Hello Fellow Artists,

I have spent 25 years using my art talents to earn a living. I do sell my art work but I also have created another more stable income. And I can tell YOU how to have this business too.

Are you wishing you could spend your workday drawing, mixing colors, and making a big difference in someone's life? Do YOU feel rewarded in your present job? You can have a job where people thank you everyday for teaching them to paint with this simple to learn method.

Take a short training program and become an Art is 4 Every1 Certified Instructor. You will have the tools to start your own art business.

Go to www.artis4every1.com for full details and to register.

One of the best side benefits of this business is your own art will improve at the same time as you work on the "problem" of breaking down each photo into steps to teach the painting and mixing the paint. This will give you practice over and over.

Join us!

elaine

Dr. June Maffin has marked the trail for all of us seeking a deeper, creative and more meaningful life. Amazon has released, artid member June Maffin's guide to the within. Entitled Soulistry, Artistry of the Soul.
June has thoughtfully structured the book in such a way that the outcome of each person's journey will be different depending on one's answers. The questions are both road map and compass to an often overlooked destination -- the elusive "within."

"Making changes in your life is difficult and requires work, so much so that many people are not willing to make the effort."

Like so many explorers who kept a diary of their adventures, this guide to journal- keeping gently asks the questions that only the traveler can answer. A thoughtful read and a gentle gift for someone you love who is struggling with life's questions.

www.amazon.com

Mary Lawler 
Artist, 
Marketing Director for ArtId (www.artid.com) ]]> http://artid.com/members/marylawler/blog/post/5279 Fri, 06 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This month even though it's almost over, I find I need to talk about transformation,my transformation..upon a recent injury to my lower back and other related areas to my body, I sit at my drawing table and work on my paintings in pure discomfort. These new paintings are detailed and meditative. A recent one that I have not posted yet is a butterfly. This my just sound like a simple butterfly but its not! I've been having the darnedest time finishing it. Then it came to me in my yoga practice why this butterfly was giving me so much trouble! My injuries, this butterfly....I'm transforming! The only way to finish this butterfly and to heal is to let it happen! What an AHA moment if I ever saw one! LIVE LIFE IN COLOR!

_PEACE

A fellow artist on Facebook inspired this blog. He had a dark night of the soul recently. He gathered all of his work together and decided to burn the lot of them. He didn't actually complete this task, but he was exasperated by his artistic career. I assured him that he is not alone, we have all been there. I am there nearly weekly.

The dark night of the soul is inevitable, at some point, in our artistic lives. It is born of frustration, the inability to do the sort of work we want to do and not being the artists we want to be. Primarily, I believe, it is profound self-doubt. Self-doubt is not a bad thing.

I am a converted Catholic of nearly three decades. There is one particular idea that was presented to me during instruction and it is this: If you never doubt God, your faith will never grow. I turn this around: If you never doubt yourself, you will never grow. This is something I have thought about repeatedly as I have tried to paint again over the past several months.

We have to understand the dynamics of self-doubt and the origin of these feelings. The only way to combat them is belief in one's abilities...to embrace the artist within, not the one who is without in another body doing work we envy. This is a lot easier said than done.

I paint florals because they are my best work, not necessarily where my heart is. Is continuing to paint florals embracing the artist I am, or prostituting my talents? As I have been painting florals since 1977, there is now self-doubt as to whether I am capable of anything else. Will my envy of the landscapes and portraits of others take me back to a point when I refuse to paint? Is there a dark night of my artistic soul in the future, when a pile of flower paintings will be tossed into the fire? Will I burn my dreams and ambitions?

It is February, 2010, and I'm snowbound for a day or so in the middle of a small blizzard. Not a ba-a-ad blizzard, just one of those winter storms where, if I drive, I'll lose any sense of serenity I have. Ice under the snow, you know.

This is the time of year I go deep, so to speak, meaning, I look at my life and what I'm doing and seek a deeper spirituality, a deeper Meaning.

This has been my practice for many years now, enforced back in 1981 by the need to look at how I lived in response to the family I came from, and what was happening to the family I had created. It's been a long, slow, process, painful at times, other times quite freeing. I've been "peeling the onion" of numerous layers and still haven't quite gotten to the core. Will I ever? I don't know. Still I have this intense impetus to keep on.

And where do the creative arts come in? They are my exploration, my meditation, my spiritual home, my connection with spirits, my language to myself, my messages from those spirits, my guidance, my path to Deep Source.

I have been incredibly fortunate to have been able to study Expressive Arts Therapies and to have been able to practice these with many clients over the past 25 years. I have also been incredibly fortunate to have been accepted into a family of Lakota people whose inclusion in their ceremonies has taken me into powerful spiritual realms. It isn't possible here to adequately describe all I've learned, but I'd like to share the accompanying collage, done in the late 80s, and write a bit about how it came to be and what it came to mean in my life.

I began creating this out of a sense that I wanted to work in a different way, a way that was more spontaneous, that gave me more creative choices as I worked (or played) through the picture. The first choice was about the paper. My artist friend, Karen, had shared some very rough paper she'd been given and I felt it needed some special theme and method. I decided I couldn't just use watercolor. It begged for more. I chose a theme of openings, although I didn't know what, at the time was opening. Believe me, if I had known, I probably wouldn't have done it.

I had some spray bottles, and used them to create thin paints using both watercolor and acrylic paints. The "openings" were stencils I cut of arches, several kinds. In addition, I had found, at a rummage sale, some Indonesian wood blocks used in batik and loved the idea of including them. Then there were some bits and pieces of paper, left over from other projects, in varying colors.

Now, when I create using this method, I have since realized it leaves the work open to the influence of spirits. Yes, real spirits!! They're real, beings from other dimensions. If you haven't experienced this, I don't know how to explain, but it happens to me every time I use this method.

So I began. Spray the openings in blues and greens. Then what? The angled arch, the inverted V, to create an upper frame. Now what? Darken one arch--deep blue. Lighten another with sprayed pinks. It needs more pink/red on the other side. Next, play with the shapes. I was thinking of Joan Miro's shapes, or Calder's playful forms. Move them around, where do they fit? The sensation they are all floating. Brush in some deeper colors here and there. I have some strange images from a travel magazine. They float into the work. Is that a tree near the bottom on the right? It's vegetation of some kind! It needs some gold. I use the wood blocks to add decorations to the arches and pillars. I stand back and...and...there are figures!! Upper center turquoise. Lower right shadow. Lower left another shadow. And the black "box". Why that?? It seems out of place. Strange shapes at the bottom, lying down.

It was a stunning insight at the time. I was opening up my whole life. Letting go of the rigid church practices I had been reared to believe. Opening to a whole new way of being, a new belief system. Not without fear and guilt!! What if I go to hell?? I didn't know where I would end up or even what I really wanted to believe. I was literally opening up a Pandora's Box in my life. And that's what the picture is about. It's also about the help and blessing I was receiving from the spirit guardians, the wolf, the eagle, and others. It's about how beautiful the creative life can be. And how disturbing! About coming back to balance. About tolerating the chaos of creativity before it all comes together. About living with imperfection and oddity, seeking the beauty of both. It's about loving the place I'm at and anticipating the excitement of the next creative work/play.

I invite you all to play this way. Who knows? You might meet a few spirits who emerge in your work with messages to you.

The healing nature of art continues to be a theme in my painting. This painting, one of several in the "Storm" series was done early in the academic year, right after a full time faculty member had resigned with very little notice. As I scrambled to find part time faculty to teach his classes, with less than a week go go before the semester began I was feeling stressed/anxious/a little angry/a little abandoned/ and very sad to have lost a very good friend and colleague.

As I often do when I'm feeling stressed/anxious/etc. I started painting, and kept painting for quite a while. I was working with acrylics and mixed media on 6 × 6 canvases and the energy just seemed to flow out of me. Several paintings later, I was much calmer, and when my husband looked at them, he said they brought up the image/feeling of a storm to him. Thus the "Storm" series was named. It seemed to fit perfectly since I was certainly dealing with a storm of emotions.

Thanks for reading.

My dear beloved father,Vernon, recently passed away. I am his first born child- hence my first name- Vernonette. I am dealing with my grief by reminiscing happy memories of my father, and by honoring his memory through my art. My father always encouraged my interest in creating art, and he was proud of my artworks.

This is a portrait that I created of my mother Anna, my father, and of myself. A photograph of all three of us together was used as my reference.

If any readers of my blog here have experienced the death of a loved one- be it a relative, friend, or a pet, please share with me your methods of coping- be it through art, music, through writing/journaling, etc.

Thank you, and I look forward to your sharing,

Vernonette

I wanted to share this wonderful video clip with the ArtId community. By way of introduction, Best Buddies is a non-profit dedicated to enhancing the lives of people with intellectual disabilities by providing opportunities for one-to-one friendships and integrated employment. For the last 3 years, Best Buddies Springfield has paired local artists with Best Buddy artists to create art for auction at our annual Artistic Abilities Fundraiser.

This year, we were fortunate to have Fuzzy Clock Productions (fuzzyclockvideo.blogspot.com) produce a short trailer of the collaboration between two local artists in the Western Mass area, Steven Kennedy and Michelle Delicci. Steven is a student at the Riverside Arts Workshop studying with Denise Herzog, one of the founders of One Cottage St. Arts Alliance. One of the paintings produced over the three days the two artists worked together was auctioned at the Best Buddies fundraiser in Springfield, MA on October 23rd and sold for $450 ~ the remainder of the paintings will be auctioned at various upcoming Riverside Arts Workshop fund raising events.

On a personal note, my son Andrew is profoundly deaf and special needs. I have seen the power of healing and expression through his artwork. It is my profound honor to work with the Artistic Abilities Event and to be able to share Steven & Michelle's artistic collaborative process. This is a 10 min. trailer which gives a good flavor of what the finished program will look like and it's well worth the watch! Anyone who has ever taught art class or collaborated with other artists will be inspired.

Enjoy "Painting My Dreams"......

Sometime in early July I stopped painting. When I thought about taking up my brush again, I would become afraid and also the stresses of life intervened. For a week I returned to smoking, something I had quit 10 months earlier. I even had several offers to paint portraits, but I didn't follow up on them. I thought, perhaps I wasn't ready to commit to being a working artist. But why? I had the time, the means, and a modicum of talent. Should I put the blame on my mental illness or should I stand up and take responsibility for my lack of commitment? In truth, it isn't either/or, but both. Surviving the worst of schizophrenia (and over 10% do not survive) has left me with depression, voices and a damaged ego. Add to that a lack of work experience and a limited support system. I do not live a "normal" life, but I know we all have our personal demons and trials. Despite my illness, I'm fully aware that I am very fortunate. My illness is an impediment, but I have stood in my own way on many occasions.

I've wanted to be a creative artist since I was a child. I went through stages embracing different arts--painting, music, dance, writing, photography. Ironically, being multi-talented did not serve me well. I became a dilettante. I wouldn't stick to one medium. I wouldn't commit. I wanted to do it all, but I didn't have the fire in me to become passionate about it. My art practice was erratic. Sometimes I was in school, other times I was on my own. When I practiced I made progress, but I invariably would stop only to start again at some later date. And today, years later, I still struggle with that same pattern.

How do I change a lifelong pattern? And how do I combat a mental disability that is interwoven into that pattern? It might sound trite, but I think it's safe to say that I have to take it "one day at a time." I think it was Henry David Thoreau who said in his book WALDEN--"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" And that is equally true--Keep it simple, break it down into manageable pieces. I have a friend who has suffered from severe depression and the motto that got her through it was "little by little."

Now I have another chance, a fresh start that began two weeks ago when I started painting again. How did I break my artist's block? The friend I mentioned kept encouraging me and I then encouraged myself. One day I sat down at my drawing table, took out a piece of paper, took hold of my brush and wet it, loaded it with watercolor pigment and made a mark. I had no idea in mind, except to make marks on a page and to suspend judgment. I produced a small, abstract landscape. It is not very good or even complete perhaps, but it served to break my block. For me, there's a touch of joy in it. Just to put pigment to page, to make another start and to have faith in a greater process is a freedom that I've been missing for two months.

Breaking the block is a big thing, but taking that impetus and following through a little each day should be my creed. I have a deep respect for the artists here who work each day, rain or shine, and share their work in this open forum. It's a blessing to work and a blessing to see the work of others.

Working each day takes good ideas. To motivate myself I've been making loose watercolor copies of some of Cezanne's oil paintings. The image here is based on his portrait of Joachim Gasquet. I've also been painting from a couple of photographs I've found in magazines, photographs that struck some kind of chord in me. Right now, I have no teacher, which means that I need to organize and structure my time better and draw inspiration from various sources. Thanks in part to my mother, I have many excellent art books to study. I miss New York City with all its fantastic museums and schools, but I can still make my way as an artist, as many of us do in rural communities. Artid is a boon to me; it gives me an art community to belong to and somewhere to return for inspiration and some support. Just looking at other artist's work and reading their blogs has already stimulated me to contribute my share. May this be a productive fall and winter for all of us.

The ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu was reputed to have said "Nurturing your love is like tending a small garden. If you keep pulling up the plants to see if the roots are growing, you will not harvest anything."

Over the years, I have come to recognize the importance of self-nurture and that regardless of what/who the 'love' is (Lao Tzu's quote), when we care for and encourage the growth and development (of another, ourselves, our art, our vocation), the result is self-nurture.

How often have I said/thought "I'm not an artist." "I can't draw." "I can't ..." only to realize that the more emphasis I put on the negative, the less likely it would be that I would cultivate my artistic and creative soul.

Are you someone who is more likely to "pull up" - be that your art, relationships, yourself? Let me encourage you to reflect on times in your life when you continually "pulled up the plants to see if anything was growing." Were these times of self-examination so that you could learn from your experiences, or were they times of self-recrimination and reproach and what results / consequences were there?

Are you someone who is more likely to "nurture" -- again, be that your art, relationships, yourself? Let me encourage you to reflect on some good 'nurturing harvest' times in your life - moments when you were self-nurturing and discovered rich soul-harvest in your art/ your relationships / your self-growth as a result.

It's taken some time, but I have enough hair now that I don't feel totally self conscious. You get a lot of comments when your hair is this short. (I think I look a little butch.) No signs of curls yet though, just a lot of cow licks. Eyelashes are coming in fast which is also good. Gluing on false eyelashes to go to the grocery store was getting tiresome. I'm vain, what can I say? Just back from my first post treatment visit with the Radiologist and he was pleased with my state of mind and body. I've dropped a few pounds, got a lot of energy back and I am raring to go, but...I have to be very selective about what I throw myself into from now on. I was over committed before and I loved it but no more. Now, I like having some time to myself to spend with Alex and my creative pursuits. All that down time was frustrating and defeating, but it gave me a perspective on how I wanted to spend my time in the future. "I don't have time" was my excuse for a lot of things, exercise, letter writing, lunch with my friends. I want to write letters and have lunch with my friends, exercise, not so much, but I feel so good now that I want to ride my bike. That counts, right? I might even start taking the stairs again. Don't laugh, the ArtId office is on the fifth floor of a factory building, a killer set of stairs, not for the faint of heart or faint anything else.

Drawings are like currency in the memory bank. Flipping through my sketchbook, I was transported back to Italy, to a Tuscan hillside village called Radda in Chianti.

I'd already drawn a picture of the valley that smelled good from our balcony, so I grabbed my pad and pencils one sunny afternoon and walked with my wife down the cobblestone via looking for something to sketch. Drawing helps me see like writing helps me think. Elizabeth veered off to scope out a leather shop, so I found a shady bench in front of a house across from a fountain and church steps, and started doodling. Before long, two kids, a boy of four or five and his little sister, came out of nowhere and hopped up on the bench with me. They leaned one each on my shoulders to watch me draw. I paused...turned my head to the boy on my right...and then to the girl on my left..."Whassup?" I asked. Not much, apparently. "Buongiorno" I tried again.

The boy starts chattering at me in Italian so I say "Whoa - hang on there, Pinocchio." They laugh. "Oh, you like that - Thumbelina?" I add, kind of smart-alecky. Nothing. So the boy points at my sketch and says something like "belvedere" or "bananarama." I don't know.

"Well, you obviously don't know much about three-point perspective, do you?" I scoff. He gives me this quizzical puppy-dog look, you know, like "Huh?" He points at the building and then at my drawing and starts in with the "bandiera, la bandiera" stuff again. Just then the children's mother steps out of an archway with a watering can, sprinkles some flowers and says "flag." She disappears.

"Oh, right - the flag. I knew that" says I to the boy. There's an Italian flag hanging off of the building next to the church and so I line it into the drawing, filling it with red and green. I could have done better but the kid rattled me. I'm not used to people looking over my shoulder, yet someone did it each time I pulled out a pencil in Venice, Florence, and Spoleto. The flag was the last thing I drew before another woman, the grandma this time, came out of the big wooden door next to the bench. I think she told the kids not to bother me (but she might have been telling me to scram, I don't know). I indicated that they were no problem. Frankly, I was entertained. The woman spoke slightly better English than I did Italian and sparked up a conversation. Turns out she was an artist too and invited me into her home to see her paintings. I jumped at the chance to see behind one of the magnificent doors that lined the street, and followed her into the medieval apartment.

Despite the blinding light of a courtyard, it was dark inside. Dark and cluttered - and meravigliosa! The place was filled with statues and artifacts and cool junk. Her studio was hung with drawings and paintings - portraits, landscapes, and even a picture of the very scene that I'd been sketching outside. After all, it was her bench and her view. Her style was rustic but expressive. We communicated just fine in the language of art, thank you.

The younger mom came in from the courtyard and listened briefly before saying something that got the kids all geeked up again -- "gelato" I think. They started dancing towards the door all "arrivederci" and stuff, so I followed them out but not before saying plenty of grazies to "Nonna." I told her that of all the museums and galleries I'd seen in Italy, hers was my favorite. Still is. I think she got it.

We all hit the street just as Elizabeth was walking by with her new handbag. She was surprised to see me bounding out of the door like the man of the house with my secret Italian family, but 'splainin' that one was a piece of cake. Bidding the madre e bambini a happy divertimento, Elizabeth and I headed back to the inn.

Now, I know most pictures have deeper meanings or stories behind them but this half-baked sketch reminds me of that colorful, cultural episode. So excuse me if I think it's a masterpiece.

]]> http://artid.com/members/art_aesthetics/blog/post/1496 Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Artist Date: Lost in the translation. I am in Yokosuka, Japan. When I arrive the air is steamy with humidity -- much more intense than the steam I am used to in New England. There is something psychologically jarring about looking down a street, decorated with beautiful, colorful signs and not being able to read any of them. Not even the characters are recognizable. I am surrounded by the conversation of people walking in the streets who are speaking a language that I don't recognize. No "oui madam," no "como estas?" and no "danke schen," to be heard. Even the attempts that are made to speak in English are barely recognizable. The language is music, it rolls of their tongues with such confidence and passion. It makes me wish all the more that I knew what they were saying. I approach the sidewalk crossing. There are no cars in sight yet everyone waits patiently for the green pedestrian sign to light up to give the signal that they can step off the curb into the street. I watch in disbelief. There is no pretending that I am in Boston at this point. Bostonians make j-walking an art form. I take a photograph of them all waiting on the curb for the little green man. At 5 feet 2, 120 pounds, I feel like an alien or perhaps more like Godzilla- woman. The tiny, well coiffed women that surround me are both delicate and strong. They dress impeccably and seem comfortable in their tiny jeans, miniature shoes and beautiful, loose-fitting blouses.

When I return to my room with a tuna bagel and a cup of hot tea from the Starbucks I have found around the corner from the Central Hotel, I feel just as out of place. I am not yet ready to brave the Japanese restaurants or the breakfast offered in the hotel lobby. I realize this is cowardly, but I know if I give myself a few days to adjust I will join the buffet line. For now, comfort is most important. Then I return safely to room eight thirty-seven. I peel back the lid of my tea to allow it to cool and turn on the tap to fill the abbreviated bathtub in the closet sized lavatory. I am keenly aware that my single dormitory room in Johnson House at UMASS (1982) was slightly larger. It didn't have a bathtub though. I squeeze myself into the deep tub and sip my tea before going to work at the Yokosuka Museum. At the Museum there are few English speaking people, two Americans and three German curators. It is a relief to have a conversation that extends beyond, "hello," goodbye," and "thank you." I have the best meal of my excursion in the café: bamboo, tuna and pasta while watching two small Japanese children at the next table in amusement. They drink from their sippy cups while their mothers simultaneously tend to them and remain engrossed in deep conversation. The girl has a stickly little ponytail that juts straight up from the top of her head and cascades down like a Parisian fountain.

At the end of the day a few of us sneak down to the shore in front of the museum while we wait for our taxi to arrive. The gray sand is littered with weathered sea glass. It is my most nostalgic pastime, collecting this glass. When I was a child, my mother would challenge all seven of us to find a royal blue or red piece of glass (they were very rare). We would spend hours combing the beach in search of these coveted colors. On a few occasions we would find them and she would give us five dollars. I remember grappling with the tough decision of whether to give up the beautiful glass for the money. Sometimes the glass won out. This day in history, on the beach at Yokosuka, Japan I find both a red piece and a royal blue one! I also pick up many lovely pieces of aqua colored glass that I have not seen before. This makes my day, and quite possibly my trip. My artist self is renewed. Color renews her. Unexpected treasures renew her. Playing in the sand while everyone else thinks it silly, renews her.

Photo credit: Julia Courtney Tokyo Bay from the Yokosuka Museum

I am very glad to have discovered Artid. This is an ideal place to display my work to family, friends, potential clients and other artists. I have studied painting and photography for a while, but am only now venturing into the world of art business. My focus right now is on portrait painting. I am calling my business Second Sight to emphasize the fact that painting a portrait requires a fresh perspective, a new way of seeing someone.

My business cards arrived yesterday with this image of the little boy on them. I am pleased to say that all the information on the cards is correct and the image of the boy looks good. Now, I have to get up the courage to start handing them out and posting them in public places locally. And it does take courage to promote oneself to one's community. For me, it takes a little more than courage, it takes determination, because I am a reclusive person.

My reclusiveness is due to the fact that I suffer from schizophrenia. Now, I have worried about whether I should reveal my illness on this site. Several people have said that I shouldn't and for the last week and a half since I joined Artid, I have been struggling to write an introductory blog about myself without stating this basic fact about myself. I couldn't do it. Then along comes my friend Pamela Spiro Wagner, who just joined Artid. I looked at her site and read her blogs with great interest. She also is an artist who suffers from schizophrenia, but she didn't hesitate to clearly state the fact to everyone right upfront. I admire and love her for that.

I have found that being creative in any way is a powerful tool for healing mental illness. During the acute stage of my illness, I wasn't able to paint or photograph, and so I crocheted afghans, hats, mittens, shirts and made simple jewelry. Doing this was part of what kept me stable and it gave me pleasure and satisfaction to create things I could hold and look at and give away as gifts.

I returned to art college about three years after my initial breakdown and went on, through some severe depression, to get my B.F.A. degree in painting and photography. Sometimes it was a struggle just to go to classes, but ultimately it got easier. It is only recently that I have been well enough, thanks to medication, therapy, my family and online support, to continue with my artistic pursuits.

I am very interested to hear this community's response to this issue of whether to reveal or not reveal personal information to potential clients. I have yet to hand out business cards to people in my community and so I could always delete or modify this entry before I do. What do you think? Should I?

Tomorrow is my last chemotherapy infusion. How do you spell "screaming and jumping up and down"? I'll still feel rotten for a week or two but who cares, I have plenty of popsicles and the weather is gorgeous and my patio is clean and ready for me. My friend Jamie came over and helped (she did most of it) weed and prep one of the gardens. There are herbs in that one mostly but I add a few annuals for color. I puttered around a few of the other beds and the perennials are coming back strong. I even managed to get the Clematis I planted last year to survive. I've tried twice before and they didn't make it but this one is off to a great start. Over the Memorial Day Weekend I spent considerable time finishing up several calligraphy jobs that will all be due next week. If I didn't get them done before tomorrow, there is a slim chance I would feel good enough to do them later. This year has been a busy one for calligraphy requests. I've had two large wedding invitation jobs, table cards, diplomas, two sets of awards and a small gift. I have one more large diploma job but I have plenty of time to complete that.
I will teach at Snow Farm www.snowfarm.org the week of June 15th and radiation will start the 24th of June. Six weeks of that and I am done. How do you spell, "it's all over thank God, party"?