TASK: Nature's art from a child's heart

We are told Christmas is a time for so many things -

for forgiveness, for laughter, for peace ever after.

It is a time for eating, drinking and being merry.

And it is a time for family

...and especially for children.

And in this mad world that never stops long enough for us to get off and pause for breath, we rarely get a chance to spend enough time with our children (or other people's) to remember what the world looks like through the child's eyes.

So this Christmas task is to see the world through the eyes of a child and make a picture out of it. For this task you will need nothing more than a handful of youngsters if you can find them, one if that is all there happens to be around, and a bit of the beautiful and bountiful outdoors.

Take said child(ren) into the wonderous natural world - a beach, a park, a wood, anywhere you can get messy and find a supply of suitable raw materials - where the imagination can work its magic... and create a picture.

You may wish to start by collecting enough sticks to make a picture frame. You may wish to frame your work of art in another way, or perhaps it doesn't require a frame at all.

Let the children and the child in you be the guides - don't try to impose an adult view of the world and of what art should be - an adult's view is never as interesting, creative or magical as a child's.

Then take a photo of your picture and post it here...

Merry Christmas everybody, or as they say round these parts where I am indulging in the festivities - Nadolig Llawen (with a bit of God Jul and Buon Natale thrown in for good measure!!).

Happiness...

'The most sought-after and elusive of conditions,

happiness is one of the central themes in human history.

Yet do we even know what it is, much less how to attain it?'

…So begins a book entitled ‘The Discovery of Happiness’ by Stuart McCready.

In this book we meet Plato and Socrates, we visit Nirvana and the soul. From Sufism's magical dancing to the utilitarianism of the Enlightenment, the authors explore every facet of this elusive concept from a philosophical, academic and spiritual perspective.

But interesting as it is, in this book there are no pictures of my children, no kisses from my husband, no hugs from my parents as they arrive on the doorstep, no phonecalls from my distant sister, no texts from my friends, and no images of me flopped on the settee at the end of a hard day with a glass of wine in my hand and something mindless on telly, the kids snoring softly in their beds and my wonderful man performing culinary magic in the kitchen.

There are no pictures of the sun filtering through the clouds, no wafts of cardamom, no sensations of a soft pillow against my cheek, no heart-stopping moments of the sheer joy of being alive.

So whatever happiness is, it sure as hell isn't easy to put down in words! I tried...

How could I be otherwise?

maggie and milly and molly and may

went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang

so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and

milly befriended a stranded star

whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing

which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and

may came home with a smooth round stone

as small as a world and as large as alone,

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)

it's always ourselves we lose in the sea

e e cummins (selected poems 1923 - 1958)

I am happy, for I have known happiness in my life and I have known love. I feel love. I am loved.

How could I be otherwise?

He's only happy when he's miserable!

Spiritually, I've only known true happiness once. It lasted about two, maybe three, weeks. And I knew it was happiness, in the blissful sense, only when it was finally ebbing away from me. Would I like to return to that state of mind? You bet! Will I get there again? I hope so.

But that's only one kind of happiness. I believe there are as many kinds of happiness as there are people. Something my mum used to say ('he's only happy when he's miserable'!) illustrates the point. There's something about a sustained bout of misery that can also be deemed 'happiness' if that's what suits you at the time. Or the happiness gained from getting through another day without any particular mishap. Or finding that vacant parking space in a busy carpark. Or knowing that you are loved.

Yes, I'd say I was happy, even though I'm not entirely sure what I mean by that! But even in my most anxious moments, I'm still happy. I suppose it's because this is my life, and I wouldn't want to be doing anything else.

Oh, and one other thing... friends = happiness. So thankyou all!!!

Big Art right up to the final moment...

"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming:

"WOOHOO what a ride!"


OK, so I've pinched the quote - saw it on another blog, checked Google to see whether I could find the source, got 8,820 hits and gave up! I like the sentiment, though, so I'm going to revise my funeral plans. And to duck charges of plagiarism I'll swap the martini for a bottle of Swedish Punsch ...

TASK: Happiness

In the cold twilight of another passing year, before we bask in the glow of the coming new one – in the dizzying whirlwind of good intentions, resolutions, should-have-dones and wishes, I ask you to ponder this question: What is happiness to you?

I ask because I dread the question and the topic, which, inevitably comes every time I see my mother-in-law. Although I’m expecting it – from the unending drive to see her, to the minute we’re through the door – she never fails to catch me off-guard. When I’ve relaxed, perhaps smiling, for a split second and forgotten that it’s coming. Then, with witchcraft-like cunning, she pounces on me when I’m alone for a brief moment. She pins me with her dark eyes and coos . . . “Are you happy, love?”

Happy? Yes! Of course! Why wouldn’t I be? Isn’t everyone? By the way, what is happiness?

In trying to understand the startling, jarring, almost inhuman nature of the question, I’ve tried to think about the elusive and varied meaning of happiness.

To me, happiness has always been something invisible: My mother’s soft touch on my forehead as I dosed in bed when I was a child. The first, tentative tickle of cinnamon-and-pine-scented realisation that it’s Christmas morning. The smile from a boy you fancy. A sparkly ring on that finger. My baby in my arms for the first overwhelming, life-defining moment.

But happiness, to me, is also more than just the sum total of those breath-catching moments. It’s also the sight of my sleeping child every night. My husband’s silent presence next to me every day. My mother at the other end of the phone every week. And, somewhere along the line, for me and I think for most people, those moments blend into one great Connect-the-Dots picture of our life. Is it a happy one? For most people, I hope, the answer is yes.

For my mother-in-law, unfortunately, I fear the answer would be no. Because of the invisibility of happiness, I think, some people end up chasing it their whole lives, like a mist-veiled holy grail. Never realising, the grail is right in front of them, if only they’d pick it up and drink.

Dreaming in Technicolor

The waiting rooms in life have always been the hardest for me. As Dr. Seuss aptly said: "The Waiting Place . . . for people just waiting. Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for Friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake:) or a pot to boil, or a Better Break or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls or Another Chance. Everyone is just waiting."

And, as I wait for Uncle Jake, a precious little dream-fairy brought me an enchanted gift last night . . . a lovely dream that Mr. Daniel Craig decided to come to my birthday party. Never mind that the illusion vanished with the first crystals of morning. Never mind that it was a ridiculous, unimaginable scenario. It was a spontaneous, delightful moment in a time of anxiety, uncertainty and seemingly interminable waiting.

Yes, I do believe in magic.

Dreams

Like most of us, my daily life often lacks enchantment, and usually when I need it the most! But one part of my life can always exceed my expectations, and that is while I am dreaming. My imagination runs wild, unbounded by the inhibitions and self-limitations that I usually carry around with me.

For example, a week or two ago I was lucky enough to experience a lucid dream. It happens from time to time, though not nearly often enough for my liking! In this particular dream I was visiting a train station - slightly Harry Potteresque - and suddenly realised I was dreaming. How wonderful! My thoughts turned to flying but try as I might I couldn't get more than a foot off the ground. Still, it was a magical experience, and one that has stayed me ever since.

To me, dreams are very much a part of my real life. And due to the stresses and strains that we all go though these days, my dreams are often the closest I come to the enchantment I experienced as a child. I admit I'm a bit of a 'dreamer', still spending my sleeping hours riding a magic carpet over the twinkling lights of the town below.... and I hope it always stays that way!

Just another ordinary miracle today

This task has made me realise how disenchanted my life is at present. I can find images that inspire me and fill me with awe, and photograhps that suggest enchantment but as for feeling it, it has been a while. It has been a bad week and that is almost certainly colouring this post but I am not in despair, far from it.

I have a secret place where I go, where enchantment lives, a spot in a field where the world wraps itself around me and takes my breath - winter, spring, summer or fall. I haven't been there for a while but clearly need to go and soon.

Enchantment is like synchronicity, the magic happens all around us all the time but in order to see it, feel it and know it we must keep our hearts and minds open. Look for it and it will be there.

TASK: Encountering enchantment

Task: Set by Daisy

A few weeks ago I set a task for my Masters students, and I am going to set you the same one!

Throughout the last century, social scientists and historians have claimed we live in a ‘disenchanted’ world, where rationality, science and modernity have made everything ‘knowable’, predictable and explicable. Put more simply – there is no longer any magic in the world.

But in 2001 Jane Bennett wrote a book called The Enchantment of Modern Life. In it she argues that we do still have ‘moments of enchantment’ in our life, encounters where we experience a fleeting return to childlike excitement and wonder about life and the world around us.

Quite simply, the ability and desire to be ‘in love with the world’.

So I want you to describe such a moment of enchantment that you have experienced. It might be when you were captivated by a glittering pair of shoes in a shop window and you were carried off to a fairytale ballroom, or it might be watching your child engrossed in a task and losing yourself in the wonder of watching this magical little being you brought into the world, or it could be simply kicking the autumn leaves and feeling your heart flip at the simplicity of such joy.

Each of us encounters enchantment differently. And I want to hear your stories.

Winter Wonderland

Michigan, my Michigan, a.k.a. "Winter Wonderland" on slush-covered license plates, is the memory of Christmas my heart won't forget. Some white, some green, some grey, all cold. Those Christmases, now confined to the museum of my memory, live immortal as the hodgepodge of clashing cultures they were. But, for that, they no less instilled the universal festive sentiment of: "Everybody here? Mangia, let's eat!"

Christmas Eve was Noche Buena. Christmas morning was fried matzoh then Mass (Confusing? Don't). Christmas afternoon/evening, more Judeo-Christian free-for-all: communion wafers around the dinner table, followed by challah and turkey. Then Buche de Noel. "Never mind, just mangia!" The number of nationalities present when the extended family gathered was enough to warrant a UN chaperone.

Today, that tradition continues two thousand miles from my Michigan and though the scenery may be more English countryside and less Winter Wonderland, the sentiment is still the same . . . "Eat your bloody sprouts."

Feliz Navidad.

look the spangles

that sleep all the year in a dark box

dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,

the balls the chains red and gold and fluffy threads,

put up your little arms

and i'll give them all to you to hold

every finger shall have its ring

and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

(extract from little tree by e.e. cummings)

Ett Hem

I knew the minute I saw this, it would have to be something from Carl Larsson. Christmas for me is Sweden. And Sweden is Carl Larsson. Growing up in Sweden, when Christmas was always white, and the tomte would be sneaking around leaving no trace in the snow, checking up on boys and girls to see who had been good and who had been naughty. Candles would be lit in every window and men would be on rooftops shoveling off the snow. We would ski to school and skate on the flooded football pitch at the end of the day before going home for spiced gingerbread and hot chocolate.

Somewhere in our house in Sweden, I don't remember where exactly, was this Larsson print of the little girl on the 'spark' - the sort of sleigh thing you sometimes see the Same using in Lapland - a chair on blades basically. We had hours of fun on ours (usually pretending it was a horse), as well as using it for trips to the shop or as a buggy when my little legs were too tired to walk in the snow. And whenever I see this picture now I can smell the crisp freshly fallen snow on Christmas morning in our garden in Sweden and I can hear the metal of the blades on the spark cutting into the perfect surface. I can feel the swish of it under my arms and legs as my sister and I lay on our backs making snow angels, swallowing the gigantic snowflakes that fell onto our tongues.

In Sweden Christmas is a family time, a time for the children and a time for eating. I also remember it as a time for getting out into nature and a time to dance around the neighbour's Christmas trees (could take a long time if you lived on a long street!). But at the end of the day, the family returns and settles around the candles and the warmth of the home. And it is perhaps this that is the essence of what the Christmas spirit is for me. That miracle of somehow managing to get the whole family together in the same place, yet not with the pressure of having to 'do' anything in particular. I think this final Larsson picture sums up what I mean - they are all in the same room. They are all, more or less, sat at the same table. But they are engaged in their own pursuits, there is no pressure to take part in the card game. There is no pressure on them to perform or do anything to show their commitment to the family unit. Their very presence is enough to say 'I care'.

Carl Larsson may have produced some of the most wonderfully evocative portrayals of Swedish life, but he was also unwittingly the catalyst behind IKEA. In 1899 he published 'Ett Hem' - a home. He was a bit of a Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen of his day - an interior designer and artist, with a mission to show the world his perfect family home, but instead of going on Living TV to do it, he published a delightful collection of prints depicting his family life in 'Ett Hem'. The Swedish populace took him to heart, a nation styled its homes Larsson-style and this model of Swedish interior design became ingrained on the global psyche as utterly and typically 'Sweden'. It was but a short step to IKEA...

The house is now a museum and IKEA a legend. Perhaps a longer legacy than our Lawrence might manage..!

So as the nation settles down around it's IKEA flat-packs this Christmas, plugs in the triangular advent candle lights they all bought from IKEA (originated in Sweden also!), I hope it doesn't turn out to be a time of squabbles and family rows - the result of unrealistic expectations about how amazing Christmas is meant to be - but a time to just sit and reflect that we care enough simply to be there. And I'm not religious, but isn't that what the three kings and all the rest of it was about? They cared enough to be there to celebrate the birth of that little baby.

If you liked those Carl Larsson prints, check out more HERE... and have yourself a very merry Christmas!

TASK - The Spirit of Christmas

The Spirit of Christmas..? by Flora Dora

What does the spirit of Christmas mean to you? Post anything from an image to a gallery, from a sentence to a novel.

Be hopeful, charitable, invoke Scrooge, revel in or bemoan the excess of it all, it matters not as long as you - express yourself.

I know nothing about this picture (sorry!) but it illustrates one of the many images that inspires me. Rainbows. Rain. The sun shining through dark clouds, illuminating the earth in discrete patches via magical rays of light. I find them uplifting and beautiful, and they always stop me in my tracks.

I almost chose the night sky (brightly studded jewels on a velvet background!) but finding a suitable image was more troublesome.... ;-)

Spiralling

Inspired by the feather and stones image, I started to look at patterns within nature, repeating patterns: circles, circles within circles, spheres, spirals, radials, waves, veins and branches. In the garden alone I found them in snails, pea tendrils, the acer japonicum, in the earth, in water and light and of course in me. The very limitlessness of the search left me in awe and led me to my quote of the day:

"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible." (Oscar Wilde)

Cloudy vision...

Having set this task, I have subsequently been struggling with what piece of 'visionary art' I can put up myself!!! There are certainly hundreds of paintings that have stopped me in my tracks, taken my breath away, or dragged me into them and away to far off places and possibilities.

But then I thought of something much simpler - and it isn't even really a piece of art, but a photo. A simple photo of a feather on a beach.

White feathers are seen by some as messages from angels, to let us know that they are there. This feather has clearly more to do with seagulls than angels, but it says something about the greater whole to me. I look at this feather, dropped by a seagull after a fight with a bag of chips on the prom no doubt, and it looks like it could just be a message from beyond. The rounded pebbles, randomly placed by the sea all around it, unquestioningly a strong reminder that nature is all around, and then this perfect white feather plonked on top and you just can't miss it.

And looking down at that feather it just doesn't look like a natural occurrence in nature. It looks like somebody has 'put it' there - like somebody has carefully placed and framed this picture to make it say something other than its component parts add up to. And yet this isn't an artist inviting us to take a step into the unknown beyond, but perhaps the unknown beyond inviting us to consider it is a possibility...

It certainly wasn't me who composed the picture. I just pointed the camera at it and clicked. Was it a disgruntled seagull? Or could it have been an angel...?

Visionary art...

Ok peeps. Let's kick off. This week's task takes us back to basics. Let's think about what inspires us creatively. What images help us to link the mundane everyday to the power within that inspires us and helps us tap into the creative driving force? Is there an image you can look at that just makes you think - of course!

I came across this link on Visionary Art. Its aim is to summarise the changing way in which artists have depicted the inspirational link to 'all that is' through the ages. From the Baby Jesus, via Rossetti's colourful, almost astral depictions, right up to Dali and altered states of consciousness, the article explores some of the ways in which art has depicted what is going on in the material world, but through a lens coloured by a perception of what might lie 'beyond'.

Pick a piece of art that does this for you. Post it on the blog and share your thoughts...

Introducing The Big Art

"All the arts we practice are apprenticeship.

The big art is our life" MC Richards.

We are a group of artists on the search for inspiration, creativity and the energy, strength and time to realise the full potential of our creative endeavours.

Join us on our journey...