Tag Archives: Brainpickings

Art as Therapy: Self-Understanding

DSCN3223We mystify ourselves. Well, I often mystify myself!

This is why I related to de Boton and Armstrong’s notion that the art we surround ourselves with, and the art we make, gives us a language to communicate something about ourselves to others when words fail.  Lately for me, poetry (others’!)  more clearly expresses my own inarticulate thoughts.  Our art too can often say things about us, or for us, when the wordsDSCN5169 are not enough.

They describe the situation where we encounter works of art that seem to latch on to something we have felt but never recognized clearly before.  I sense this recognition looking at the timber sculptures of Robyn Gordon, or the polymer art by Tory Hughes and Genevieve Williamson.

Many of my pieces were journeys in self knowledge but three stand out: a filigree box which incorporated symbols that are significant to me; a necklace I made in Broken Hill at a a time of great upheaval and a necklace that speaks of the DSCN1763relationship between me and my mother-my desire to know what it is that helps her to live well.  At least jewellery is more wearable than inchoate attempts at self expression!

Art as Therapy: Sorrow

The third function of art as defined by de Boton and Armstrong and described in more detail here is sorrow.  One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is teach us how to suffer more successfully…base and unimpressive experiences are converted into something noble and fine — exactly what may happen when sorrow meets art.

Less of my work expresses sorrow although it may permeate pieces and be a part of their gestation. DSCN2022 I once described this piece shown as a love song. As well as delight in the desert landscape where I had lived for over four years, it was indeed expressing sorrow. And fear. And later on was linked to disappointment. But now I pass my Desert Walking Gown every time I enter my house. I remember my tenacity and focus. I know what I can do. And what is important. And where I can feel grounded, quiet and still.

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Art as Therapy: Hope

Yesterday I wrote about remembering. De Boton and Armstrong’s second function of art is hope. Read their discussion at length here where they talk about the power of art to put us in touch with a DSCN4319blithe, carefree part of ourselves that can help us cope with inevitable rejections and humiliations.  Don’t we need that?

I am an introvert but much of my art is flamboyant, over-the-top and certainly tapping into that carefree, blithe part of me that loves to play.

 

Certainly, the “girls” over the ages, have been truly alter egos!  Mind you, I have long ago given up hope of having boobs like theirs.

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Art as Therapy: Remembering

Thanks to my beloved Maria* I have discovered some writing by philosopher Alain de Boton and art historian John Armstrong on Art as Therapy. I won’t repeat what she says here but for the next seven days I will illustrate each of their core psychological functions of art with photographs of my own work.

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The first function is remembering. They write that art is a way of preserving experiences, of which there are many transient and beautiful examples, and that we need help containing. Much of my art has an element of remembering. This triptych (detail shown) was created using the images I saw on a weekly bus journey when i lived in Nepal.

 

IMG_4098And this necklace (R) was created to remind me of the elation I felt at finally arriving in Lo Manthang, Upper Mustang; a destination I had dreamed of reaching for nearly 30 years.  The crushed tobacco tin was, to me, a precious relic.

*So much noise on the internet isn’t there? I hope I don’t contribute. Maria helps me to turn up the signal, wipe out the noise.  

Choose

Some times, it is almost like you are being TOLD something. In my reading from various sources last week, there was a repeated message about choice.
First I was reminded of Victor Frankl’s words:
Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response is our growth and our freedom.
DSCN0716Then, as I read my beloved Brainpickings, I came across this from Anne Lamott in her books Stitches:
Most of us have figured out that we have to do what’s in front of us and keep doing it…Every time we choose the good action or response –  the decent, the valuable – it builds incrementally, to renewal, resurrection, the place of newness, freedom, justice…
We live stitch by stitch, when we’re lucky. If you fixate on the big picture, the whole shebang, the overview, you miss the stitching. And maybe the stitching is crude, or it is unraveling, but if it were precise, we’d pretend that life was just fine and running like a Swiss watch.  This is not helpful if on the inside we understand that the life is more often like a cuckoo clock with rusty gears.
It is an art to learn to spot the space to choose. So many of my practices – like my yoga, my journalling – are to help me to do that…to spot the space and respond mindfully and, as a wise and darling friend reminded me, with good intention.

If this is Sunday, I must be in Sydney….

I left the Hill on Wednesday and will visit four cities before returning to Adelaide and leaving for Nepal.  A lovely, albeit busy time, of reconnecting and sharing.DSCN0121

And while journeys have allowed significant time for reflecting, there’s not so much time for writing. So….some favourite quotes and a photo or two – some flowers made using soothing Placid Blue and lotus buds to give the Samunnat ladies.

Over the last few days travel, I couldn’t believe how many women had obviously had plastic surgery. There is such a sameness about them all, a homogenised look, and (IMHO) it isn’t beautiful.  Ursula Le Guin so wisely says:

Beauty always has rules. It’s a game. I resent the beauty game when I see it controlled by people who grab fortunes from it and don’t care who they hurt. I hate it when I see it making people so self-dissatisfied that they starve and deform DSCN0118and poison themselves. Most of the time I just play the game myself in a very small way, buying a new lipstick, feeling happy about a pretty new silk shirt…[or wearing really fabulous jewellery. Ed]

Maybe it was because I was going to a school reunion that this resonated:

…I look at men and women my age and older, and their scalps and knuckles and spots and bulges, though various and interesting, don’t affect what I think of them. Some of these people I consider to be very beautiful, and others I don’t. For old people, beauty doesn’t come free with the hormones, the way it does for the young. It has to do with bones. It has to do with who the person is. More and moreDSCN0115 clearly it has to do with what shines through those gnarly faces and bodies.

Resilience, authenticity, courage in a face is more beautiful to me than a fine nose or full lips.

As Brene Brown says in The Gifts of Imperfection, authenticity is letting go of who we think we are supposed to be and embracing who we are right now.

Last week, when I tentatively practised embracing who I am right now (instead of the me I thought I was supposed to be) I could finish a task that had being hanging accusingly over my head for months.  Embracing the fact that I was a passionately enthusiastic volunteer who could ask for help (yup! revolutionary idea that one!) and not waiting until I was the fabulously computer literate graphic artist I thought I should be allowed me to get the job done.  It was good enough!

There is less evidence of plastic surgery in Nepal but the phenomenal sales of Fair and Lovely whitening cream suggests that the pursuit of idealised perfection is just as strong. Oh that my grand daughter could live in society where true inner beauty is valued, diversity celebrated, the weathering of age seen as signs of a long life well lived.

PS See Zed Nelson’s Love Me for more food for thought.  And Brainpickings for a cracker read every Sunday!

 

 

Connection

The regular reader will know that I got greedy and had several Words of The Year and  (here comes another one for those watching!) one of them is connection.  This year I have been so aware of connection at many levels:

image006Connection with my place (like running in the Living Desert and doing lovely walks in Mutawintji NP); connection through my yoga and meditation; connection with friends and family; connection with people I meet who seem to often have just the thing I need to hear or learn….

There has also been connection in the form of teaching, buddying, mentoring and creating. At the moment, the work I am making is connecting ideas that seem quite disparate and I am absorbed with the link between seed pods and reliquaries.  Steve Jobs said Creativity is just connecting things. And Maria Popova in brainpickings writes about the role of connection and creativity here.  She quotes Paul Rand who says, The role of the imagination is to create new meanings and to discover connections that, even if obvious, seem to escape detection. Imagination begins with intuition, not intellect.

Some of the loveliest connections lately have come from students! Only this weekimage021 two students sent me some real treasures. In response to a conversation about colour, Carol sent these fabulous photos of birds (she didn’t know the source. Ideas anyone?) and after we talked about the importance of creativity in life Clem sent this fabulous quote from Helena Bonham Carter which he displays in his workplace for all to reflect on:

imagesI think everything in life is art. What you do. How you dress. The way you love someone, and how you talk. Your smile and your personality. What you believe in, and all your dreams. The way you drink your tea. How you decorate your home. Or party. Your grocery list. The food you make. How your writing looks. And the way you feel. Life is art.

I think the pod photo was taken by Cynthia Mooney of this site but I am checking!  Soon I hope to connect properly with our new grand baby. Obviously I will need to wait until after the birth but I will be doing some preparatory connecting this week when I drive over to let it know that grandma is ready now!  At least you are all used to sporadic, irregular blogging.

Here’s a sneak peek at my polymer ponderings on pods and gaus – the Tibetan Buddhist amulet containers:IMG_0050

Life and Death

e1191109ebcdab31b6503debc3cbb179Guess what!? Austin Kleon reads obituaries too.  (Yes, I have mentioned him before!  I loved Steal Like an Artist and meant to write more about it) He describes obituaries as near death experiences for cowards.  I read obituaries. Not the ones of famous people but the ones about the heroism of ordinary people recounted with love by those they leave behind.  I usually cry.  As Kleon says in Show Your Work, they aren’t really about death; they’re about life.  In a wonderful newsletter this week, Maria Popova (Brainpickings) quotes illustrator and author Maira Kalman saying: the sum of every obituary is how heroic people are, and how noble.  I so agree with Kleon who says reading about people who are dead now and did things with their lives makes me want to get up and do something decent with mine. Thinking about death every morning makes me want to live.  For me, verbally acknowledging each morning that all things end, all things change reminds me to not take for granted for one second, the preciousness of life.

Like many people on planes last week I was more nervous than usual. I refrained from sending an email to family from the airport telling them who the authorities should check if anything went wrong.  That would have made them more anxious! (But why would you board a plan for a 9 hour flight with no hand luggage? Travelling light obviously down to an art! And what was that bandage around the hand hiding? Surely not just a wound. Ah, the blessing of a vivid imagination.)

I sensed a collective relaxing of shoulders when we did all finally land. Sheepishlyannaquindlen_shortguide exchanged grins that indicated our slightly embarrassed relief.  I’ve been on planes where the passengers applauded when we landed. This time the relief was not audible, but just as obvious.

Lately the realities of life and death emphasise the value of living rather than existing (and go straight to Brainpickings for more on this. Gosh Brainpickings is good. Have I mentioned that?) I think I’ll buy A Short Guide to a Happy Life by Anna Quindlen.  This resonated so powerfully for me:

It is so easy to waste our lives: our days, our hours, our minutes.  It is so easy to take for granted the pale new growth on an evergreen…the colour of our kids’ eyes…it is so easy to exist instead of live. Unless you know there is a clock ticking.  I was reminded of that wonderful paragraph in Toni Jordan’s Additions where she says:

DSCN2559Most people miss their whole lives, you know. Listen, life isn’t when you are standing on top of a mountain looking at a sunset. [Mind you, that can be very lovely!] Life isn’t waiting at the altar or the moment your child is born or that time you were swimming in a deep water and a dolphin came up alongside you. These are fragments. 10 or 12 grains of sand spread throughout your entire existence. These are not life. Life is brushing your teeth or making a sandwich or watching the news or waiting for the bus. Or walking. Every day, thousands of tiny events happen and if you’re not watching, if you’re not careful, if you don’t capture them and make them COUNT, your could miss it. You could miss your whole life.”

As I was about to board the plane, and seconds before I had to turn off my phone, shots of my grand-child-in-utero, already besottedly adored, came through.  I allowed myself to feel incredibly happy acknowledging how profoundly vulnerable this made me.  I savoured those wonderful moments, cried, showed the man next to me and touched the dear face that appeared on the screen.  Quindlen says:

Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby’s ear. [my emphasis! Can’t wait. We do great ears in our family] Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because, if you do, you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived.