Serious decluttering

We recently decided to replace some carpets and vinyl in various key areas of our home. As it was planned, the floor coverings were delivered and laid all within a week, so it was a major upheaval. Everything, EVERYTHING, had to be taken out of my studio, our bedroom the kitchen, and the landing outside of my studio which I usually use to dump extra stuff from everywhere else.

I have to say here that I have been systematically decluttering for years, always with an eye to a future house move. But seeing the bare bones of those rooms again after 20 years of accumulating things, even useful things, was a revelation. And it made me vow to never ever pile it all full again.

This has required a different kind of decluttering; I am convinced that if it doesn’t hurt, you’re not doing it right.  I’ve had every single book I’ve dragged along from continent to continent over the last 40 years in my hand, and I posed the question, ‘Would it break my heart to let go of this’.  If the answer was,’No’. Then it went into the give away/sell box. If I wasn’t sure, then it went into storage in the attic until I could make up my mind. Entire identities pass in front of one’s eyes when one does this. It takes time, a sort of inner focus and energy, but it needs to be done if you are really serious about preserving Space rather than Things.  Also, I admit, that occasionally I’ve thrown a book nonchalantly into  the ,’No, it would not break my heart pile’, to wake up in a cold sweat the next night and go scrabbling through the piles trying to find that one book that I’m, after all,  not quite ready to part with.

One sentence you really have to throw right out of your vocabulary along with the old stuff is, ‘Well, gee, this may come in handy sometime’.
If it has lain at the bottom of a heap of junk in a drawer for the past 10 years, it is Not Going To Come in Handy Sometime soon. Get rid of it.  And if you discover you really do need it one day, I think you can work around it. My big temptation is to keep things for my various art and creativity courses. In that case I allow myself to keep half of the stuff and throw the rest away.

As a result of this, and of letting go my large light table, which I used only occasionally (gee I could have used it today, drat) my studio with its new white varnished wood look is like a Zen-do. Walking in there is like getting a shower of light.

Only problem is that it is so gorgeous and clean and spacious, I daren’t take out any of my paints, just imagine if I got a spot on my studio floor.

Obviously this is ridiculous. But that’s how it is right now. 

#6 Chinese Cowrie shell

 

 

 

Chinese Cowrie shell

Size:  16 x16 cm
            6.25 x 6.25 inches  

Medium: oil on cardboard  

Story:  Dear friends C&G once gave me a book on the origin of Chinese characters.  It is an exquisite publication, full of images that stimulate my imagination like; old Chinese wells and bronzes, ancient vases, stone tools, shards, and statues. Every time I leaf through it I want to draw or paint. This image is almost an exact copy of a page about cowrie shells being the first currency. And the character, which you see underneath in its evolution and final modern form, stands as well for value, expensive. 

This piece also foreshadows the next few feature artworks, which are all on a shell theme.

What I like about this piece:  It is actually much warmer in colour than the photo appears. I like the symmetry and the tranquility.

Tips:

Price: $25      €17      15 GBP         plus Shipping:  $5     €3,50      3GBP    (Only $5 shipping regardless of how many paintings you buy if  in the same order going to the same address).
Please note, all work is delivered unframed.

Ordering info: Please click here.

#5 Masks

 

Masks

Size:  16 x16 cm
            6.25 x 6.25 inches  

Medium: oil on cardboard  

Story:  This started out as two large river pebbles side by side. The faces just appeared as I was working.

What I like about this piece: Once again, some of the nicest ‘moments’ in my pictures seem to occur in the margins or as afterthoughts. I like the green landscapey curve on the bottom, it seems to be a bird’s eye view of a park or monument, complete with little trees; and the brown earthy triangle. The overall sober colour scheme of this pleases me because I usually play with lots of colours in the same piece.  Still, there is the touch of  hot orange and the strip of blue and white stripes peeking through. This one also seems to hint at space beyond the painting itself.

Tips:

Price: $25      €17      15 GBP         plus Shipping:  $5     €3,50      3GBP    (Only $5 shipping regardless of how many paintings you buy if  in the same order going to the same address).
Please note, all work is delivered unframed.

Ordering info: Please click here.

#4 Wing flints

Wing Flints – This  is one of about 6 mini-oil paintings with a stone theme. They will all be featured here in the next weeks.

Size: 16 x16 cm
            6.25 x 6.25 inches  

Medium: oil on cardboard  

Story: Basically a study of a found piece of stone resembling flint

What I like about this piece: The symmetry, colours, and the little line of secret calligraphy running across the top.

Tips: Because this particular series is all the same size, buying several and using a changable frame would make an ever changing artwork.

Price: $25      €17      15 GBP         plus Shipping:  $5     €3,50      3GBP    (Only $5 shipping regardless of how many paintings you buy if  in the same order going to the same address).
Please note, all work is delivered unframed.

Ordering info: Please click here.

#3 Amulets

Amulets – This  is one of about 6 mini-oil paintings with a stone theme. They will all be featured here in the next weeks.

Size: 16 x16 cm
            6.25 x 6.25 inches  

Medium: oil on cardboard  

Story:  Like Angel fossils (previous Featured artwork) , this one is derived from my soapstone carvings.

What I like about this piece: This is one of my favorites. I remember being surprised by the appearance of those mini-landscapes at the bottom of the painting. They are still my favorite part of the composition as well as their silvery neutral tones.

Tips: Because this particular series is all the same size, buying several and using a changable frame would make an ever changing artwork.

Price: $25      €17      15 GBP         plus Shipping:  $5     €3,50      3GBP    (Only $5 shipping regardless of how many paintings you buy if  in the same order going to the same address).
Please note, all work is delivered unframed.

Ordering info: Please click here.

Featured artwork #2 Angel Fossil

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Angel Fossil – This piece is one of about 6 mini-oil paintings with a stone theme. They will all be featured here in the next weeks.

Size: 16 x16 cm
            6.25 x 6.25 inches  

Medium: oil on cardboard  

Story:  Several years ago, I had a period of working with soapstone; one sculpture of light sea green stone became, ‘Angel Fossil’. Right at the center of the wing form the stone is so thin that it is almost transparent. Most of the hand sized forms I made during this time resembled shells or stones that you could have bent down and picked up, either on a deserted beach or deep in the woods.

What I like about this piece: I like the whimsy and the colour in this painting.  Also, the spiral in the lower left hand colour intrigues me and confirms the bond that these forms had with shells.

Tip:  The paintings in this first series are the same format and very affordable. If you buy 3 at a time, with one simple *adjustable frame (no matte needed) for all three, you can frame each one in turn according to your mood. Contact me for images of the whole series at info@artwell.nl
* adjustable frames allow you to frame and de-frame pieces easily with just a turn of the swivel clips on the back.

Price: $25      €17      15 GBP         plus Shipping:  $5     €3,50      3GBP 
Please note, all work is delivered unframed 

Ordering info: Please click here.

Sustainable marketing

NEW!!  Featured Artwork page, scroll down and see previous post

Connected to the idea of sustainable creativity, ie creativity that can be maintained in a natural way, fitting with one’s lifestyle and capacities over a long period of time, is sustainable marketing. 

What bothers me about the current ideology of building up social capital via networks such as Twitter and Facebook is that generating poplarity is a means to an end. A friend of mine put it this way:   just as she’d become tired of people who invited her out to lunch then spent the time trying to sell her their multi-level marketing scheme, now she is fed up with people who want to be her ‘friend’ on Facebook , etc, when it’s clearly about building a market for whatever they are selling.

Another pitfall I’ve seen is that once you have a following, there is a constant pressure to maintain your visibility and keep coming up with new things to keep up the interest.

I’ve also seen how quickly some one can shoot to stardom, only to be dropped when the next hot thing comes along.

The remedy for this, if these kinds of methods don’t suit your temperament or ethics, is the old fashioned way of doing what you love with integrity, building up a customer circle organically, and developing up your own staying power by aiming for long- rather than short term results.

In her book, ‘The Soul of Money’, Twist refers to sufficiency and sustainabliilty as being based on values like partnership, gratitude, and valuing what you already have and using that as a prime resource.  This eliminates the need to acquire more and more followers, and shifts the focus instead to the social and other resources which are already close at hand.

Basically, sustainable marketing is quality over quantity. It is something you can grow into and grow with, that fits with your ideals, and nurtures you and people around you  as well as your business. That really is ‘win win’.

 

First featured artwork

 

Stone stories

      This piece will be available to buy for two weeks: Wednesday December 16 – Wednesday December 29th.     
                 
SOLD

See  ‘Intro to Featured Artwork’ page for info about this feature.  

A few words from the buyer, who is a dear family friend: 

‘I would LOVE to  buy Stone Stories.  I have such an affinity for stones and rocks ( cairn building among other things).  All the rocks around my garden were  personally toted by me up from the creekbottoms.   So if it’s still available, it has found a home and a home in which stones are highly prized’.   

Sarah here again: For me, as the artist, I especially enjoy how stories meet.  Candy, thanks, enjoy it and I’ll send it off this week!

Stone stories – This piece is from a series of mini oil paintings I did when I was trying to get more into painting and was not ready to tackle a larger format.  

Size: 16 x16 cm
          6.25 x 6.25 inches  

Medium: oil on cardboard  

Story:  In this series I often used stones as symbols. I associate it with the quote from Anne Michaels’, Fugitive Pieces’:  

‘I learned the power we give to stones to hold human time. The stone tablets of the  Commandments. Cairns, the ruins of temples. Gravestones, standing stones, the Rosetta, Stonehenge, the Parthenon’.  

What I like about this piece:   the overall colour scheme, I find it soothing. And I like the moonshaped stone in the top left hand corner,  it is still in my garden somewhere-a curious ochre colour, pitted and weighted when you hold it in your palm.   Also, the little sliver of golden on the left hand side, to the left of the terracotta coloured stone looks like a split in a curtain where light from a magic realm is peeping in.  

Comments/tips:   I’d suggest framing this simply. Here is what it looks like in a simple wooden silver leafed frame: 

 

Price: $25      €17      15 GBP         plus Shipping:  $5     €3,50      3GBP 
Please note, all work is delivered unframed 

Ordering info: Please click here. 

   

  

 

Sustainable creativity and creative sufficiency

Michael Nobbs,  an awgrad friend, wrote about ’sustainable creativity’. Faced with chronic fatigue syndrome, he  had to find a way to keep creating despite physical limitations.

His journey from being a driven, stressed artist, trying to complete large paintings, to slowing down and making small, easily finished drawings has been beautiful to witness. It is nothing short of a radical change in consciousness over a relatively short period.  As often is the case, his journey has parallels to my own process of calming down and letting things unfold, rather than forcing things to happen. 

Michael’s ideas about sustainable creativity have to do with finding out how to keep creating despite obstacles. How to keep going, even when you do have to draw in bed.  And how to take small steps, and keep taking them until you build up a body of work.

Once committed to this process, you find that not only are you building up a body of work, but a supply of disciplines and habits as well that enable you to keep working.

I would like to add to this theme by bringing in my own recent insights…on ’sufficiency’.  Used in Twist’s, ‘Soul of Money’,  to mean ‘enough’, this concept is another tool on the path to more gently supporting one’s creative self. 

Book excerpt:

‘I suggest that if you are willing to let go of the chase to acquire… always more and let go of that way of perceiving the world, then you can take all that energy and attention and invest it in what you have. When you do that you will find unimagined treasures….’

I read the book 2 years ago, but it seems to take awhile to actually integrate the new insights deeply enough to effect a real change  in one’s life.  For me, creative sufficiency is about realizing that I already have enough-  of a lot of the things I’ve been chasing after for the last several years.  Once you start basing your view on ‘enough’ rather than lack, it seems as if the world gets softer and more open.

One practical example of this in my life is that for various reasons (to make my business financially successful, for example) I’ve felt obliged to accept every commission that came my way whether it was something I wanted to do right then or not. The rewards of this were, admittedly, substantial: solving a customer’s problem,  financial return, the satisfaction of completing a job well, and the chance to create using my skills.

The down side was the stress of too much work at the same time; I kept getting rerouted from my own projects; and I had little time to give my home and my health the attention they needed. But most of all, I realized  that I was working hard trying to generate new work, when all along I’ve been sitting on a treasure; we must have hundreds of pieces of sellable artwork here at home. Because neither Rende nor I do galleries on a regular basis, it just keeps stacking up.

And because I was often working to other people’s briefs and deadlines, I haven’t had the time and focus needed to find a way to move  the work we already have.

So for me, the beginnings of creative sufficiency is appreciating this huge resource, and making it a priority to get it out to the people who will appreciate it as well. I plan to do this mostly through my blog and site, so stay tuned.

And on the subject of sustainable creativity, I have decided this coming year to be more selective about commissioned work and focus mostly on the above as well as completing and designing my dementia book in small steps,  developing my webshop  and  my creativity workshops.
Already I feel more relaxed, less driven, happier, and….more creative!!

Later: I’m starting with a mini oil painting on board series, see ‘Featured Artwork’ category. The first one has been posted Dec. 16th and will be available to buy for 2 weeks.

New work etc.

It was nice to sit down today and finally  have a session with my materials. 
All the commmissioned work from the past 5 months had me speeding along
accomplishing things. It was hard to slow down enough to play.

This one was done on heavyweight terracotta coloured charcoal paper, first a layer of sketchy acrylic and then oil pastels. I love the colours.

Michael Nobbs has invited me to appear  as a guest blogger on his site.  I’m enjoying the exposure to a new group of people and the thoughtful feedback.  Michael is an awgrad friend of several years and has inspired me with the authentic way he has adapted his art to the internet. I learn a lot from him. I also love his drawings, and own some issues of his ‘Beany’.