Showing posts with label carl jung. Show all posts
Showing posts with label carl jung. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Celebrating the Day


I am so happy to be able to celebrate this day. Fourteen years ago, on April 7, I packed up the van with the 2 dogs, 2 cats and 2 birds and began a caravan with my partner driving the moving truck and a dear friend bringing all the house plants as we relocated from Ohio to Virginia.... moving from the glacial moraine to the edge of the continent.
Many of you have probably moved more times than you can count. Others may be like me, I'd lived in the same geographic area for more than 40 years. I traveled a good bit and felt a sense of expansiveness to life because of that but picking up and leaving it all behind was BIG. HUGE. With the move...everything changed.
                                                                  'In You Go' Drozda  Acrylic on Wood

    I'm so happy that it did. It's been a good shake up and I've loved coming to a new place to explore.

The Cypress swamp where I walk
 So every April 7 I take the day to wander and to wonder and to open to what will be coming around the next turn in the trail.
I've met the most wonderful people since relocating, and I knew the greatest folks before I moved, but one of the celebrations that is on my mind today is the amazingly rich and endless community of artists who I can visit through this medium of blogging. I love what you create and what you share. I so enjoy learning from you and being inspired by you. I'm new to it and I'm green but I am enthralled and entranced. I feel so fortunate to be in a community where beauty and wonder are so willingly shared by so many exceptionally gifted and talented beings.

I'm celebrating something else today. Every ninety days I set a goal. That takes me around the wheel of the year from Equinox to Solstice to Equinox to Solstice and round I go spiraling year after year. This quarter's goal is to improve my techno-communication skills. I felt that one way that could happen is through this wonderful art of blogging. To assist me I signed on for Blog Triage: Maintaining a Healthy Artist's Blog with Cynthia Morris and Alyson Stanfield. Today is the first day of a one month tune-up and I am rather thrilled to imagine the world of discovery that awaits me. I hope that you'll pop over and follow along throughout the next four weeks perhaps gleaning some tips that you can use....and of course, if you are here, I hope that you will comment (hint hint :-) sharing your wealth of knowledge with me too...this is exciting and I feel like such a happy learner!

At my monthly women's art group a call has gone out for books that have helped us, as artists, when we feel that the creative stream has been diverted or is drying up. What are some of your favorites? What books are beside your bed? What books do you reach for when you feel the need for sustanence? I have so many titles that uplift me but I wanted to share three today. Creating by Robert Fritz, Man and his Symbols by Carl Jung and I'd Rather Be In the Studio by Alyson B Stanfield. These are three very different books each with its own way of bringing up enthusiasm and courage for moving forward with what is. I am so appreciative that over the years the philosophy put forth in each has helped to bring me back into a feeling of strong yet gentle creative flow. I'm an Elder now. I'm considering the 'birdseed trail' that I might spread across the earth. I'm not interested in pushing any rivers but I am so jazzed by what there is to discover and share through our many mediums and their countless messages.

As I celebrate the fourteenth anniversary of my move I am also celebrating these vital foundation builders and all of you who inspire me so deeply and so wonderfully by sharing your world view with such passion and generosity of soul. Thank you so much.

~Sing the day

Monday, November 23, 2009

All Mother Sentient Beings


Buddha Ratnasambhava (detail)

It's been an excellent week...traveling to New York and the beauty of Westchester County to visit my dear soul sister/friend and artist extraordinaire, Karin. Mostly we chilled and enjoyed one another's company in the comfort of her lovely home/studio. I had the opportunity to actually hold in my hand the amazing book that we've watched unfold over the past eighteen months on her blog space. I have so swooned over the images in digital format but now I was offered the chance to fall in love anew...and I did. There is no describing in words (thus, I'm sure, the reason why her blog is titled as it is : ) the beauty of these pages and the multidimensional depth of her technique only to be seen when this hefty tome is held in hand.

Mahavira's Final Liberation (detail) Standing Jina

On Friday we drove 'into town' and invested the afternoon wandering through the Rubin Museum of Art on West 17th Street visiting the glorious galleries filled with Tibetan and Himalayan art. Being a student of Tibetan Buddhism and having spent time in Nepal and Tibet I feel almost overcome when surrounded with the spirit driven imagery from this culture.


page 105 The Red Book

Also on display is The Red Book by Carl Jung filled with his private journal entries, vivid dreamlike imagery and mandala studies.