Welcome to Timeless Rhythms Studio, online art journal! Look at some of my posted art (above), read my entries and feel free to comment on any part of the blog that interests you! Most of my art is available for purchase and I can also be commissioned for a variety of custom painting projects, from portraits to murals. Contact me here by leaving a comment on any post. I look forward to hearing from you in my Timeless Rhythms Studio, online art journal!

Thursday, January 25, 2007

A Call For Matronage, Patronage

As I write this morning, I bring coalescing thoughts about who I am becoming at every moment into this journal entry. The prompt really, is coming out of participation with this incredible art summit that I am late to today! The invitations in the summit to notice details, such as the nature of one's blog spot in relation to other artists', for example, is to reach a clarity today about some relevant underlying motivations to create artwork. That of not being wholly market-focused at this time. Rather, there is equal dedication to growing quality of consciousness in all that my life experiences encompass. Chiefly, how am I noticing my life in relation to others?
As a working artist, I understand with greater definition my own unique context as that of a working artist-of-life. I intentionally put intimacy forward in creatively intelligent, and expressive demeanor, because it is my dream that more people learn, in order to know how to be courageous for themselves. That people open to consciously recognizing ways that are practical and simple in possibility, to simultaneously feel safe out in the world while knowing where to find equally pragmatic experiences of nurture in healthy autonomy, that are really required in order to be full in our human experience of living one's own life! Patiently consider, the possible urgency of attention to that message.
I intuitively, intellectually, and passionately articulate knowing this awareness orientation of self, as being at the core nature of my seven year old epiphanal experiences. Consequently, the journey to know and express this quality awareness clearly, is indicative of the very nature of the art of living well, and at the heart of my work as artist-of-well being as I move further out into the world.
It is that with this entry today, I directly send out a call for matronage or patronage to rebuild and recover through execution of a painting series, yoga work, and organic cooking for deep-level health restoration, the quality of my creative fire and health in a two year transition. This particular kind of call is directed to that (those) particular individual(s) who are in a place in their financial abilities, and life that reflects a true affordability-consciousness, and who want to make a difference in such a way as I am describing. One-to-one, where the inspiration to build upliftment for the benefit of others is compelling in attraction, in trust, in belief.
I am seeking to co-create an opportunity to deftly combine disciplines to define life as a diplomat to alternative, healthy lifestyle. Pragmatic attainable balances, between the traditional intentions found in the withdrawal-from-the-world purity of the yogic masters, that combine originally with the more earthy, and equally intelligent nature of the interpretive artist, and in this case, also combine with the organizational experiences that focused single-parenting has taught and is teaching me in raising a vital human. Noting that, I did not accomplish this expression of being without her individualistic participation!
In noble humility, I make this call for reasonable financial support for two years.
Communicating how this gift of matronage, or patronage can look in ways that are mutually healthy, and respectful are prerequisite. Communication, and hence clear understanding are central to this uncommon creation of connection, and support. May this flow both ways to the best benefit of all involved directly and indirectly, checking all unconscious control agendas, on both sides, at the door. Please contact me here in response to your respectful considerations of this bold request. Thank-you.

the piano lesson, after Renoir, in his medium!



Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Experiences in Synchronicity Returning_WOW!

Today's post will undoubtedly get revised repeatedly, so do check back. Usually every couple of days, is my rhythm.
Anyone keeping up with my posts will notice that the header has a new title. That now cognizant, detail is the result of participating in a telesummit, as it is termed, that is geared for artists making a living successfully from their art!
Consistency in one's public i.d. is the first really awful mistake most people, without a budget to speak of for marketing, and in any money-making endeavor, most frequently overlook.
So, if my business cards introduce me as a working artist with the name "Timeless Rhythms" in bold lettering, then everything pointing to my artwork also deserves that consistent identification.
Even though this blogspot is beginning as primarily a journaling site for me, it also includes identifying myself as an artist, and includes examples of my artwork...!
My studio name has existed for over five years now, so you'd think I'd know it! There are obvious things that we do congnizantly know, and then over the course of too much time alone, we do out of fatigue forget. I learned it again today in this telesummit just for artists!!
The name got developed as my own "breadcrumb" in order to keep the deeper meaning of identity connected to a relevant personal lifeline. One that I could see was going to take second chair to a willing devotion that my daughter deserved from me, as her mother. In order to work her way through high school the way she needed, the last five years have been in service to her support! I salute you my dearest girl! Our family life IS a team effort.
As a fulltime, single parent, who has worked as an artist for most all of my daughter's growing up years, and as she marked my every step to paint, show, and, sell as a real trooper girl, these last five years are very well invested outside of the studio. Hence, the professional studio name has a roundness in it's recognition of all that this woman artist's life must be. There is no escaping this, if one chooses family. There is no escaping period, the reality of pioneering one's means of working from greater privilege, right into the twenty-first century as a woman identified, when one's mutually chosen field is art. Mutually, meaning that the universe and I chose this, at age seven!
I include, that no matter what work one does, and no matter what gender one identifies as living, this remaking of self in order to move forward in composing a life, can be read as inclusive in the personal descriptions that I share with you here. More on quite a bit of this later in our Timeless Rhythms...

after Thomas Hart Benton, prisma colour

Saturday, January 20, 2007

The Process of Lightening Up One's Life

Spontaneity is what I feel today, I would love to find the cash to literally run off and join the circus for a year! Probably Cirque EOS in Québec_as a yoga teacher.
When I turned forty, I realized it would be really appropriate to go to comedy or clown school, to learn drop-to-your-knees-and pee-in-your-pants humor as a dominate coping tool. Ah! raucous laughter, I miss it in my life as a center stage response. Then, I also miss hanging out, and having no responsibilities, and road trips with no time frame for arriving wherever one might decide to stop after a week. (Don't worry dear, you know that you always have the choice to be there!)
Then, I think about this idea, that if I could just travel right now for a two year period, to see the world with no agenda_ listening to people, watching what they do, being engaged with them where they are, painting, doing yoga, and sharing good food with new friends along the way, and not leaving my daughter without resources, or my own ability to be where she might need me....ah-h-h, this would be a transition!
I am open to stalwart friendships to make these ideas happen. It's not a one-way street idea of transaction or connection. It is the direct, open and honest description of present need. Why do people recoil at this kind of "putting it out there?" Maybe just the wrong folks up to now, maybe it is living so many years in a small town. In addition, I know that living the idyllic life in a small town has been about preserving innocense while doing deep personal work, and that one of the consequences is , I have grown truly naïve about who is ready for my work in art, in yoga, in healthy food, and how I might get these gifts to them...anyway, must keep following my own life path, and continue taking the steps to reach out, so that I can risk all the wonderful connections that are possible! Anyone reading this 'got responses?!'

Other things that I would like to see come into form, would be a day that women in business give to women who are struggling in poverty: a day to shop for interview clothing at a consigment shop without having to pay. To receive pedicures, manicures, facials, massages, coiffeurs, and babysitting from other women, who are gainfully employed, and who feel wealthy enough in time and self, to donate to the well being, and success potential of other women, whose lives are differently fortunate. ( I do write the intention this way cognizantly, and that ain't naïve!) A day in a café in the company of other women in need, as well as, the opportunity to just interact unfettered for a brief time, with people in general. All for the sake of supporting the well being esteem of all involved in the giving and receiving, and for the residual esteem of the community hosting such supportive generosity!

Another dream I have is to start an art institution that houses ALL of the fine arts under one roof, from poetry to theatre, from set design to opera, and dance including every other visual, and performing art in between. This would be a place where not just budding artists would come to grow and develop in their chosen artform, also, middle-Americans could deepen their awareness about art, and culture in support of national identity_ a common working appreciation for what is creatively intelligent, and wonderful, and not generally noticed inside one's own country. Awareness training through art appreciation in American Art History, in order to gain an educated orientation and working comfort about the wonderful parts creatively, outspoken people passionately create, and historically have regarding being inspired, because one looks deeply at one's own country!
This institution would be replete with a fresh organic juice bar, and on-going yoga classes. Over time, it would be my personal dream that, we could be one living example of a nourishing environment that fosters healthy ways all human beings can flourish. So, that would mean no smoking, no counter-intuitive late-night partying with excessive amounts of health-robbing substances...a place to create like one's mother present to support the best possibility for the development of the creative soul. This would be de rigueur of personal discipline required.

I would also start a foundation that would award scholarships only for full-time, single mothers who want an art degree_have to be full-time, single moms with no familial support!

Additionally, I would frequently bring over artwork from France by women artists and establish a permanent cultural connection.

Le Modele déposé, après Suzanne Valadon,
colour de prisma

Friday, January 19, 2007

What can you hear or see concerning access?

I am posting directly today from two different current reading sources_actually I am loosely quoting, and I do not want to reveal the sources although the writing may be recognizable to some. It is because I would like friends, family, and other interested readers to focus on the content versus authors, or book titles and their subjective relevancies...

It is more appropriate to me, to hear your own responses to the content, as I am using these references to solve my own dilemmas about my big question: HOW to make money and be happy on the soul level? In our culture, as hard as it is to hear any form of (constructive) criticism nowadays, I am most curious how thought remains head-centered even in associations I admire the most. Yes, these are people who have brilliantly polished minds, and yet I am frequently astonished that this seems to be all, especially when these same people begin to experience illness in the body...I pose these considerations as non-judgmental food, that is gently brought forward for the purpose of noticing_ so, I propose: there are different kinds of very intelligent thought of which to become more aware. More on this later.

Now the quotes:

Mutual Connection

'The overarching concept, or organizing principle, of Bodynamic Analysis is that humans, in their development, inherently move toward greater and greater connectedness with others and the world. Marcher calls this drive mutual connection, and sees it as our most basic motivation. This concept is expressed from a different point of view by Maturana and Varela in their scientific treatise, The Tree of Knowledge: 'This is the biological foundation of social phenomena: without love...' '

(What is it_love? What kind are they referring to? What are the different kinds of ways of looking at love that open us to our greater sense of self, our higher self?
Just a glimpse of this aspect of limitless love consciousness, referred to as the higher self, and one can never go back to only a head-centered set of experiences in this life!)

' 'without acceptance of others living beside us, there is no social process and, therefore, no humaness.'
In a healthy development, mutual connection grows in breadth as the human being acquires an increasing variety and depth of resource and tools for the realization of this connection. During each developmental stage, the focus of connection in the...relationship occurs around a particular theme. In the first stage, the focus is on developing a secure sense of existence; in the second, on a sense that our needs can be met; in the third, on exploring the world, and being autonomous; in the fourth, on having our own power, our own intentionality or will, and still being loved; in the fifth, on being able to have deep romantic and sexual/sensual feelings; in the sixth, on forming deep beliefs and opinions about the world and reality, and expressing them; in the seventh, on being a member of a group without the need to be special, but also with our uniqueness valued.

If we take the Opinion Structure as an example, it is a time when the human being is helped to form beliefs and to express them verbally. In a healthy development, the human being learns that she can have her own opinion and others can have theirs, and there can still be a connection; that differing opinions do not imply separation. She can stand up for her opinions and still be separate enough from them to take in new information and change. Health in this stage might be expressed as: ' I may not be right, but I know what I think.'
Implicitly, the character structures come about through breaks in mutual connection. Every time there is a break in mutual connection, there is a break in development. A break in mutual connection occurs whenever a human being is placed in a dilemma of having to give up an impulse or resource in order to maintain contact, or having to give up contact in order to keep the impulse. The early and late character position for each stage are the ways the human being attempts to maintain a connection to self and others. A human being in the early position of character structure will tend to withdraw from connection to maintain a sense of self. A human being in the early Need structure, for example, waits for you to come to them if their needs are to be filled. It may look as if they are indifferent about the contact, but they are really waiting for you to come to them. The later positions in each structure fight for contact, but will often give up maintaining a sense of self. While they fight for contact, they don't trust the contact and thus don't let it in. For example, the late Need structure will distrust or denigrate the things that are offered to them. Additionally, the fighting often breaks the contact, since from the outside it may be perceived as pushing away. So we can see that both early and late positions have compromised their abilities to simultaneously be in contact and have a clear sense of themselves. '

The other quoted source:

'No one acts entirely out of self interest, just as no one acts entirely out of altruism, but the assumption of self-interest is a common simplification in attempts to understand the behavior of others, particularly those whose common sense has been diluted by reading too much economics. Women often err in the opposite direction. Because they are traditionally taught to emphasize service, their choices may be uninteligible and therefore deeply suspect. Yet although their motives don't match expectations of those around them, one can be struck by how terribly hard (this group of) women worked as students and later on in their careers, and how often work is underappreciated when the motive behind it is not understood.

It is not only in childhood that people of high potential can be discouraged or held back and their promise subverted or sustained. The year before...a group of women had declined to stand for tenure. One of them simply said that after six years she was used up, too weary and too eroded by constant belittlement to accept tenure if it were offered to her. Women (were) worn down or burnt out. During the three years...as dean of faculty, ...watched some young faculty members flourish and others falter,...gradually realized that the principle instrument of sexism was not the refusal to appoint women or even the refusal to promote (although both occurred, for minorities as well as women), but the habit of hiring women and then dealing with them in such a way that when it came time for promotion it would be reasonable to deny it. It was not hard to show that a particular individual who was a star...had somehow belied her promise, had proven unable to achieve up to her potential.

This subversion (was) accomplished by taking advantage of two kinds of vulnerability that women raised in our society tend to have. The first is the quality of self-sacrifice, a learned willingness to set their own interests aside and even be used up by the community. Many women...end(ed) up investing vast amounts of time in needed public-service activities, committee work, and teaching noncredit courses. Since these activities (were) not weighed significantly in promotion decisions, they (were) self-destructive.

The second kind of vulnerability trained into women is a readiness to believe messages of disdain and derogation. Even women...full of confidence gradually (became) vulnerable to distorted visions of themselves, no longer secure that their sense of who they (were) matched the perceptions of others. When...told...before coming and without previous discussion with me, that he had heard (I) was 'consistently confrontational,' that (I) had made...'a tense, unhappy place,' and that he would want to select a new dean, (I) (should) have reacted to his picture of me as bizarre, and indeed confronted its inaccuracy, but instead (I) was shattered. It took...a year to understand that he was simply accepting the semantics of senior men who expected a female...to be easily disparaged and bullied. Like so many of the young women they had managed to dislodge. It took...a year to recover a sense of...self as worth defending and to learn to be angry both for...self and for the (institution) as (I) watched a tranquil...turned into one that truly was tense and unhappy.

The problem, as (I) came to understand it when (I) had had time to follow the development of individuals over several years, was not only to ensure the hiring of women and minority members. This was hard enough to do from the dean's office, but what was even harder was to turn... into a place where all young women and men hired to teach (as well as students) could thrive, whether they were promoted and asked to stay or not, a place where whatever talents and strengths they brought from childhood could be fostered and they could go from strength to strength. Such a place would have to be challenging as well as supportive,...providing room for criticism and discipline as well as indulgence. But it could not be belittling.

The need to sustain human growth (should)/ must be a matter of concern for the entire society, even more fundamental than the problem of sustaining productivity. This, surely, is the deepest sense of homemaking, whether in a factory or an institution or a household. For all of us, continuing development depends on nurture and guidance long after the years of formal education, just as it depends on seeing others ahead on the road with whom it is possible to identify. A special effort is needed when doubts have been deeply implanted during the years of growing up or when some fact of difference raises barriers or undermines those identifications, (but)/ and all of us are at risk, not only through childhood (but)/ also through all the unfolding experiences of life that present new problems and require new learning. Building and sustaining the settings in which individuals can grow and unfold, not "be kept in their place" (but)/ rather empowered to become all (they)/ one can be, is not just the task of parents and teachers, (but)/ also the basis of management and POLITICAL ( all caps are my insert!) leadership_and simple friendship.'

Fertility, tempera

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Bread Crumbs...

This is what I call my own process of reconnecting with the contents of various journals, that I either am currently writing in, or have stock-piled over the course of my life.

In this very public forum, I bring aspects of my journal activities online, in order to reconnect to the larger world, again. The thoughts presented here will have largeness to them. This is consistent with the artist's work_ what is at first abstract in thought, feelings, etc. Consider that this page of journaling then, is like that magic when we are watching an artist work on a drawing, and how that set of making marks on a page impacts all of the senses at once. The, in fact magical moment, when we begin to experience the drawing come together as if right before our eyes. My journaling here is very much this way, finding my own breadcrumbs of wisdom, and teaching myself to keep focus on the path. A path that has led this particular artist's life in healthy, creative, intelligent ways, away from the house of origins. Back there, no one, whose job it was to care for, and to raise us was ever really happy. So it was quite early in childhood, that I decided to pay attention to who might have ideas about how one might live as a happy adult_ was that only childhood logic?

In brief synopsis of the personal, I will open the door a bit to let you very generally look in. Perhaps because it was traumatic, and childhood was dominated by my biggest question: how would I learn to coordinate happiness with work, come that magical master-of-one's-own-fate, called adulthood? Or, from a child's perspective, when that moment of arriving looked like it would all just be a larger-than time, and that this would be what was called adult life, because surely, I reasoned this is what having the freedom to choose for one's self must be, I concluded at the age of seven: "I know, I'll be an artist!"

A lot of time has passed since that epiphanal moment in a cathedral in Europe. As my childhood moved toward emancipation, my life was dominated by tears, as it really wasn't a happy life for the rest of my family. In those early years, I just planned out my own escape.
At this juncture, my task may be to look at the reality that I have yet to have a healthy, mutually sustained relationship with another peer, and in the meantime to get on with the next direction of living. Fulltime single-parenthood, has been a shared priority during the therapy years of my early adulthood, along with much deep creative development, and just plain hard personal work. I will point to these parts of who I am in a variety of ways over time, as in the inclusion of my visual art, on this public page.
What my personal journey has been like, is intended for those who are in earnest to learn from one another's experiences. The visual allows one point of contact, and from my bread-crumb-reconnecting-wisdom point of view, as a garden variety hybrid, I offer another point of contact. I am banking that it is as often in hearing threads of commonality, that one can actually find the inspiration needed to feed individual decisions, about forward movement toward clarity, about the purposes for one's life, and ultimately, for a conscious liberation from the inherited patterning of unneeded burdens. In other words, what is the best of all human endeavor that is possible, and in combination, what will this looking, seeing, understanding define as new? How will we then choose to recognize and experience living? Too big? Just trust the process...
For example, I can see that I have experiential resources of value to offer the collective healing work out in the world, as a working artist. I just don't yet know how to get paid to do it happily.

Trusting this place to begin, let the flavors of these maxims reveal what may be valuable in the waking process_ what is important about the process for each individual, that one can add to the collective process of building an environment that supports each one feeling safe, and supported enough to live this life as it is meant to be lived. That of consciously waking up.
How can one put a price on this kind of work when engaged with others?

Therefore, these quotes are important in and of themselves, outside of the context they may have been originally stated, thus converting them to the maxims that I refer your attention to here. Breadcrumbs of wisdom for your own considerations...as a result, please feel free to be engaged with me in mutually respectful dialogue through this site. Expect the entries to be like the artist's renderings right in front of your eyes. Initial sketch, shade, chiaroscuro, using the eraser to draw out negative spaces...continuously and organically morphing toward clarity.

Thank-you_


'The lover of life makes the whole world into her family.' paraphrased from: Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life

'The more intensely the family has stamped its character upon the child, the more that child will tend to feel and see her earlier miniature world again in the bigger world of the adult.' paraphrased from: Carl Gustav Jung, Psychological Suggestions

“Sometimes the best way to keep peace in the family is to keep the members apart for awhile.” FDR, letter of December 18, 1942, to Assistant Secretary of State, Sumner Wells

“There’s no vocabulary for love within a family, love that’s lived in but not looked at, love within the light of which all other love finds speech.” This love is silent.” TS Eliot, The Elder Statesman

“Jonah’s adaptive niche in the family ecosystem was to be the perfect grandchild, eager to scramble up on laps, unafraid of bitter vegetables, under excited about television and computer games, and skilled at cheerfully answering questions like, ‘Are you loving school?’ “ Jonathan Franzen, The Correction

...The systems I have always liked best arise from a poetic combination of desperation, generosity, imagination, and practicality....who wrote it?

The name inside this image identifies the face inside the image, not the
painter! However, I am the same painter who stepped away from
the easel to learn the software, to then make this image in Illustrator!
What peaceful, health-promoting purposes can these skills begin to serve?