failure

I realized something yesterday. I will find the downside of everything I do. I make something or achieve something and then I will judge it against others or not being good enough and I will make it a failure.

Take threadless for example. I make t shirt designs for threadless and at the back of my mind I know I won’t win, I say I am not cool enough or I am too ‘girly’ for the mainly hip younger male crowd that seems to get designs printed. But the thing is I have good ideas I just don’t have the Photoshop skills to really make them shine and I find they improve slowly as I go. A part of me takes it personally when I get a low score and feel like I am failing again whereas really I am pitching to the wrong audience and there are lots of people out there who like my art and show support and I don’t count those but I count the people who don’t like my stuff. Failure.

Doesn’t mean I am going to stop making designs for threadless, it’s actually been an education to do them. I stretch my skills at graphic art and sometimes the best way to really see a design objectively and see how I could push it further or bring it closer to what I had in mind is to put it out there in front of people. And threadless has some really wonderful artists and designers submitting designs and I learn from them too as to what is possible. I just need to stop judging myself a failure.

I suppose that’s the balance. Knowing my capabilities and skills and how best I use them and where I can improve them and then the other side of believing in what I do right now and not belittling it because it doesn’t measure up to where I think I should be or what others are doing. And also to do things for my own pleasure and practice and not to be secretly looking for approval from the audience I am showing it to.

I remember when I was younger and my mum would always make sure we knew how good we were in relation to the others we were going in against in competition. She had them all pegged and pinned into the level of their skill and value as musicians. I was never going to win, I wasn’t good enough, but sure I could try anyway if I wanted. I did want, and I wanted to prove her wrong, but you know, I always ended up proving her right. There were always lots of kids ‘better’ than me. It became a measure of my worth and still is really but now I don’t want it anymore. To see something is to own it and to own it is to be able to leave it behind. I don’t know what I would have done in her place, if a child of mine was going in for a competition that I knew she wasn’t going to win. I think I would probably say nothing at all and just wish her luck and do her best and maybe I wouldn’t put them in competitions in the first place. Its not her fault, she was just following the track she was taught and it was fun also. We did loads of choir competitions and they were fun to head off to with the class.

Maybe that’s it, I am still in competition and wanting to win and never getting the prize because the prize doesn’t really exist anymore. I am in competition with myself for elusive perfection and self approval that I never give myself because no matter what I do there is always the part I failed to do. I don’t congratulate myself for having learnt the piece and practiced and got up and played in front of everyone I judge the fact I wasn’t the best in the eyes of everyone else out there. I don’t say wow well done I have had a few exhibitions and sold work and make art that makes me happy and fulfills me I judge myself that I don’t sell more or don’t have a big gallery behind me or am not ‘well known’ in the academic art circles which in reality I don’t want to belong to anyway. I wait for the world to recognize me when I am not seeing myself.

wow, just had a thought…. maybe thats why I paint faces all the time… I need someone to see me!

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a sense of perspective

Standing on Sandymount strand one early evening with my bike propped against my hip I gaze out into the sands and pools of shimmering water left by the outgoing tide that stretch for easily a mile out of shore. The sky is that wonderful almost transparent blue/purple that has a promise of mystery and a hint of things hidden about to be revealed. The sun has just dropped below the horizon of houses behind me, the moon is just peeking over the horizon in front of me and just up to the right Venus shines in her first star glory.

I begin to do a mental exercise. I imagine it all in 3d. I put the sun behind me and the earth a ball on which I stand spinning on its axis on its orbit around the sun. I put the moon on its smaller orbit around the earth and Venus on her orbit, a smaller one closer to the sun and moving faster then we are. I put aside all notions of up or down or flat orbits and I place us all in space, where these considerations do not apply

I play with this idea for a minute, and then suddenly it hits me with full force. It becomes real. I look up/down/sideways and grip my bike tightly as if to give me weight. There is nothing above me. Nothing, really nothing holding me onto this spinning ball we call home. There is no such thing as ‘sky’; that is a word made to give us a safe concept of having a roof over our heads. Only reason its blue during the day is because of reflecting light. I have incredible vertigo for a few seconds and then slowly it passes and I am once more feet on solid ground again.

Thank you gravity, whatever you are!

its friday

wonderful!

nap done and I am feeling a lot more mentally together. Teaching is exhuasting. I am out of practise of how to appear like the stern teacher and I used to hate that bit anyway and also with a strange class it takes a while to get to know them. Its funny, with the discipline bit, I am not sure what my mother has in place as to what is acceptable and what is not but when someone does something thats really out of line then the rest of them freeze for a second. Then they realise I am not going to do anything and they go back to normal.. Trouble is in a classroom messing and noise escalates rather than them keeping themselves calm. They just get giddier and giddier.

Plus I am unknown territory so they have to try everything to see if they can get away with it. They started with the fake coughing round little break today until I offered to send anyone who wanted to go up to the principal to ring their mothers and tell them they were sick. That stopped that in a hurry. I think whats so tiring about it is that you can’t switch off for a second.

Schools have changed. When I was in primary it was all about sewing and art and drama and singing and projects with history and geography and maths fitted in round the sides of those. Now its all curriculum and there seems to be no time for what I would consider the important things. I ask myself why teach a young child endless facts about geography that he or she won’t remember when we should be teaching them creativity at a time when their minds are still forming and are open to new ways of thinking. Teach them the facts later when they will learn them faster. If I had a child I would definitely send them to a steiner or a waldorf school or teach them at home if I could.

Their pictures turned out great. I would take photos but the camera isn’t at home so…

a dream

I had a dream years and years ago and I was sitting beside a canyon looking at an old leatherbound book which had the words “Where dragons be and how to find them” written on the front cover. I was looking at the index page because of course I wanted to know how to find them when up the canyon a huge bird came soaring. It dissolved into a thousand pixelly parts and then reformed facing towards me and took off past me with such power. I was left sitting there with my mouth open but no-one else saw it in the dream. I never did find out how to find dragons, guess I wasn’t supposed to know that information at that time.

I have changed a lot since that time. I lived in my dreams back then, It was quite cool for a while, I could dream on order and I had all sorts of mad strange lessons and journeys and I think looking back I was learning a lot on a level I didn’t know about. Time came though when I realized I wasn’t capable of holding down a proper job or manifesting all these dreams I had into reality. I was so afraid of failing (or succeeding) or making mistakes or not being able to live up to my own dreams and my knowledge about myself that I was stuck in this world and so I made the decision to come out, to quit obsessing about my inner world and start manifesting in my outer one.

The thing I know about myself is that I always get what I ask for.. always.. and this is not from an ego point of view, it amazes me sometimes when I look back and remember ‘Oh yeah, I asked for this, cool, thanks universe’. Of course this cuts both ways, I remember being frustrated with myself that I wasn’t in touch with my negative emotions, I was living on the surface all the time. Boy oh boy did I have a doozer of a year and a half after that wish but I came out the other side wiser and more in touch with myself and more accepting of my negativity and smarting from a few painful lessons.

So to come to place I think of as the Jonathon Livingston Seagull place. To learn how to ‘not ask’ but to stand so still you can traverse time and space. To learn how to be in that precious space of peace where creativity flows without hindrance, without judgement or comparison or fear or dissaproval. To leave ‘trying’ behind and just be. To let myself do that with my art and my pictures but also my life. Let it flow to where it needs to go so always I am in the right place , and the right place is always here.

I feel right now I am on the beginning of a cycle, cool feeling, I am planning work, wanting to get down to it. more oil pictures, these pictures I’m doing for threadless will get turned into embroideries. Patience, plant some seeds and see what sprouts. I said to someone recently my lesson is slow development and patience with myself is something I have had to learn. Let things develop slowly, don’t rush, don’t push, I will get to where I want to go to eventually with my stuff well learnt and well prepared, with calmness and in heart.

I am settling with Paul also, wonderful feeling of deepness that I always just accepted I would probably never find and of course scared the shit out of me when it arrived . Just to make ya’ll jealous here is a picture of the swimming hole we were in recently and I was swimming in a looking around at where I had found myself in my life saying “Cool! thanks universe”

Silence

so I have been thinking. I think we women need to reclaim our space. The feminists were right! I have been thinking about art and galleries and history and what is accepted by the establishment.

I am talking about our silence, our willingness to accept outer conditions of beauty and artfullness that come from an intellectual level. The mind (our own mind). The mind puts conditions and wants meaning and thought and wants to control. I remember being in art collage looking through the history books and the vast majority were men. Now I know this is old news and I was angry then but I recently had a realisation that women let them do this. The men set up establishments that they considered very important and set up rules of painting and how to’s and what not to’s and said that anything that wasn’t accepted by them was not good art. (i know I am sweeping the whole of history with a very big brush here) and the thing is we believed them! we women started to try to be like them to get into the establishments they set up. Think about an alternative history where women respected their own womenhood and supported each other. Look at native american tribes or aboriginal tribes where the men and the women each have rich separate connections and rituals that honour and value the validity of being male and being female as well as connecting as a whole tribe.

If european history had had that how different would it be now? It also took men to break out of the rules at the end of the 19th century with Van Gogh and Gaughain and Monet and Picasso and all the groundbreakers from that time and yes there were women then too but where are they now? why are they not household names known by everyone?

I know whoever is reading this might be thinking this is a bit of a rant but this was a big revelation to me. As Paul asked me last night, (after he was contemplating ants and they didn’t even know he was there) what is so big I can’t even see it. So on a personal level how have I been trying to fit with a male view of art and self expression, without even realising it.

There are women out there following their own path and I wish them all the good luck and energy in the world because it is hard. Looking at Ireland right now and there seems to be a fashion for intellectual art that ‘means’ something. When it is good they are meaningful and insightful and I love seeing them and pondering them but there is the other side too that we must honour and maybe it is time to create it ourselves. People have the buying power, women have the buying power!

I love the women artists I am finding on the web, and all the quilting and stitching shows, especially in the states are totally inspiring. They have gone past the functionality of the humble quilt to a piece of art work that shines with power. I love when I find beauty and true self expression whether it be male or female. because that what it comes down to, if we deny the female it doesn’t matter what sex we are, we are only living half a life. Its so important for us women to speak out and be vocal and make our lives how we want it, for ourselves first but also if the women are silent then the whole community is only living half a life.

The female is fluid and limitless, creating new life, bringing forth, breaking boundries and overflowing the old. She is death because to create something new you have to say goodbye to the old. She is darkness because the seed needs darkness to germanate before bursting forth in new life. She is light because light flows everywhere. She nutures and guides and holds and encourages with no reservations, no rules apply, nothing is to little to be passed over.

The male is structure and buildings and solidity, the male brings forth the dreams and the creativity of the female and gives it form. Shapes it with tools and thinks up new ways of forming and controlling substances to hold the creation of the female. Builds buildings, creates laws, sees limits, names things, puts order on chaos,

The male is lost in the pure fluidity and surging of life of the female and the female cannot function in the pure laws and structure of the male. We are all male and female, it is our job to balance the two.

ok, hope any of this makes sense. I know its a bit of a ramble. It makes sense in me but sort of in a round soft shape that is hard to put words on. It is a feeling of freedom for me, a sense of a whole other place that is there to be explored that I really didn’t value before. A place that is very open and welcoming and warm. Women have to find this place first because we are closer to it and then when we honour it and honour ourselves and each other then it doesn’t matter what the ‘establishment’ wants, we have our own place of power.

x clio

mexico city

…back from the big smoke to the (relative) smallness and countryiness of Guanajuato. Mexico city is an amazing place. Full of everything. We wandered round museums and down streets and up buildings. The picture above is a street, but see how it undulates? from the earthquake in 1985 (wikipedia) the streets curve into the distance. Mexico city is basically built on a lake bed so subsidence is a problem. There is a pendulum in the cathedral which shows the movement of the building over the last few hundred years or so and it topples slightly to the right and then to the left!

It is full of art this city, the Palacio de Bellas artes is incredible and there are art museums all over the place. Little places are hidden inside courtyards. We stumbled into a building and found a sculpture exhibition. What was interesting was that there was braille beside the description. They were beautiful to look at, heavy shiny metal, big faces and full round bodies, but also when I started trying to feel them with my eyes closed wonderful to touch aswell. I don’t have the name of the artist, whoops! didn’t even think of getting it, just looking and wandering.

also a lot of art along the paths. I love these guys.

And, finally we got a new Huichole painting. I love the Huichole art work. They have websites selling their work and galleries all over mexico. I like the market in Mexico city because it’s actually them selling their work. Puerto Vallarta is terrible, the traders have these huge stores selling the ‘best’ of the art but really all they want is to get you into a timeshare interview. We were being offered paintings for free if we would only come and listen to their pitch (hell on earth as far as I am concerned, you might get something for free but I could not listen to the hard sell for three hours) and it made me wonder how much money the artists actually got for their work from these guys.

Isn’t it beautiful?Not sure what it means, there was no story written on the back. Its night time, and the man is a shaman and those animals are probably his spirit guides, and then I thought maybe he is a shapeshifter, just from the alternating dog and human footprints. Your guess is as good as mine!

Ok! time to do some work, have to see if photoshop has decided to start behaving itself again after I told it to repair itself, xx clio

Oil painting

I finished the two paintings I was working on. Time to tell the story. Paul kept asking me what they were about and I would just say ‘you know, freedom’ very articulate I know but sometimes I can’t say until they are finished and I am so much better at writing this than saying them. So here it is!

I had a dream about a wee brown bird. I took this brown bird away from where it was living because I wanted to protect it. The bird was angry with me for having done this and was going to fly back to where it came from. I was really worried about it because I figured it was too small to do this safely but then I looked and the brown bird had turned into a young man with a backpack on his back and I realised he could do it if he wanted.

The moral of the story? wee brown birds are perfectly capable of looking after themselves

The meaning of the dream? I am that part of me that I figure can’t look after myself. I mother the bird, trying to protect it and it gets angry with me for not letting it live its own life. The bird/young man is that part of me that is very able to take care for itself but just looks small and fragile right now. I have to stop trying to look after it and trying to keep it by me but let it fly and go where it wants to go. Let myself go where I want to go and do what I want to do and trust myself and my wishes and heart wants in life.

I will have the other finished painting and the story behind it in a day or two..

x

fairs, rollercoasters and paintings

I went to Leon yesterday (that is in Mexico not spain by the way) to the ‘Feria’. Sooooo many people. Just follow the crush around the stalls until we got wise, abandoned our friends who were looking for ceramics and got outside and headed straight for the ‘mechanical toys’. They are kind of old here, Paul reckons they are the rides that he used to go on when he was young, there are almost no safety harnesses (although as I pointed out its nice that mexicans assume you are not going to jump out of the ferris wheel car whereas everywhere else I have been they see a possibility and immediately fill it) and I reealllly didn’t trust the look of some of them. We skipped the old rollercoaster and went on the middle-aged one (twice), went on the haunted ride, took a spin on the spinner, ate churros, did the water-ride, ate cotton-candy, felt sick…. usual fun… I am like a child in these places, I never went to them when I was growing up. I make lists of all the rides we HAVE to go on and drag Paul around behind me!

Anyway, I bought these

which are the cutest things..a hobby horse an a hobby tiger.. they are from paper mache and I don’t know how long they would actually last in the hands of a child, I dented a tiny hole in the paint just taking a picture. But they are gorgeous!

and these

they are feng shui frogs and if I put them in the right place they will attract riches into our house. I will have to find a nice place for them to live.

Lastly.. to some art work I am progressing with the two oil paintings. I have got to the stage where I start to have some real fun. The backrounds and major details are done and dry and now I get to do stars and dots and spirals and flowers and suns rays and other wonderful things.. happy monday ya’ll… make a wish for the rest of the week!

Hades

Hades was the king of the underworld and he stole Persephone down to his underground kingdom and tricked her into eating six pomegranate seed which meant that she would have to stay for six months underground and could return to the surface for six months. This is where winter and summer comes from. When Persephone goes underground her mother, who is the earth mother, Demeter, mourns for her lost child.

So says the myth

but… greek myths are not just myths but maps of the human pysche. I become fasinated by various ones at different times. This one, I began thinking about Persephone, queen of the underworld for six months. Does she fall in love with Hades who really loves her? does she gain some of his power? In an earlier myth she was actually the queen of death and life but as the world grew more patriarchal the myths changed and the women grew less and became secondary to the men. So she survives as an abductee without power, forced to be with Hades for six months.

I think she learns and accepts her fate, takes half of the power down below and shares the throne with Hades.

Demeter can’t accept this, her beloved daughter has grown up and has taken a position opposite hers, Demeter is life, Persephone is death. She mourns for innocent times past when there was no knowledge of death and decay and change. But there can be no life with change.

Hades, in a secret part of himself worships Persephone and can’t believe he has managed to trap this angel of light to himself. He is lost when she is gone for the six months and waits for her to come home, maybe afraid she will break the agreement and never return.

She is two.. life and death, winter and summer, free and bound, the light and winds and the underground darkness.

The first picture is Persephone looking to the light as she prepares to leave for the six months, not looking back, happy to be going up to the green and the sun. Hades looks at her leaving, he can’t follow, he is bound to the underworld.

The second picture is hades lost without her. The sad king, he has a whole kingdom and it is not enough.

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letting go

So… it is time to get the new years resolution into action! I decided this year I would try and clear as much of my past as I could. Release old ways of thinking and behaviours that don’t work any more, finish projects or definitely say good bye to projects that aren’t working. Use up the big pile of fabrics I have on the floor of my work room before I can buy new fabrics. I get more inventive when I have to improvise.

I did this once before, about four years ago when I was coming to mexico for the first time. I reckon, looking back, I was about 95% ruthless. I burnt old diaries and sketches and stories and writings that I had been hanging onto since secondary school. I went through my clothes and books and jewelry and gave away anything that I never wore or rarely wore or just some items I knew a friend would really like. It was really hard to do but I felt so light after it was all gone.

Clearing the past is not forgetting people or places or times but rather clearing any old negativity or limitation round the memory and remembering with love and acceptance. It also clears any energy blocks that are preventing me from going forward or achieving my goals.

I bought paper this morning to get started on the illustrations for the crow story and I have three nearly done embroideries waiting for borders and a skirt hanging waiting for a hem. All the new stuff can wait for a week or so while I get everything sorted.