Tag: drawing

Communicating…

by susanbradfordart, posted in Creative Process, Healing, Learning, Visual Art

I’ve been thinking a lot about communication. How precious and precarious it is. How difficult it is to get it right. And how much I have to learn about it. As much as I try, and as much progress I think I’ve made, it can all get weird in just a moment’s time. This has all been working on me and within me, stewing around inside my brain and my heart for the past few days. And I just got a small piece of the puzzle late last night.

I couldn’t sleep because we had an intense thunderstorm with lightening coming in like strobe lights, followed by huge explosions of sound. Very exciting. Very unusual for this small corner of the world. We get rain but not thunderstorms.  Another facet of climate change?  Sigh. But I digress…

So in the midst of the storm, it came to me that at the core of so much of my communicating is the need to be right.  I like to think that it is about the need to be witnessed, to be heard.  But when I am very honest with myself (as I try to be), I realize that after all this time and all this self-work, I still just want to be right.  And I want everyone around me to think so too.  The more I want it, the more tongue-tied and inarticulate I get.  The more off-message, the more counter productive.  The more someone disagrees with me, or if I have a minority opinion in a group, the more I dig my heels in.  I get a little preachy.  I keep trying different ways to make them see my point.  I advance the art of communication not at all.  Sigh.  I need to go back to the drawing board.  To breathe.  To allow.  To surrender.  All good words for me.   I have so very much work to do.  This looking at self stuff is so not easy!

I did this drawing as a commission for someone.  It represents the Fifth Chakra or the Throat Chakra, home of communication with ourselves and others.  It is light at the center, but it gets a bit dark and messy at the edge, with many different layers and a lot going on. The words I thought of for her were easy and discerning.  More sighs!  More good words for me.

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Spring Mandala (Tolerance)

by susanbradfordart, posted in Creative Process, Healing, Mandala Art, Visual Art

In January, I came up with the idea of doing a new mandala for each season of the year. I finished the one for Winter on the day before the Spring Equinox. This one is ready well in advance of summer.  Good for me!

The sub-theme for Spring is Tolerance.  And here is why.  Do all the flowers get stressed when they start coming up at the same time in Spring?  Do they fight with each other for space, or crowd each other out, or deny each other light and water?  No, they somehow make it work.   And even when the weeds start to take over, they all still tolerate each other.  They all know what to do.  My personal lesson in all this is to be more tolerant of those who don’t act with kindness, or who don’t care about the good of the planet, or don’t have a particularly humanitarian philosophy.  I recognize that we are still all connected whether I want to admit it or not.

But perhaps my greatest challenge in the Tolerance department is for those nearest and dearest to me.   It is so easy to get annoyed or to need and demand perfection from them.  I want to feel like the two ribbons of blue in the mandala, entwined yet flowing in different ways and in a different rhythm.  I want to be working toward the sun and putting more and more consciousness into the tangle of green.  Coming through in the orange and pink flowers.  It’s all growing in its own way and in its own time.  And oh my, I want to be more tolerant of myself as well.  That dark spot almost in the center of the mandala.  The remnant of darkness from the Winter months.  The remainder of mistrust and doubt in my soul.

Beginning Again

by susanbradfordart, posted in Mandala Art

I made this drawing a while ago and found it this morning while looking through one of my sketchbooks.  In the bottom right corner, I had written the words, “and so it begins again.”  Because of this it felt appropriate to use it here, as one year is ending and another is about to begin.  The colors seemed to also reflect the spirit of the holidays.  And the imagery felt celebratory as well.

It has long been a practice of mine to use words in conjunction with form.  Sometimes the words come first and then they determine what the imagery will be.  Sometimes it’s the other way around.  Using words helps me to understand my feelings and why I am creating that particular piece.  Sometimes the words remain visible, and at other times the imagery obscures, or partly obscures, the words.  It’s all good.  Using the words is more for me than the viewer.  I don’t really want to pin anything down too much.

One Red-ish Drawing

by susanbradfordart, posted in Mandala Art

After posting last week on my inability to handle red in my work, I decided to try to rise to my own challenge, and to work with red this week.  The results are here for you to see.  A circle, but not quite a mandala.  Not a terrible piece, but not quite red.  Only red-ish for now.  It’s a start.