Striving for fridom

I have been a believer in the law of attraction for a long time. It is so far the best explanation I've found for how life works. The difficult part for me is to follow my emotional guiding system. My thoughts change from feeling good to feeling bad to feeling good again in a nanosecond, and sometimes I really need to sit down and ask myself: "What happened there? I was happy a minute ago, and now I'm angry/upset/sad (delete accordingly)." And other times to feel sad actually feels incredibly good. One such amusing occasion happened just before Christmas. I was watching a documentary about Frida Kahlo with my husband, and I was enjoying every minute of it, until I became suddenly very sad, angry and, basically, a venom spitting cobra. It took me a few hours to understand what happened. I had become upset because I developed a sudden desire to BECOME FRIDA KAHLO and move to Mexico, straight away, that night. Maybe Source is already in Mexico, but I'm still here. There are other minor impossibilities in this project, anyway. On the other hand, understanding all this, amused me no end. The mind is a beautiful thing. Or, the mind has a mind of its own.

Things

I have learnt and I'm learning a lot about things lately, how we surround ourselves with things to feel secure and how things actually fail to do that function -  they instead often stunt our creativity, fill precious space, and keep us where we were, stopping us from moving forward. One of the reasons why I like travelling is that I leave all my things behind. I now pack a tiny bag and rely on the masses of things accumulated by others. Adapting to what I find, in terms of books to read, accessories, paper, pens, toothpastes and hand creams, is a fantastic exploration of the world and of my relationship to the world. Travelling only with hand luggage makes me feel that I am at home everywhere and nowhere. Even my sketchbooks are becoming smaller. I love this super tiny Moleskine. I brought no art supplies with me to Genoa, thinking that I would find something there. I bought only this fun pen called tratto pen that turns blue if you wet it. Back home the tratto pen is now sitting together with all my other hundreds of pens, and has lost some of the charm it had when it was the only one. Possessing things or being possessed by them is a funny, delicate balance. Travelling is a great way to test what is and what isn't important.

What to do and how to do it

While I was barricated in the bedroom waiting for the floor to be finished in the sitting room, I read two books, the conversations with David Hockney and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Superficially these two books have nothing in common, but somehow each helped me to understand the other. It's something to do with who you are, who you want to be, who you think you want to be or do, who and what other people want you to be or do. Indecision on what to portray and how to portray it are often the main reason for inertia in creative people. Most often this insecurity is a struggle between who we are and who we think we should be in order to be succesfull, understood, appreciated, loved. This is why at the beginning of my artistic expression I became fascinated by outsider artists, people who follow their muse, be it a god or a need, without worrying about technique, without worrying about pleasing anybody. Just following their call. Outsider artists are incredibly prolific, because they do more and worry less. They also often have the time, but this is another excuse. The moral of these two books, as I interpret it, is: return to your soul, it knows better than anybody else what your destiny is, and your real destiny is always good.

While soundproofing

My first regular contribution for Mixed Media Art magazine is up today. I planned to revive my blog around the same time, writing more about journalling and the techniques I use. Instead I am in the middle of soundproofing the floor in the sitting room and the rest of the flat looks like a place that American Pickers would just love! Piles and piles of stuff everywhere. I spent the day in the bedroom yesterday, feeling like a teenager, one room to study, read, draw, sleep. Having an ipad helped feeling less deprived of tv watching in the evening, and I ended up watching Amos & Andy and other very old, very odd tv programmes. We had dinner in the kitchen upon another pile of junk, listening to a cassette of Los Lobos. It's funny, with all the mp3 players, downloads, etc. the best music we have still seems to be on cassette! Today is the second day of soundproofing and soon I'll go back to the bedroom and find some other way to spend the day. I have a book on interviews with David Hockney... somewhere.

to sketch (or not)

I love sketching, but I have to get over a wall of inertia ever so high. I don't know what it is. Once I get going, I'm fine, I enjoy it, but I seem to find a lot of excuses: not the right weather, nothing to draw, too many art supplies or not enough. In search for the perfect pen that does all the work... After spending a couple of days at the sea describing in detail to an artist friend all the reasons why I should sketch and all the equally important reasons why I avoid it, I've decided that I should stop being a pain and get on with it. So here it is, today's sketch. A pair of scissors (just about one of the hardest things to draw free-hand). Not just any scissors. These are my grandmother's, with an art nouveau butterfly design. Tomorrow we'll see. There's plenty of horribly difficult things to draw all around us...

Good book bad book

I've always hated the expression 'a good book', as if anyone wanted to relax and enjoy a bad book. Nevertheless, this is a good book. The author takes you on a complete journey of the human nature starting and coming back to maps, and that is pretty clever. He touches on things that I never particularly thought about, like what are the reasons behind collecting, and he quotes authors who've written on the subject. They say that collecting comes from animistic beliefs, it's a way of surrounding yourself with sacred objects that protect you and inspire you. I wonder if this explains why I keep on buying art supplies that I often never use, but revere as if they held the key to my creativity.

My shelves full of art supplies

Now here's a bad book: it is not really a bad book, just sad for me, as I tend to read every book as if it held a piece of a truth higher than mine, as if it was right and I were wrong. It's just the opinions and samples of various artists' sketchbooks and most of the artists seem to see sketches as means to an end. Yet, in my opinion, the means are way more interesting and alive than the ends. Also I seem to be attracted like a magnet to the pencils/charcoal/marker isles of art shops. Those art supplies are my idols, and yet I seem to be told here that they're just ephemeral, that only oil paints or acrylics are the real thing that makes finite, complete artworks. 

It makes me cry on my printer, who (sic) is working hard with me to preserve those marks created using transitorial, short lived instruments of unfinished creations.

 

Leaving the past behind

A little doodle I did on the back of an envelope with a biro and a dried-up marker sparked all sorts of thoughts in me. I wasn't thinking of anything in particular when I was drawing but I was wondering why this guy looked sad, because all of my images are usually jolly. But then, still for no logical reason, I started sketching the house that I see from my kitchen window. And the thought occurred to me that this guy, who is young in age or in spirit, is leaving his childhood home and is not ready to be happy yet. But butterflies are showing him the way and the sun is shining.