Old Journal Entry...

WHOA!

I was organizing my vast collection of old journals and picked one up and opened it randomly to a page and found something that blew my mind. I have absolutely NO recollection of this dream which is so strange...

I've been slacking on recording them lately but I believe strongly that dreams are important and have merit. It's basically having a conversation with yourself on a deeper level. In my experience when you make an effort to remember and analyze your dreams and take them into account, it's like your subconscious goes, "Oh! Great! You're listening! Let's do this!" and a stronger sort of language is formed. Becoming involved in your dream life and not dismissing it but allowing it to have merit is basically encouraging connectivity in your brain and forging and strengthening pathways. It's being more self-aware. There are endless benefits that I won't get into because I have a modeling job tomorrow and I really just felt the need to share this crazy awesome dream I found...or did it find me?...again...  o.0

November 16, 2007

I had the most extraordinary dream the night before last. I dreamt that I was walking along a street of cobblestone or asphalt and that I came across a small sort of transparent green tentacle jelly like form sprouting up from the stone or asphalt. I kicked it and it broke off leaving a hole in the matrix so to speak. It was like a broken/incomplete hologram appears on Star Trek to a degree, without the technology. Waves or ripples radiated out from the hole - fractal patterns. I knelt down beside it. I realized then that I had wounded something.

Me: "I'm sorry, had I understood I would never have done that."

I then saw next to the wound a sort of box or lantern. A great voice spoke to me from everywhere and nowhere - It was deep, and calm, and powerful.

Voice: "Look."

I looked inside and within and saw, set inside metal like a diamond or pearl, a light that was white and ethereal. It glowed and had a presence but was in between physical form - there, but not there at the same time. I was wonderfully beautiful. I was in awe as I looked upon it.

Voice: "This is the Light. This is what all arises from, and what all eventually returns to. It is the Alpha and Omega, it is within All Things, for it is All Things. It is also within you. From this you can create anything and everything you wish - It can become anything...Create."

Then I woke up more excited than I've been in a while.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

sooooo....I'm going to hop into the studio for a bit...just had to share.

I like my brain sometimes. If you believe that's where that came from...intense...

An Act of Rebellion

Something that came up multiple times this week in conversation was Art as an act of rebellion. Anyone who isn't an artist may not think of it too much, but pursuing a career in art constantly brings this to the forefront. I don't mean that the art one makes needs to be intentionally rebellious in nature, but that the actual act of being an artist in itself is an act of rebellion. 

Many people may roll their eyes at this because we have the teenagerish kind of rebellion locked in our minds, and everyone knows someone who likes to think themselves a rebel, builds their self-image around it, shoves it down our throats, and generally annoys the crap out of us with it. It brings to mind the people we all know who refuse to like or enjoy (or at least admit to enjoying) anything popular because their idea of being a rebel is liking things that the majority either doesn't like or (even better) doesn't know about. Their rebellion is just refusing to admit that anything commonly appreciated has much merit.

That's not what I'm talking about, but by the way, just because no one has heard of that obscure thing you love doesn't make it, OR YOU, better.

Sorry side rant.

This whole thing will probably need a second posting to do it justice because truthfully I just don't have time at the moment. I'm doing my taxes, and that's part of what brought it to mind.

Taxes lays out you and your place in your society in little boxes and everything has labels and forms and appropriate places to enter the appropriate information. The information you have as a working artist doesn't plug into those little boxes as neatly or ideally as it would otherwise. The whole process is just so awkward because you're translating things into 9-5/desk job terms. Does it fit? Of course, eventually, yes. But the very process of looking through everything for the best place to enter the amount you spent on art supplies or not having a W2 to file...just the whole process makes you feel like, despite being a law abiding, tax paying citizen, that you're operating outside of the system, despite being a part of  it.

That's the truth of it too, always has been. Artists occupy a very odd place in society. We have a place, always have, and it's extremely important to society whether or not the average person realizes it. But it's a place straddling the edge, on one side there's society and on the other are the fringe dwellers. The fringe dwellers are usually feared, because they represent what happens when you fail in society. Mole people are an excellent contemporary example of fringe dwellers. Artists...our place is right on that edge. 

Exaggeration? Not really. What's the average reaction to, "I want to become an artist." Most often it's skepticism and concern, "You'll never make any money at it." Being the most common one. Well, what's that mean? You don't make enough money, you become homeless, you become homeless you become a fringe dweller...So there you go, the concern supports it,  whether it's realized consciously or not everyone knows where the Artist lives: on the edge. We live on many edges but  I'm referring mainly to the edge of society's perception of success and failure.

Bottom line is that I'm doing what I love and what I love is art. In a society dominated by soulless desk jobs and 9-5's that rarely have anything to do with an individuals real love or passion or talents...I say that makes me a rebel - statistically speaking.

I'm doing my taxes and looking at my finances so don't worry, there's no ego or over romanticizing that. 

Honestly as a panentheist and a person that tends towards feelings of connectivity with everything and everyone...being reminded of it is actually surprising and jarring more often than not.

For me it's less, "Yeah! I'm a rebel! I live on the edge!" and more, "Wait. What? Where am I? What am I doing here at the edge of this giant gaping maw of a societal precipice?"

Yeah...so here's what I'm up to in the studio, it's slow going, sometimes what goes on in an artist's studio is actually as boring as watching paint dry, because sometimes that's what you're doing.

So that's where the night stand is right now. I've been gone on modeling jobs a lot this week so it's slow going. I haven't been around much during the hours that power tools would be acceptable, I don't want angry neighbors. Plus I've been working more on the coffee table which may be on its last coat on primer at last. Even with the studio ventilation and a fan on it still takes ages to dry.

And here's the beginnings of Green Tara, it's also slow going because it's been months since I've drawn with a mechanical pencil sharpened to a syringe point. I'm a bit rusty. But I'll fix her, never fear.

Sleep now. Then early modeling work. Then possibly a power nap. Then back to the battle with the taxes.

Tenzin Rabgyal's Green Tara

I couldn't find it for my last post, but the most beautiful Green Tara that I've ever seen was actually painted by one of the thangka artists I was honored to study under at Thangde Gatsal Studios in India a few months ago. Tenzin is an amazing artist working in Dharamsala India as an accomplished Tibetan Buddhist Thangka painter. He's also an amazing teacher and helped me so much as I worked on my own thangka.

Here are a few images of a Green Tara he painted on green, using gold and a few selectively placed mineral pigments. She really glows and it's just amazing to see in person. the whole piece can't be larger than 18x24" even, the detail is stunning. The top photo someone else took so you get to see some of that glow. I unfortunately only have the camera on my phone so my photos don't capture it's true beauty.

Here he is working on Kalachakra

So, praises be to Tenzin, who is awesome. Long may he paint beautiful, beautiful paintings.

I'll definitely be squinting my eyes at this one as I create my own Green Tara, it'll be nice to know he's still teaching me in a way, despite being far far away.

Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha

Studio Update ~ Tables

Welcome to the new blog, be not afraid, change is good.

If you're confused and scared, all my previous posts can still be found on my old blog, there should be a link on this page. If there isn't I'm sorry, I'm still wrestling this thing into submission.

Continuing with my current project...

I suspect that the paint/finish stripper may have been a massive waste of time and I probably lost a few brain cells due to the fumes, I can't believe how completely toxic that stuff is.

I washed the coffee table off and then sanded it with super fine grain sandpaper and got it all nice and smooth for its first layer of primer today

There it is all nice and clean

And here it is all nice and smooth after the go over with the fine grain sand paper

Here it is with the first coat of primer drying in the studio

The night table is currently more cause for frustration. I have it going along on the side in between drying times and such with the coffee table and so it's going at a slower pace. I know pretty much exactly what I'm going to paint on the coffee table but I don't really have any solid plans for the nightstand so I'll most likely clean it up, prime it, and then tuck it in a corner until I'm finished with the coffee table.

But here it is with the stripper scraped off of it, looking kind of...weathered, lets go with weathered.

ew, stripper

turp running down the edges looked kind of cool though

sitting there dejected in the studio, thinking about what it's done while I work on the other table.

So tonight I'll give the nightstand a good scrub down with soapy water before I sand it a bit. I want to get as much of the residual stripper and turp off of it before I sand it so I'm cutting down on the toxicity of the sawdust I'll be trying to avoid breathing in.

I'm also going to start my grid drawing of Green Tara. I already have my own drawing of White Tara that I used for the Thangka. It's considered appropriate to use the grid drawings of your Master (at least it was where I studied) but I like drawing them myself because even though you're following the same grid each artist always ends up giving them a different feel/look. Plus that way I have the satisfaction of creating a piece from the ground up and knowing that all the work is mine. It's a wonderful way to really get to know the Deity as well.

Buddhist art is created for the purpose of meditation. A practitioner meditates upon a work of art in order to cultivate within themselves the ideals that Deity represents. Monks and Nuns and practitioners will meditate upon these works of art in illuminated manuscripts, thangkas, and wall/cave paintings, and statues. They will study them their entire lives. But I've heard it said that they will never know these Deities the way that the artists know them because of the specific kind of focus and dedication that an artist must have to call them into being. A different kind of understanding is forged between Deity and artist during the creative process. The artist understands the arms and the fingers, their form and how they hold aloft the various instruments of Buddhism. They have a greater understanding of the flowers, their folds and patterns of growth because they have spend hours, days, months, and years carefully studying and rendering them; from the lotus in the water, to the lotus throne that unfolds and holds aloft the Deity, to the lotuses the Deities hold in all their colors and meanings, to the myriad of flowers that bloom around them creating a beautiful celestial garden for the Deity and a sacred space of contemplation for the viewer. Drawing and painting these Gods and Goddesses brings about a completely new level of understanding for the artist.

Meanwhile the process of creating this kind of art requires the artist to cultivate a unique kind of mindfulness and patience. I believe the most important kind of patience one can cultivate is patience with yourself and the painstaking, meticulous nature of this kind of art demands that of you in a very real and tangible way, and you have to be present with it and in the moment to do the work justice.

All of it is a completely unique form of meditation.

Now that I wrote that and reminded myself of all of this I think washing and sanding will be more meditative instead of just something annoying that I have to do to get me to the painting part. I have to remember that the prep should be as meditative as the actual drafting and painting part...*crosses arms and shuffles feet with grumpy face*... I guess...phooey

In any case, I'm off to wash down the nightstand and eat dinner and then start on my Green Tara drawing. I have never drawn her before so here's an image to tide you over if you have no idea what I'm talking about.

I love the last one. Green Tara is meant to have the face of a beautiful 16 year old girl. She's meant to have a beauty that exudes a fresh loveliness and youthful vitality and purity.

So lets see how I do with that...