“wiggly pinwheel”

It’s been 5 weeks since I posted anything or looked at anyone else’s blogs. 😭

I had to pack up my art supplies so we could decorate for Christmas and have a beautiful house (I’ll post an Xmas blog with the pictures and whatever words I can squeeze out. lol!) That meant all the art stuff had to go in boxes down to the garage.

Ifelt so angry when I was doing it, though I agreed to do because I love to make the house look lovely and super Christmassy. It’s probably my favorite part of the holiday season. More on that in the Xmas post.

It’s been really hard to deal with, not being able paint. I did some drawings, but I’m not great at it, I don’t love doing them as much. Until recently it was difficult on my eyes (lots more on that soon).

“Wiggly Pinwheel”
That’s what I saw. What do you see in the painting below?

I painted this last night. I wanted to make an atmosphere of joy and exuberance because I was so happy to be painting! It felt healing. Hooray for art therapy!
 I listened to The Police while I painted. I started loving them was I was 13 when my aunt bought me Synchronicity for Christmas. And that was that. 😀
I used some odd tools to make this, brushes and palette knives, of course, but also things like plastic silverware, toothbrushes, paper towels and little straws.

It was fun to make and I think it looks happy.

I 

“3 am”

A couple of nights ago a panic attack woke up at 3 am. Í think i had the attack because I was in a lot of pain and that made my mind flip out. I got up because I was wide awake and anxious as hell. 

I sat at the dining room table from 3 am until 8 am when it was finished. 

This is just line art so it doesn’t look that exciting, but I enjoyed it so much that I am making another one that is larger and has a lot of filling in and highlighting. Stay tuned!
Sleep well WordPressers!

“Playground”

“My outsider art, my therapy”

I’m kind of excited about this drawing. I always want to make outsider art and most of the time it doesn’t feel right. I think I got what what I was looking for.

When I saw my therapist last week and she told me to get the bad feelings out. She told me yell! So I did and what i ended up shouting almost involuntarily, fuck you fuck you fuck you etc.

Recently I wrote about art therapy. This is a great example of that. This drawing is how I felt when I was yelling in my therapist’s office. Drawing this was another way of getting negative feelings out.

I drew it all in one sitting. I really didn’t want to stop the process, so I kept working on it.once I got going it was easy.

I did it with prismacolor markers. I wanted to express the insanity I felt so I didn’t use any pencil or ink outlines, just straight up color and shapes.

This sort of  artwork makes me so nervous. It’s way outside my comfort zone. but that’s a good thing for an artist.

 Since I’m not skilled at drawing and I rarely post pieces that are raw and negative I feel vulnerable. It’s totally uncensored and totally unpolished.

So, here you go!

art is therapy (illustrated)

Art has been a powerful form of therapy for me. i’ll show you!

 

This was one of my first acrylic paintings. I wanted to create something surreal. almost all my experience with art was abstract. It came to me naturally. surreal was a lot harder!

the lizard print is from when I was in high school, one of the toughest times in my life. My parents were in the middle of an ugly divorce and my bipolar was  undiagnosed and out of control. I was drinking heavily.

My four years of art class was a haven. We got to use the 2 big art rooms and supplies on lunch or after school. The teacher, Sister Claire was wonderful.

this is a lino print i made in one of her classes. she taught us to cut mattes too, i did a good job, but this photo doesn’t make it look that way!

“lino lizard” 1989

I didn’t paint a lot until 2009. It was a very difficult time in my life.. I felt hopeless and shut down. I found art as a form of therapy. I knew I was creative and i’ve appreciated modern art as long as I can remember.

I didn’t know what to do about it. Then I read about prismacolor pencils online. I bought a ream of card stock and a set of them. I used up the whole ream and half of the pencils.

“pachyderm” an early colored pencil drawing

I drew all day, most days and I felt better, as time went on. I joined deviantart and started to learn. I asked everyone everything.

I worked on learning to paint and draw. It was practice and obsession. It was incredible. The world seemed open again. I tried as many mediums as could.

I made friends with artists on social media sites. We discussed artists we liked, techniques, inspiration and motivation.  We validate each other and give and get positive feedback.

As I said, my art epiphany happen in 2009. It wasn’t the only time I painted. Both times my muse was my depression.

In 1995 I was asked to take a leave of absence from a job at E*Trade Securities that I hated, because of my bipolar disorder issues, I wasn’t able to act appropriately in a corporate environment. I cried at work, I missed way too many days, got angry when I was micromanaged, on and on. It was much too uptight, high stress, and just wasn’t what I wanted for myself.

After getting pushed out of my job i became extremely depressed. I was angry and scared. I felt ashamed. Thank goodness I had my husband to save me.

My dear father wanted to help. He gave me money to buy art supplies because he, my husband, and my psychiatrist thought it would be therapeutic. it was. 

I went wild! It was feeling the thrill of buying art supplies for the first time. I chose large format canvases, oil paints, linseed oil, turpentine, brushes, drop cloths. I was really excited again. I started painting. Some of it was really enjoyable. I didn’t like making all of them because they woke up feelings I needed to feel but didn’t want to. Therapy! Catharsis!

“comet cleanser” an oil painting i did in 1995. you can see the catharsis!

Unfortunately, I only did that for a year. After that I made notebooks I filled with pen and ink drawings and oil pastels. i have no idea what happened to them, which is really too bad.

at one point I drew on a big pad of newsprint with sticks of charcoal. I put the pad on my old easel. I did lots of scribbling, making marks, (and making a mess!), practicing graceful curves suggesting the human body. Making big strokes and lines, drawing freely made me *feel* free.

I made and sold artisan jewelry for a couple of years after that. it kept my creative juices flowing and was a lot of fun. During this time I also did some oil painting.

one of my necklaces. i sold it to someone in australia!

 

one of my oil paintings done during the time i was making jewelry, before i got serious about painting.

Now I paint with many kind of paints and inks.  I make psychedelic drawings with markers and fine liners. 

drawings:

Back Camera

Back Camera

 

paintings:

 

 

It’s still going on. I’ve learned so much! That cliche about the more you learn, the more you realize how little you know is definitely true in this case. I think it will get more and more interesting as I carry on my art journey. It is still, and always will be, a large part of the therapy I need for my mental and physical ailments.

“woman on the wind” water color

 

“sort of a flower with a hook”

“space case” a watercolor painting

wow! acrylic paintings, abstract, of course

🙂

🙂

more about one of my mandalas

a little while ago i posted some mandalas that i created by using some original, traditional drawings and photo manipulating them.

i wanted to delve into this idea a little more. actually i just want to show off my coolest mandala.

i think it looks sort of like flash for a traditional american style tattoo. maybe i should get it! actually, because because my fibromyalgia  makes my pain several times worse than it would be for someone with out the disease, so i’m not going to try it again. i’m mostly covered, anyway!

the symmetry of this mandala is just a pleasure for my brain to experience. the softness of the lines make it look kind of dreamy, something from a long time ago. obviously it gives me lots of ideas. that’s so fun!

it’s also fun to try out to different photo editing apps. i did that with  such programs on the pc,  but doing it with  my phone, i had to get apps to do it with. i found several and am checking them out. like anything you do first on the pc and then use on a device, there’s a learning curve, but it’s not like trying to learn to use PhotoShop!

i think this looks like a gate. maybe it’s a gate to a palace, or a crest over a door. i said tattoo already but it looks like i’m saying it again! it would be good painted on the back or a leather jacket (i had a jacket like that, but the painting i’d done on it wasn’t that great. haha!

it’s nice to remember that…and think about how incredibly much i’ve grown, artistically, over the years, especially over the last decade. i can’t believe that i’m still  on the art therapy journey, one that i hope will never end!

 

art history of me!

i think think i should write more in this blog. i know seeing pictures of my art is nice, but it’s kind of impersonal if i just post the pictures without any descriptions or explaining my technique, etc.

let’s start out with a little bit about my “art history.”

when i was 11 i found out that i was bipolar I, OCD, anxiety and panic disorder, i have eating disorder symptoms. PTSD was always there in there underneath. my mother was abusive, had almost all the symptoms. can you imagine two people (my dad left) like that, and filled with rage trying to cope.

everybody in my maternal extended family was an artist, professional or as a  hobby. my mother taught me a lot about art. art’s in my blood. so is mental illness. all those artistic people in the family are mentally ill. most of them are in treatment.

my tough childhood, and my physical illnesses caused me to move out of the city i grew up in (st. louis–horrible place.) and move to the  Bay Area to go to university–Santa Clara University. i started taking art classes, for fun, most of what i did was photography. i loved it. i started learning about composition, something i think i do well. i started to doodle.

i graduated from university at 23 and got married immediately. i was very depressed at the time. my dad knew that i was stagnating and falling deeper into my misery. he gave me money to buy painting supplies. i started out with oils, got brushes and canvases, linseed oil. the canvases i bought were huge. i had one that was $100. i knew  nothing about painting so i was just going along with my instincts.i knew immediately that i wanted to  paint abstract works. my paintings were decent, looking back.

i floated away from painting and didn’t make any art for a while.  i started to make jewelry  that i sold on etsy. i made weird jewelry, very mixed media. i even had custom beads made for me by etsy artists i made friends with. they taught me a lot, especially about photographing  jewery. all my creative energy went into making jewelry. i figured a lot out on my own. at this point i realized that it was therapy, art therapy.  i spent more money on the materials my jewelry to expensive for people  to buy and if i priced them lower i’d be losing money big time. i quit, sadly.

shortly after that my husband suggested i join deviantArt. it was so exciting! so much to see, so many people that were friendly and eager to teach out and help others. i had two accounts and disappeared for long periods of time. over the six  years learning to draw and paint. i still can’t draw very well. i can make trippy drawings with sharpies, thought. i think a lot of my paintings are pretty good. i’m always trying new things. it’s exciting every time i sit down to make a piece of artwork.

i don’t sell my art. i trade it and give it away.

now art is a huge part of my life.it is wonderful therapy.  it’s accumulating all over my house! i post it on various social media sites. not fb though. i get bad vibes from that site.

 

anyway, hope this was interesting, and i’ll  try to write if  anybody is interested. maybe i’ll do it simply for the sake of it.