Good art day as the holidays finally fade away

Well, I guess the holidays are finally over, and life is starting to resume its normal rhythm.  In the past, the holidays have consisted of the time I had off from school, recovering from the rush and serious hard work of tutoring up to 10 hours/day to prepare students for exams.  It seemed like the vacation was barely over before I was back at work tutoring again.  This year, in strong contrast, I am no longer tutoring.  For the first time in my life since I was two and a half years old, I'm not on a schedule which is tied to the academic year.  It's a very strange feeling.  Normally I get cues that it's time to put up a tree when I see one in the hall at school.  I talk to colleagues about their holiday plans.  I go to the chapel service at school to hear the choir sing carols, or my kids are in school and I hear their PTA choir performance with the carefully selected diversity of tunes including Hanukkah and Kwanza.  This year we didn't put up a tree.  The kids traveled with their Dad.  Chris and I went to the beach where it's possible to miss the holidays completely.  We bought a few presents but not many.  We focused on the sacred aspects of the season, attuning ourselves to the goodness surrounding us and the beauty in our lives.

Shifting my focus from one of ritualistic consumerism to sacred awareness made me very aware of the way the world, well, at least the US, almost stops for about a month.  There are holiday parties, there's the rush of buying the right presents, cleaning the house to prepare for company, getting ready for family, stress, stress, stress.  I would email people to set up an appointment or would have ones set up for photographing a model or whatever and people would cancel/not be able to set one up until after the holidays - too much going on.  I felt like a detached observer and was surprised to see all the hustle and bustle and what a black hole was created around these celebrations - Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and to a lesser extent Hanukkah and Kwanza.  I don't really want to take part in all that, but it isn't really possible to continue interacting with others until after the rush is over.

This week it feels like things are starting to get back to normal.  I started teaching a Beginning Drawing Class at Crossroads Art Center.  It felt great to get into the classroom and to teach again.  It's the first time I've taught Beginning Drawing, and it's great!  8 students, 5 of whom are raw beginners and a bit worried about messing up.  The way I teach there's no way to screw up - it's all about learning to see in a different way and teaching ones hand to translate that onto paper.  I look forward to the next 5 weeks of class!

After class, I returned home to tutor - yes, tutor!  One of my former students asked me to help her prepare for the SAT for a month.  Since I am crazy about her and enjoy her company so much, I said yes.  It was great to see her.  Then I prepared to teach a teenager art.  Unfortunately he got caught at the doctor's office so he wasn't able to make it - I found out when he was over an hour late.  That's part of tutoring which I don't miss at all!  Once I started getting the sense he might not show up, I decided to start on a new canvas.  I'd drawn the image on a month or more ago, but I put it aside to work on some other pieces in the meantime.  This afternoon I received the write-up the model wrote for me about her experience.  She inspired the heck out of me and made me excited to work on her piece.  Here's part of what she wrote:

I had been ashamed of my body for so many years, this just added to my disappointment. Then a friend posted something on Facebook, about a talented artist in Richmond, who paints female nudes, and shows us that we are all beautiful in our imperfection, we don't need a "perfect body" to be gorgeous! I was hooked! It was the awakening I needed-I no longer had to feel ashamed of my body...and something shot through me like a jolt!! I wanted to be a model! I never in my entire life would have believed that I would undress in front of anyone, and give her permission to paint my image, and show it in shows if she wished, but that's exactly what I did! What a freeing experience! Susan helped me to accept myself for who I am, and to love the body God gave me, and to accept both the imperfections He gave me, and the ones I created.

I am free-perhaps for the very first time-and it is an amazing feeling! Thank you, Susan, for helping me learn to love myself. It hasn't been easy to stop being self-critical, but I am getting better every day, because I now know-that I am indeed beautiful!

 After reading that, I'm sure you can understand my inspiration!  

 Here's the progress so far.  This model was bold enough to have me photograph her outside on one of the beautiful, absurdly warm days of Fall.  I haven't painted such an elaborate background before, with an abundance of nature all around.  It was fun trying to figure out how to create the illusion of leaves and branches, etc. without driving myself nuts painting each and every leaf. 

Tomorrow I hope to spend time cleaning up the background then moving on to her beautiful body.  It feels good to be back at the canvas, back in the classroom, back to the lovely rhythms of my life as an artist.

Christmas Eve and Christmas morning at the Beach

For Christmas Eve, Chris and I went to the Sound and sat in meditation for an hour from 4:20 to 5:20 as the sun set.  It was a glorious, spectacular display of ever-changing beauty.  I invoked the fellowship of Quaker Meeting in Richmond (they were meeting at the same time) and reveled in the gorgeous display in the clouds and on the water.  Grief over my father's death two days before and worries about what was to come crossed through my mind, but I chose to replace those thoughts with awareness of the beauty and sacredness of the moment.

Written on Christmas morning:
Right now I am watching pure beauty unfold as the sun rises over the dunes in front of me.  I see a sliver of orange light at the edge of a slender purple cloud.  The sky above it is beginning to take on shades of neutral, then green, then brilliant aqua then light cerulean.  I have no shade for the green among my paints - it's the same hue as was in the sunset yesterday.  Birds by my window, many of them, awaken to partake in the feast they can now see arrayed before them.

Wisps of clouds drift through the horizontal sky.  Small puffs up high reflect the orange glow beginning to ascend over the horizon, purple on the top where they still reflect the night just passed.

These moments between day and night and night and day hold such magical beauty, such vivid displays of color and intensity.  Perhaps transitions are such - birth and death seem to be equally full of richness and an awareness of the Divine.  How else to explain the infinite variety of exquisite?  One simple sunrise is more satisfying than the entire stable of Oscar-winning movies since The Academy began their awards.  And such promise each one holds.  A fresh start to a new day.  Clean, clear, washing everything with the brilliant glow of the almost infinite power of the sun.  How logical for our ancestors to have worshiped the sun!

Even on overcast days, the sun offers a glow through the grey, a hope of beauty, and, always, Light.  Light that illumines all things and displays the Truth of them for all to see.  Light I hope to shine onto the sadness and grief present in my life right now.

The sun is rising.  I can no longer look at it - its glare would hurt my eyes, so direct and bright has it become on its journey to illumine our entire world.  It casts a pink/orange glow on the large white house in front of me, standing sentinel over the dunes.  The sky is taking on its daytime blue, tinged only slightly by green now.  The puffs of clouds have changed to light yellow underneath, their grey more green than purple.  The orange cast to the horizon has been dulled to pale blue, almost neutral, by the sun's brilliance.  The powerful yellow white orb has wiped out the quiet intense colors of dawn to shed its stronger light on the world.

It feels too direct, too bright in this moment as it shines its beam directly into this room, onto this bed, into my eyes, casting a strong shadow through the railings of the deck.  I am beginning to feel the heat of the rays on my face.  I notice the parallelogram patterns of sun and shadow against deck floorboards and the salty residue shining almost opaque in the window.  The shadows from the rails allow me more visibility through the glass to the outside world.

The sun is an inch above the dunes.

Fear of situations in my daily life intrudes.  My stomach feels the rush of adrenalin.

I return to the scene outside the window.  More beauty is there for the awareness than anything I could imagine in my mind, especially these days as my mind runs amok with worry and despair.

Perhaps this Christmas is about the birth of a deeper God-consciousness within me.  Perhaps it is the chance to live more aware, more in the moment, with greater gratitude for and awareness of God's presence.  A complete surrender to his Will, complete Trust in divine goodness, and Trust that joy and happiness are more present when I open my heart fully to God.

The sun is shining brightly on my face now, warming it, causing me to keep my eyes downcast so I don't burn my retinas.  Maybe that was the metaphor for God in the Bible - the Israelites weren't supposed to look directly at God - perhaps he was embodied in the sun for them.  That makes sense to me.

God, bless us as we go through the day.  Help me feel the ultimate gift of your presence.  Help me retain the knowledge of your presence as I am confronted with my fear and sadness.  Blessed be.