Tag Archives: Inspiration

The Creative Epiphany – The Life-Support of Art

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Breathe deeply and open your senses to the wonders around you. Be alive!  Live in the now. You are a human being, able to lift yourself up through the joy of imagery. You are an emotional sponge – soak up what you need. Art is to be used – it is a tool for information and life enhancement, available at every turn.

Go to it when you need it. The beating art is your life support.

“The saving of lives, for an artist, is surely a daily act. Artists are resuscitators of dreams, rescuers of the abandoned, lodgers of the unwanted, and keepers of faith. In our lifesaving, we are saved. In polishing the souls of others, the artist polishes her own with her resurrections. She can’t help herself – giving life is the ultimate creative act. ‘As soon as there is life, there is danger,’ said Ralph Waldo Emerson. ‘I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot.’ ” 

Written by Sara, excerpted from the March 4th, 2014 Letter of Robert Genn, which I highly recommend for all of you who enjoy being enlightened about the creative life.

Here’s the link: http://clicks.robertgenn.com/save-a-life.php

To be subscribed to the Twice-Weekly Robert Genn Letter, you can find out about it by going to www.painterskeys.com

From that website – Informed and successful artists and other creative folk from more than 115 countries visit this website for information, inspiration, artist advice, friendship and connectivity. Most have signed up to the Twice-Weekly Letters, which is FREE and we strongly encourage you to also subscribe to get the most benefit from this community. It has also been our goal to make this website an online resource of information for artists and a place to share with others what you are doing, such as through the Art Show Calendar, Art Workshop Calendar and Premium Art Listings. One of the most popular pages is the Art Quotes page, and we also share other things like a listing of Art Retreats available to artists, books, videos, and more.

I had to share this brilliant quote from Sara – her quote says so beautifully what is in the heart of every artist. Many people see us creative types as passive, introverted, perhaps even wimp-ish, but we are indeed the gutsy ones who smear our souls across canvas, following that brave effort by asking  for comments from perfect strangers. With our images we offer solace and comfort to the suffering, joy to the truly alive, hope to those who seek it and reassurance that life must go on. People who appreciate the artistic efforts of centuries discover all that and more.

People are moved by the sensuality of color, the fascination of texture and the thrill of a striking composition. That is wonderful. But art is not always pretty, and when it is not gorgeous to look at in the classical sense, you can be sure that especially then, when the image is not necessarily beautiful, it is still thought-provoking and it has a profound message to deliver. My wish is that people would follow that less-traveled visual path more often and care enough to discover the intent of the artist, the bravery required to make such a statement and the value therein. Dipping the pen of that artist and the viewer into the blackest, deepest well, as Ralph Waldo Emerson alludes to in the above quote within Sara’s quote, in other words. Art is so very all-inclusive – there is something for absolutely every one of us whatever mood we are in at the time. There is a time and a place for it all. When you need some life-support you will find it. Take a day trip to your local museum, visit an art class, stop into a gallery, go online to websites like ARTSPAN.com or just visit BING or GOOGLE and ask for images of your choice. You have the world of art at your fingertips, for your viewing pleasure and sustenance – an easy way to take you right out of yourself and into another world.

The Creative Epiphany – Your Fountain of Youth

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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wave5 Watching the massive wave events on the west coast of the Big Island, Hawaii in late January, 2014

 

“Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is a matter of the will, quality of imagination, a VIGOR of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life”. – Samuel Ullman

I believe that if you can find a geographic place – a safe and enfolding place of  contentment, magic and wonder where you can go when you need renewal – you have found your version of the fountain of youth. Some people never manage to find that unique and stirring location, but others who are young at heart and keep an open mind to the gifts of the universe search for and find their particular GPS of choice and they use it time and time again to recharge the batteries of their souls. My daughter who has traveled the world says one of her favorite places of all she has seen is Yosemite Park, practically in our own backyard.

I have not traveled the world but still I know what brings me back to the places where my heart is fulfilled and brimming up with contentment and peace. For me there are several locations – Big Sur, the big island of Hawaii, Yellowstone and Yosemite Parks and the mountains of Colorado – and when I spend time in those locations I feel sure that I am a positive force in a greater universe. I am infused with such joy at every return trip, highly energized, feeling that my life is enhanced and perhaps even prolonged by the adrenaline rush I experience. The epiphany here is that what you want to happen will happen, and so if you believe in the power of a place, you will undoubtedly reap the rewards by using it to bring quality to your days and additional time to your life. You are what you think constantly about, as they say, and so whatever brings positivity and happiness in its purest form directly into your veins – to your very being  – can only be good. If it is in your power to find your place, do find it and hold it dear. If for some reason you are unable to go where you want to go, use your powers to picture it, find it, embrace it in your soul. Do not allow the boundaries of your physical world to confine you. Go beyond and get there.

The Creative Epiphany – Giant Redwood-like Birthdays

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

sunone Muir Woods, California

Today I am having one of those epic birthdays, right on the heels of Thanksgiving, that are thrust upon you to get your complete attention and sober you up about life. I am beginning to feel like a giant Redwood. Last year launched me involuntarily and against my protests into a new decade and now, a brief, fleeting, sort of nano-second year later I have my first year of that decade already under my belt. My belt is tightening with all the decades under it. When I was growing up I never could imagine I’d be this old, and I thought that if by any chance I was, someday, this old, I would be at death’s door – shriveled and feeble and ditsy and wrinkled and not having any fun at all. Might as well be dead, I thought.

I am none of those things, to my own amazement. I walk normally, I can still run and climb steep mountain trails, I am not at all feeble, and/or ditsy. I have a gorgeous boyfriend and yes we are lovers. I am a bit wrinkled but so are my younger friends, and I am having Tons Of Fun, enjoying one of the greatest periods of time in my life. Who knew it would be like this? I still listen to the R&R station on the radio when I drive because it is upbeat and infinitely more energizing than the news talk shows. I do believe that the channels you listen to on the car radio are revealing of your internal state of affairs. Please don’t listen to those idiotic and arrogant “spouter – offers” who seem to want every single person on the planet to believe as they do. They will pollute your day, robbing it of any optimism and cheerfulness, and eventually sour your mind and your soul on life. Listen to the fun stuff.

Yesterday around the Thanksgiving table we were discussing how old all of us are. Finally I offered the info to my sweet 5 year old great-niece that I was going to be 71 today. Her eyes widened, she looked at me and said, “Great (she drops off the “aunt” ) Jo, you are going to die!” Everyone laughed and I was the first to agree with her. But I am not dying today. I am nowhere near being finished.

Honestly, composing this blog is my attempt at brushing off this birthday with clever observations when in reality my birthday is always a deeply emotional moment in time for me. Last week I was reminded again and mourned again the fact that JFK was killed just a week before my 21st birthday. I can’t say that I enjoy birthdays anymore when they are my own. I have a reputation for making other people’s birthdays special and spectacular, but not my own. I see my own as harsh reminders. I am always glad glad glad when the day is over and I can stop the celebration. I can’t wait to move on…..I appreciate everything that loving people do for me, but moving on is my desire.

What I will say to you now is nothing more than the obvious – life seems to grind along most of the time like a slow and heavy wheel, but it is a true phenomenon that when you get older the years begin to fly by. I first noticed this when I turned about 50. The number of years you have lived are greater in length and represent a higher percentage of your probable lifetime than the years you have ahead, and so an urgency settles in. You have that feeling – that looking over your shoulder feeling – that something is chasing you. Instead of trying to run faster, you understand that no matter how fast you can still run, the years are gaining on you, gobbling up your time. You have a lot you want to do and an indefinite period of time in which to do it. If you are an artist, as I am, you know that you are painting better than ever but the payment you make for that reward is a loss of time. Every single day is precious, every holiday, every visit, every moment. Every brushstroke on your canvas has to count.

Gratitude is a word you begin to use more often. Thankfulness. Astonishment at your blessings. But you want to feed the hungry children, save the whales, see peace in your lifetime, witness miracles, travel into space, and leave a lasting legacy. You wonder about lost opportunities, you have experienced forgiveness, you hope for second chances, there are mistakes you can still correct….. you often feel unworthy…..you would like to believe in reincarnation. You value living in a country where life itself is the greatest gift and every life is valued, a country where we can all make a difference and freedom is the consistent, primary focus.  But it’s getting late.

It is my 71st birthday right now but tomorrow I will be ok again.

The Creative Epiphany – Your Place or Mine?

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

I have said it many times.

If you have a place where you can go to find peace, renewal, solace, healing, inspiration, joy, refuge, answers, enlightenment or comfort then consider yourself fortunate and blessed. It need not be an actual physical visit to a place. It could be a mind’s journey, a meditation, a visualization, a remembrance of a place. But being there – in this special place – whether in body or mind – provides you with what you require to proceed with your life, with your year, with your month , with your day, or with merely another hour. You gain courage, purpose and  desire just by being in the aura of this place that is so magnificent in its restorative powers that it brings chills to your arms and strength to your soul. It is a place, but for you it is also a shrine. You worship there, in any sense of that word that you desire.

This place need not be grand. It might be as humble as a bench under a tree. But to you it is a connection to the universe, as grand as any cathedral. You know things after you pay a visit there. Answers come to you, or the peace of knowing that it will be alright to live without them. When something happens, some thing that disturbs and confounds you, you get to your place. It might take some travel to get there – it might be a true pilgrimage getting there. You might be saving things up for when you will arrive, carrying an agenda of all the concerns and worries accumulated from days and weeks, so that as soon as you make it to your place you can place them before the universe and learn how to solve them or perhaps find the strength to continue to carry the burden of them until you are given greater insight as to how to lighten your load.

Or you might arrive at your place brimming with joy, running ahead, laughing and carrying only the need to express thanks for the many blessings you have received. That is the experience I had this week…being in one of my own favorite places where I could express my thanks to the universe for all that I have experienced in this life, this glorious, amazing life. I worshiped nature, I drank it up in big gulps, I was in awe at the beauty around me and as a humble artist I was vastly inspired and reminded of my own place in the greater scheme of things. I felt truly alive, every nerve ending at full attention. Sensory overload unabated.

Where did I run away to, from here in the midst of utter chaos, as I prepare to make my move to Denver? What extraordinary place could lure me away from my endless, compulsive schedule of packing and preparing to take my entire life to another location? Where did I feel it was most appropriate to say my fond goodbye to the incredible geographic diversity that is California?

I was in Yosemite Park of course – the place where magnificence was born.

 

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The Creative Epiphany – Little Jo and the Devil Pony

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

youngjo Thunder is the one with the wild look in his eye..

It was bright and early on any Saturday morning when I was six or seven years old, down by the barn on our country property. I was skinny and small, maybe 60 lbs, not sure. Fresh out of bed and still not really awake. Wishing I could be listening to my Saturday morning radio shows up at the house. Strawberry blonde hair that curled up with summer perspiration  and blue eyes, unrevealing as yet of the budding determination behind them.

I knew it was time to ride Thunder again, probably get thrown off and lucky, I hoped,  to land safely without fracturing my neck. Mom was sure I would be injured. Dad was fearless, and I was caught in the middle somewhere. I knew the perils of horseback riding, had been taking formal riding lessons for weeks, so I also knew that, in spite of my size, I would rather be riding any full grown normal horse (we had two of those in the barn, just 3 stalls down from Thunder…and I loved them both) using an English saddle than to have to get on the back of that black devil pony from hell and that damn western saddle.

If I heard it once I heard it a thousand times, as I picked myself up off the ground and put my hat back on, trying not to cry after being tossed like a pillow over the top of Thunder’s head,  “Jo, show that pony who’s boss! Get up on him and try again! Come on, hurry up. He’ll warm up to you.” But actually he never did. I learned to ride him, but with great respect and constant  trepidation for what might transpire at any given moment, if he decided he didn’t like some bird or some weed or some sneeze…he was unpredictable. He had a consistent wild look in his eye, because he was nuts. Like a cowboy’s bad dream. Truly demented.

Those mornings eventually taught me more than how to get Thunder under control, but of course I didn’t know it at the time. I now know, however, from that time on, confronted with any problem whatsoever, I choose to walk through it over the hot coals rather than around it. The lesson was learned, more out of wanting to NOT look like a chicken than from wanting to be brave. I would rather hunker down and weather the storm than sneak around it going sideways to avoid the issue. But honestly, sometimes walking through the center to the eye of the tornado and out the other side  is nothing but crazy and I am just saying that you can get tossed around and badly bruised every once in a while with your perhaps foolhardy bravery. It does not work 100% of the time, to look a situation right in the eye and decide to challenge it. Violent situations with people and guns or wild animals are a couple situations that are best not confronted armed only with your steely-eyed determination and your slightly red hair.

But down through the chapters of your life, as you face adversity and all the problems that life brings, if you are engaged and truly living it, you must take it all on like a champ. You learn what to accept as a challenge, what to avoid at all costs, what to stand and fight for and what to flee. Which battles are worth engaging and which to ignore. You learn what can be negotiated and what cannot. You learn that some people are reasonable, and can be “talked off the cliff” and some will never know what reason is. You learn that sweating all the small stuff will just wear you out over time and that you need to save your energy and your big guns for the life-changing battles.

Yes, Thunder has become a symbol for me. Black as night, hoofs like thunder, the maniacal look in his eyes and the ability to run like the wind…you have to give that kind of life-form a lot of respect.

The Creative Epiphany – Painting Away

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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There is a certain charm in painting away from home “on location” as they say – remotely – in a studio not your own. It is liberating – everything’s arranged differently and it forces you to leave your routine behind and get loose. Where’s the paper towels? Do you have a squeegee? How about some light blue violet? The light is best at this window except the ants are crawling across my canvas.

The locale offers you new colors to consider, new views, new sunsets and exotic fruit. That is all true and on steroids here in Hawaii. The visual display begins with breakfast and continues throughout the day – kinda makes you want to take notes, and you do – mental color notes. You wish you had more paint. You wish you had more time. You wish.
Purples with sunset orange, pineapple, lime, papaya, mango – all translatable into colors splashed on canvas. Juicey and delicious.

To have two paintings completed before lunch seems ridiculous. That just never happens at home. To be certain that they are truly finished by mid afternoon is crazy fun. To see colors flowing from some resource you had no idea you could use, as if channeling the island ambience just for yourself, is a delightful discovery. Being away is an epiphany.

The Creative Epiphany – Nature’s Holiday Offering

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

path lichen sunone treemoss water suntwo fernsIt has been a week since I last posted and I am here to tell you that there is good reason. I have an excellent explanation wrapped around a thoroughly entrancing story, all true, which will remain undocumented in this Blog. It is a story well worth telling, but in another space and time. It is the kind of a story that marks a pivotal change; a “sea change” in my life – a story that will forever hold a bookmark as one of my favorite chapters.

I believe a theme runs through everything, and if there is a theme revealed in this untold tale it is that for everything there is a season, and a reason, and that timing is everything. However, SOMEDAY is not a day of the week. Don’t be putting stuff off for that future some day. Be alert and don’t be skittish – when opportunities brush quietly against you, notice that. Sometimes a softer touch delivers a more monumental impression that a wallop. Live in the now and sieze the magical moments that life offers you.

These photos were taken in Muir Woods – a northern California treasure near the Pacific coast just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. The rains had come down in sheets for two solid days – walls of water – with serrated, biting teeth – leaving open wounds on trees, shrubbery – maiming things – tearing the last of the fall colors limb from limb. But then when it stopped, it stopped.

I found myself in Muir Woods, a glistening cathedral of giant redwood trees dripping irridescent liquid from every branch as if in holiday regalia. The filtered sun added golden sparkle to the silver, and the tumultuous creek became the hallelujah chorus. Mounds of newly washed moss appeared deeper green on tree trunks, rocks and entrances to the same hollowed logs you see in the pictures of fairy tales books. Rocks displayed new colors wet with rain, ferns uncurled their feathery fronds to lap up drippings.

The respect paid by fellow visitors to nature’s display was apparent and  walking the woods became a prayer.

The Creative Epiphany – Rituals

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

I am fascinated by the rituals of our daily lives – tasks of loving maintenance that we repeatedly perform, knowing there is no end to them because they will have to be done again and again. And so in the performance of them they become a meditation, a devotion, an affirmation of thankfulness. They might seem mundane and at times we might tire of the “doing” but the larger tapestry they weave is one of productivity and dedication. Baking the bread, preparing the food, stringing beads, sweeping the porch, rocking the baby, doing the dishes – those repetitive chores common to all people. I would also broaden the definition of Rituals to include the telling of memorable family stories to our children and the keeping of deep friendships, year after year. Carrying the family torch, so to speak, passing Life Wisdom from generation to generation; a mantra for humanity. It is all ritual to me, lovingly offered up to those we care about most, century after century.

My Ritual paper assemblages begin with handmade scrolls of various exotic papers placed in a design and then heavily embellished with meaningful items that indicate ethnicities, tribes and families – after all, we all belong to a tribe of one kind or another. Even you and me. In these art pieces you will often find small colorful beads constructed by the women of Uganda using recycled paper, carefully cut into elongated triangles, then rolled, glued, lacquered and dried in the sun. (Go to www.BeadforLife.org for more information.) The distinctive chunky black beads with white dots & designs are made by the women of Kenya from sections of found Water Buffalo bone and horn, an animal that is not endangered in Africa. Feathers, shells, ribbons, tassels, leather and dried pine needles and other found objects are often used.

The final product is not intended to be religous but rather a spiritual creation that speaks to people everywhere of our collective calling to perform life’s Rituals.

The Creative Epiphany – 24

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

Art class – University of Colorado – the sixties

The university fine art professor who first opened my eyes to the possibilities of collage art was an eccentric and gifted man, and mixed media collage was a relatively new concept in the sixties. I had signed up for his watercolor class, so imagine my surprise when he strode in one day carrying a pile of rubbish and flopped it down on the table. He announced that we would be learning the art of mixed media collage. We had no exotic papers imported from around the world available to us – we had no precedent to follow except his wild and confident direction. He had stopped in the restroom and grabbed some paper towels, he had crumpled newspapers, brown paper bags, candy wrappers, string and other trash. Our instructions were to begin layering paper with paint in a highly abstract sort of way. Watercolor was not well suited to this process at all, and we used the same kind of paste that kindergartners used. There were no other choices available to us at the time. Now there are industries built around supplies for mixed media artists – the alchemy has caught on and we MMC artists are on the map.

This charismatic and visionary professor taught us the value of texture, layering paint with paper and placing pattern on top of pattern. We learned that painting can become sculptural and sensual and tactile. We learned that exposed rough edges are good, wrinkles in the paper are just great, and paint applied the thickness of cupcake icing is fantastic. It was the beginning of my love affair with abstract mixed media collage. And look how far art has come! Look how free we are in our expression now!

If you are familiar with the art of Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008), Picasso,  Robert Motherwell, Helen Frankenthaler and others then you know that these prominent artists and a long list of other innovators experimented with mixed media collage. The technique of adding paper, odd items and urban debris into painted art or constructed assemblages actually goes way back. I mean really, if you want to venture even farther back it is quite apparent in some pre-historic cave art where the person sketching with charcoal made the decision to stick on the cave wall with wet mud some grasses and weeds underneath the drawings of the animals. How cool is that?  He/she must have been so proud of that creative addition. I read recently that children are probably responsible for much of the cave art since it was a way to pass the time while staying safe and dry as mom tended to other things. Some things don’t change.

This composition  titled “24 HOURS” takes me right back to that precious time of art experimentation in my life  when everything was fresh, improvisational and serendipitous – and it  also signifies for me all that is basic, primitive, simple, raw and beautiful about merely existing on Planet Earth. The sun comes up and the sun goes down, the moon shines in between. People around the world do their thing, every 24 hours.  And then they wake up to do it again, but knowing that if they are lucky something wondrous might happen.

 

The Creative Epiphany – Years and Peers

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

Well, we might as well get it over with. It is hardly a secret that I am not exactly a spring chicken. I live in a 55+ ACTIVE retirement community, located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas in northern California. We are halfway between San Fran and Lake Tahoe, and happy to be here thank you very much. Our community here in Lincoln prides itself on the word ACTIVE. To put things in perspective for you younger people, many of our residents are, shockingly, years older than the Rolling Stones (older than the actual ages of the Stones, not how long they have been rock legends) and these people are in great shape and holding, rather than being hit like a train by the passing years.  So who cares about age? They don’t care. We don’t care. I don’t care. We  could show those prune-faced Stones a thing or two, prancing and dancing all around the stage as they do, singing their faces off about getting no SATISFACTION… We can show you satisfaction.

For the past two years or so our community has been hit by a series of burglaries which seemed to be increasing in number as well as the threat of violence, and the local police department is stretched to the thinness of a potato chip in this California economy. The two cops can’t be everywhere all the time. So some retired cops, firemen, ex-military guys and amateur sheriffs formed a kind of volunteer security squad and it was not long until the thugs were apprehended. Oh of course there will be more thugs some day – but now we know we are ready for them. We are not sitting ducks here in this gorgeous, peaceful community. We are more like hawks, smart and vigilant and beady-eyed.

As far as retirement is concerned, we all feel that we have been blessed to be able to live here. It truly is a rare and wonderful place. A great emphasis is placed upon the arts, both in nearby local communities such as Roseville and also in  Sacramento and San Fransisco. I am happy to be an art instructor at the Orchard Creek Lodge in Lincoln, teaching Mixed Media Collage to an energetic group of adults who are open-minded, creative and eager to try something that many of them have never done. I am consistently pleased to discover that people who have put the art experience “on hold” for the decades when they held high-powered careers are able to now not only enjoy this class but thrive and produce extraordinary, frame-worthy art. These classes feed my artistic soul as well as theirs; they make my days productive.

Research has proved that people who live long, healthy, productive lives have several things in common. One of the most important of these factors is simply a reason to get up in the morning – a way of remaining relevant. If it cannot be an art class it might be a computer class, a billiards game, a marathon, a garden that needs tending, a dog that needs walking, laps to swim at the pool, grandchildren to visit, a pot of soup to make, a day-long hike, a bus trip to the Bay, a friend to check in on or volunteer work to be done. And we see all of those here in our community and much more. We are not all as old as the Stones, but if we are not we want to be. Nobody talks much here about being hit like a train by old age. Attitude is everything.