Getting Back To It

Sinking Deeper - 48" x 48" - acrylic and charcoal on masonite © 2010 Kathy V. Crabbe

It's been ages (actually,  just one month) since I've painted - a necessary break, and now it's hot again...in the 90's and my little art studio is heating up. It feels good to bask in this warmth.

"Your love is an ocean... An ocean refuses no river."

~ Sheila Chandra, from the song "Ever So Lonely" (UK, 1992)

I listen...what is the painting trying to say? It's beyond sound, beyond time and space, sinking deeper, deeper. Musical Ambiance: Real World, Various Artists

Artist Time Defined

What is 'Artist Time'? For me, it means tuning into and awakening all my senses, but especially hearing and vision (not so much smell or taste due to allergies!) How about you - what are your strongest senses and do you tune into them on a regular basis?

I find that focusing upon one's strengths requires us to let go of some of our weaknesses. Here are some examples:

~ A film director might call this editing.

~ For an artist/painter it's about knowing when to stop.

~ Perhaps a poet leaves words and lines unspoken but implied, hence the phrase 'reading between the lines'.

~ An actor learns how not to overstate the case or over-act, this makes it more real.

In Process - acrylic, pastel & charcoal on masonite - 48" x 48"

I do believe that women are becoming stronger and more powerful and in turn this strengthens the men in profoundly new ways. Musical Ambiance: Ricky Lee Jones, Ghostyhead and Clannad, Macalla

Seeing Things For The First Time

Sinking into Artist-Time is sheer self-indulgence in a way and in another way, not at all! It is both and more. It is being present and open to:

heart emotion intuition dreams soul being feeling alive and on fire in every pore.

In Process - acrylic, pastel & charcoal on masonite - 48" x 48"

It is trusting the instincts of your hand, the brush, your colors and their combinations based upon years of loving them, knowing them, spending time with them, through devotion, nurturing and letting the paintings and colors nurture and heal oneself - it's all of this an so much more.

I can't imagine seeing the face of God/dess because She is everywhere and in everything.

Sometimes it may appear to others that we're being selfish, but how can we possibly feed and nourish others when we ourselves are starving? So we take and take and nourish and feed until sated and then we empty ourselves in giving, knowing that we will never go hungry again because now we understand what fullness means and we can share that knowing with all we meet. So far with this series - Journey Into Intimacy, I'm learning how not to finish a painting to perfection, but instead to let it be, not push it beyond where it wants to go, trusting completely in the process to guide me into a perfection I've never known before - non-attachment.

"I'm seeing things for the first time in my life." Sung by The Black Crowes ~ Seeing Things.

Musical Ambiance ~ The Black Crowes album, "Shake Your Money Maker" and Santana's album, "Supernatural".

Full Moon Fruition Collage

To get things rolling for my brand new course - Awaken Your Divine Feminine Soul- which just debuted on this New Moon, March 15, 2010 I'm going to be sharing some ideas that are a part of this course such as the Full Moon Collage (pictured here) and the New Moon Collage I created this self study course especially for women to help awaken, inspire and engage your passionate, intuitive, creative selves through the creation of a Moon Musing Journal, Moon Collages and Moon Musing Exercises in honour of the new, full and waning moons.

I believe that the moon can help guide and challenge us to know and resonate with our instinctual, emotional selves in a balanced, harmonious and soulful way.

The course will start on the new moon of each month and includes four lessons plus a supplemental Moon Musing email specifically geared to the zodiac sign that the moon falls in for that particular month. My course is offered through the Wise Woman University which has lots of other interesting and goddess-oriented self-study programs as well, so stop on over and check things out!

If you have any questions about the course, please let me know and I'll be happy to respond here or via email.

Sheela-na-gig - Dark Goddess

“We can make art letting the voice of the goddess – the oracle – speak through us in healing words and images.” ~ Vicki Noble

Sheela-Na-Gig is a goddess I have wanted to work with for a long time. She represents much that we, as women, have had to subdue just to fit in. She is fierce and uncompromising.

“She is remembered in Ireland as the Old Woman Creatress who gave birth to all races of men. Her function in the church was like that of the Gorgon on Athena’s shield: to protect and ward off evil. Labeled obscene in later more prudish times, the carvings were destroyed or defaced, sometimes buried in yards of the churches they once sanctified.” ~ Elinor W. Gadon - The Once & Future Goddess

My Waning Moon collage was created on the computer. The background consists of an abstract painting from my recent series “Journey Into Intimacy” and the quotation was something I had used beneath my photo in my graduation yearbook from Graphic Design College, back in 1992.

This Collage is an example of the kind of creative activity we will be doing in my new eCourse Awaken the Divine Feminine which begins at the New Moon on March 15th at the Wise Woman University. The course is 4 weeks long and costs $49.95 - I created this self study course especially for women to help awaken, inspire and engage our passionate, intuitive, creative selves through the creation of a Moon Musing Journal, a Moon Collage and Moon Musing Exercises in honour of the new, full and waning moons.