I'm BACK!!

Whew! Stay tuned! I am back on my own computer living among the "housed" again, since this past Monday. Just got my computer online today!! News from the edge to follow!

New Life Experiences

For a few years now, I have been looking at my life and all its possibilities as brand new all over again. This view only seems to be increasing with every new development in it as I recognize myself as more often alert and attentive! I can see more clearly in how many ways I am truly blessed then; to have retreated from society for so long in order to turn significant areas in my life around for the better, healthier_ more functionally balanced! The work is paying off naturally! It is to have more youth; a new view on all of life and myself_ to be new at entering the world-at-large with life experience!
Daily it seems, I consciously notice there are gifts that cross my path in many forms and expression(s); invitations to wake up more deeply and see through fresh perspectives what is possible within and outside my sense of self.
As the artist in life, I am trusting my way through this portion of the life-painting metaphorically_ tapping inner vision to see what details may work best in every peaceful step from here and beyond the healing life-path I have crafted for myself and my daughter, in a small Pacific Northwest town.
She has launched really well, yet I am in a rough crossing now and yet, allies, new friends are showing up almost daily saying directly to me, "Here, take my hand_ we can help each other."

For these experiences and awarenesses, I am deeply grateful.

Please hold the visualization with me, of my becoming very well employed, most especially in the face of all seeming economic odds. My ultimate goal is healing work in this world: the artist with life.

*I will also add an image to this post when I am accessing a more user-friendly computer!

Eh voila! Here it is:

The Thing Is...

Your support can help right at this juncture, in my immediate efforts to secure housing again for myself. A safe place from which to continue my renewed job search back in my "hometown." I have returned here for as long as it takes to get my feet back under me and to not get overwhelmed in any other transitions out there in the future. I even believe that I can get myself to Italy for Christmas to visit my daughter as she finishes her semester abroad!

Contact me about your interests in my art work; the works posted here that are for sale (ask me about what catches your eye), or my muralettes offerings, the details of which can be found here!

Remember, I am NOT homeless! I am an intelligent, talented woman in a rough transition right now. So, I ask that you very simply help this hardworking individual toward her own successes, and be part of my new presence in the world! Thank-you for all your support.

The Ginger Path Back

I seem to be making steps back from the abyss of homelessness; a hard lesson in beginning to own other neglected facets of my own personal power. I am not 100% back on my feet as that is going to take time, yet simultaneously amazing acts of kindness and generosity keep showing up each time I renew my commitment to this developing stage of conscious attention to my own life. One example, includes a stay in the rural-side to doggy-sit my commission portrait subject, "Rufus." Yes, I have painted and made more progress on his portrait! I will upload photos of this stage in the painting when I can get a camera to do so. Meanwhile, you can get to know my newest art business by going here.
Always resourceful in my thinking and responses no matter what chaos appears to threaten to tear up my life.
I will add that I am ready to face my needs for engaged, meaningful, healthy friendships, and indeed online this past year, I have experienced some of that development. Thank-you!
I have traveled a long way on my own for way long enough now. Some of this history reflects flat-out wrong choices I made in earnestness and naïveté. I can say that I am more than ready to change this now as well. Stay tuned. Make contact. Do let me hear from you, won't you? I am ready to have great conversations on the consequences of running away from generalized perceptions about social prejudices such as homelessness. What does that mean: "homelessness" and running away?
But I have received another gift: I am not a homeless person. I am a capable, intelligent and talented woman going through a very hard transition right now.

Homelessness

I post for the time being as I venture into unchosen, unwarranted, circumstantial homelessness today, an essay on my own homelessness.
Many voices are sending their words of love and support to me. If you have such words, please post them here.
There is also room for other responses, especially to solution-find with me. Understand that within reasonable measure of my own endeavors along with your support, my conditions in this state will not persist for very long at all!

I will close by leaving a copy of a posting I submitted concerning my own impending homelessness to the local craigslist. It is confounding to me to realize what is happening in my life as the artist in America in the 21st Century. Arriving at this moment, I can see that in my future creative work, a book and a painting series will come out of what I've learned so far. For the sake of America's well being, invest your spirit and faith in what this country stands for in all her ideal by considering in your own communities, the pro-active ways you support the artists' fiscal access to an income much the way a plumber and electrician are enabled to support themselves:

My craigslist post of July 22, 2008:

A Call For Social Justice

Date: 2008-07-22, 4:28PM PDT

I am a fifty-three year old woman who has very recently completed 20 years of full time, single parenting_ yet not parenting itself, as one can never "complete" parenting. During that twenty years, I earned my undergrad degree and home-schooled my child. I built my foundation as a producing, exhibiting bartering/selling artist, while I negotiated all levels of cultural exposure, choices and access for my child through on-going activities and travel that has only added to the quality of experiences with which my child has grown up. I am skills-rich where work is concerned, and I have done more years of therapy, self-examination and spiritual enlightenment discipline, than many people my age it seems. In a nutshell, my child now a young adult, is doing quite well at a very good college with lots of scholarships. Likewise, I have finally been freed up to rejoin the world of healthy social connection and most importantly to work long and well! I relish this part of my path, except the on-going threat of homelessness that shadows my every step right now.
After many months of struggle pertinent to me, I have at last found wonderful employment. Yet, the benevolence of one who has housed me in my efforts to transition from a small town to the "bigger city" where more employment choices abound, has run its reasonable course. I must leave this coming week-end: 7/25/08.
I have titled my plea for reasonably supportive access, "A Call For Social Justice," because this seems to be all too common a scenario out here: women who have sacrificed willingly for the well-being of family to be faced with an uncaring society in large measure. This is simply a reality-based recognition. I understand the system very well, having made myself unfit for it by virtue of its challenges that a recipient better one's life. My own background of understanding, isolation and lack of traditional forms of support coming into this nature of experiences so many years ago, also plays a role. In effect, I am truly as unique as anyone in this world.
In greater advocacy for the well-being of our collective humanity, I do call on the greater community to cognizant(ly) recognize the wealth that is here in this society among everyone who is working, earning benefits, and able to care for a family. There are those among you all, who have gone without all those traditional mechanisms of support, courageously, ingeniously, persistently providing for self and family against all the odds, that have in other ways evolved by forced choice, yet have made it heroically nonetheless, most of the way to responsible social participation. I personally have done this in ways from which even the most materially successful, can learn. Creative business people take note. I embody those ways that can inform solution-building processes that do not have to leave human lives on the street with no place safe to live.
At this juncture, at this moment, I need your help to get into my own place to live in order to complete my return to responsible social participation. I may even have help for your own enlightenment on compassion, beginning with your own self. Simply. Not judgmentally_ that informs how others can also find solution for homelessness, for reasonable social access, education, and in natural health resources. Portland, you are not as enlightened or as organized or as motivated as you market yourself in the media. Please hear my in-earnest plea, for reasonably accessible support, to get on with my own successes for self and my child. Let us open a door together on possibility that can only result in what is always bigger than what any one of us can ever accomplish alone. My position of resource-lessness at this moment in my life, is truly only in-part, a reflection of my individual choice-making. Will you meet me in this opportunity where I am right now? To step into solution-building with me is to learn what is possible together for (your) own self and many more!
I am hopeful for this city and our country. I hope you will respond to my call for social justice, as compassionately as you know how. I am yearning for this in earnest.

Namasté


Look over my new blog. It is my calling card for a more streamlined manner by which to be self-employed; to offer my creative services in a manner to meet regular folks incomes where they may be during this down turned market.

Rufus, the final sketches- a comparative

If you have been keeping up with the process and progress of Rufus' portrait, his painting two-thirds complete_ is on-hold for now. I am so disappointed. Rightfully, albeit graciously, so is my client.
Even though the canvas as I say is two-thirds complete, and I have completed all four of the full-color drawings I knew I wanted to do in order to learn this dog, and get myself back into the habit of looking, seeing, and drawing in order to paint after nine years(!)_ it just got to be too tough to get through a creative project without my own roof over my own head! All the while attempting to keep up with a traditional job search, living in someone else's home who is unyielding and quite giving in real limitation, (yes it is a paradox!)_ think though, for the past twenty years I have been sovereign in my own queen-dom! Nonetheless, as awkward and disappointing as everything is right now, I am equally_ awkwardly grateful!
It is such a huge transition I am making in my life, and I really don't have quite the adequate resources to do it properly, to be affective economically and individually at the same time! I am pulled in too many directions where just an ounce of right resource support would make a universe of difference for the better!!
I think over and over, between meditating and looking for work I could sure do with an old-fashioned rescue: re-defined in an updated and healthy context! (i., e.; No obligations of sex for money or marriage, kind-of-fantasy_ bluntly put.) Just intelligent, human being-to-human being trust in the invested, based on my track record! Just plainly and simply, because you can and want to, and that is fulfillment enough for you.
Meanwhile, as sad as it feels not to be finishing this project and beautiful portrait, still(!) in the making, I will come back to Rufus when I am reestablished in my own place! I am a follow-through person. My client, has at least assuaged me with a good-hearted agreement to revisit this possibility, when that wonderful time comes.

As the wheel turns and I embrace the traditional job search full time again, I have also put out a new calling card/ business in art, to keep creatively active and try another approach to earning money by my trade. This approach is in a more streamlined manner, and meant to accompany the renewed full time search for the job-job_ the details of my newest hunger to be creatively fulfilled, can be found sketched out_ here. It is what I call painting the muralette: small murals, commemorating what is important in your life, for a set price! Done inside your home or office in a four-hour turn around from hire to finish! Simple, memorable, pleasurable imagery!

So come on world, be open enough! Be awake enough! Be brave enough! Allow in beauty enough to celebrate your world! Be open-minded enough! Support the artist enough!
Do you know how you got your favorite anything in your world? Design! Someone creative had to put the intelligence into making any object you may take for granted. It has to be functional for your use! That is all about design. So how valuable is the artist in community?!
Listen, most all artists do earnestly want to work for a living (doing their own work) and thereby be financially able to independently provide themselves their own place to live. How hard is that?! It's wanting a life that works, just like everyone else. Therefore, check out my new muralette idea and hire the artist! Thanks_ really!

By the way, I have posted all four of those color studies of Rufus on this blog. You can see them in the scrolling slide show at the top, or you can go back to December '07 and look over the progress posted to this blog, through the months to June '08. Again, thanks for your interest and support of goodwill at the very least! Hire the artist to assist you in beautifying your world! Celebrate! This is your life!

The Launch of a New Project blog

Ok! Here it is! I got the site launched late last night. There are rough spots perhaps, yet I wanted to get the idea out there no matter what. Being good at what I do, I would rather get out there and connect with people so I can help others to enjoy in their special moments in life!
Use these muralettes as gifts for yourself, someone you love, a friend or special person you care about, a boss or someone in your life to whom you wish to communicate something special; something important to you both!

I will be launching this idea on craigslist in the next few minutes, so I look forward to hearing from you!
I am really excited about the journey to paint that special muralette for you, or someone you care about and wish to communicate more than words can say. A special image to be shared and enjoyed about a special place, a special time, special idea, goal, or object of desire in the goodness of the heart!