Not that I post with any kind of regularity or schedule, but here I am on a Tuesday. I’ve enrolled in a five session course on portraits with acrylics and the first session went pretty well. The advantage of acrylics is the drying time and how it’s much easier to take it home to continue work on it. Compared to pastels where the work has to be carefully transported, acrylics are easy. I’m enjoying these courses which are in series of five sessions each time focusing on a particular medium as I feel like I want to understand how different mediums work.
I do enjoy portraits a lot and I want to try and see what different things I can do with it once I get the basics down.
When I was a young girl, my mother once showed my notebook of writings to the daughter of a friend of hers. I think my Mom was proud that I was writing, but I was quite embarassed because her friend’s daughter was (at that time) already playing the violin for a big orchestra. I was like: Eh…Mom. Why?
But instead of dismissing my work, this young woman looked at it carefully, then she said something to me which I’ve carried around much like a puzzle that I keep trying to unfold.
“An artist,” she said. “Can see beyond the leaf.”
I never got around to asking her what she meant because soon after that this violinist went abroad to play with other orchestras and our paths never crossed again.
I think of her words every now and then, though.
Today, those words came bubbling up again and I thought of the following reply:
“Beyond the leaf is a world (maybe more than one)
Lives are lived. Not all are told or written down in story.
Not one is insignificant.“
To you who read these words, may you be surprised by small moments of daily joy. Thank you for stopping by.
Here’s one of my favorite exercises from this week. On a background of sennelier soft pastel, an impression of branch and leaf.
February turned out to be a more challenging month as the flu struck and just as I was feeling better, shingles happened. I had this idea that I could get through shingles with just paracetamol, but after enduring a night with no sleep and pain that I can’t describe, I caved and asked my doctor for stronger pain relief. Thankfully, my doctor prescribed pain relief quickly and I have been able to sleep through the night which accounts for why I no longer need the pain relief. I do have this incredible itch where the shingles outbreak happened and a burning sensation pretty much like when you have a bad sunburn.
Recovery from shingles is a process, but I’m glad I’m able to come upstairs to the workroom and do some art practice as well as a little bit of writing.
I was inspired quite a bit by some of the work that I saw when I visited the art fair and had a conversation with an artist who was doing some live painting. That conversation made me think about my own approach to art and art making.
During our conversation, the artist told me that what’s important is to find your own gestures and your own signature. What is it about your art that makes you the artist that you are? Every artist has a signature–not the name you sign, but it’s in the language that exists between the artist and the blank canvas/page.
I think about this conversation as I draw without having a particular goal. I draw repetitions of shapes as a way of tuning in to what am I feeling, what am I thinking, and what is going on in my body and in my spirit today.
Breathe in, breathe out.
In today’s world where everyone seems to want to rush towards a goal or to achieve something or to become someone, being in the moment frees us of all those stresses. When we are free from those stresses of becoming something, we can listen to what our bodies tell us.
Small circles, gridlines, spirals, repetitive mark making and repetitive movements. All of these things are practices that ground us in the body and in the moment. And being grounded allows us to transcend to where we can see beyond the mundane.
I’m stopping here for today.
To you who reads this, thank you for dropping by. Blessings and peace.
There’s a Dutch phrase that captures the emotion for what we have gone through–het laat mij niet in de koude kleren zitten. Which means that all we’ve gone through as a family, all I’ve gone through as a person, these things have not left me unchanged or unmoved.
It’s a good thing to be moved and to be changed because it means I am still alive. I am still feeling, I am still living and I am constantly in transition, evolving, changing, not standing still. I think about this as I find myself surprised at how this season, this moment of being in a state of limbo, has feed the creative in me. I write, because I love to write. I make music because I love to make music. I teach because I love seeing how those I teach bloom into their potential. And I make art because a lot of times, when I am making art, I find myself in conversation with my maker.
Before 2022, I never imagined I would be making art as I do today. Or that it would become so important to me or that it would help me talk about what I am going through or that it would be a pathway to growing and knowing myself better. (I used to say that I write because I can’t paint or draw and am basically useless at art.)
When I told my Mom about my diagnosis in 2022, her command was for me to go ask God what his purpose was with me. At that time, I had no words for writing anything. I couldn’t even speak about what I was going through. Imagine being a writer unable to write or say anything about the storm going on inside you?
This was one of the first images I made which expresses what I was going through at the time. It was hope and agony and my soul just crying out. It was: God, if you really see me, then do something.
From that moment, telling the story of that time happened through images. Sometime in 2022, a friend proposed that I should try making use of acrylics. My first approach to painting was to simply splash color on the canvas. To try and put on the canvas or on paper what was in my head or in my heart at the moment.
This stormy canvas was just me saying: here I am in the middle of this storm and the storm is so big, I can’t even begin to describe it.
Making something visual happened because I had no words. But when you are without words for more than a year, and when you are engaging with art making almost everyday for a year, your work changes. One day, early this year, something told me that the way I was working was going to change and so was the art.
I think about the process of art making and how making art led me back to writing and how art that’s on the canvas tells a story just as the words on a page tell a story. We create because we have stories inside us that we want to share and stories will find their way out of the person bearing those stories. If not through words, it will be through other means of telling. (Just consider the plethora of youtube stories, audio stories, film stories..etc., etc.)
The more we engage with telling stories, the better we become at them. The more we engage with a certain medium, the better we become at that medium. Before my diagnosis, I would never have dreamed that I would someday tell stories through painting. After diagnosis, I thought I would never be able to tell stories through words again.
There are a lot of famous saying about life and art, but for the life of me, I can’t remember a proper one at the moment, but I do believe that art and life are intertwined. If anything, being diagnosed has made me more conscious of how important it is to live a life with purpose. To create marks with deliberation and care, to engage fully and be present in the moment, to look–really look, to really see and to also rest and be in the moment and allow moments to flow over me and change me and transform me so I can bring that back to whatever I am working on at the moment whether it is on art, on writing or my relationships.
I keep thinking of that friend who said to me “if only we knew how much time we had”. The truth is, we know. We know our time on this planet is not infinite. We know it, we just don’t want to acknowledge it.
I think about this as I contemplate the story of my life and I find myself wondering about the overall arch and how the completed story will read like or look like if it were in a book or hanging in a gallery. When we are in the process, we only see now. We only see this moment.
This is one of my latest works in progress (yup, I have more than one). I’ve been working on it for almost two months. I do a little work. I put it away. Think about it. Work on it some more. Right now, it’s missing one more element which I am thinking about.
I can honestly say that I don’t know why I am writing this or sharing this at this moment. It just felt good to do so. I don’t know what 2024 holds. I don’t even know what will happen tomorrow or next week or the weeks after that. Today, I am heading to the hospital. I am getting a CT scan. I am doing what I can to keep my body healthy. I am spending time with my kids and with my loved ones. I am writing. I am alive.
Blessings and peace to you who read this. Choose life.
“I use the term Indigenous to refer to the self that has found its place, its home in the world. Emptied of projections of “inferiority”, “third world”, “underdeveloped”, “uncivilized”, “exotic and primitive”, and “modernizing”, it is the self capable of conjuring one’s place and growing roots through the work of imagination, re-framing history, and re-telling the Filipino story that centers our history of resistance, survival and re-generation.” -Indigenous Filipino Knowledge as defined by Leny M. Strobel-
“Unlike the English word ‘Other’, Kapwa is not used in opposition to the self and does not recognize the self as a separate identity. Rather, Kapwa is the unity of self and others, and hence implies a shared identity or inner self. From this arises the sense of fellow being that underlies Filipino social interaction.” – Leny M. Strobel –
“In the way I experienced Kapwa, I found that people would seek acknowledgement of a shared bond by trying to find a connection that ultimately widened the sphere of the self.” – Margarita Certeza Garcia, Towards a “Kapwa” Theory of Art, Working towards Wholeness in Contemporary Practice
And then, this Tony Hall quote that I picked up from Nalo Hopkinson’s twitter feed: “The arts are really oxygen for the community, creating breathing space. If we don’t breathe, we die. We need oxygen.”
I am thinking of oxygen–the need to breathe–the need for connections–the need for air and how we need each other in creating space so we can breathe. I’m thinking of community and I am thinking of love. I am thinking of the importance of dialogue and conversation, the necessity of keeping lines and doors open. I am thinking of how this thing is true, that we are always at risk, that we put ourselves constantly at risk. That trust is hard and pain is inevitable.
I remember my Father reminding me that what matters is not how others see me or how others judge me–I remember him saying: “what matters is how you respond to others. Your actions–what you do next–that’s what you’re accountable for.”
It is a risk to remain vulnerable, but if that’s what it takes to help build a stronger community, I’m ready.
Every now and then I groan out loud on twitter about how long it’s taking me to finish the novel. Well, that and I have other work that I also want to finish. But my ultimate goal is to complete work on the Body Cartographer’s novel.
One of my former students has been a great inspiration to me. I’ve been following his progress and I check in on him from time to time. ( His parents are my godparents, so even if we’re not blood-related, we are family.) Anyway, I’ve been pleased to see that he’s taken the encouragement to keep up with his art and to witness his growth as an artist. His determination in the face of obstacles inspires me and I asked him if he would make me some art to keep me going while I write the novel.
You can read EJ’s story and see some of his artwork here.
Anyway, I sent him some snippets and he sent me his interpretation of those snippets. Here’s one of the characters from the Cartographer’s world. A warrior woman of the gods, named Gunn. 🙂
**I’m posting this picture as a thank you to my Clarion West Write-a-thon sponsors. I didn’t make my fundraising goal, but I did get more than halfway there, thanks for your support and encouragement.
From the Beloved Country 
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