Globetrottering?

Yes, it seems to be a continuing fact. This year I first have been away from my flat during four months, from march to july (they were changing the watertubes in the whole house) and I lived in 12 different homes, visiting family and friends. Then I was home for a month and a half, cleaning dust and more dust. But oh so wonderful to be alone in my own place. I even painted two mandalas! Wow.

But lucky me that my computer, a Mac of cource, follows me wherever I go.
And my computer is full of photos from all my paintings.
And Photoshop!
How would I ever be able to be without Photoshop? No way.
I can select pieces from different paintings, cut and paste, liquify, modify, put on filters and in this way I can be creative and have a lot of fun which is good when I cannot paint.

Yes, it seems to be a continuing fact. This year I first have been away from my flat during four months, from march to july (they were changing the watertubes in the whole house) and I lived in 12 different homes, visiting family and friends. Then I was home for a month and a half, cleaning dust and more dust. But oh so wonderful to be alone in my own place. I even painted two mandalas! Wow.

But lucky me that my computer, a Mac of cource, follows me wherever I go.
And my computer is full of photos from all my paintings.
And Photoshop!
How would I ever be able to be without Photoshop? No way.
I can select pieces from different paintings, cut and paste, liquify, modify, put on filters and in this way I can be creative and have a lot of fun which is good when I cannot paint.

At this moment I am sitting at a table in Holland. Yes, and without a diccionary. But wait, that is not true. There are diccionarys on internet so I have no excuse if I spell a word wrong or if I don`t find a suitable translation. I am just lazy, but I feel very happy because the internet connection works with my own computer. Yippee!

Today I became even more happy when we went to the town nearby to buy colours and canvas, because in this little village I will spend a lot of my time and there is also a good space for painting.

The shop was huge and had everything! Even a different mark of waterbased oilcolours with lots of more colours. It couldn´t be better.

Now I just have to follow the flow and have confidence in life itselves.

Wonderings about the creation

These two small watercolour mandalas are about the creation, expressing one of  many metafors. 

"In the very beginning there was a Sound". 

So I have painted how I imagine that the soundwaves are spreading out through Cosmos, in circles or as sound-rays.

Good for meditation.

But I also wonder about other things, trying to be open.

 I have been painting for some hours to day on a very big painting, from the floor to the ceiling. I step up and down on a high stool to paint and then sit in the sofa to look. Paint and look, paint and look. 

Of cource I dance and breath. 

Breathing is very important to me. It opens me,  my body, mind and soul.

And the dancing. Just  dancing. 

Freely, following the needs of the body, expressing emotions of all kind. 

Slow, fast, soft, hard. Also with the face, entering in contact with my wild animals that has been hidden for so long time in my unconsciousness. 

So, a very short summing up what is important for me in life:

Breathing

Dancing

Loving

?

Ok!

Painting

"God" or if you prefer "Big Bang"

180 x 180 cm

This is my first textile mandala. When I did it I had no idea about mandalas, I just wanted to do it like this. 

It was funny. We, my family and I, had recently moved to the south of Sweden, to the countryside were  the mire with its little island was.

After some weeks the priest came to see us and wish us welcome. I suppose he was curious to know if we were presumptive visitors to his church. We showed him around in the house as the custom is in our country. When we came to the room where I was working  with this rather big textile, the devil flew into me and I challenged the priest telling him that I was sewing God. 

”Oh”, he said. Nothing more, and he left the room.

In my point of wiew I would have got very surprised and also very interested. And he, the priest who talks about God every sunday just answers ”Oh”! I would have asked a lot of questions such as: Why? How do you think? How come you do it in this way? For me it was an invitation to something deeper than  normal talk about coffee and cookies. However it was a good way to discover that this priest was a traditional one, without curiosity about other ways of looking on life and God.

However, no dissapointment.

It took me six months to make this textile of ”God” or ”the Big Bang”. In the center there is ”everything and nothing”. I like to see it as a metaforic diamond. In the Big Bang this diamond explodes and divides in small small pieces of diamonds. From the heat, fire and smoke every little piece gets very dirty and has to be cleaned on its way back to the original diamond.

So, every glaspearl could be seen as an image of the soul that longs for being complete again. There is a continuous movement in both direccions, one of many many paradoxes in life. Both and ...

When the soul is very far away from the center the attraction is not so strong but it gets stronger and stronger the closer it comes. And once there, it  is thrown out again ... perhaps in on other direccion... a continuos big bang...

Or, using God and the number 7,  the center  IS, that what is BEYOND everything. It divides in 7 ”Sub-Gods” wich could be seen as the different religions in our world. Every 7 divides in 7 again wich makes 49, which divides again in 7 which makes 343. There I had to stop. No more place nor pacience to sew more pearls. (there are about 23.000 of them)

Mandalas

watercolour, 90 x 90 cm

To paint mandalas is a wonderful thing to do. I started doing it 2003 when I lived one year in Barcelona.
It makes me calm and quiets my mind. The brainwaves slows down and the brain enters in a peaceful state and harmony.

I know it works like this. At least for me.

It was not always easy to live in a little flat with lots of noises and smells,  alone and not every day in peace with myself. So instead of walking up and down the room, (which was util in wintertime when the flat was rather chilly) or going to the movie, I dedicated many, many hours to the mandalas when I was inquiet or depressed.

First I coloured pre-drawed mandalas from books (it was easy to find these books in special bookshops) and then I started to do my own ones, which of cource was even more funny.

It is said that CG Jung painted a mandala every day during ten years in order to help him to handle  the separation from S Freud. It helped him to follow his inner psychic development.

The mandala above is inspirated by a traditional tibetan old mandala.
It is so fantastic with mandala-painting because you can give yourself totally freedom to paint whatever you want. You just make a circle and start improvising.
It is good to know that what is inside the circle represents your inner life and what is outside is consequently your outer life.

During my stay in Barcelona I wrote a little tale and paited twelve mandalas with the dragon Isidor and my grandchild Gabriel as protagonists.
As I tomorrow will go to Spain and spend ten days with two other grandchildren and I will be without internet, I plan to translate this tale for my coming blogs. That will be interesting.