Been feeling out of sorts lately, haven’t been able to paint. 🙁

Sat down with my journal and forced some doodles two days ago…

I always come back to Rilke.

And Rilke always brings me back.

Acrylic on paper, July 2010

Go for the house on top of the hill!

Lazing, Acrylic on canvas, 12X16, July 2010

I like painting quietly.

For two nights now I’ve been experimenting with a new medium…acrylics.  Water-based, so I can paint indoors, yay.  Dries super quickly, so results are almost instant.  Very interesting possibilities, but trade offs are: not much blending allowed and can’t mix big color batches in one go (the paint dries up quickly!).  Challenge is to work on color mixing, and mixing the same shades again and again.

Just the same, excited for the many adventures ahead.  I have a new toy, time to play play play!

Ink on Paper, May 2010

Although we try to keep a proactive mindset everyday, at some point we do catch ourselves waiting. Waiting for inspiration to hit, for new opportunities to arrive.

This slipping–for days to become better on their own, or for elephants to fall from the sky–is there a constructive or win-win way of doing it?

When does waiting shift from being passive to active?

Ink on Paper, May 2010

Ink on Paper, May 2010

Ink on Paper, May 2010

One of my favorite questions, and also one of my favorite answers.

When I am lost or confused, it always boils down to it–I go by Truth, it is my radar.

I found these old cards I made for friends, maybe in 2000. Never got to give them away, would make for a good surprise now, 10 years after.

Interesting to see how I saw them then, and also how we related to each other then.

Reminds me of a passage I read in Julian Sleigh’s “Friends and Lovers”, that there are three things going on simultaneously in any friendship, and they are worth recognizing:
1. the changes going on within person A
2. the changes going on within person B
3. the changes going on within the actual friendship between person A with B

Sometimes we get stuck on just one of these sets of changes, and we fail to see objectively what the situation with a certain person presents, and what it demands of us.

I hope it’s not too late for these well-wishes to be received with the same love they were created 10 years ago 🙂

Hugs, friends! 🙂

Gouache on board, July 2010

I tried meditating seriously for the first time last night, and I saw this. A dark enclosure–me within it–and a faint light peering in. Or maybe it was the opposite. It was the darkness carving its way into the bigger lightness around it.

It was pleasant and inviting, and I hope to visit that place again.

Gouache on board, July 2010

Sometimes we are guilty of beholding people we admire, and wish to emulate, and we fail to recognize that what we hold so sacred and highly in them is just a shadow of the light that they themselves hold sacred. When our quest is to behold Truth, to come face-to-face with the Greatest and Indescribable, we will inevitably come across people who have gone ahead of us, and who will help show us the way.

But to have a real familiarity with God, to know God, to be intimate with God, we must come to the source ourselves, and behold God ourselves. There is no borrowing, no making do with secondary light. We can’t live in the borrowed faith of our mentors. We are all built for the Lightest of Lights, we must not insult it and ourselves by settling for less.

Gouache on board, July 2010

I went from God to God until they cried from me in me, “Oh thou I!”

-Bayazid of Bistun

Last May, two of my best friends “sat” for me, and I had the chance to draw from real life for the first time.

I tried rendering these pencil drawings using oil pastels on wood, unsure of how to do shadows and lighting, but was quite pleased with what came out:

Now the bigger challenge is to transfer them onto canvas!