A Conversation with Kim of Creating Space

I have been interviewed by Kim of Creating Space! Please visit her blog and let me know what you think .... I have really bared my soul here....

Just thought my friends in the USA would like to see this quiet, contemplative spot on the Liesbeck River in Cape Town. I hope your storms have passed over now. Looking forward to more winter photo's, Suki!

My dear blogger friend, Cynthia awarded me this award for not only being worth reading but also bringing my sweet natured yet powerfully potent heart to all of my creative work. Aawww!!! She is this amazingly talented writer and so I feel really honoured that she considers my words significant!

A Mandala

There is something very therapeutic about creating a Mandala. This one is about 66cm in diameter and done using various pencils on a board.

I drew this just after I turned 50. I incorporated the Picasso, “Woman Dressing her Hair”, I really identify with how her body seems to be all over the place and the parts not quite fitting the whole.

Next to her is Vincent’s empty room at the Saint-Paul hospital at Saint-Remy with his cloud swirls and cypress trees overlapping. His crows fly on the other side of the woman.

I liked the image of the baby hands holding on to some aging hands, I think this was torn from a magazine and copied. Children are peeking through the cracks next to the empty room.

The watch signifies the march of time, with the watch strap becoming the arms of a sea-anemone and the pattern is repeated on the side, I think they are trying to hold onto everything familiar.

A woman’s face is fragmenting in the changes occurring in her world.

A cloud woman hovers over an imaginary landscape representing creativity and intuition.


Kim is posting an interview with me on 28th January, so please pop over to her blog on Wednesday!

A New Website!

Please visit my new website, http://www.diannemcnaughtonart.com/
I am back after a break with blogging and can’t wait to visit all your sites and find out what I have been missing! The only creative thing that I have done in the last three weeks is to create this new website for myself. Please have a look and tell me what you think. A friend gave me the link to this great site that helps you create your own site completely free of charge, http://www.synthasite.com/
I decided to buy my own domain for a small yearly amount. This is optional and you can get a synthasite domain completely free of charge. The site is managed by yourself and it is very easy to update whenever the need arises.
I have verified my site with google and there is one more step that I need to take with some help from a more experienced webmaster.
I would love to be able to sell paintings from my site and am still looking into this – Paypal does not work in South Africa, I can spend money with Paypal but not receive money. So if anyone out there can give me advice here, I would appreciate it. I have linked my other site, http://www.southafricanartists.com/ as my online shop for the while.

Painting on Black Gesso

I decided to work on three different shaped canvases, a rectangle, a square and a long skinny one (since I had these in stock). A pot of black gesso has been sitting in my cupboard just looking at me – I bought it ages ago but have never used it. (Do you have a cupboard full of stuff you haven’t used?) I decided to experiment with applying a black coat to most of the canvas, leaving some white shapes to play around with. I see Mary Ann of Blue Sky Dreaming is also working with black gesso at the moment! I then applied a transparent glaze of Alizarine Crimson and Quinacridone Gold over the white areas and really loved how the shapes hung softly in the darkness. I wanted to see if I applied white acrylic ink, spraying with water to loose the hard edges, I might be able to get a similar effect.
When I looked at the three works, I became a little uneasy about what was appearing, the strong darks with the reds stirred up strange feelings in me, they were disturbing! I wanted to cover the paintings with white and yellow. (Every time I turn on the TV, there are dire warnings of a global economic meltdown and I am worried about the implications for various members of my family – I think I am painting these fears).

I get to a mid point in the painting, when I become impatient and I have to tell myself, “Don’t rush it, take your time, let it evolve”. I can have days when I become quite frustrated with what I have done, the paintings don’t look as if they have moved on at all. The next day, the paintings may evolve and I can perhaps see where they are leading me.

The painting at the top of my posting was about the doorways that open up to us, (in landscape mode) but I prefer it turned upright – the genetic connection theme has appeared again. We have a really nasty genetic thing in my family of which I am a carrier – this keeps coming out in my paintings. I don't have photo's of this one at the beginning, only of the square one that still needs a bit of work, so will post it next week. I still have to do a few clear glazes and might paint some more, so this painting might change again!

A Tagging and an Award!

A Tagging from Suki, I am to list five things that I do daily to keep my spirit happy and healthy.

This is quite difficult, because I do many things to keep my spirit going, but not everyday, I often alternate certain things ....

1. I love to get up early when the world is quite and make myself a cup of tea and read from one of the various books I have on the go. I do this every second morning.


2. On the alternate morning I go to the gym and exercise for an hour, getting those endorphins going and building up my bone strength.


3. I paint nearly every day to keep my spirit happy.


4. Music feeds my soul, I love my music and collect CD’s of my favourite artists. I particularly like musicians who write their own lyrics and music. I feel bereft if I don’t listen to music sometime during the day.


5. Writing in my journal or on my blog keeps my spirit soaring, this I definitely don't do everyday for lack of time!



I am challenging all of you fellow bloggers to write about what keeps your spirit happy and healthy!

Also thanks to Soulbrush for this award she gave me at least a week ago!

New Beginnings

With the coming of a new year, thoughts of new beginnings start bubbling, just under the surface.
I often feel just like these baby doves when contemplating a new pristine canvas. These two babies sat on the edge of their nest in our garden for two days before taking off into the great unknown.

Taking that first step using an intuitive painting process is a bit like taking that same giant leap. I have no idea how my completed painting will look, I just have to begin and get swept along in the process.

Where do you start if you are an intuitive or abstract painter? Where do the ideas come from? Shaun McNiff, in “Trust the Process” describes creation as a process of emanation,

“Nothing will happen unless we start working and allow the practices of our particular discipline to mix with streams of ideas and experiences that are constantly moving through daily life”.

I want to put this sentence up in my studio to remind me that I just have to start painting and something will come of it.

I find that I need to get into a certain frame of mind in order to paint. I have a little ritual of going into my studio and pottering about, sometimes reorganising my paints and brushes, filling up my various water containers and putting on my relaxation music to block out extraneous noise. This type of music tends to put me in a meditative frame of mind. I have a collection of this “New Age” music from my midwifery days, when I ran antenatal classes. I used this music to teach the prospective mums relaxation and visualization techniques.

I like to warm up, painting on something that is already in progress rather than going straight to the blank canvas, so I tend to have a few paintings on the go at various stages of completion. Paint that I am using on one painting is usually used to create those first brush-strokes on the new canvas.

I am really interested to hear what you do to get yourself in a creative frame of mind.

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year and a wonderfully creative 2009.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas and a wonderfully creative 2009!

Instead of going to those crowded shops in search of gifts, I got out my pots and bowls and melted some chocolate with some cream and butter.

Now, I love chocolate and couldn’t resist popping a piece into my mouth before it all melted.

These are the bowls that I really enjoyed licking and scraping – I was transported back to my childhood, watching my mother baking and waiting to get my finger into the mixing bowl before she whisked it away to be washed.

Here are my some of my chocolate truffles, the size of golf balls – of course, I had to taste a few to see if they were tasty or not!

Wishing you all a wonderful Festive Season!

Inspirations!

Don' t you just love the bravery of these window cleaners, abseiling down with their sponges and water! I came across these guys high up in the centre of Cape Town. Imagine the advert in the Job Finder, "Window cleaners required, mountaineering experience an advantage"
Suki has now inspired me to be out with my camera, she has taken so many beautiful photo's of her winter environment.


I love that we can maybe influence each other to try different ways of expressing ourselves. When we paint/write/ dance in isolation, it is so much more difficult to keep on moving and experimenting. We sometimes need to feed off each other to help light that spark.

I have found this blogging experience has really opened my eyes to a whole new experience. I am in contact with innovative artists from all over the globe, who express themselves in their own personal way. Many of these artists are incredibly generous with sharing their own experimental techniques and I love to try out what they describe and maybe incorporate the new-found knowledge into a painting.

Yesterday, my friend, Kathy Hebert posted a painting, “The Fishing Nets”. She is a figurative painter with incredible talent, but decided to paint this abstract painting, having been inspired by me. I feel incredibly honoured and quite overwhelmed to have been an inspiration to you, Kathy! I feel so connected to this work. Kathy is a generous teacher of fledgling artists, she opens the door of creativity and painting to new converts – it must be wonderful to see new artists spread their wings!

The Flower Seller

I created this painting using watercolour, inks and collage a while ago and it has been hanging in my bathroom, framed and behind glass. I often look at it and wish there didn't have to be glass; something about the glass just kills it. I love working on paper, starting with watercolour and then adding various other media as I progress, but dislike having to frame the work behind glass.

Ellis Cooke describes in a recent post how she pastes the paper onto canvas and then seals it with medium, oh wow! Thanks Ellis! I am going to try this method with this piece and then progress onto some large works when I get the hang of it.

I just thought I would mention an interesting relationship that has developed between my creativity and physical workouts. I was diagnosed a few years ago with Osteopenia, (the precursor to Osteoporosis) where I have a moderate wasting of bone in my spine. I was advised to do regular weight-bearing exercises to build up muscle which helps maintain healthy bones. I am embarrassed to say I have never been keen on sport or exercise, I’d much rather be painting. I decided to give it a go and after the initial effort to get to a certain level of fitness, I now enjoy my hour-long sessions at the gym every second day. I feel this rush of Endorphins (the feel-good hormones) about half-way through my regime and then I am away in my mind, thinking about my painting and writing. I come up with many creative solutions while lifting weights! I also feel fitter and younger now than I did in my forties and have far more energy to explore my creative projects. My physical and mental well being has been greatly improved by these workouts, so I can highly recommend getting physical.

Mr Mugabe’s information minister is now blaming the UK for introducing Cholera as a genocidal tactic to overthrow the Zimbabwe government and people!

Vine Leaves

I added a few more washes and turned my vine painting on its side. I quite like the contrasting effect of watercolour with the oil bars.

An important aspect of intuitive painting is the ability to tap into your subconscious mind, bring information to the surface and be able to use it in a creative way. I have read that dreams are a window to this area of the mind. I have great difficulty remembering my dreams if I don’t try and consciously bring them to the surface as soon as I wake up. Intuitive painting is all about revealing yourself absolutely, honestly, warts and all. This way of working gives you transparency and coming to terms with this gives you incredible freedom. “This is me”, like me or not and these are my paintings which you may like or not.
I great way to tap into the subconscious, is to make a, “Life collage”. A few years ago, while attending Margie Johnson’s watercolour lessons, she had us make this type of collage. She had laid out a pile of magazines, put on a lovely classical piece of music and asked us to spend 10 minutes tearing out images. We had to empty our minds and not think about what we were doing, not showing any preferences for the images. We then took a large piece of paper and had to paste down the torn pieces quickly, without any thoughts of composition or preference. All the collages were put up on the wall and we were asked to really look at our own piece for five minutes and then make a few comments to the group. My collage absolutely astounded me! I had created this without conscious thought. I couldn’t believe how much of myself was revealed there, it was really scary!
Every torn piece of magazine held a huge amount of relevance for me. It is a great resource for ideas for future paintings.

I love these kind of creative exercises! Do any of you have any good ones to share?