of the beautiful places I’m seeing on my travels. My sister has been having a series of invasive and increasingly serious operations, this is worrying enough but the crisis has unearthed a lot of scarcely buried resentments and projections in my family. Not with her though, this life threatening event has brought perspective into fast focus, our rivalry and resentment pales into insignificance and I realise how much I love her.

The here and now is not without it’s pain but it’s never without wisdom.

Beautiful Bees

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I’m a big bee fan.

They are the most wonderful creatures who devote their lives to making nectar for the Gods.  Did you know that honey is the only non corruptible food as well as being yummy for your tummy?

Another one of my favourite bee facts is that when one of the girls finds a particularly juicy crop of nectar she will come and dance for her sisters, wiggling her bum and angling her body in relation to the sun to point the way. She will also bring a sample of the nectar to show them what they are looking for and perhaps to provide an incentive!

We visited a bee shop in New Zealand where you can taste the most remarkable array of different flavours, from delicate clove to tasty thyme and the miraculous health giving Manuka. Apart from being gorgeous on toast honey is balm for burns, can be used as antiseptic and good for allergies. It takes one bee a whole lifetime to make one teaspoon of honey, so show some respect next time you have a honey moment.

Bees are in big trouble worldwide, they are battling some natural predators (mites) and also, sadly the enemy to so much natural balance… us. Yep, we in our great wisdom have been busily intent on destroying the foraging areas for bees, mowing down the wild flowers to make more crops to make more money. Einstein made an ominous prophesy that when the bee community ceases to exist, humans will not be far behind, so crucial are they to the food chain.

“if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would have only four years to live”.

They seem more aware and respectful here in New Zealand though, it is so heartening to learn they are working to support the honey bee.  At Arataki where we visited they work in partnership with the local farmers who ensure part of their land is left wild and bee friendly. It’s so wonderful to see the main motivation being balance and respect for nature, as opposed to blind greed which is sadly so often the only incentive.

So let’s hear it for the honey bee, raise your toast in a salute to this industrious and miraculous little being.

In praise of contrary

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There is no bright without dark, there is no night without day, so why do we seem to strive for shades of grey?

It is not generally encouraged to be contrary, to show extreme and differing sides of ourselves. Indeed it is actively discouraged in mainstream education where blending in, predictability and being normal are the rule.

Yet, how dull! How sad not to know the quirks and oddities, the irrational and absurd, the utterly unique and confounding?

Most great artists were well acquainted with their contrary natures, Vincent Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo certainly were.  It doesn’t make for easy living companions necessarily, but it certainly gives life a richness and depth that conventionality does not. The joy and sorrow, the yearning for community and loneliness are as apparent in Vincent’s work as they are in his life. Frida is the Queen of contrary, making her struggle with health and illness, love and loss, convention and sheer naughtiness into an art form.

So before you smooth out your bumps, blend in you oddities and muddy your contrasting colours into shades of grey, think about celebrating your contrariness, it makes you unique.

This image of Frida is for sale in various  affordable formats, have a look here. http://www.redbubble.com/people/spiralfran/works/8507753-contrary