Red

Interesting things happen when creativity is flowing . . . just showing up at the table curiously to move paint with regularity spills over, circulating and leading to new ventures.  Last month’s play with one word and collage elements led to four paintings.  In turn, they led to a short story that wove the four women into one tale.  Moving from painting to writing a spark flew from the images holding story inside::in reverse::painting from word compressed haikus and expanding them to imagery.

I began this year by going through my haikus.  They’re organized by castle and wavespell over years of timekeeping with the tzolkin calendar; started with Red and gathered them together, printing out a dozen as diving boards.  This is to be a slow ongoing project with no ‘end’ point.  Just playing intuitively with expressing images as response to the words, moving into discovery of palette, symbols, motifs, observing what happens, attending to what emerges . . . giving myself a space to experiment and learn from; the haikus provide the ‘structure’ that sets the tone linking the paintings, which I’ve chosen to make on watercolor paper of roughly 6 x 8 size.

I love painting:: in upright position, standing; this allows for bodily motion while applying strokes, lines, curves, stepping back, sideways, forward, bending, straightening, moving away to refill jars with clean water, returning and noticing something new.  I often have a few pieces of paper and either a board or a canvas out at one time.  While one is drying, I’ll paint another or enjoy loose brush work and colorplay.  Excess paint on the brush finds a place on canvas or board before I wash the brush, later these colors and marks suggest a direction to move with or toward.  I enjoy painting this way immensely, and joy (not happiness) is part of the state of being that I do treasure and hope to imbue what I do with.

As this green castle closes a whole calendar round, am appreciating the flavors in this harvest of haiku and honoring the words that came before, going through the themes and observing which seeds to sprout and cultivate, which threads to pick and weave ahead with, which to give closure to.  What color does the next red castle feel like? As of now, it tastes fluffy, a rainbow of luminous light.

Why reach for the moon
An orb with no inner light
Constant reflection

Energetic food
Served inside an earthen bowl
Luminous stars shine