Tag Archives: Art

That Which Stirs My Soul

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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I had an experience last weekend that sent chills down my entire body for almost 48 hours straight….and then left me with a life-long memory of a spectacular cultural event that stirred my artistic soul like few others I have ever experienced. You see, I love Native Americans; I am fascinated and moved by everything to do with Indians. I have read many books, collected picture books, taken photos myself, purchased rugs and jewelry and baskets as evidenced in my home where it all combines quite well with my own contemporary abstract paintings and my African collection. I am a mix and match, ecclectic decorator.

My generous daughter booked us for the Native American Gathering of Nations Pow Wow in Albuquerque for the weekend, then an extra night in Santa Fe before we each flew out to our respective homes – she to Vancouver and I to Denver. I was thrilled, to put it mildly. I had been to several small pow wows through the years but nothing approaching this magnitude. Nothing with the pageantry of this.

During the opening ceremony, 2800 Indian men and women representing dozens of tribal nations in full dress filed into the arena to an almost deafening beating of drums and singing coming from several points on the arena floor. It was thunderous – it was chilling – it was visually stunning! The variety of regalia was magnificent! The fine artistry of it all was evident in the feathers, the fancy beaded garments and moccasins, the jewelry, the headdresses, the belts and accessories – all were fascinating and endless in their variations. My first photo above was the very beginning of just one row of Indians – they came from all corners of the arena, marching down the stairs between the seats to the floor below. I had never before seen such a huge gathering of tribes – Navajo, Cree, Seminole, Crow…the list went on and on. There were Indian names I had never heard. The energy was palpable; the history was right there before us and the language lives. I was told by a Navajo gentleman sitting next to me that the secret parts of tribal dances are never performed in public; they are kept only for private ceremonies in their own communities. But there was enough revealed in both song and dance to keep us enthralled for hours on end.

For the next two full days and evenings, then well into the wee hours of Sunday morning the dancing and the chanting and the drumming continued. There are many dances! The rain dance, the grizzly bear dance, the fancy dancers, the jingle dancers, the chicken dancers, the southern dancers, the summer dances and the grass dance – it goes on and on. The toddler dances, the under 5 dances,  the teenage girl and boy dances – then the young maiden dances and the Indian Princess dances followed by the bachelor dances. Prizes were awarded to the winners in all ages, from under five years to elders over seventy in all categories. Traditional gifts of thanks in the form of blankets, quilts, baskets and such are given to the extended family and supporters of the contest winners, as is the Indian custom. Winners are given gifts also, and cash prizes, and the great honor of being recognized by their peers.

I am filled with wonder and gratitude that I was given this experience. But then, if you knew my daughter you would not be surprised. She is extraordinarily insightful and generous; a believer in the priceless value of incomparable experiences, a world traveler, a fine travel photographer and a graphic artist. Her name is Kelly K. Heapy. Follow her blog at  http://www.compassandcamera.com and here on WordPress and you will certainly see her professional photographs of the Pow Wow event.You can also find her photography on Instagram and Twitter, as is mine which pales by comparison…..

Jo Ann Brown-Scott, artist and author

BOOKS – http://joannbrownscottauthor.com     http://www.acanaryfliesthecanyon.com

Artistic Expression

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

 photo courtesy of nationmultimedia.com

Ai Weiwei's latest installation has 14,000 life vests tied to the columns of a Berlin concert house.photo courtesy of CNN

“Are you jealous of the ocean’s generosity? Why would you refuse to give this joy to anyone?”

Quote by  RUMI, born 1207 in Afghanistan, whose family fled the threat of the Mongol armies and emigrated to Turkey between 1215 and 1220.

The relevance of artistic expression in today’s world is seldom more explicitly displayed than in this recent installation by the most prominent of Chinese dissident artists, Al Weiwei, on the pillars of the Konzerthaus Concert Hall in Berlin.

This artist has wrapped 14,000 life jackets around the pillars of this landmark building to bring attention to the urgency of the tide of refugees arriving on the shores of  European nations and around the world. These particular life jackets were worn by  migrants who braved the seas in flight from the Island of Lesbos in Greece.

With thanks to this artist and others who feel the pain and misery of the refugee population, who at this very moment are enduring all manner of human suffering in their attempt to simply find a better life for their children, I humbly and simply post this blog.

Excerpt – A Canary Flies the Canyon

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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Back from a little mini-vacation to the great Northwest – Whidbey Island and then Vancouver! I am happy to find that my new novel is getting more 5-Star reviews! I think that is a lovely treat to come home to….a HUGE thank you to all the people who cared enough to write a review on Amazon.com. Your comments are invaluable to me!

These days social networking is everything – it is word of mouth in its newest and most effective incarnation. There is simply no better way to get the word out, spread the news, show pictures and be an accessible author who will accept communication from anyone anywhere anytime!

Today I am offering you another excerpt from my book, from Chapter 18 – this time giving you a glimpse into a period of time when my heroine Annie worked as director of a very successful Denver gallery, owned by a woman named Kerri. This experience would eventually change Annie’s life, and in this brief excerpt I am introducing the reader to Kerri’s mother and some of the other staff  who also worked there:

I thought Kerri’s mom was an interesting study. She was an aging beauty, a little worse for the wear, highly eccentric, constantly nervous with several tics she kept repeating as she spoke – a cracking of her neck to one side, a thing she did with her shoulders that went up and down and a tendency to lick her lips excessively. Perhaps a bit unstable and hair-triggered, I thought. Rather impulsive; a reactionary personality. She loved men and she hated them, exactly like my own mother. I could not quite figure her out but I certainly did not want to get on her bad side for any reason real or imagined, and I had a slight suspicion that could happen at the drop of a hat. Her mood swings came and went twenty times a day. She wore things that wrapped, she was always swaddled in a bunch of fabrics of varying color and pattern. I had no idea where she was inside all that. She looked like she was running a fever for lack of ventilation. She was perennially flushed.

The guy, Troy, who shaved his head and oiled it up until it was shiny chose his words carefully so as not to appear stupid, and was so obviously in love with Kerri that it hurt to watch him. She was entirely out of his league; he would have cleaned the floor with his tongue for her. I liked him, but he seemed unsophisticated and naïve, yet we needed him because he was our muscles. He made himself useful with framing, doing any heavy lifting and art deliveries for clients.

Then there was another employee named Sandra who was a lady wrestler in her off time, with an alias lady wrestler type name which cannot be repeated here. She was a little hard looking, tatted up and muscular but she could sell art til’ the cows came home. In fact she could not stop talking, but in sales that is sometimes a plus. After I began working there I found out that she was sort of on probation, in danger of losing her position, because she was a little on the undependable side. Her boyfriend Chung was a rock star in the world of wrestling, with his giant chiseled body, long lanky hair and dozens of piercings. He was a scary dude. Having him in the gallery occasionally to pick up Sandra was both an attraction and a detriment – crowds of (also pretty wacked out) wrestling fans who recognized him quickly formed a gang asking for his autograph but then other potential art buyers, more cultured and refined, bolted for the door. It was never a dull moment in there. Psychos to the left of me and freak show on the right, stuck in the middle…welcome to the art scene. It sometimes reminded me of the bar scene in one of the original Star Wars movies, and if Jar Jar Binks himself had walked in to apply for a job or purchase a painting I would not have given it a second thought. Thank you very much, I thought, glad to be back. This is going to be entertaining. Is it cocktail hour yet?

Please read the book’s full description on Amazon.com!

Available on Amazon.com

http://www.acanaryfliesthecanyon.com

Google Chrome – http://www.joannbrownscottauthor.com

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It’s All In Your Head – a Compliment to Women

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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So I had these two identical lamps, with bases made of sculptured women’s heads looking slightly classic and Greek but still mostly generic – no particular ethnicity was obvious in their eyes, mouths or expressions. They were so enticing, but sort of judgmental, sitting there all the time so stoic and serious with their lampshades over their heads. I put them on our bed-side tables for several years, sometimes putting seasonal hats on them or sunglasses and scarves, sometimes earrings or earmuffs, just for my own amusement. My husband thought that was stupid, which begs the question of whether or not he actually ever understood the person he was married to and her wacky sense of humor….if I had to guess I would say he did not. But I digress.

One day I just snapped and dismantled them, tearing them from their lamp-parts and keeping their lampshades for some other lamp. I knew I was going to do something with them but it took a day or two to figure out which of my ideas would win.

Since I do have a bunch of lovely, patterned and textured collage papers from all around the world, and I am a mixed media collage artist, I decided to collage their faces with an assortment of torn paper shapes, giving them kind of a tattoo treatment. Immediately, as I worked on the first one I thought of the broadest concept of women – the enormous tribe of women that encompasses all other tribes of women anywhere and everywhere in the world. The concept of women in general, all over the map, and what a powerful force of nature we are. We are multi-taskers of the highest degree and we can do ANYTHING we set our mind to.

In my new novel, published just last week, I believe I address that very subject. The story revolves around one particular woman artist who is faced with major life challenges, and how she surprises her own damn self with the strength she has. Please pick up a copy on http://www.Amazon.com. The title is A CANARY FLIES THE CANYON.

http://www.acanaryfliesthecanyon.com    http://www.joannbrownscottauthor.com

Not coincidentally of course, because I do not believe in randomness or simple, innocent chance, I had lunch yesterday with some of the strongest women I have ever known – a group of my old college friends. There were only about seven of us, and we all do keep in loose touch, but yesterday we got more specific about what all has happened to us and how we have coped over the years since college was over. It was truly a revelation to hear it all. I am so proud to have a place in that group. You would be shocked at the variety of serious MONUMENTAL challenges we have all faced – not a single one of us escaped life’s major misfortunes – but we all survived and came out on the other side finally able to smile again.

My sister has the other lamp head, which is much more eccentric and Bohemian than this one in the above picture – her lamp woman is in reds and corals with patterns of great energy and fun. Mine is an elegant woman – her’s is a ballsy broad. But of course there is room for all of us in the tribe of women, and we all have multiple personalities which is a large part of our charm, is it not?

Do you question randomness? What is destiny?

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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The older I get the more I question the validity of a true, pure, innocent, random coincidence.

I question events that happened seemingly out of the blue, but really not, as I look back over my shoulder at life.

In my life, or any life, I often observe a pattern in the information that “randomly” comes to me at the oddest times; messages come in unpredictable spurts surrounded by different colorful contexts but bearing the same core theme, delivering the same basic wisdom that apparently I need to hear. If I listen, wow that is great. I’ll probably be just fine. If I don’t, the message will hit me again with a louder impact in a different context, trying to get my attention….hey! Listen to me! Get a clue!

It is not that I believe our lives are beyond our control and that nothing at all is random; what I do believe is that we are indeed given choices and of course our destiny lies in which path we take. Perhaps the choices we are given are not random. Perhaps the universe sends us just what we need to learn in the form of various choices of a certain category, based upon our purpose here on planet earth. Perhaps even based upon what we learned in a past life and what more needs to be experienced in order to live a more enlightened existence. The purpose would of course be to evolve as a human being; to contribute to the greater good, to be a better person and to leave some wisdom behind when we move on…

People often wonder what their purpose here really is. What is the meaning of life? Why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing? Rumi wrote about it repeatedly and our modern writers have made additions to those three big questions….I have a t shirt that adds, “Where are the cookies?” which is of course an important thing to learn about life.

My new novel is about a contemporary woman artist growing up and growing wide, as I like to say, since a good life has both width and depth; she is struggling to learn things about life and art. When a kid has no mentors, no advisors, no guidance and no quality advice as she grows up she has no choice but to go inward, and learn everything the hard way. But oddly enough, going inward and finding things out the hard way, the lonely way, is an excellent foundation for creative development. It stimulates your creative juices; it requires that you ask questions of yourself. In a way it is a twisted gift the universe has given you; a nasty trick that life plays, hoping you will rise to the occasion at some point and conquer the obstacles in your path, taking the high road and pushing through to the other side almost all by yourself. You finally arrive where you always hoped you would be, battered, wounded and worn, but just in the nick of time to enjoy it. Better late than not at all.

In my novel, “A CANARY FLIES THE CANYON” (soon available on Amazon.com) I track this evolution in one young woman. The title is enigmatic, whimsical and of course reveals its origin in the book…so please watch for that. But I am just wondering, have you ever seen a canary flying free in a rugged Colorado canyon, elevation 8500′ and climbing? A small yellow dot in the shadows and the sun, flying her heart out to a higher destination, dodging hawks and other birds of prey, through all kinds of weather? It does seem absurd, does it not?

“OLD SOUL” Makes Her Debut for the DYAO

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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copyright 2015, Jo Ann Brown-Scott, OLD SOUL

Every year the Denver Young Artists Orchestra hosts a fundraising event called the Painted Violin Event. Artists are selected, retired violins are sent out to them and we are all asked to paint the violins with a theme of our choosing, three-dimensionally,  then the violins go on tour for several months at many of the Denver area art galleries with the hope of attracting buyers to fund talented young kids who love music. It is an exciting time, receiving a violin, knowing your mission is to give it an inspired treatment by anointing it with a theme that is both appealing and marketable; one that speaks to people and sends them a message. Please visit  http://www.paintedviolin.com  or  http://www.DYAO.org  to see all the new violins for the 2015-2016 symphony season and those from all past seasons as well.

I have chosen to honor the authentic character of my particular old violin by embellishing her weathered patina with exotic stones and treasures including rare leopard jaspar from Madagascar (which is one of the oldest known gemstones containing healing powers), turquoise, African bone beads, Mexican silver, coins and other treasures from around the world. After all, she is a musical traveler, having provided the music of the world to audiences from all ethnicities and walks of life during her long career. The story of her origin and how she finally came into my hands is fascinating and involves the San Francisco Bay area and Yosemite Park to name just a few of the clues to her long life. Coincidentally or not, both of those locations are especially meaningful to my own family. Most of the items with which I have chosen to adorn her are from my own personal collection of magical found objects….saved through the years for some special purpose. This is an extraordinary purpose.

“Old Soul” is my second violin selected by the DYAO, (Denver Young Artists Orchestra) following my first violin included in the 8th season titled Scheherazade, which I have also written about on this blog. I have enjoyed a life-long career in fine art after obtaining my degree from the U. of Colorado. Most recently (2009) I  published a book titled The Creative Epiphany – Gifted Minds, Grand Realizations and taught mixed media painting in northern California. After returning to the Denver area in 2013, a place I consider my home, I enrolled in a class at Denver Art Students League taught by Homare Ikeda which further deepened my work as a contemporary abstract artist. My most recent work places an emphasis upon color, pattern and texture in compositions inspired by travels to Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Hawaii and the landscapes of the western USA. I am currently writing this blog based upon my art and my travels, which fuel my experiences with art, and I will soon publish my third book, a novel titled A Canary Flies the Canyon, within days…

This violin, as did my first, carries a deeper meaning than people will see on the surface – it truly found me. That is another story, but a story worthy of telling. Please stay tuned for continuing information and revelations about this violin and the larger story of one contemporary woman’s artistic life in my new novel A Canary Flies the Canyon.

That which does not kill you…..

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

IMG_7156 Ten moons til the move is over – Conifer Colorado, August 2015

That which does not kill you….makes you stronger, they say. Not sure about that, but I am in the ugly process of moving to a different part of the Denver area and I am really strong right now from lifting boxes that I should never be lifting. I have muscle definition and even abs. Still, I think it might kill me too. I am so driven to get this horrible transition over and done that I am being a little stupid. And there are stairs involved. I am trying to do as much of it as I can, myself, before the big truck pulls up. The other day I turned a large table upside down and slid it down the entry stairs, hanging onto one end of it for dear life so that we both would not smack into the front door at the bottom. After this entire process is over I will return to my former degree of common sense, jump back into the old groove and be writing regularly again.

I said my book would be published in late summer of 2015 and I still plan to achieve that goal if you will be kind enough to consider Indian Summer as being within the parameters of summer. Oh come on….stretch a little bit and just give me that. Yes there have been a few delays and if I explained them to you they would sound implausible so I won’t bother, but just take my word that they are not within the normal range of belief, but they are indeed true.

My website for the book is going live soon – very soon – even before the book is published. I will also be releasing another tidbit right here and now – this time the official book description. Please enjoy.

“A Canary Flies the Canyon” – a novel by Jo Ann Brown-Scott. Book description, all rights reserved.

Have you ever questioned randomness?

Do you wonder in your life, or any life, whether or not the choices we are offered are really choices or if fate determines our destiny?

With her third book Jo Ann Brown-Scott offers a fresh and energetic novel about the life-long evolution of a contemporary woman artist. In her characteristically vivid, painterly voice, at times both irreverent and profound, Brown-Scott composes the story of a maverick, free-spirited woman, awarded with creative DNA and privilege at birth yet scarred with a childhood of loss and family dysfunction. Fueled with these ideal circumstances for artistic creative development, the heroine Annie breaks loose to become the Bohemian abstract artist she was born to be.

During her artistic maturation, relationships with three prominent men in her life, a salesman, a contrarian and a Swede bring seemingly random disorder, chaos and instability as her art continues to acquire complexity and growth toward success. Facing complicated challenges Annie gradually becomes faith-based, spiritual and enlightened during her struggles to thrive. She questions randomness; can life’s moments of perfect timing be attributed to mere coincidental chance? Do we have any real choices, or is a life already written in the stars as karmic retribution or reward?

Art mirrors life; paintings are a life journal. In Annie’s mixed media life we discover her soul – her humor, courage, passion and her relentless amazement at life itself partnered with her embrace of all that remains mysterious and unknown. She learns of possible past lives; she questions the complete and utter finality of death. Her paintings morph into powerful, carefully structured compositions indicative of her intellect, fire and passion. Her messages about life are evident in the exuberant color and pattern of her art.

Only after Annie hits emotional rock-bottom and is brought to her knees with adversity does the universe present her with an option that hints at both restoration and renewal. They say that karma is a bitch, but more often it is just karma. When it does intervene it is nonjudgmental; pure, swift and arriving in the nick of time to level the playing field once again. It comes bearing gifts for a gutsy, risk-taking woman, many times burned; a chance and a choice that just might balance the scales and enable Annie to grasp some reward in the last chapter of her life. If she decides to take one more leap of faith, the results could be astounding. Will she choose wisely? What is her destiny?

Blog www.thecreativeepiphany.wordpress.com

Art Originals & Prints http://joann-brown-scott.fineartamerica.com

Book http://joannbrownscottauthor.com – coming soon!

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As Promised….an Excerpt!

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

Choices

Original painting by Jo Ann Brown-Scott  titled “Choosing the High Road” copyright 2015, all rights reserved, which will be used in the cover design for her book titled A CANARY FLIES the CANYON copyright 2015, all rights reserved.

I am nearing the publication of my third book, this time a novel, and I am pregnant with anticipation. It is a time-consuming process and it seems to go slower the closer I get to the goal. Sorry this has been so long in coming – I promised an excerpt weeks ago.

Well hey, first of all it is difficult to decide WHERE to excerpt from  – what tidbit is the best, especially for the first one? Should it come from the first chapter, necessarily, or not? Should all the excerpts come to you in chronological order? I guess so…. How many is enough? How much should they reveal?

The book has many moods. It can be black and white, multi-colored, highly textured and patterned with humor, melancholy and every emotion known to human kind.  It will be taking you along on a journey…the story of one young girl’s life that unfolds toward an artistic career. Of course that journey is fraught with random (or not?) surprises and challenges. Life does seem, at times, to be pre-planned (almost scripted, with an agenda in mind, hmm…) and so this young girl begins to question the random-ness of things. But then she questions everything….

Excerpt from the novel  A Canary Flies the Canyon, copyright 2015, all rights reserved.

After great consideration, I offer you the first excerpt from Chapter Two called “Blind Spots”; a quote from Annie.

“I have thought long and hard about who my female role models were as I was growing up and I cannot think of a single one. I loved my mother, and much later saw her as accomplished and courageous to have done what she did, but I did not idolize her and she never talked with me in conversations of any length or significance. If she had ever once just sat me down and requested a heart to heart girl talk with me about life, or about anything that might have guided me toward a course to follow, our relationship would have been a far different one. There was not a single male or female who ever took me aside and truly talked to me, mentored me about my future, gave me advice, encouragement or became a person in whom I felt I could confide. I think that has been part of my problem. I was always rudderless, sailing through life on a free-spirited wing and a prayer, hoping to somehow stumble upon the Northern Star. I never found it; certainly not by choice it became my norm to depend upon no one, and that closed the door to my soul a little bit. I was starting out brave but naïve; smart but innocent. I was often lonesome, seldom in meaty conversations with anyone and primarily a visual person, an observer of life. I did not know it at the time but these are the ideal characteristics and circumstances for feeding creativity and artistic development. A person goes inward and learns everything the hard way.”

Author BIO

Jo Ann Brown-Scott, born in Ohio, is an artist and a writer living in the Denver, Colorado area. Her degree from the University of Colorado emphasized studio art, art history, literature and psychology. In conjunction with her art and literary careers she has taught interior design at a community college in Denver and was an instructor of mixed media collage in California. She has years of experience in sales and marketing including gallery director positions, event planning, client acquisition and book publishing.

Jo enjoys travel to favorite places such as Singapore, Cambodia, Thailand and Italy among others, finding that travel feeds and informs her art and writing. She believes that painting and writing have much in common, both requiring that a story be told in a unique voice with a distinctive vocabulary and palette. Brown-Scott’s abstract, mixed media paintings and collages have been exhibited throughout Colorado and the west; her work is currently shown by appointment.

She has published two previous non-fiction books on the subject of self-realization and creativity, specifically involving true stories of life-changing epiphanies. Her second book, The Creative Epiphany, Gifted Minds, Grand Realizations, won Best Books Award Finalist in the non-fiction narrative category of the National USA Book News awards.

She has two grown children who are each gifted with literary and artistic skills.

Blog www.thecreativeepiphany.wordpress.com

Art Originals & Prints http://joann-brown-scott.fineartamerica.com

Book http://joannbrownscottauthor.com – coming soon

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Starving Artists and other misc.

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

tears artists

I recently attended the Cherry Creek Arts Festival in Denver – we spent about five hours strolling around and it was hot sweaty fun, on constant sensory overload and hoping to find greatness every once in a while. The people-watching is as fascinating as the art. Since I cannot publish any of my photos of the art, and I took many, without violating copyright laws these two pics will have to suffice. The collective cultural mood of the weekend was friendly, the people typically free-spirited and a little on the crazy side. My kind of folks.

As you might imagine, there were 3-4 streets, both sides, jammed with art booths. It took a long time to see it all and yet I am convinced it was worth our time, because we are both serious artists ourselves and because it has traditionally been enlightening to attend and view the enormous variety and check out the current trends. Paintings, Pastels, Ceramics, Photography, Wood Working, Jewelry, Collage & Mixed Media, etc.etc. A new surprise around every corner.

You would think that Denver is screaming with fine art – we have the oldie but goodie Cherry Creek Art District, the newer South Santa Fe Drive Art District, the upcoming Rino Art District (river-north), the Highlands, the LODO (lower downtown) Art District and the various neighboring suburban art areas in old Littleton, Greenwood Village & Centennial, as well as Boulder just up the road about 45 minutes. There is the highly prestigious Denver Art Museum, the newly acquired and widely acclaimed Clyfford Still Museum and many other fine places to view art. Denver has become a foodie town; I wish we would become a fine art destination town.

People tell me that good abstract art is hot right now in Denver. I just don’t know exactly where. If I knew I would go there immediately. To me, it seems that really great abstract art shows up sporadically and mostly not at all. My instructor, Homare Ikeda, at the Art Student’s League of Denver is one of the best abstract artists around. We found some sophisticated abstract art, quite exciting, at the booth of Michael McKee from Fountain Hills, AZ. at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, and he comes back almost every year. Western art is always popular, and usually it is very fine here in Denver. There was recently an important show of women artists’ work. And of course there is also a plentiful supply of junk.

Denver is hot right now; we are some of the most well-educated and fit people in the country. We are almost electrically charged with energy, jobs, people moving here in droves and a real estate market like it used to be in California. However, galleries close here as fast as they open. One week they are here and the next they are gone. As an artist it is very difficult to break into the gallery scene unless you want to be in the kind of shop that carries a lot of trivia as well. True fine art galleries that endure are rare. That is because a large number of inexperienced idiots with a bit of money believe that all you have to do is find a large space, paint the walls white, put up a sign, open the door and you will have collectors streaming in to make purchases. Heh. Omg. Really? Yes there are still people like that out there.

I know very few artists who live here who are not starving. We all have to have other incomes. The people who rent booth space at Cherry Creek Art Festival, or any of the other summer art fairs pay outrageous amounts of money to set up their booths all across the country – very few are local people – and it is a gypsy life for them, traveling around in the art fair circuit and working through all kinds of extreme heat, wind, hail and torrential rain. They have to be able to cover and protect their precious wares at the drop of a hat or a hailstone. It is not an easy life.

But being artistic is not, and never has been an easy life – you have heard me talk about it before in my blogs. It ebbs and sometimes it flows, but it is always unpredictable.

I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes about artists, only a little bit relevant to what I am talking about today, but always important to remember:

The greater the artist the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.  Robert Hughes

The Creativity Muscle Personified

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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Best Laid Plans 18×24 mixed media by Jo Ann Brown-Scott, copyright 2015

I believe that creativity is a mind muscle that needs consistent flexing to remain active, aware and functional. People ask me sometimes what can be done for burn-out; the inevitable creative blockage that arrives without warning like an unwanted houseguest who might settle in and stay for days on end. All of a sudden you find that you are stalled in the middle of what was a great creative roll. Or perhaps you have been anticipating a new project for weeks, simmering and planning and building your creative excitement for the day when you must begin work, when you are amazed to find that you experience failure to launch! Fear of success perhaps?

Creativity is a fickle bitch, isn’t she? She comes breezing in, all colorful and witty, commanding your complete attention and getting you all jazzed up with her come-hither looks of sensuality and promise. You cannot resist her; you build your life around her, dropping all practicality and allowing yourself to get caught up in days and nights of her entertaining and stimulating tease. You produce your most inspired work – you paint, you sculpt, you write, you compose music, you cook, you photograph, you build, you design, you weave and you invent and you pull your inspiration from the vast store of fantastic ideas that creativity carries with her in her mysterious bag of tricks. She is your favorite guest. You cater to her; you feed her your best foods and give her her very own space in your home to do with what she likes.

But sometimes she is just a momentary guest, getting you all fired up and sweaty with energy and then she leaves in the dark of night and disappears for long spells of time when she is out of communication and mysteriously gone entirely off your radar. How can you lure her back?

But you see she never really left. She is always there, hovering over or behind you, watching, making comments and sometimes rude remarks about what you are doing and how you spend your time. You must realize, you must know by now that she actually does live right there, just over your shoulder of consciousness. But sometimes she time-travels – she has to – are you kidding – that is what she does best! She cannot be confined to the here and now. The universe is her playground.

She gets cranky when you fall into ruts and don’t exercise her enough. She needs daily activity, she needs sunshine and awareness to be happy. She needs stimulation, conversation, the flow of ideas and the food of thought. She needs far horizons of new places and unknown adventure. She loves humor, she gets off on sex and romance, she needs film and theater and children’s joy and the wisdom of older minds. She wants it all. Feed her often and she will come back – her brief flights of fancy when she does not answer your calls, your texts, your tweets and then your high-pitched screams for help will be less frequent. When she begins to notice that you are a serious, dedicated creator who will not be denied her attention, a person who is filled up with potential that you were given for free at birth, she will truly respect you and she will never be gone for long.

Copyright Jo Ann Brown-Scott 2015 – This post is excerpted from my upcoming novel to be published in late summer of 2015