cliodhna’s wave

What is it about a white sheet of paper? or rather maybe a sheet of beautiful watercolour paper with the ragged edges and the rough texture or a sheet of handmade paper with the leaves caught in it and the unevenness of the crafting of it. They are a symbol of endless possibility and reflect nothing except what is inside us waiting to come out. Maybe that’s why it scares me slightly, I want to practice on cheaper paper, but then cheaper paper doesn’t inspire me the way a good sheet of paper does and so anything I do on a cheap sheet of paper (like a photocopy paper or a sheet from a sketching pad) is so-so, it might be a good drawing but if it were on the best sheet I would be inspired to continue, put my energy into it to see where it goes.
It is the same with paint. Cheap paint just isn’t worth the effort, a brush stroke with cheap paint is just a smear of colour, colour that sits dead on the page and can be called colour only from the scientific understanding of the word ‘colour’, but good paint, like a good watercolour or oil paint or an expensive oil pastel goes onto the page like a song and shines and glows and entrances me into its depths. I could stare at it all day, and have done sometimes, I remember painting a canvas Prussian blue once and just sat and looked at it. It didn’t need anything else.
And my embroidery, I use silks and felts and wonderful satins because they inspire me and when I wander into a fabric store my fingers itch to hold and stroke and grasp cool blues and pale greens and watery smooth chiffons. I always end up spending more money than I thought I was going to.
And so to life, why use cheap things when good well made objects that were made with love are so much more satisfying and continue to be loved for years. Why eat crap food when good food makes me feel good and whole and healthy. When I want to do something I have to do my best and do it on the best materials available to me even if it takes a little longer. The end result speaks for itself.
That’s the other side of the good sheet of paper; it reflects my fears about myself. Am I good enough to give myself the really good sheet of paper? Or should I wait and practice on the cheap sheet and save the good one until I am better? If I use the good sheet that is saying to the world I am worth something, I value myself and give myself the best.

Forget the cheap sheet, it is a trick and a trap, nothing that is done on the cheap sheet will shine or inspire me and so I will always think I am not good enough for the good sheet or the good paint. I have found that I have to use the good sheet of paper and use good paint and with that leap of faith the rest flows from a place of trusting myself. So what if I mess up? Its only paper…. There’s lots more in the store… and in life there is always opportunities to fix mistakes.

my new threadless submission…..

White fox is a character that has been around for a while. I am not sure where she came from except she jumped in front of me once in a meditation and cocked her shiny black eyes in my direction and I have been kinda hooked ever since. She takes on many forms.

I suppose she could be to do with camoflage. The artic fox changing its coat in the winter to blend with the snow so maybe she is to do with the other side of me. The one who is still hiding in the snow.

white fox dances while I look on

White fox is the mysterious dancer, slightly out of reach and almost not there. I watch as I walk my path in life. White Fox doesn’t care who sees or not. She is dancing.

She dances again while it rains. She puts on her special dress for the rain and enjoys the water

i am listening to white fox while she explains the art of camoflage

Camouflage. Hiding. In the snow. Good or bad? not sure. To be able to camouflage can be a useful skill but I guess needs to be used in a way of power and not of fear.

Maybe I will ask her in a dream. Or maybe the lesson is to learn the opposite. To not hide, to show myself standing out against the snow. To not wear the white robe in winter and the red one in summer. Who knows, I guess I will find out some day.

x

I have painted many women with stars over the years. This one is the painting I described here. She stands proud upon the earth but still she has her connection to the stars.

I have started painting on large paper. Good watercolour paper and masking taping the edges so when the painting is finished I still have those wonderful edges. easier to transport too.

loudly, quietly, out of tunely, sweetly, because I like to, silly songs, happy songs, about love, sadly, in the shower, alone, with friends.

my threadless submission for a design challenge where the words have to be part of the design. x

sometimes it is only later that I can look back and see why I did a picture and what it meant to me at the time. My first exhibition was full of pictures like that. Lost and lonely characters populated strange landscapes and looked helplessly out of the picture searching for something but they didn’t know what.

I didn’t know what I was looking for at the time either. I thought it was a boyfriend probably, someone to love me when I couldn’t love myself and avoided relationships. Lucy is me and the dog is me, I am running away from my own inner dog, the part the unconditionally adores me for me and will gaze in my direction with big round eyes. Dog owners know exactly what I am talking about.

Of course I didn’t realise this at the time, I just knew I was unhappy and painting the pictures and doing the embroideries was a way of getting it out in the open because my natural state was secrecy and I needed practice in being open with the world. I look back on those pictures now and there were a few I am still happy with and a few I see where they lack finish but at the time they were perfect and doing an exhibition and putting them out in the open for the public to see them was the best medicine ever.

I have a fascination with mermaids… they appear everywhere… I have even been mermaids in dreams… have written at least two posts about them and the sea here and here.

I like this bag, mermaid on the front and fishies on the back. I made it so she could give dream energy to the things inside the bag.

Glorious Bags, designs by cliodhna

How do you explain to a fish what water is?

You take him out if the water and show him the air. Then he will understand better than a thousand words what water is.

How do you explain to a person what life is and what we have surrounded ourselves with?

You take them out of it and let them see eternity. Then they will understand what life is better than a thousand words.

Perspective. A very little used tool in our army of rationality. In fact most of the time it is ignored, abused, shoved under the bed into the far corner where dust balls come to rest and forgotten about. We lose the perspective on our lives in a thousand moments every day. We don’t take the time and space we need for ourselves and we surround ourselves with things and responsibilities, and deadlines and bills to pay and all important things that make us think we HAVE to keep going and going and going like a hamster on his wheel.

If we don’t take the time we need who will give it to us? If we don’t give ourselves the space we need who will provide it for us? We get ratty with partners and people we love because we don’t look after ourselves. Nobody else can do this for us, we have to do this for ourselves. We have to give ourselves the love and healing we deserve and not wait for someone else to do it for us, not wait to be looked after and then get annoyed when it doesn’t arrive.

I get annoyed and frustrated and cranky when I feel I am not being looked after, but when I honestly look at my life it is because there was something I wanted that I didn’t do/ask for/ go and get because I was waiting for someone else to do it for me. It is an ego battle too, I WANT the world to pay attention to ME! My spoilt controlling child self takes over the reins because she reckons the grown up me isn’t cutting it, I am not giving myself what I want/deserve so she steps in to get it for me.

Perspective is about standing back from your life and your emotions that rule you and breathing fresh air for a minute. Away from the drama of the minutiae of daily life. Away from the soap opera that hooks us in, feeds us its never-ending looping circles of storylines, keeps us caught on what is going to happen next. It doesn’t want to let us go, we have to escape from it ourselves. It wants us to stay caught in its current, because we give it energy, without our energy it dies, cut of its head by taking away our attention and it dies.

Our life is our own responsibility. We shape our lives as we want to, and this includes knowing when we are being dependant on others and also knowing when it is time to ask for help, when we can’t do something on our own. Balance and perspective.

I love writing. I love putting words together and making a story. Sometimes the story comes first and sometimes the words come first. Sometimes it’s just a name and an idea. My problem is finishing it. Not an unusual problem I know. I can never figure out exactly how to finish the story. I have two finished long stories to date and lots of little ones. One children’s novel which needs to be rewritten (again) and an idea for a book that I could never quite get together involving a man named Winkle Ferrydinkle who left the shores of the faraway sea to go past the mountains of forgetting to find out what is on the other side.

I actually think writing a children’s book is harder than writing for adults. There is a simplicity to well written children’s books that is so difficult to achieve. They also have a shorter attention span and you need to catch and hold them, keep them in the world of the book. Look at Tove Jannson and the Moomin Books, it’s like taking a dip in a cool mountain pool reading her stories. The water is clean and pure and feels soft on your skin and so refreshing after the hot sun.

It has taken me a long time to actually learn this simplicity and to see it in all of the great novels and story books. We only really notice it by its absence. A book annoys us because it is too intellectual, or wordy, or opinionated, or we can feel the writer lecturing us through the characters. One of the best pieces of writing advice I gleaned from my travels was the phrase ‘Show, don’t tell’

Show us through language what is going on. Build the picture in our head of what the character is feeling /doing/seeing. Avoid ‘he was sad’ and instead remember the tempest scene in King Lear where the storm outside reflected perfectly the turmoil that was happening in the kings head. We only have words and they are tools that can be manipulated and controlled just like any other medium.

The other thing that daunted me was conversation. Man, how I avoided it. But, know what? I avoid it in real life too. I am not very good at talking to people. I am a bit of a closet recluse that only now this late in my life am I coming to really recognize that about me and accept it. I avoid people I don’t know very well, they make me uncomfortable. I am never sure about the intricacies of conversation and communicating with people. It takes me a while generally to open up, and thats fine, I am not going to push myself or feel bad about it. Thats who I am.

But… this translates into my art and my writing. This is where I push myself to be open and reveal myself. It means I hate writing conversation so it is the part of writing I need to practice most. Or maybe find my own style that doesn’t rely on conversation. Find my own way of telling things. I can think of a few authors that are dreamwriters, that write a strange world of shifting space that the people say almost nothing in. Also anybody see Belleville Rendez-Vous? Beautiful cartoon and I think there is about five words said by the characters all the way through.

so to be put on the list of blogs on this search site I have to write a review, clever. It gets them publicity better than a simple little widget along the side.

As to how it all works and will it bring traffic, I don’t know, have to wait a while and see. If it does I will post about it and you will have a good link. It has a list of new rss feeds and a list of top 100 which is updated once a month.