lLEARNING STUFF IN A VORTEX website: santafekitchenstudio.com

English: Cupcake; a painting by Wayne Thiebaud (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“It’s a strange thing when we’re in the middle of a vortex. Outside a vortex, we watch and judge. Sometimes we don’t even see it or feel it. But the closer we get, the more we’re drawn into it. Its power begins pulling on us as we get closer and closer. Then we’re sucked into the middle of the experience with a chaotic rush of emotions until at the very center we find pure, absolute peace — although if we’re conscious, we know we’re in a vortex. We know… then suddenly, it’s time to leave.

“The energy weakens. We begin to get thrust out — pushed out — but its still necessary to pass through the whirling centrifugal force. Sometimes it spits us out. Sometimes we extricate ourselves.

“But it’s always… almost magnetic, push and pull. It’s vortex energy.” — Melody Beattie

“In order to paint, one has to go by the way one does not know. Art is like turning corners. One never knows what is around the corner until one has made the turn.” — Milton Avery

My notes on this page of a banana tree photo, written in black Sharpie, go like this: “YOU’RE NOT IN A HURRY, ARE YA?”; and, “You don’t think you’re succeeding while you’re doing it, but you are. Monkey Mind will always tell you NO”…

This tree series I am now working on is a vortex in and of itself. I stayed in the studio for hours upon hours last week, painting, drawing, coloring. Partly to just sheerly prove that I still have the power of the room. The ability to just doggedly sit here and work on my art.

And I am reading the liner notes in my huge birthday treat, “Wayne Thiebaud, A Retrospective”, part of which are written by Adam Gopnik. You don’t get no more up town than that. Pretty good for a farm boy who paints cakes. And I have a Wayne Thiebaud painting of a hot dog stand that was a New Yorker cover taped to my fridge. And I am copying Wayne Thiebaud words into my sketchbook while listening to Jimi Hendrix, Band of Gypsies.

Band of Gypsies is the second record I ever bought, Led Zeppelin I the first one. (Not counting the records I bought once upon a time when I was a perfect little straight girl — when my taste ran more to Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison and Whipped Cream by Herb Alpert.) I laugh at myself as I type this. I practically jumped for joy when I put the Hendrix on. What a miracle to have my old music with me here in Mexico. The only albums I am missing are Kathi McDonald from 1972, Mark Jordan from 1976, and Leo Sayer‘s Just A Boy, from 1971. Oh, and the Brewer and Shipley albums Rural Space and Shake Off the Demon. I would not mind coming across Rocky Burnett when I go home this summer, maybe in some mad remainder bin at Hastings.

The Hendrix drowns out the disco down the hill that blasts all over the neighborhood with its refrigerator-sized speakers, sometimes all night long. I hardly notice the noise any more. A person I was recommending my neighborhood to asked if it was quiet, I said yes. Then I gave that another think. “Mmmmm, maybe not so much. Not like a person who just comes down to Puerto Vallarta a couple of winter months would define quiet.

What a surprise to be in the slow lane pushing towards seventy and still having the heart for rock and roll and big green and pink paintings and learning new stuff. Still trying to get my mind around how to make my life and paintings match up with what’s in my head.

Today as I stood in line at the Oxxo chatting with a former neighbor, Miguel, IN SPANISH — ok, rudimentary Spanish, but still, we were talking and laughing and getting through to each other — I thought, this is what I always wanted. This is who I wanted to be.

I have lived in Mexico four and a half years now. It is long enough to forget to put “living in Mexico” on my gratitude list when I make it up each morning. Because Mexico is part of me. A fish doesn’t say, oh, ok, where’s the water? He is a fish. He is in the water.

What did the rock say to the mountain? I am part of you. To Mexico, to painting, to learning the new things that I need and want to learn, whatever they may show themselves to be, I say yes. A great good holy thank God I am here yes. I’m still here.

Think new thoughts. Make new karma.

THE LONGER I LIVE website: santafekitchenstudio.com

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, the circumstances. Than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break… The remarkable thing is, we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace that day. We cannot change the past, we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you… We are in charge of our attitudes.” — Charles Swindoll

What is a zither? It seems to me I have way more strings I can play than attitude. The attitude is more the instrument itself. The strings, all kinds of decisions, choices and actions pouring forth from my attitude.

Right now, my attitude is, I must change my life. I am changing my life. I had so much fun taking my sketchbook on my morning walks at Connie and Ross’s house, I have decided to stop saving walks and sketches for when I am on vacation. When am I on vacation? Two weeks a year.

Some might think that being retired from my succession of variously enjoyable day jobs a type of permanent vacation. If you do it right, retirement is no such thing. I did my painting and writing on the side all those years of working for a paycheck, too chicken to do my art full-time — except once in a while when, armed with the notion that anyone can do anything, I would find myself eating onion sandwiches and thinking I needed to rethink this magical idea, because it translated into being hungry and cold. I didn’t like that.

Now, I have the ideal conditions for making art. Free time and enough money to live on. For what more could one ask? The good sense that God gave a chicken, go back to being frugal, stop trying to prove I am not cheap — I am cheap — cheap enough to put my money where it does the most good — books, food, art supplies, rent. My penchant for going down into town every day and then taking cabs back up the hill is a habit I can change. Because going down into town every day is a kind of running from my studio, from myself and what needs to be done.

“There’s a pervasive myth, shared by artists and non-artist alike, that art is a product of genius, madness, or serendipity. Wrong. Art is not the chance offspring of some cosmic… roll of the dice. Art is mostly a product of… WORK… Living life productively is very significant.” — Ted Orland, The View From The Studio Door

So I am thinking I can be up here on the hill and still go out in the daylight, go for a walk. Maybe spend more time sunning on the roof. When I stop running around, stop running, the illusion of being busy evaporates and makes a space at the table for magic to occur.

The magic, really, is rearranging my head to create a new reality. A new/old reality. Good old artist writer painter me.

Think new thoughts. Make new karma.

A stack of Money/Picture of money (The following is the description taken from image metadata on the FBI Buffalo Website) Orientation of image: 1 File change date and time: 2010:06:02 12:07:25 Software used: Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

MY BLUE HEAVEN website: santafekitchenstudio.com

Henri Matisse. Woman with a Hat, 1905. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“And so I remember that part of being an artist is not being really good at things but continuing pursuing a thread even though you are not really good at the technique. Because to have something to say or you have an image in the back of your mind that is itching to get out — you get it out in a ham-handed unique way. And that awkward love is part of the beauty. So I fold my fabric and tie it up and wrap it around poles and dip in my bucket of dye full of discomfort and follow the thread.” — Catherine White, potter

Catherine White is working with indigo right now. I seem to be working in pink. I came across a pink, blue, green and red Matisse in the New Yorker and I remembered it is ok to be drawn to pink, to paint, quilt, dream and sleep in pink. When I was housesitting over Christmas, I would lie in bed and watch dawn be all pink and streaky blue and white. What lovely skies at Connie and Ross’s house.

Connie is a Louise Hay-certified life coach. If you would like to receive her free newsletter for inspiration and comfort, like Connie Queen on Facebook, then click on the drop down to get notifications and sign up for the newsletter.

Just to be able to see the sky at all at my house is wonderful, a step out from looking out on a courtyard that still smelled of the murder next door months and months and months later, and viewing monster condo stack being built all day every day but Sunday. The rustico kitchen studio with its cute little terrace that I cuted up still more with small, bushy palm trees, gerbera daisies, rosemary, mint, thyme — the herbs contributed by Robina Oliver of Curvas Peligrosas — and all manner of colorful flowers and lively growing plants — an angel wing begonia that is, once again, after being bashed about moving, three feet high — plants grow here like a speeded up Disney nature movie — all this fixing up was as nothing to the odor of death wafting up from down below in the courtyard, and the sun blocked by the noisy concrete Godzilla rising next door.

And so, the kitchen studio I am in now is a real step up. And I have a grateful heart. A grateful heart keeps the devil out. Most of the time. Once in a while you trip up and invite the devil in for iced tea with lemon and wind up feeling stupid, but usually my house on the hill is devil-proof, because I am up here painting and minding my own business.

Still, when I had ten days of waking up to seeing the sunrise over the ocean while lying in my bed, it made me feel like, maybe, just maybe I could also have a view, if I moved up one floor here where I live now. In six months, maybe yes.

In order to do my travelling to Santa Fe and Taos this year, and also move upstairs, where I can see the sun rise pink over the ocean every morning from my bed, I am going to need to rise up my income.

Fortunately, while at Connie and Ross’s upscale paradise, I did drawings and took photos on my morning walk every day. And now I have started my “Skies and Seas and Rocks and Trees” series. So I am hoping and affirming that these new ones, with their pink skies and lush greenery, will sell, because they are as beautiful as I know how to make them.

My instructions to self on this leg of my painting journey are, SLOW DOWN AND DO A REALLY GOOD JOB.

Last night I drew two thumbnail sketches of plant/landscape details and then colored them in with Prismacolor pencils. I love to draw and color. “As at seven, so at seventy”. Anybody can do anything.

Think new thoughts. Make new karma.

BEING AN ARTIST web: santafekitchenstudio.com e-mail: outofthearmchair@gmail.com my new cookbook link: http://www.blurb.com/books/3939201

English: “Taos Mountain, Trail Home”. Landscape painted in Taos, New Mexico, USA by Cordelia Wilson, oil painting (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“More women are writers [than painters] because it is something you can do in secret or private. It is much more threatening to create visual art because there is much more exposure. A painting… is out there for anyone to see right from the beginning… Anyone can afford paper and pencil, but to paint you need money, and you have to take up physical space… A book is affordable. Paintings often aren’t. Men, usually holders of money, buy male artists’ work… Painting is technical. There are all kinds of things to learn that aren’t taught in public school… The technical skills for a writer are built in from first grade…” — Barbara Zaring, in Living Color, An Artist Paints Her World, by Natalie Goldberg

The older I get, the more affinity I feel with my mother. I have a good stockpile of food here in my kitchen studio. Mother had daddy build a “solarium” onto the back of our house. A solarium is a big old sunroom when it is at home. At one end of this many-windowed room, mother had cupboards built, wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling. Which she then proceded to fill with cases of food. Cans of shrimp, cherry pie filling, blueberry muffin mix, boxes of beef stroganov in three easy steps, could not be easier. All that 1950’s kind of stuff that was gaining traction over traditional make everything from scratch, tooth and claw right out of the fields, like Scarlett O’Hara and her famous turnip, vowing to never go hungry again.

At the time, I found mother’s stacks and stacks of food, two refrigerators, two freezers for sides of beef and such, embarrassing. I wanted a plain beige, or beige with wallpaper in the bedrooms, house. A house where everything was normal, calm, kind, peaceful and loving. Ha. Good luck with that tv and movies-inspired existence. Did anybody actually have one of those? I thought everybody but us most definitely did.

Well, mother and daddy were children of the Depression and so their accumulation of money, land, antiques, food, and pretty much everything they could get their hands on through working smart and hard and being lucky, made a lot of sense. I just couldn’t recognize it because I had never gone without. I had never gone hungry, with just potatoes on the table. Once I lived in Taos where jobs were an almost impossible privilege — even Walmart, KFC, McDonald’s five dollar an hour jobs — I understood how mother felt. At times I lived in a cold half of a double wide trailer — I kid you not — and ate onion sandwiches. And painted. Painted Taos skies and landscapes, made sculptures out of desert wood I found on long walks with a big sack, happier than I had ever been, side by side with a dearth of money and empty cupboards…

Ahh, now I understood mother’s closets full of clothes, shoes, hats. Her antique doll collection that eventually amounted to over a thousand dolls — she made it into a business, the dolls, the antiques she dragged home from here, there and everywhere — so her obsessive desire for things was justified under a thin scrim of normalcy. Mother had a hard life, emotionally. I think we were all mean to her, in fact. Because of our own need and greed.

Thank God that mother believed in God and art as saving graces that could actually save somebody, us.

The lesson I took from my growing up years was, if it ever comes to this, you are painted into a corner, save yourself.

I thought mother’s paintings were dumb. I didn’t understand her monochromatic landscapes bursting with light. I did not like her color choices, her color sense was too wild. Now I make my own dumb paintings — have since I was sixteen years old, and I am as happy with mine, as delighted, as mother was with hers. I wish I had been more understanding and savvy and supportive. I wish I had been a more loving daughter in every way. It is only now that I am old that I am grateful. She predicted this to me. She told me that someday I would appreciate the many finer things of life she and daddy provided. And now I do. Now I do.

Think new thoughts. Make new karma.

THERE IS A HUGE RELEASE OF ENERGY WHEN THESE PROBLEMS ARE RESOLVED website: santafekitchenstudio.com e-mail: outof thearmchair@gmail.com

“…Seduced by the siren song of a consumerist, quick-fix society, we sometimes choose a course of action that brings only the illusion of accomplishment, the shadow of satisfaction. And sometimes, knowing little or nothing about the process that leads to mastery, we don’t even realize a choice is being offered. Yet even our failures to choose consciously operate as choices, adding to or subtracting from the amount of our potential that we will eventually realize…” — George Leonard

Honor your long plateaus. They are there for a reason. Writer’s block, painter‘s block, whatever big old stuck place in which you seem to be spinning your wheels, is not as awful or as dire as it feels. I just came out of a long stuck place. I really prefer the creative bursting with ideas and energy for work and fun — work being fun again, fun work being the lighted path — to slogging over the daily terrain wondering when I’m going to get it together to really make something. The question in the stuck places is: “Are we doing something real here or just dancing around it?” Monkey mind is happy to supply the answer — nunca, nada, mas, my friend. Nothing nothing nothing. Dancing around it.

My ten day creative retreat was worth gold. I started drawing again. The drawings and the supporting photos I took in the jungle-park-like setting are to form the basis of where I go from here.

On my first day back painting at Galleria Dante, I admitted I did not like my huge skies and seas painting, “Slouching to Quimixto”. So a factotum took it down and I spent several hours fixing it. People gathered around, oohing and ahhing and saying how talented I am. At last, after three years of painting every week in the gallery’s sculpture garden. All good things start with “we admitted”. My gratitude for the huge release of energy all weekend is off the charts.

THE STORY OF THE DEVIL’S YARD SALE

“It was once announced that the Devil was going out of business and would offer his tools for sale to whomever would pay his price. On the night of the sale, they were all atrractively displayed, and a bad-looking lot they were. Malice, envy, hatred, jealousy, carnality, deceit, and all the other implements of evil were spread out, each marked with its price. Apart from the rest lay a harmless looking, wedge-shaped tool, much worn and priced higher than the others.

“Someone asked the Devil what it was. ‘That’s discouragement’ was the reply. ‘Well, why do you have it priced so high?’

“Because, replied the Devil, ‘It is more useful to me than any of the others. I can pry open and get inside a man’s consciousness with that when I couldn’t get near him with any of the others, and when once inside, I can use him in whatever way suits me best. It is so much more worn because I use it with nearly everybody, as very few people yet know that it belongs to me.’

“You say you use this wedge of discouragement with nearly everybody. with whom can’t you use it, Mr. Devil, sir?’

“The Devil hesitated a long time and finally said in a low voice, ‘I can’t use it in getting into the consciousness of a grateful person”… — M. Stortz

Catherine White, the famous potter, had a horoscope that said, “In order to win possession of the many blessings that offer themselves to me, I have to give up on solid footing and dive into unknown depths again and again”… Catherine White says, “This could generate the most fun I’ve had in years.”

Me, too. Think new thoughts. Make new karma.

Description unavailable (Photo credit: g_firkser)

 

MOVING ON website: santafekitchenstudio.com e-mail: outofthearmchair@gmail.com

“I think that for artistic development, you have to be seduced by something about the idea or the material or the moment. You have to fall in love with something so you don’t see the flaws. When I started working in my sketchbooks with renewed vigor in 1999, I was tired of how kids start books and never fill them up. I decided that no matter how silly or misguided, I would fill my notebooks. I remember being 16 and visiting a friend’s grandfather who was an English professor at Dartmouth. He had a study that was filled with his journals. And I thought, someday I want to be him. I want to be able to point to the books that represent being 16 and the journals of my 20’s, 40’s, 60’s. So I fill my pages with words and images and try to work with the compulsion of an outsider artist. I try to be the artist who is not educated, but who is driven by vision. In my notebook I am the artist not driven by the marketplace, or fame, but by a desire to express the inexpressible. I aim to get it down to keep going and filling with madness, eagerness, love, passion and trust that all adds up to artistic development.” — Catherine White, potter and professor of pottery

“I don’t want to learn anything,” I said to my friend, Connie Queen. What a surprise to hear myself say that. What I meant was, I don’t want to learn anything anyone ELSE wants me to learn. I am on my own journey of discovery that has nothing to do with anything the main culture is plunging into like bucking horses — touching their phones to each other to do God knows what, learning how to do this and that, this and that on their computers, having the latest gadgets, or gadgets at all — everyone knows I don’t have a phone and I resisted having a computer until I could not go one step further as the Luddite I am at heart. I only have a computer because Connie Queen spearheaded the purchase of a cute little red notebook. I only have a camera because Barbara in Tucson sent me one.

When I moved to Mexico, it was for the sunshine, the friendly warmth of the people, and that Mexico is cheap to live in. My plan, loosely imagined, which cannot, perhaps, really be construed a plan, was to live in this lovely setting, mouldering away under a palm tree. Read, draw, let the time go by however it does.

This willed obsolescence, concomitant with an assumption that to get old is to deteriorate, was just silly.

But I was determined.

Become a beachcomber, live under a palapa. Eat pineapples, bananas, avocados, and mangoes. Maybe some bacon and eggs. Go for walks along the ocean. Doesn’t that sound stupidly like waiting for death to come? I read in some chick lit vampire book, “Never knock on death’s door. Ring the bell, then run. He hates that”.

Why doesn’t anybody tell you that old age can be the most smoking hot wonderful magical mystery tour of your boiling life?

And how could a star such as I, a princessa in a kingdom of one, entertain such a foolish notion of ceasing to be who I am?

Only more so, now that I have the time.

First off, I like to have my stuff. 30 paintbrushes, 42 pens, 6 sketchbooks, a row of cookbooks, a cluster of more cookbooks, acres of book shelves for my regular books and my fancy leather bound Franklin Library books, my 3 feet of Harvard Library books — read them all and you’ll have the education a civilized person needs to have — I’m not reading them… Art books, homemade, hand-stitched Crazy Wisdom Sampler pillows and quilts, rows and rows and rows of garbanzos, pasta, tomato sauce, cubed tomatoes, pasta, pasta, pasta… Mexican pottery containing various teas, coffee, and soups, from Miso to habanero chile noodle soup in a cup…

Small appliances — rice cooker, tea kettle, crockpot, toaster, blender… furniture, shelves and worktables, clothes in the closet, shoes on the floor, suitcases, tschotkes… baskets, bowls, dishes, glasses, cups, cooking pots and pans… All this stuff wouldn’t fit under a palapa on the beach.

And palapas on the beach suitable for a dedicated beachcomber have no electrical outlets, flat screen tv’s, hot showers, doors for locks to be on — locks are very important to me. F. Scott Fitzgerald said “Solitude is the luxury of the rich”.

I am not rich YET. But neither am I Tarzan, Robinson Crusoe, nor Uncle Wiggly. Good thing I gravitated here to Puerto Vallarta, where the living is easy, because, even in the winter, it is always summertime. And my really small, really nice middle class bourgeois kitchen studio is totally doable. It is cozy, it is cute, it is comfortable, and it has a swimming pool on the roof. So get’r’done, right?

The stuff I am learning, you don’t get out of books and computers. It arises out of who I am, where I am. This morning I was repainting the edges of one of my pig paintings, “Puerquitos I”.

Catherine White has pointed out that the idea of ‘critical periods’ — that you can only learn when you are young — is a myth. I am doing an amazing amount of learning these days. These are the good old days for me. Doo dah dippety.

Think new thoughts. Make new karma.

Photograph of the Sphinx at the campus of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

NEW: link to my new cookbook http://www.blurb.com/books/3939201

“You’re always starting new. Today is today. It is not yesterday. You can draw a certain amount of strength from success, but then you have to go out and take a step that is a challenge. You have to come near the abyss in a certain way, come near the danger of doing something radically different or new. It’s ALMOST LIKE AN ACT OF FAITH… the work is the refuge… I’d finished the film about four days earlier, and I was in limbo. The familiar was gone. So there was a sense of buoyancy and fragmentation, isolation and exhaustion…” — Jason Miller

PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE. Get ready. Get set. Go! So easy to just be getting ready to do whatever it is you are fixing to do. Somewhat easy to get set. And go is just a decision, backed by action. My friend the life coach, Connie Queen, says, “Three birds were sitting on a fence. One decided to fly off. How many birds were left? Three, because simply deciding is not enough”…

The Merry Pranksters used to say, “You are either on the bus, or off the bus”. Oh kiddos, I am so on the bus at this moment, early morning roosters crowing, my lovely early morning writing and Earl Grey tea rituals complete before the world wakes up.

I finished making my new queen-sized pink and green Crazy Wisdom Sampler quilt yesterday, New Year’s Day. My neighbor had asked me what I was doing for New Years. Was I going down to the malecon, was I going to watch the fireworks from our roof, what were my New Year’s Eve plans. I said, nope. I have no immediate plans. I am a nester. I have this beautiful nest. I will be in my nest.

How many months I spent working on the two quilts I have completely rearranged, reconfigured with new fabric, making the quilts into an “Old voices/new ears” type of practice. What is the practice here? Work to finish. Making things.

And now, my new cookbook is ready to go. I ordered one. Shipping is killer diller to here in Mexico. But OMG, who cares. I am not kvetching and kvelling over ANYTHING these days. Say, it’s great to be alive. We are born to be alive. My thing for 2013 is LIVE LIVE LIVE. And draw. And color. And paint.

Think new thoughts. Make new karma.

Royal Blue Coach Services, Victoria Coach Station, London (Photo credit: Alwyn Ladell)