Peeling the Layers

It is our un-mourned losses that become the scar tissue of the heart.~julia cameron. A pretty powerful sentence. A new art journal page.......... I hesitated to put this up because at first it seemed so dismal. Maybe when I sketched out my girl I was feeling an un-mourned loss. This page is full of layers. Maybe I've been peeling away the layers of scar tissue. We so often only show the happy stuff in our lives and I think it takes courage to share the not so happy stuff along with the not so happy art. But it's all part of who we are or are finding out who we are. And it's ok. Thanks for visiting here. I hope you've had a good week.Thanks for all your wonderful comments. It's part of why I keep showing up here. Thanks for visiting...................xoxoxo jo I am linking today with Art Journal Every Day and the art journaler group at Flickr.

Landscapes

Do you find that your art changes depending on what is going on inside of you? Do you tend to produce art that is happy, bright with smiling big-eyed girls and flowers because that's what we want to see, or are expected to present to the viewer? Perhaps a better question might be do you think your art reflects what is going on deep down inside you? I think we forget that we work through things with art, art saves us, art heals, and it's ok to show the dark, scary, angry serious or sad faces and colors. It's real and the stuff going on inside of us is real. I happened to come across a piece I had done in 2009. I didn't consider myself an artist then. I said to myself,"I'm just doodling." I wasn't into drawing faces (like i am now) but my gut and head were spilling over with a lot of "stuff." I wasn't thrilled with it at the time. It wasn't happy, gay or bright. But it was real and it said a helluvalot. And as I look at it today I am amazed at the power of it. Art and art journaling can be that way. Sometimes she felt large standing on the outside watching her on the inside(It's hard to see all the words.) Forward to now. The landscape within me is quite different. The face is still not a smiling face but different colors, a different place, a different time. I stumbled upon a place where there is a theme once a month for art journalers. This month's theme is The Landscape Within Me," which is what sparked this post. What does your landscape look like today? Thanks for stopping by....................................................jo

Art or Doodling?

Before I started my blog in 2009 I had been doing what I called doodling. I don't know whether it's because I didn't have the nerve to call myself an artist, didn't consider what I was doing as "art" or a bit of both. I didn't have a lot of art supplies and I thought 5 x 7 Moleskine journals were pretty cool. I wasn't even doing art in the car in the mornings at that time. I was playing and playing through a lot of emotional pain at the time. Art was my friend. I needed to keep showing up to meet up with art. Talk about mindless, doodling. But so much fun. I started to buy some gel pens and markers. Then I started to get strange, like "extra galactic," wierd stuff, or so I thought. Then I went back to black and white where you can see my beginnings of trees and buildings start to appear. Sorry one of them is very blurry. In my thinking about this art and doodling, I see that my doodling or what I saw as doodling then, shows up in my art work now. You know how everyone is always saying to keep a sketchbook or journal? This is the place you doodle your thoughts and ideas. I guess these are mine. Recently I purchased Dawn DeVries Sokol's book Art Doodle Love. I must admit I was drawn to the colorful pages with prompts and or suggestions for playing, doodling, and although I've only worked on one of the pages, I've traded in my morning faces for morning doodles this week in the car. The prompt was to fill in the colored areas with a doodle of anything each day for a week. Here's what I have done. I have a feeling I will enjoy playing in and with this book. Thanks for visiting....................................................................................................jo

If

If you express what is inside you, what is inside you will save you. If you don't express what is inside you, what is inside you can kill you. ~Gospel of Saint Thomas ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm sharing with you something I did several years ago, when my life seemed in a state of upheaval, of changes. Some unpleasant, some very painful. I didn't know it then, but I was doodling my state of feeling broken and fragmented. It was the beginning of mending, healing, and working through a lot of pain. Art is healing.

That page is now part of" The Smash Book overhaul." And this

........... is what I was on my art table a year ago today.

I'm glad you came by.............................................jo