Art and Legacy- what we share with others

I have been thinking about legacy lately and what we leave to our children or the people in our lives. We create legacy on a daily basis. In fact our life is our legacy. Art can be a way we can share a piece of who we are and what is important to us.  It holds an energy or charge to it that when gifted to another encompasses the love or thought that we have for someone else.  When we introduce someone to the arts it is like gifting them with the potential for their creativity to grow and thrive. I cannot think of a greater gift.

When I think of who supported my artistic path I think of my grandmother, an artist in her own right even though she probably wouldn’t  have considered herself one. She was a piano teacher who taught the neighborhood children and later in life she dabbled in oil painting. It was not the art she created that made her an artist but the beauty she found in the world and grace that she bestowed on to others.

To teach is to show, a showing is a revelation of more than we see with our eyes. It is what lies just beneath the surface. Art can do this and so can a mentor. The way we speak to someone, the glance of encouragement, or just a simple complement.  Can be all that someone needs to be comfortable in expressing oneself. Expressing oneself in the arts can be where our true nature shines.

So, tonight when my daughter asked me to hold her hand as she fell asleep I thought of my role now as her guide. To share with her the beauty that was once shown to me and how to express that to others. She may be a painter, or a writer, but most importantly a really good person that will one day continue a legacy of expressing her true self.

My Many Colored Days – using art to express feelings

 

Recently, at my daughter’s preschool they had a copy of Dr. Seuss’ s book “My Many Colored Days”, by Dr. Seuss.  In Seuss’s classic rhyming way it brilliantly describes each day in terms of a particular color which is in turn associated with a specific emotion.They were teaching the three year olds in the group about recognizing feelings in a language they can relate to-Color! Have you ever felt that you have been taken in by a painting and truly felt it’s presence. It’s almost as if you step inside the feeling of the artist. A feeling that may have been fleeting yet captured in an instant within a painting. Making it a piece of an experience. A feeling frozen in time.

 We have all had those “blue,” days but we have hopefully had more of the bright”yellow” ones too. Because, we are all “feeling” beings and color can help us best express those feelings. Art can take us in and can make us feel through color. As an artist, I intuitively choose colors that express how I feel. I love the freedom of using color in such a way that is spontaneous but in the end relays a particular mood. What is important is that the underlying feeling of what I want to express is conveyed verses the actual representation.Yet, it is not through mulling it over that I get to the color that I am looking for. It is usually comes from that deep quiet place that bubbles up from within.

We have all had those feelings of being “Choked up,” when describing the tears that try to surface when we least expect it. This is when we are taken up by a moment that takes us off guard. I cannot think of a better way to feel then through paint. Paint can be the medium for our tears to flow forth. It can be the way we feel again if we have been suppressing feelings or putting them aside. The time can be dedicated for you as the painter to be present and just wait for what feelings arise. So, I will continue to paint my many colored days and in classic Dr. Seuss style,”it all turns out all right, you see. And I go back to being me.”

 

Moving through Fear with Art

Recently, I have felt some roadblocks in my creativity. Not feeling inspired to paint or continuing to cycle through the same image over and over again. I came to realize that it was fear that was preventing me to paint and letting go of preconceived results. This made me think of how art can be used to work through fear.

When I am working on canvas or paper there is a decision that has to be made. What color to put down or what stroke to be made. It can be a spontaneous movement of energy while taking in the elements of what inspires me to make the next move. When there is fear there is stiff movement with too much thought and less guided direction from within. The same can be said when we procrastinate, if our energy is not utilized it is trapped and we loop back to the same fear or limitation preventing us from working at our dreams. The thought of actualizing our dreams can be a fear as well. Because, we have this preconceived idea of what our life should look like once our dreams are realized. So, we then live in constant pursuit of a dream that is alive only in our thoughts. Life obviously does not work this way. There are always twists and turns and the mystery of life often surprises us with what makes us truly happy.

Art can help us move through our fears. It can be an exercise at stepping outside of our comfort zone and trusting that we will know what to do next.  There may be mistakes, but you learn to accept them and move in a different direction.  And if it doesn’t turn out it is still an act of creation that needs to be respected because it served a purpose in the moment. As my teacher once said it’s only paper or canvas after all.

Creating art is an internal process; it can be like a compass in your life that leads you. You may not know where you are at any given moment, but art can provide comfort in a world of uncertainty.

Fear creates lots of excess energy, and if it isn’t utilized it gets trapped and stored in the body. Art can be a way to move through this fear and release it. There is nothing more refreshing and therapeutic then to start anew with a blank canvas.

In order for me to move out of my head, I focus on the movement of my brush strokes while finding shape in contrasting colors. Taking in the colors that I see in a sunset or the way the tall grass moves in a field are the elements that are within me and come through in a painting. So, I continue to take notice in life, to be present helps me to “be” without fear and within a safe space in art. 

 

Painting From the Heart. What I learned from my five year old

 

 “Angel Painting” by Kai Duckett, 5 years old

Being authentic to who you are as a person and as an artist takes time and practice. There are times as an artist where I revert back to old patterns of what I think people will like or what will be accepted. This is when my art lacks that inner glow or illumination. It often looks stiff or as artists call it “over-worked.” Overworked with too much thought and not enough emotion and heart. It is often not from the heart but the head.

At times I will go back to these old patterns of not being true to my inner artist. When I am in these places I feel lost, and beyond frustrated.  Recently, I was finding myself in this place once again. It was my five year old that reminded me of the process of painting from the heart. He just sat down and started painting, not with thought and emphasis on the finished project. He approached the process with an eagerness to accept whatever inspiration was to be reflected back to him. He allowed the process to work its magic and he was the instrument for it happening on paper. He was working from his heart or center and letting the colors flow from within.

Matthew  Fox in the book “Creativity”  says it best “when we create we are pouring gifts of being back into the universe itself. This pouring of being into the universe is a joyful act and ecstatic art (Fox, 141).” I like this imagery of pouring our being or authentic self onto the paper. The art than becomes a reflection of who you truly are.  As our lives change art can be a way of redefining who we are.  Redefining who you are with art can be liberating. Because, once we live our life from a place that is true to who we are not what we think we should be doing, we are living the hand crafted life. A life that resonates with who we truly are. The inside matches the outside.

As children we naturally live our lives this way it is only as we age we forget. It was watching my son and his process that reminded me of living the hand crafted life . When I asked him about it he said “mom don’t listen to your brain but your heart and bones.” He continued to tell me that the “brain has its own ideas. And the heart tells you what colors to use. If you paint it does not matter if it changes. Allow the change. Spill yourself out of your heart and  just paint.”

Trusting the Process

“Images birth one another. moving us within ourselves.” -Author Sean Mcniff

In 2005, I was commissioned to create a line of greeting cards for women having difficulties with fertility issues.  They were to be sold at hospital gift shops and clinics. I found this timely, in that my husband and I were talking about starting a family. I had my own fears around becoming pregnant and did not think that I could conceive. Once, again I turned to my art and it’s process to heal my fears around becoming pregnant. The opportunity with the card company did not come to fruition so in instead I chose to take the artwork that I had created and turn them into my own card line.  I created the artwork before, during, and after pregnancy and they became the springboard for the process of all of my cards.

What I learned is that when you paint and continue to move from one picture to the next a series of pictures will emerge. The women’s series were all my personal experiences, feelings, hopes and dreams of being woman and becoming a mother. When the paintings were finished , I would gleam more of a feeling from them then a particular insight that would point me in the direction of the next painting. There was an energy to them that built on the previous ones.  In each painting, I would start with the woman figure and as I painted  new qualities would emerge from her in color, composition and overall feeling.  I was moving with the art and as the paintings were changing I was changing with them.

Looking at our own paintings gives us a glimpse at our inner landscape. When we work on a series of paintings it allows us to see our life over a period of time.  Our lives are often fragmented and we often look to the outside world for answers or direction. A world that is unpredictable and in constant change. To relax in periods of uncertainty within our art work is a skill we can take into our lives.  There is often a point in when doing art when one is uncertain what the next move should be or where the painting  is heading. This can be a place of chaos.  As in art this is true in life.  It has been studied that Creativity increases with chaos. Chaos can be a place where we flourish instead of flee from. We can use our imagination to dive into unknown and see where it takes us. To trust the creative intelligence within our own bodies and “letting go” into the unknown will lead us to new places of healing and hope.

 

Finding the Space between Moments in Art and Life

“I Come Home To Myself”

 I stand firmly in the Truth of who I AM

 Learning to take refuge in the eye of the storm

I am no longer buffeted by the winds of fear or the waves of change

The ship of me takes on no water as I gain power and strength

The course is clear, the sail is set

Confidently sailing now through the storm of chaos

Trusting, knowing, seeing, feeling

The shore of TRANQUILITY lies straight ahead

written by Anne M. Delaney (C)

 

Have you ever been in a moment where you feel a part of the experience. Where you and your surroundings are one in the same? When you are there you lose sight of how long you are in this place where time seems  to stand still.There are different ways to describe this place of “flow” or “Zen” or space where you and life merge.  The moment may be fleeting but definitely memorable. For me it was, and a place I want to return.   Like a spiritual pilgrim who makes their trip to the holy land the trip can be arduous and painstaking journey. Or, it can be a visit to a place within a moment that is quite ordinary where you can take a sigh of relief and thank God for just how ordinary it can be.

I have had both experiences, the jaw dropping all encompassing moment and the everyday ordinary one too. They say it is most interesting in art to see things in contrast to each other. I think this is true of life. So, I will briefly tell you my story of both. After graduating from college at twenty-two I decided not to take the typical pilgrimage of most graduates and travel cross Europe. Instead, I signed up for a twelve day kayaking trip with a group to Aialic bay within the Kenai Fjords of Alaska.  As you can imagine, this was the difficult and physically demanding version of my first “moment” within a moment. As we made our way along the coast to Aialic bay the motion of our paddles were in perfect unison. The ebb and flow of our kayaks floating through the swells that would peacefully rise us up only to gently release us back down.  Until that moment, when the glacier came into sight revealing itself as this divine piece of nature’s work.  We were literally and metaphorically carried away by a current in a moment within time where everything was in perfect harmony. Everything made sense and the parts of life all came together and I could see and feel a natural being. Feeling “melted” into the experience or “flowing into it with the knowing I was to be there at that instant while contributing to it’s significance.

There is an actual term for this “vital engagement” a relationship to the world that is characterized by both the experience of “flow” (enjoyed absorption) and by meaning.  It has been studied and well documented by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Psychology professor who is best known for his notion of “flow” and his years of writing and research on the topic. Csikszentmihalyi interviewed all kinds of people he discovered a common thread to their stories, he found them all describing the same feeling of “flow”  when describing how it feels to be absorbed in a painting, or playing a difficult piece of music. Watching a good play, or reading a stimulating book also produced the same mental state. It was clear from his research that the outcome was not what was sought after but the process itself.  

This was so true, in my experience in Alaska. I believe it was the process of the monotonous paddling for hours at a time that eventually brought me to a place of heightened awareness. Or as my guide at the time called an “unmasking” where the beautiful moment was revealed. It reminds me of the “OM” sounds made in the process of meditation.  It eventually gets you there yet you can’t quite recall how you got there.

I think there are many ways to get to this place. For me it comes most easily with art. I can be so engrossed within the process I can lose time and my focus is intent as the painting changes, and I change with it. Up into the point where I put it down, look at my next blank canvas and start the process all over again. I think Csikszentmihalyi  is right when he says it is not the anticipation of a beautiful picture but the process of painting itself.  

So, now about my ordinary experience of flow.  Actually, It is quite boring but just as memorable as I caught a glimpse of it again the other day. It was as I was driving my kids to preschool. Don’t worry I did not have to pull over. It was quiet and subtle experience of sensing, as I was moving with the glistening colored leaves and for just a fleeting moment I found myself again in the space between moments.

Alisha K. Duckett

Artist, Owner Healing Art Images

Be moved by art

Is inspiration motivated from within or is it nurtured by our relationships with others? This is a question that peaked my interest recently after doing some reading on the subject. The first, was the September issue of the “Ladies Home Journal” titled “The Long Good Bye,” about a mother who confronts the feelings that come from an empty nest and having to redefine who she is and what motivates her. She begs the question of the roles we fulfill as daughters, mothers, wives and if we are internally motivated from the roles we fulfill or do we feel inspiration from a place that is uniquely our own?

In contrast to this article, I read a book titled “Journal of a Solitude,” by May Sarton about an artist who goes out of her way to create in solitude with little interaction with others in complete isolation from the world and all of its distractions. She feels that it is only in this place she can truly create in a way that is authentically her own.

As a mother of two small children I was drawn to both women. Seeing the changes coming as a mother and knowing in my heart that as the article was so appropriately titled “The long good-bye” is  really what the mother-child relationship is all about.  However, I have to be honest the thought of creating in complete isolation did make me wonder if I would be a more accomplished artist with all the time and freedom to create without the distractions of everyday life.

So how to be within the world, meet the changes that meet us where we are while maintaining the relationships that help us define who we are? For now at least.  Because, as those precious people in our life change we change too. Everything is a part of this constant change. all of it.

So where do we go from here? As in my case, the little ones leave the roost 15 years or so from now? Who do I become as a woman, an artist? Were they my true inspiration? Was I motivated to create from them alone?

Yet, there is something deep within me that in my opinion is untouched. It is to be what Aristotle called “The unmoved mover.” Art can lead us to the place where we are internally motivated yet willing to move as life moves us. So, instead of a “room of one’s own,” maybe it is more realistic to have the space of one’s own.” art can provide this space. All of our feelings, and experiences from life we can process them in our own time as a way to reflect or process it.Every gesture we make on paper has movement and change. Each stroke is unique to who we are and where we are in our life.  To access this flow is how we can meet life as it changes and to hopefully move with it rather than against it. Art helps us meet who we are becoming right in the moment we put it on paper. And that is just the beginning of where art will lead us if we let it. Because, right when we think we have made our mark it changes, the paint flows together, the paper dries and it means something more than we had originally intended.

Alisha K. Duckett

Artist, Owner Healing Art Images

 

Awakening Our Spirit Through Art

“We write to taste life twice. we paint and dance and sing and compose and do all art to taste life twice.”Anais Nin.

I am continually amazed by the power of awareness in my life. Art, has shown me how to become more aware at life and take it in with all my senses. Recently, I was buying time in the parking lot of our local grocery store and was struck by the beauty in the flowers. They just glowed with life and the hibiscus were the largest I have ever seen. I was showing my children and walking through the garden when a woman came up to me and said that it if it wasn’t for my attention to the flowers she would not have taken notice and would have missed the beauty completely. In her thanks, I reflected on my own awareness of life and the gems that maybe missed when not paying attention.

Art can reveal more than we can see from the lens of everyday vision. How often do we see life as a series of monotonous events? What if we could see the sacredness of the routine in our life? This is the role of the artist. The artist, must first see clearly herself only to reveal what glistens and illuminates all things through art. This is true even with our relationships with other people. When we connect and see one another for who we truly are. Or, really listen and hear what someone is saying we are connecting with what lies beneath the surface. This is one of the greatest gifts we can give each other. It is also an art form in itself, to slow down and look at something with depth and sincerity. 

In the words of Georgia O’Keeffe, “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for a moment. I want to give that world to someone else.” To take in all of life whether it be through art or through a heightened sense of perception is what makes life richer and full of meaning.  

Alisha K. Duckett, Artist, Owner Healing Art Images

Art helps heal Jewish WWII Soldier

This Week on NBC Today show, they featured artist Si Lewen, German born Jew who enlisted in the US Army during WWII only to witness firsthand the horrors of the holocaust.  He turned to his art in his words “in order to heal I had to paint.” At 92, he continues to paint where he is constantly recycling works into new art. Because according to him this is how “creation and life proceeds. from creation to destruction to re-creation. Lewen is a true example of how we can use art as a catalyst or a change in our life.  It can release our fears, give us hope and heal our pain.

Art  can help us listen to our hearts. Because when we do art we are in constant dialogue with what is inside us, what touches us, moves us and betrays us . Art gives us the opportunity to take what we perceive and process it in a way that is constructive or life affirming. 

When we practice expressive arts we are tapping into the creative energy that makes us and keeps us alive. When we return to this place within us where art can happen, true peace can result within us  and in our life. (see full story from link).

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/41521818/

 

 

 

 

Somewhere over the rainbow (Israel “Iz” Kamokawino ole’ version)

What brings out the best in you? Or a better question is what brings you pure joy? The type of joy that we often forget as we age and the weight of what we think we "should" be doing takes over? How did we forget to just lay in the sweet smelling grass gazing at the sky? Read More»