Merry Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I would like to wish all of my readers a very Happy Thanksgiving! Hope that you are well... I am grateful for so many things.  Particularly the joy and laughter that is in my home and heart...

I am also grateful to be able to share my artwork with you!  This painting is called 'Godspeed.'

It is about the feeling like a Slowpoke ....

I have written a poem to go with it...

LOVE-POKES

Us Love-Pokes 

aren't in a rush.

That's just cuz 

life is so lush...

Love calls us

to savour now.

Attention...

To beautys' wow!

This step here 

is just so fine,

take a minute

to smell the Pines...

It's okay

to be this way. 

God has plans

to fill our day...

Just enough

Our cups are full.

Right here now,

we feel Loves pull...

 Stay safe.... peaceful happiness Judith...

Finding My Flow - Cultivating Gratitude

Having an art practice can benefit your health and well-being. 

Understanding how art can help you be happy, and how being happy can help you be healthy is really important.

An art-making helps cultivate gratitude. 

How to be grateful for the beauty of simple things will train you to focus on the positive. This practice can change the channel of your consciousness. 

Art-making can train your eyes to see.  When you learn to appreciate the beauty of the visual world,  all sensory experience is enhanced.  Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm... I am blessed! 

Life is an abundant adventure....

Hope that you enjoy this painting.  It is 8" x 10" acrylics on masonite. The title is...

"Finding My Flow."

Best wishes for your health! 

Peaceful happiness Judith 

Gladiolus September

September's gift...

Breath deeply

Glowing sunshine 

Thick as honey,  

Dancing on the edge

of Autumn 

Summer's grace 

Receding...Blessing 

Glad and glorious 

Frilly petals 

Blow kisses 

To the setting sun.

Labour Day Sunset

Wow what a fabulous Labor day it's been this year...  warm and windy and almost raining all day... I'm happy that I just saw the most beautiful sunset. It was red and pink , magenta, and purple... so lovely! It was really really really beautiful.  Oddly enough, I happened to do a painting yesterday that foreshadowed the sunset that I we had today... so I'm sharing this beautiful painting of a sunset with you the 'Labor Day Sunset.' 

 I'm sitting here listening to my little singers, The Crickets and all the other insects who are adding to the Beautiful song that they make this time of the year...  this is a real treasure to me!  Its so lovely and so peaceful...

 Yesterday  I was sitting and watching the sun set, and a little dragonfly landed beside me and watched the sunset with me for a while... he kept on looking up at me with his big blue eyes, as big as his head...  and before he left, he landed right on my finger as if to say "thanks for watching the sunset with me" and then off he flew... 

Thanks for reading my blog.  

Peaceful happiness Judith 

 

Golden Child. Art as Spiritual Practice

The core of my practice as an artist is actually the practice, the action of making. 

My process is very much driven by meditative practice. Allow the mind to chatter,  but it gets quite with deep art making focus. It is such a relief to escape the mind chatter.  Peaceful happiness rushes in,  along with an expansive feeling of time and space. 

 Curiosity, freedom and the willingness to not know... like letting the artwork call the shots,  brush stroke by  brush stroke... Colour by colour... Shape by shape.. Creativity has wildness ... and needs relaxed acceptance. More like listening and less like talking.  This is why artists follow their muse. When you learn to listen to the still quiet voice within....  where your art spirit lives... you will learn to love. 

The interaction of hand,  brush,  paint and movement. And a deep feeling of gratitude that I have been gifted with the resources to devote some time to the practice. 

A deep feeling of gratitude to be surrounded by such intense beauty.  The artwork becomes a humble offering of reverence for this beauty. 

The artwork itself will always have limitations and will never fully contain the beauty... but it's enough.  It's enough to brighten my ability to see and  appreciate the beautiful.  And I hope that my viewers can get a sense of peaceful happiness from looking at it.

Blessings... Judith...

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's day and a great big thank you to all you Dads and all you Uncle's doing a great job raising the kids in our community

 I'm sharing with you today the demo I did for the kids in my zoom classs so that they would have fabulous artwork to give their dads today.... we chose the image of the seahorse because seahorse the fathers look after the young; an appropriate image to share with the kids in honour of Father's Day..  and seahorses are just super fun to draw...

My Dad will be 90 years old in July,  and he is working with some health challenges. But he has a lot of courage and grit. So I am very grateful that I still have my Dad and I will be giving my seahorse drawing to my Dad for Father's Day too.

My Dad has a sweet tooth and he loves icecream... 

Have a joyous day! 

Peaceful Happiness Ms. Judith 

The Purpose of Art

Well... 

The purpose of Art it's not anything that somebody else can tell you... phew... I'm off the hook for that blog title...

It  is a big job to figure out the purpose of your own art... and there is no one defining purpose either... change is the constant that we can count on... 

Here's some possibilities and motivations that have informed my art process over the years..

Learning to Draw...

Becoming more observant...

Curiosity and learning about the world...

Learning about myself... and my values...

Developing courage...

Slowing down... calmness...

Developing the capacity to maintain deep focus...

Developing my own sense of aesthetics and beauty....

Developing and understanding visual symbols...

Exploring intuition,  dreams & the subconscious...

Learning how other people see see things...

Sharing,  community and friends....

Teaching and the privilege of sharing and encouraging others...

Becoming more open to Beauty...

Pleasure and joy... happiness...

Making decorations and a beautiful home...

Remembering experience and events...

Making gifts...

It has truly been a fabulous adventure and I have been blessed with the opportunity to share it with my family,  friends and students...

 

All of us are blessed with the spirit of creativity and deserve the space, time, freedom,  resources, safety, and encouragement to express it in whatever way fits each of us...

God bless us... everyone... 

Wake Up

Well this is the first painting that I've made since we've been on lockdown...  I don't know what it was about chickens but I found after I was sitting around long enough, I started to want to draw chickens and lots of them... It kind of culminated in this guy ... 

Chickens, in our culture are a symbol of fear... and the virus generated a lot of fear...the odd thing about that is... roosters are fearless... Especially Fighting Roosters...

 I sat with that for a while and came up with the idea that maybe maybe true courage comes from facing fear and chickens can be a symbol of fear but also a symbol of Courage one of those double sided coin type symbols... they're also very beautiful...  enjoy....