It’s sweaty summer downunder and the mind of winter is a far-off fantasy. But if the Xmas fairy comes with a wish to grant, it’ll be an easy choice for me: I’d love to attend this zen art retreat at Zen Mountain Monastery. Here’s some info from the website:

Winter is a season of deep stillness. The landscape is bare, sounds are crisp, and living creatures turn inward, seeking warmth, rest, and renewal. For many of us, winter can also be a period of trial and difficulty, a time when the life force that is at the root of our urge to create feels a bit frozen. If we look closely, though, the energy and creative potential are always there. As long as there is life, the potential is full.In this retreat, we will focus on opening the heart and mind to dispel the belief that we need special circumstances to create. We will see that, whatever state we find ourselves in, it’s possible to pick up a brush, face that situation, and use it. We just need to act with integrity. Then, simply marking a white surface with color fully expresses our creativity. We can enter wherever we are.We’ll also have a chance to see how thirsty we are for exploration without analysis. To paint with feeling means to not know. We will explore not-knowing by painting and experiencing the movement of our bodies until the movement takes over and the unfolding of the unexpected becomes the energy that drives the brush. We may find it strange to be in a place we can’t define, but this is where true learning takes place and creativity is born.

Visit the web page for more info. And if you go (you lucky sod), let me know …

NB - image copyright Zen Mountain Monastery website

As far as I can gather, in the context of blogsville, an avatar is a symbol for a site and its scribbler. Symbols speak. They are stand-ins for words. (Words are symbols too, but that’s another story.)

I wanted my avatar to be more than a decorative motif. It had to say something about what my site and my work is concerned with - and hence its scribbler.

I’ve always been interested in the phenomenon of perception and its relationship to the creative life. Our response to anything depends on how we ’see it’, and this includes one’s creativity as well as one’s daily life. Habitually we see what we look for - which implies that we knew beforehand what we’d find. In other words, we are looking from our conditioning, out of the past, the known. But there’s another way of seeing: a kind of direct or global seeing. We stumble upon it when - for whatever reason - we are looking with innocence, without agenda, without labelling. I wanted to find an image that would portray these two very different modes of perceiving.

This one met my requirements. It demonstrates the way one’s perception can shift at lightning speed to view two (in this case) possible readings of an image (situation) - neither of which is the right or wrong one. Perception cannot show both images simultaneously. But once they have both been perceived they cannot be denied. The brain changes. Wonderment flows in. This is very good for the creative life.

I also like the way there’s only ONE motif, yet hidden within it are two possible alternative images. One of them shows a large white cube with a black space recessed into the foreground corner. The other shows a black box protruding from a white background. If I think of myself as that black area, I get a neat description of my relationship with the Whole. Most of the time I’m busy strutting ‘my’ stuff, and interconnectedness with the Whole is forgotten. Then, unpredictably and without invitation, Oneness strikes and I’m back in my proper place again, embedded in the Whole, being SPACE. This is when genuine creativity flows, and I’m awed at the results.

In either event, Oneness is all there is …

If the perils and pitfalls of perception interest you - particularly if you’re an artist - I highly recommend Art and Illusion by E H Gombrich.

For a fascinating account of how one woman tracked her own processes of perception, look at A Life of One’s Own by Marion Milner.

And if you’d like to download my free e-book believing is seeing just click here. It’s full of puzzles and activities designed to demonstrate the way perception works - a handy resource for both teachers and students.

God created the giraffe, the cat, the elephant …

He has no real style, he just keeps trying things.

Pablo Picasso

find a heap of quotes about creativity here
and about everything under the sun here

My version of the via creativa isn’t a path, it’s a journey.  The path opens up beneath one’s feet as one wonders about and explores the possibilities presented by life.  Life as-it-is, here and now, in this very moment.

I’m in awe of the movement of the via creativa in my life.  If I’m open and my mind isn’t yapping away telling me what I should do and how it should look, amazing ideas and possibilities arise.  Connections happen.  Questions form themselves.  Wonderingmind flowers.

Many years ago I studied traditional and contemporary textile surface design in Japan.  I often used shibori dyeing techniques in my work - both in wearable art and wall pieces.  Here’s an example of an early work:

 It’s called ebbing:Leigh
(900 x 550: arashi shibori, stitching, canvas, washi, silk cords, found object)
In my notes for this piece I wrote:
I spent the winter of 1987 in a sleepy village called Leigh on the Pacific Coast.  The cottage overlooked the harbour where small fishing boats and yachts would anchor, and the water view reached over to Little Barrier Island.  The pattern produced by the arashi process brings to mind the ripples on the tide as well as the patterns left in the sand by the ebbing tide.

 Years later I was fossicking through fabric scraps and came upon some more bits of the arashi shibori cloth I’d dyed during those years.

Hmmmm.  Wonderingmind liked the patterns; the way the indigo dye flowed in softly graduated tones from dark to light.  I’d been painting with acrylics more recently, layering them on textured canvas in a technique I call making love with light (thank you daido loori, sensei).  Wonderingmind asked: what if the arashi patterns were transferred to canvas and I played with light upon them?

 And so the aquascape series created itself.  The banner image at the top of this page is a detail from one of them.  You can view more here.

This is my first post to a blog of any shape or size - imagine waiting for over 6 decades for the experience!

On my website I have a little marquee scrolling across the top of each page. It reads … relax into the art of not-knowing … revel in the joy of wondering mind …

This is good advice to myself. I’m keeping it conscious (between hair-pulling and teeth-gnashing) as I fumble my way with the construction of this site “… one error at a time …” as the wise timethief quoth! (Where would those of us suffering from blogger beginner’s mind be without timethief?)

I must also be patient. And if you’ve found your way here I apologise for the lack of - anything much - as yet. If I could have completed the site before publishing I’d be happier, but there ya go. Everyone gets to watch. This is a new experience. Woooo Hoooo!