textures shapes and color

May 3, 2013May 31, 2016 | miriam louisa simons

Being an artist is like breathing.
It’s this incredible urge to create, that you can’t question.
Like breathing you just have to do it, or else you will die.
– Marina Abramović

How could you not love a blog with a quote like this displayed in prime screen-space? But even without it, I’d still love Leslie Avon Miller’s collages and creations – and the way she writes about her creative process. Her need for “solitude, contemplation and stillness” resonates here, as well as her profound appreciation of Life as rich and miraculous.

Artwork by Leslie Avon Miller

On her profile page we read:

Leslie Avon Miller experiences her work as a means to observe and honor the world around her. This requires solitude, contemplation and stillness as the work evolves. Once the finished pieces are shared with others they become a conversation between the artist and the viewer. Each collage is as an entry into a journal, keeping in mind, as Heraclitus said; we can’t step into the same river twice. The compulsion for creating collage comes from experiencing life as beautifully wild, poignant, and fleeting. The process of creating collage clears space and light for experiencing the moments.

And in a recent post she writes:

Pausing to deeply enjoy the stars and moon before bed and hearing the bird song in the early morning brings me enjoyment and satisfaction at the beginning and end of the day. It is enough. Life is rich. Life is a miracle.

Click on the screenshot to visit Leslie’s superb blog.

curiosity and wonderment

November 9, 2012May 31, 2016 | miriam louisa simons

If you asked me to choose a couple of keywords to sum up the dynamic that drives my creative practice, I’d pick these two:

curiosity and wonderment

When, on the first day of August, I dreamed up the little project called the daily details, I was just as curious to see whether I’d have the tenacity to stick with it, day after day, as I was to see how far my work would take me – would there be enough images to last the month?

Considering that a large portion of my works-in-hand has never been documented, I was amazed to find that not only were there plenty of details to last the month, there were enough to take me through three months. It transpired that the details themselves ended up driving the project – they wanted OUT. They grew grumpy if I pleaded for a break.

But after three months – 92 postings in all – they let me off the hook, satisfied that a decent overview of the many tracks I’ve explored so far on the via creativa had been gathered together. Followers and friends of this blog have had a break for over a week now; I’m sure they’re as relieved as I am!

Yet curiosity lingers. Now it wants to know which of those 92 posts were the most popular with you, my valued readers. I’m not sure how accurate this selection is – given that I’m aware of friends who followed each posting with enthusiasm but never hit the *like* button, being averse to signing up with WP for their own reasons – but I’ve gathered together the posts that, according to WP stats, received the most *likes*.

August

September

October

And now that second little keyword – wonderment – pipes up. It wants me to choose the posts that gave me the most personal satisfaction – the ones that made me think, “Did I do that? Cool.” The ones that have set off little lightning flashes in my mind and generated ideas for new work. The ones that made me remember how much I adore color, texture and making things for no good reason other than it keeps me sane and intimate with something so much larger than the mundane and mediocre. The ones that remind me that, as Frederick Franck told us “The inexpressible is the only thing worth expressing” and urge that I have a lot of expressing to do … and that my time is brief …

Color, curves, edges … and interestingly, painting is the predominant medium. Perhaps there’s a painter in here struggling to have more of a say?

No breathscribe works made it to my grand final. Perhaps that’s because although the series continues (I still breathe my life-tide across canvas or paper) there’s been a shift from the solid straight line. It’s restless; it wants to dance, to celebrate.

I’m exploring a new dynamism, profoundly inspired by the work of a contemporary Aboriginal artist – about whom, more in another post …

curiosity and wonderment [page]
walking the way of wonder
creating from wonder 1
creating from wonder 2
creating from wonder 3

07.09.12 + here I am!

September 7, 2012May 31, 2016 | miriam louisa simons

daily details 07.09.12

canvas, acrylic paints, painted silk, fiber reactive dyes, cotton cord, gold lurex thread, seashells, gold paint

Creativity is a celebration of life – my celebration of life.
It is a bold statement: I am here! I love life! I love me!
I can be anything! I can do anything!

– Joseph Zinker

the reach of your compassion is the reach of your art

January 27, 2010May 26, 2016 | miriam louisa simons

Today is my birthday: sixty six wondrous orbits of the sun. Many people comment that Life seems to turn up the screws around one’s birthday time, and it’s certainly been the case here.

About a month ago wonderingmind studio began being dismantled. Materials, paints, equipment disappeared into cartons. Some found their way to the art department of a local school for autistic kids. Some went to a charity that organizes art and creativity events for city youngsters.

Works-in-progress and completed pieces came down off the walls. Shelving was flat-packed, books sorted and passed on.

It was like packing up a life – which is exactly what it was.

And what a timely opportunity to take stock! I was over at Zen Dot Studio recently and found that its author is also in the midst of moving house. I loved the way she had penned her thoughts and observations about the moving process and all that it reveals, and wished I’d had more energy to blog my own. But it was all too exhausting at the time.

It’s one thing to move from one home/studio to a new one and quite another to pack up a life without knowing when – or where – it will emerge from the boxes again. My boxed life has gone into a storage unit. My unencumbered life is moving on.

It demands to be let loose again; the circumstances that constrained it for the past decade (caring for precious parents) have changed. There have been long months in that intense and deep place called Griefland, which I have come to understand is really a place of R & R. And of adjustment – to absence. It heals. Allowing the energies to bubble to the surface of the lifestream, embracing them and loving them, has worked wonders. The stream enters deeper waters, vast, silent, unknown. I know this ‘place’ – I call it the via creativa. Another chapter begins …

Joseph Campbell wrote that the reach of your compassion is the reach of your art. I feel that the gift of this past decade – the gift my ancient, beloved Mum and Dad gave me – was the swelling and bursting open of a heart that had become pretty dried up by life’s apparent disappointments. From a shriveled up pea it has slowly unfurled into a quivering flower. Its perfume is Compassion.

How will it express itself? Will there be more art-making? Perhaps. Meanwhile, it is reaching out to simply share. And so, I scribble on this little blog.