creativity

The Aspiration of The Artist

English:

English: “The Moselle near Schengen at the Drailännereck”, oil painting by Luxembourg artist Nico Klopp, 1924. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From a deep well comes a certain longing.  It is for a distant horizon, dimly remembered, portending a certain clarity.  The striving for a transcendental, gives flesh and meaning to the concreteness of everyday reality.  For the artist is always seeking something more, be it in a painting, a song, or a poem.

What is the aspiration of the artist?   This question is as old as the hills, and as new as the as the latest blog post.  Timeless in form, yet essential in delineation, the artist strives to enter into the conversation of life, the river of connection that daily engulfs our lives.  Connection is key, for the moment dialogue is engaged, the artist enters into her element, and the creative flow arises naturally.  This is a given.

Perhaps in this new year, 2015, we can assess the realities before us.  A fact is still a fact, yet a dramatization can yield rich metaphors of meaning.  Hence, a realm of poetry is entered, a landscape of vivid portrayal, giving fresh impetus to the artist’s innate desire to create.  Yet, it is the conversation that gives meaning, the open knowledge that someone has seen our work, and that someone understands and appreciates it.

This is why, we at Lavender Turquois, curate the best, most interesting and liveliest of the vast offerings present to us in the WordPress domain.  This is our calling, and we hope your enjoy our effort.  For it is entering into the conversation, the element of mutual appreciation and dialog that comes with sincere effort, that is the true aspiration of the artist.

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Evocative Listening

English: Evocative light at Dundrum Inner Bay....

English: Evocative light at Dundrum Inner Bay. Despite looking like a sunset or sunrise, this picture was taken mid morning. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We have all the answers we need right within us. We only need to evoke them and listen to our heart. Do not invalidate those seemingly non-sensical renderings from our fears, wants, or sorrows or dreams. We must listen for they bear the secret of who we are. We are not separate from our experience, past, present and future. Our past can be a source of wisdom. For the present and future try going with your intuition. As I have tried this I find my old ways less helpful because my head was always several steps behind my heart. I really needed to listen to the evokings of my heart.

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The Gift

Made by my grandmother

Made by my grandmother (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

American poet William Stafford (1914-1993)

American poet William Stafford (1914-1993) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cover of "The Way It Is"

Cover of The Way It Is

Time wants to show you a different country. It’s the one

That your life conceals, the one waiting outside

When curtains are drawn, the one Grandmother hinted at

In her crochet design, the one almost found

Over at the edge of the music, after the sermon.

It’s the way life is, and you have it, a few years given.

You get killed now and then, violated

In various ways. (And sometimes it’s turn about.)

You get tired of that. Long-suffering, you wait

And pray, and maybe good things come_maybe

The hurt slackens and you hardly feel it any more.

You have a breath without pain. It is called happiness

It’s a balance, the taking and passing along,

The composting of where you’ve been and how people

And weather treated you. It’s a country where

You already are, bringing where you have been.

Time offers this gift in its millions of ways,

Turning the world, moving the air, calling,

Every morning, Here, take it, it’s yours.

(William Stafford, The Gift, in  The Way It Is, St. Paul, MN: The Graywolf Press, 1998 pp165-166)

Ignis Consumens

Mandala Supernova

Mandala Supernova (Photo credit: hersheydesai)

Where does the fire of inspiration come from? From living, from diversity, anything that calls you to be present to its’  beauty.  Our senses are moved by delight and our  senses take in what is before us and we rest. It just takes an instant to be so drawn. There are times when we see beyond the usual. There is a song going on within us. It is the song from with in that ignites and inspires our art.

More Merton Mentoring

English: Library at Merton College, Oxford, UK

English: Library at Merton College, Oxford, UK (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves ant the same time.”

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.”

“Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.”

“Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future, rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.”

“The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.”

“We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us.”

 

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Headlong Rush by Stephen Dobyns

English: Road, birch trees and gate

English: Road, birch trees and gate (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sometimes we can stare so hard

that the object of our gaze

a woman’s face,  birch trees

 

near a waterfall, a painting

of apples around a blue vase

will seem no longer fleeting

 

What does it mean, the word Eternal?

Staring at some scene, we can think,

briefly, that it has always rested

 

before us. Looking into the shadows

of a woman’s eyes can spark a moment

with neither beginning nor end.

 

Or a painting may so ignite us

that the minutewill  be blown open

and we wander dazed across the blue

 

checked cloth and curves of red fruit.

How dangerous are such occasions

They impede our headlong rush

 

by keeping us from imagining

those bright targets against which

we hope to cast our shot

 

Don’t our goals always lie ahead?

Aren’t we enemies of the stationary

but in this glance we sometimes

 

 

 

find all we have lost, all we

have forced ourselves to set aside: in the

pool at the bottom of the falls,

 

the froth of white water and the wind

tossing the white branches of the birch.

How can we do ourselves such injury?

 

How can we possibly turn away?

Yet we do, Our motion defines us.

We are the creatures who rush forward

 

on narrow roads toward darkness.

What do we lose? It is our own lives

that fall away on the roads behind us.

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Communion of the Senses

2006-02-25 drop on feather

2006-02-25 drop on feather (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Listen to the deepest heart.

Everything has glory, let it be.

Humility, finite but infinitely loved.

Ministry, on a deeper dimension, transformation in the process

Lives where we love more than where we live.

Consciousness

There is an intensity of consciousness that occurs in the creative act.

I would like to quote Evelyn Underhill on creative expression and the validity of seeing.

“Nature herself reveals little of her secret to those who only look and listen with the outward ear or eye. The condition of all valid seeing, upon every plane of consciousness, lies not in the sharpening of the senses, but in a peculiar attitude of the whole personality: in a self-forgetting attentiveness, a profound concentration, a self-merging , which operates a real communion between the seer and the seen…”

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The Primary Color-Emotion

La Vie

La Vie (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“The artist is a receptacle for emotions, regardless of whether they spring from heaven, from earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing face, or from a spider’s web.” Pablo Picasso

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