Ephemerally Speaking

In preparation for my first ever Art Talk to take place at Helix Tasting Room where my new series Ephemeral; Here and Gone is hanging for its second and final month, I've been reflecting, scribbling notes, reviewing and truth be told, feeling a little nervous!!!!

I'm not a stranger to speaking in public but it's always been about personal development and the healing journey. This will be my first time speaking to a group about my art. It feels like a big step in acknowledging myself as an Artist. Of course imposter syndrome is always a factor, but like every one of my incarnations, I've always chosen the paths that I felt were the least like what I'd been brought up to do and be. Somehow, it's always worked out, grandly! Go figure!

Sand Stone and Sea 1,2 &3

Shimmering Imperfection & Into the Mystic

In exploring this latest series and the how, why and what of it, it's taken me into a bit of a rabbit hole, tying together some lose ends. In addition, I've reconnected to some important people from my past lately. The mom of the first boy I ever kissed at age 6, and my employer who became a close friend, and pretty much handed me a career as a picture framer and gallery curator in my early twenties while I was in art school. She took a big chance on me and I've only recently learned why since reconnecting.

What does that have to do with my latest series, a visual exploration and reflection on my barefoot life in Mexico? Well as I've said and written a few times since launching this series, it began many years earlier, ever since I've been intimately engaged with the beauty and fleeting essence of life at the edge of the Mexican Pacific coastline. However, everything that happened before even that time lead me to this beach and the way I have been in relationship with the elements here.

Dust in the Wind

30 x 30

Acrylic and Organic Mixed Media on Canvas

The piece above, Dust in the Wind, is a good example. The song of the same name has taken on a new meaning for me in recent years. Getting more comfortable with letting go of some precious beings in my life, and instead of loss, choosing to feel a genuine celebration for the lives they have lead. It's all so ephemeral. All of it. All of us. Grasping won't change that. So choosing to work with a medium like washy acrylics that is less predictable and less easy to control embraces the essence of having to let go.

Shimmering Imperfection

30 x 30

Weaving in organic textural materials that conjure the more tactile qualities of the earth in contrast to the flowy unpredictable washes, brings in the other reality. The one that has a quality of presence and perceived permanence. Perhaps this duality is why we get attached in the first place and then have to spend our lives learning how to un-attach.

Cumulus Enigmus

30 x 30

Acrylic and Organic Mixed Media on Canvas

Now or Never 1 & 2

12 x 12

Acrylic and Organic Mixed Media on Cradled Wood Panel

Aparigrahah is the Sanskrit (yogic) word for non-attachment.

In spite of Aparigrahah guiding my spiritual practice for many years, and the fact that I revel in the simplicity of my life in Mexico and a deep oneness with the elements of nature, I've also recently learned that I can be somewhat of a hoarder of stuff. Things give me comfort. That being said, I also thrive when I can step away from those things and just be, no longer defined by the material world that brings me security. My recent house renovation and the necessity to let go of stuff to allow the new look to shine, opened my eyes to this conundrum. So perhaps this series is also about me craving non-attachment, which sounds like an oxymoron, but also makes some sense.

In the words of one of my teachers, the late Joanna Macey, Environmental Activist, scholar of buddhism and deep ecology, “We are impermanent as ripples in a lake and bubbles in a river, but we are also part of the living sacred body of Earth.” Great example of both and!

In addition to the embodied research I conducted over the past twenty years through my living and learning on the beach, and more consciously over the past year as I began to actually physically create this series, I also revisited a book and a philosophy from my past that had informed my nature based expressive arts therapy, training and teaching from a few decades earlier in a very big way. In my studio The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abrams became the backdrop to my creation of this series and every piece that emerged out of it.

"The landscape, as I directly experience it, is hardly a determinate object; it is an ambiguous realm that responds to my emotions and calls forth feelings from me in turn".

Ephemeral Here and Gone is about sensually honoring our relationship with earth and her elements as a living organism, about how grasping is often a behavior motivated by the need for comfort, but how letting go usually brings magic and beauty beyond what we could have imagined. Stepping into the flow of possibility, and becoming one of the elements of that flow, not just merely a witness to them, is another reason translating my lived experience through a contrasting, ever changing, choice of mediums is meaningful to me.

I hope seeing the work brings peace to others' fears of letting go, encourages a deeper connection to the loving intelligence of this earth animal, inspiring questions about our own ways of being, awareness and conscious consideration about our place in the community of all creation.

Please share any questions the work, my reflections or your insights have triggered. I'd love to use them as prompts for my Talk on the 17th. Submit questions here

See most of the works in this series here

Thank you to the great folks at helix for creating such an ideal space for showing art and for inviting me to show mine.