My image, “Gabriel’s Horn” (30″ x 40″ – Oil/Canvas – Sold/Private Collection) is on the cover of Dream Network Journal.

Yes, I’m shamelessly happy and wanted to blog about it. I often write about the creative process, post the end results and let you know how I’m feeling!  So, it’s only appropriate to share my glee here, also!

What makes this so exciting is that this painting, marked my ten years of being a professional artist! Much of my work has been derived from dream experiences.

So, this weekend, I’m doing the thankful happy dance, anyone want to twirl around with me in thankfulness and happiness?

Have a fantastic weekend, mine is off to a great start!

Peace to you and yours!

P.S. The quarterly magazine is sold at Barnes & Nobles – $7.00

You ever wake-up in the morning and  feel like you’ve just come back from an exciting place? Or know that your dream had some  significant meaning, and you try to hold on to it, to remember it, before it fades away?

I do that often, in my dreaming and at times, in my conscious life. Dreams are especially hard to hold onto, with its colors or lack of color, feelings, sense of place, things and sometimes people. Which is why I keep a pad and pencil, on my night stand, to capture all the symbolism of  my dreams.

I think, that’s why I’m mesmerized by faces, places and things.

I find faces mesmerizing, they stay with me long after the person has left my vision scope. I’ve been accused of staring, but it’s because I’m putting that face into memory and the face has fascinated me in some way. Be it, the eyes, or that little space between the nose and the mouth, or their eyebrows.

I feel that way about places, too! When I travel, I feel the pulse of a place as it attaches itself to all my senses, it can be the food, the sounds, the scene, or the meeting of new people. A place has history and stories and my senses try to get a sense of it or add my own unique slant to it.

I have a fascination with things, also, since I’m used to be that  kid, who would come home with beautiful rocks, I may have found, or a brilliant color button, strings and that old fashioned key (I’m that adult that still puts found things in my pocket). These are things, I can pick up later and in that  instant, I’m back to that moment that I found that thing!

I am mesmerized by people, places and things…or maybe it’s just as my grandmother used to say, “Life, baby, it’s just life.”

What has you mesmerized, today? Is it just for today or are you always mesmerized by that person, place or thing?

I’m listening…

In peace, to you and yours.

]]> http://indigeneart.com/faces-places-things/feed/ 24 http://indigeneart.com/defining-success/ http://indigeneart.com/defining-success/#comments Wed, 14 Sep 2011 23:42:29 +0000 Indigene http://indigeneart.com/?p=2177 This blog plays a part in my success, because it captures some of my creative processes, dreams, experiences of art and life, as a daily practice,  I share with others. Since my creative processes are often done in isolation, my blog is a way for me to interact with others, which in turn helps me to network, connect and share!

After some difficult months and major changes, I spent some time soul searching, reestablishing boundaries, redefining goals.  My definition of success needed to be adjusted, tweaked and changed at various times in my life. What I defined as success in my twenties, looks very different from what success looks like in my fifties!

In the Native American tradition, there is no word for art, because it is in every aspect of daily living and life. That’s how I wish to live my life, not with art being something separate, but as something that is a part of my life, like nature is, family is…because art is not separate from me! It is the authentic me.  This is the formula used to define my success.

(“Define Your Success” – 5″x7″ – Mixed Media/Paper)

So a major part of defining my success is creating art, selling art, living with art and letting others know how what this means to me and what it can mean for them. I would like to reiterate: this is how I make a living! I love sincere compliments, who doesn’t like hearing pleasantries about something they’ve made?

REMEMBER, it is cash, that pay the bills, feed my family, gas up the car, pay for health insurance and allows me to continue being me. This is my economic circle of life.

All of the above makes me a success! How are you defining your success? Are you allowing others to define success for you?  Forge your own path.

In peace to you and yours.

I love exploring the spirituality of the forgotten feminine, be it in dreams, myths, or truths hidden in mysterious legends. It is one of the things that my art allows me to explore…the mysterious!

There is a Navajo legend of the Changing Woman. According to this legend, Changing Woman comes closest to representing Earth and the natural order of the Universe. She represents the cycle of the Seasons, Birth (Spring), Maturing (Summer), Growing old (Fall) and Dying (Winter), only to be reborn again in the Spring. Changing Woman is mysterious and meant to be explored and shared.

(To find out more on this Native American legend, visit: http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/Changing_Woman-Navajo.html).

(Image: “Changing Woman/ShapeShifter”- Mixed Media)

There is a sense of the mysterious, everywhere, our challenge is to bask in it, share it fearlessly and allow it to shape us, not conquer it until it is only dust that slips through our fingertips.

How do you define mysterious? Does it excite you or make you tread carefully?  I look forward to reading your answers and comments.

Our humanness is a mystery. Peace to you and yours.

So after dreaming about birds again last night, lots of birds, lots of birds flying, the whole dream in blue, I decided to post my dream sequence  image of swarming birds…:)

Sometimes dreams help solve problems or give answers that exist or are needed in the conscious world, but sometimes dreams are just crazy nonsensical dreams.

But, how do you tell?  I’m open to answers.

After my week, I think it’s probably the universe, playing its own kind of game, (see image below) watching us, running through our lives, not doing what truly matters.

Be still, be alert and always present.

Peace.

After some surgery, I’ve been at home resting and looking out of my living room window. I happened to see a cardinal eating from the bird feeder in my neighbor’s yard. I always see cardinals as the seasons changed, and they always whisk me to another dreamy zone. I am captivated by their color and songs. I love cardinals and hummingbirds, they continually rescue me from the mundane and add a natural sparkle to my surroundings.

I dipped into some of the work I’ve done in the last couple of weeks, and this little darling came to the rescue! Color enriches life and this Cardinal Goddess has given way to spring time happiness! Just what a girl needs to perk her up!

Dip into and Enjoy the Spring, it’s finally here and in color!

Always in peace.

(Note: I removed the actual Cardinal Goddess picture, because it may have been infected with malware, and Google reported indigeneart as suspicious; the site is currently under review for the warning to be removed, and I will re-upload the image at a later time.  Thanks for all the comments!)

Lately, I’ve been working out some dream issues, which to me represent the most intricate designs of the mind.

Most days, I’m not sure what my dreams mean…hmmm…maybe they mean, I’m just anxious for Spring, or bracing myself for more of Winter, or missing that hour I lost for daylight saving time or …there’s always the off chance it could be just indigestion! :) lol!

I’m just spending time trying to figure out the intricacies of what they mean…how about you? Dream any good intricate ones lately? I’ll meet you in the dream world. Peace

There is nothing like sitting in a rocking chair, rocking back and forth, it’s gentle creaking, and a breezy spring air flows in your window, gently lifting the curtains in your baby’s room.

The curtains lightly swinging in the breeze, and that sweet smell of a brand new baby filling the room.

Now that’s an easy, breezy beautiful moment.

When my babies were tiny babies, I often wondered, as I stood at their cribs watching them sleep, catching glimpses of adorable smiles, “what are they dreaming…”

To the joy of sweet baby dreams…Peace.

(This was art created with many, many glazes of watercolor, the butterflies were separately drawn, painted and cutout, collage onto the artwork and then sealed with a gloss medium.)