February 16, 2016 – Taking a breath of self-love

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After reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s book “Big Magic” recently, I began following her somewhat frequent Facebook posts. Last Wednesday, she wrote a long post on her worry about the extent to which, we are hard on ourselves – she asked if we can love all the parts of us we hate. Hate is a strong word, but I can understand the wisdom in using it. If she were to understate our self-criticism, she’d be leaving out, those of us in the deepest pain. The rawness and realness of her post compelled me to share it on my own personal page – inviting you all to join me, in a self-love movement.

The next morning I woke with a fire burning inside. I felt the various threads, of what has been coming through me lately to write on Tuesdays, weaving together. I realized I needed to actually preach, in my three watercolor groups. So, I did just that with each of them – and now I am again here with you – the rest of you who “listen” to me.

In EG’s post, she recounted a meeting between the meditation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg, and the Dalai Lama. When Sharon asked him what he thought of self-hatred, he had no idea what she was talking about. It seems that bashing ourselves is a Western phenomenon. This triggered something in me about the left and right brain – and what I’m gleaning from, “The Master and His Emissary.” Iain McGilchrist is also worried about our Western culture-run world, because of the dominance of the left brain. It makes sense to me that when we habitually operate more from our left brains, with their lack of context, fixation and tendency to manipulation – without the wider view of our right brains that are connection-oriented and relational to balance us out, we are at the mercy (or lack thereof, more accurately) of our inner-critical voices.

Iain McGilchrist gave me another incredible piece to the puzzle, that I’ve not yet written about, which weaves in here too. In an interview I listened to, he said that matter – physical matter – is a state of consciousness. Like the forms H2O takes – steam, water and ice, our consciousness has a non-physical form, which then can become physical – and in doing so, we create our world. I was blown away by this. Of course! Every physical thing – at least those that we create – starts as an idea before we make it into form. I’ve said that the consciousness of the artist is in her or his work, but this takes it a bit further, our artwork is our consciousness – in physical form. Ok, so then when we are picking apart our work, as we are creating it, it’s the same thing as picking ourselves apart.

Iain McGilchrist says that the dominance of the left-brain has been increasing over time, worrying him about our future. If what we need is to operate more from our right-brains, minding our thoughts as we paint, is one way we can do our part to turn the tide. In my “sermons” last week, what I asked of the artists in my groups is this: every time we notice the voice that says, this doesn’t look right, I can’t do this, what a mess this is, I’m ruining this painting, to stop and take a deep, soft belly breath. I invite us to bring our attention out of our heads, and remember we are in a body that breathes. We are alive and here. I have no idea where this came from. I have no idea if this indeed, brings us into our right-brains, but our breath always happens in this moment and brings peace and calm – so it can never hurt. And then I want us to remind ourselves, that there is no reason to think, that we could or even should be painting any differently than we do in this moment – with our experience to date, the extent to which we’ve practiced, our own personal sensibilities and tendencies – we paint as we paint in this moment – and that is just fine – it has its own kind of perfection, even.

Since I fervently shared this with my groups last week, I’ve been painting myself (every day, haven’t missed one so far), and I see that the tricky part is actually noticing the voice. We are so used to living with these voices, that it seems normal to have them yammering and hammering along. This draws in the thread of the importance of awareness and attention – the subject of another recent post. It takes practice to grow our awareness, to have the capacity to interrupt the autopilot to bring in the breath – and the reminder that we are ok. I’m hearing over and over lately, that meditation helps this. (Here are 5 forms that don’t require standing still.) It expands our pre-frontal cortex – the part of our brains that makes conscious choices.

But also so does showing up – for ourselves and for each other. I see it in every single group meeting on Thursdays and Fridays – all the appreciation that is shared from one artist to another, for the work they are doing. We are each other’s reminders, of the perfection of this moment and the art being created in it. Our paintings are a result of a whole bunch of these moments. With awareness – self-generated or when reminded by another – we have an opportunity to re-focus our attention – away from fixating on the part/parts of our paintings (or ourselves) that we find fault with, to the expanded view of the whole painting and our whole selves. What we attend to creates our reality – attending to the goodness of this moment brings that goodness – appreciation – love – into our lives.

For a few weeks, I’ve been finding myself being edgy and short with a few people who are closest to me, including my husband and my dear friend. I have been feeling really terrible about it, and was beating up on myself for it. In my coaching group it was pointed out to me, that I might be being edgy and short with myself. This was an enormous gift of awareness which had me realize, I needed to be patient and gentle with myself, extra patient and gentle, actually. Whatever we do to ourselves, has a ripple effect. When I can bring to myself the gaze of accepting love – for all my parts, even and especially those I’m picking apart, I can bring that gaze to all the parts of everyone in my life, that I want to pick apart too. I believe with all of me, that loving ourselves is the most important thing we can do to change the world. Bringing our light to darkness wherever we encounter it, is the whole enchilada. We all have the light of God in us – the light of love. It’s hard to remember this, but when we do, it shines brighter.

With all my love,

Cara

February 9, 2016 – Photos or life? We get to decide

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The very first time I painted in watercolor, I painted from life. It was a blue Dutch iris in that first Saturday class, I took with my mom. From there, I painted a few more quarter sheet paintings of flowers, also from life. My mom quickly shifted to working from photographs, and I remember saying, that I couldn’t really see what I was painting, unless it was sitting in front of me. A few years after this, I made the shift – and for something like 16 or 17 years now, I’ve painted only from photographs, and have come to appreciate photography, as an integral part of my process.

It is often said in the art and art instruction world, that working from photographs is bad or inferior. Here’s a post that describes the problems with working from photos, encouraging us to work from life. Using reference photos isn’t perfect. There are often ambiguities in a photo, that are no longer resolvable, because the subject isn’t in front of us when we are painting. There are weird or at least curious shapes that don’t “make sense” – and since the complete conversion to digital cameras, I am frustrated by too much contrast and “blown out” highlights – where light areas are just big splashes of white, losing the subtlety. Regardless, I’m nowhere without photos.

Looking through all my paintings, I can see almost none of them would have been possible without a camera capturing the image for me, to paint at another time and in another place. I’m not drawn to paint in the vein of classical still lifes and plein air landscapes. My images come from impractical painting places, like in a fancy food shop in Paris or up a ladder inside a fruit tree, or crouched to catch the last bits of evening light, in my brother’s backyard micro-vineyard. And they come from subjects whose time has passed, like two of our dogs, who I painted after they were no longer living. Then there’s the problem of time. I capture light as it is in a fleeting moment – and I want to get a compelling composition. When it takes me on average a month to make a painting, there’s just no way to do what I do, without a photo to work from.

Even more, I’ve come to see photography and “playing” with my images in the computer, as an integral part of my creative process. It’s actually the more fun part! I’ve been asked about whether I get into a flow state when I’m painting. Maybe some artists do, but for me this part is real work. It requires me to focus intensely and I’m almost always accompanied by that critical voice. Towards the end of a painting, when I’m glazing over with a big wet brush to shift color or temperature, the process can feel really loose and flow-y – but mostly it’s not. The more free part of my process, is when I’m out with my camera. I’m in a state of expectancy, open to whatever tells me to paint it. Then when I’m back at my computer, looking through what I’ve captured, I can happily spend hours and hours, cropping and making shifts to the color and light. I collage several images together sometimes too – to make a final image, that I can imagine happily spending a month or so zoomed into, as I bring it back to life on watercolor paper. I spend time with the projector, looking at these images expanded on the wall as the final step. Some images “work” when I see them big and some that I thought might, just don’t. The final decision comes, when I imagine it amongst those I’ve already painted. If it would live happily, holding its own amongst my work-so-far, I’ll paint it.

I’ve just about finished these candy hearts. The idea to paint them came to me a couple years ago. I went to Rite Aid and bought a few boxes of the candies, dumped them in a bowl and took a bunch of photos. I don’t know what it is about one image that makes it more pleasing than another, but some just stand out. Here are two of the photos as I took them, before cropping. I decided to play with the one on the right.

To accompany all of the other paintings I’ve done of sweets, I cropped it square (left image). Not so sure about “CU SOON” as the most prominent message, I took another photo that had a pink heart with “DREAM” on it. I lifted the lettering and replaced it (center image). Then the colors seemed out of balance. So, I made more of them pink, blue and yellow to make myself happy (right image).

Lastly, it took me a couple of years to actually get to painting it! I kept thinking about it too late to finish by Valentine’s Day – and this painting definitely has a season! Now that it is done in time this year, I find it light-hearted fun – the sentiments and all the pastel colors. Though it doesn’t grab me and feel somehow as “important” as my floral paintings of late do, I had a good time painting all the colors and shapes – and it and it will make a sweet card. But I hope sharing this with you, shows you that I followed my own process, to make these candy hearts into a painting. I used photography to compose – then I chose the image, the cropping/composition and the color, all based on the photos I took.

In a Tuesday group about two years ago, I heard myself say something to Robin, that I’ve repeated over and over since. As she was laboring over the details of her reference photograph, to reproduce it absolutely faithfully, I said “you are not a slave to this photo, it is your servant.” Our reference photos have preserved much of the information, that was there when we experienced our subject matter in real life – at least to the best of the camera’s ability. And they provide infinitely more information than – at least my – memory can. Using it, I’m able to re-create the shapes and shades and colors to make my painting. I’m very happy to be an artist at this point in time – with all the technical tools we have at our disposal, to bring through the art that is in us.

My purpose has become increasingly clear to me – I’m here to provide the environments, the instruction and the encouragement, to help you bring forth the art that is in you. To that end, I’ll use and provide anything to free you from the constraints that prevent you from making art that pleases you – even astonishes you. Besides this, it’s hard enough to do what we do – why not use these tools? Especially if we start to paint later in life, we just want to get to it – to play with color and subjects that light us up, without spending time – months or even years – making art as part of a prescribed curriculum. I’ve always wanted to paint what I’ve wanted to paint. And by doing so, I’ve learned to do what I do.

Freedom – mine and yours – is my priority. Fortunately, most of us live lives that allow us to choose it. But sometimes, we hear the voices of others – often including the words “should” or “shouldn’t” in our heads. And, as we are starting out, we may be inclined to have these voices lead us off our own path. I’m here to remind you that you are not a slave to any of it. Anything that comes your way as you learn to paint – instruction (including from me!), other’s processes, other’s art – is all there to serve you and your process. You and only you hold the vision of your art. You get to decide how it comes to be.

Here’s to your freedom!

Love,

Cara

February 2, 2016 – Fifty shades of love

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Nearly every Sunday, my folks host a dinner for us – their four kids and our families. My dad plans and cooks – with help from us. And lately, my mom has been making homemade bread and rolls – there’s hardly a better smell, than that of yeast bread baking in the oven. We aren’t all there every single Sunday, but it’s usually a table of at least 10 of us. My family is one of the greatest blessings of this life of mine. We all not only get along, but we genuinely like each other, and the discussion at the Sunday table is often lively and engaged – we are an interested and curious bunch. This past Sunday, my brother Mike and I got on the subject of the different words the Greeks have for “love.” We couldn’t think of all of the three we thought there were, so out came an electronic device to ask Google. The Wikipedia page for the Greek words for love, includes not just three, but four. They are:

Agape – (pronounced ah-gop-ay, nothing to do with having one’s jaw hanging down, as Matt joked!) which is love for everyone, love of God for us and us for God. Its Latin equivalent is caritas, from which we get charity – which could also be metta, loving kindness in Buddhism.

Eros – often seen as passionate, sexual love, it also has meanings that extend to the appreciation of beauty within another person, and even to just an appreciation of beauty itself – as well as an appreciation of truth. Eros is the love of lovers and philosophers.

Philia – means affectionate regard or friendship – usually between equals. It’s the root for the name of the city Philadelphia, and in words like “Francophile” and “bibliophile.” This love includes loyalty to friends, family and community, and involves familiarity.

Storge – the love and empathy felt and expressed in families, especially between parents and children – I don’t have kids, but I can imagine how strong that love is, that it would certainly warrant a word of its own. I do have parents and I know that love. All I need to do to feel the depth of it, is to imagine what life will be like when they are no longer here.

The Wikipedia article says there are at least these four words. I found other pages online that include six Greek words for love – and not the same six. Who knows how many there could be? A chat with my brother and a hunt around the web, has me looking at all the ways we love. Here are more I’m seeing:

The love we share with our pets. The pet food and supply industry isn’t in the billions for nothing. Our pets meet our hearts in a way that other beings just somehow don’t. We love our Bo-doggy something crazy, and though it often takes the form of wanting food or play, I know he loves us back. Around here, our days start with a lick-bath all over our faces and necks. We have a kissy dog!

The love we have for our planet and also that it has for us. It’s evident to see the love we have for the earth – it fuels an enormous environmental movement, but I think our Mother Earth loves us too. Her electromagnetic field protects our atmosphere, from being swept away by solar winds and gravity hugs us close to her, so that we don’t float away. This sounds just like what mothers and fathers do. Add to this the intricate, complex web of life-giving, life-supporting elements that is our Earth. She must have a vast love for her creatures.

There is the love that we have for ourselves – when it comes from higher consciousness – it is what has us know we belong, and are a unique, and precious expression of the “big love” that is all of life. Without it we can’t express love – and in fact it has us be destructive. It can be really hard at times to love ourselves, and I’ve taken on growing it as a practice. I had a really uncomfortable moment last weekend, at the workshop I went to. No one else really knew it at the time, but I felt an icky wave of self-doubt and regret at something I shared publicly, and how it was responded to. I am really thankful to be at this place in my life, that led me to the reaction I had. I reminded myself not to take the response personally, and I appreciated the experience as an opportunity to love myself – all of myself – even in that moment. How do we know we really love ourselves, if we don’t know we can love ourselves in times like these!?

Then there is the love that we can have for our creations. Loving our art can be just as hard as loving ourselves. Our hyper-focused left-brain can take over the response to our work, and all we see is what’s “wrong” with it – it’s a painful place! But if we don’t have some kind of loving relationship with our creative work, it’s neither rewarding nor any fun to do. I’ve come to hold painting as a devotion, one that I come to with reverence. And I have a deep appreciation for my materials. I’m in love with good watercolor paper, and don’t get me started about my love of color!

And… there is the love that that our creations have for us! This is another gem from Liz Gilbert’s, “Big Magic.” Our art, our work, our creativity loves us back! She says: “Why would your creativity not love you? It came to you, didn’t it? It drew itself near. It worked itself into you, asking for your attention and devotion. It filled you with the desire to make and do interesting things. Creativity wanted a relationship with you.” I think it’s really useful to think of our work as an entity outside of us, that cares about our well-being. Ideas come to us as gifts, invitations to create, for us to make manifest. They want to come into form, and they come to us out of an appreciation – a love – of each of us as creators. Seeing it this way, I hold myself as an artist, as a creator in a whole other light. Plus, it certainly helps my capacity to love my creations in return!

A confession: I’ve not read any of the Fifty Shades books, so I really don’t know what I’m alluding to in the title of this post. But, like the myth that Eskimos have a whole bunch of words for snow, it follows that – as creations of love, expressers of love, givers and receivers of love, we’d need a whole bunch of them for love too – the Greeks just got us started. Rather than simply come up with words, though, I suggest we make love. Sure – in the sense that “making love” usually means – sex can be a beautiful expression of human love. But we can make love in all that we do: make art love, make food love, make business love, make politics love, make relationship love, make healing love. When we do, fifty shades just barely scratches the surface.

With my love,

Cara

January 26, 2016 – Awareness and attention are EVERYTHING!

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Somewhere along the way – a really, really long time ago – an idea got ahold of me that the most important thing, what makes us us, is what we pay attention to and how we pay attention. I have no idea how this idea came to me – maybe it was a spontaneous insight that was bestowed upon me, like passing Go and collecting $200 on my way around the board. But it’s stuck with me. And lately it’s really alive in me. I’m hearing from others and trying it on, and am seeing that it’s so true! I know a woman Nancy, who pays attention to birds. She sees them wherever she goes, she learns about them, so she has enormous knowledge about them – she knows about their migrations and habitats. And it is through her, that I’ve been converted so that I only buy recycled paper products, in order to help save the virgin Boreal forests in Canada, that are lumbered for fluffy toilet paper. Her attention to birds has changed me.

I’m continuing to read through parts of “The Master and His Emissary” – the book by Iain McGilchrist, that I shared with you last week. In describing what he’s discovered about the left and right brain, he talks a lot about attention. He says: “The kind of attention we pay actually alters the world: we are, literally, partners in creation. This means we have a grave responsibility, a word that captures the reciprocal nature of the dialogue we have with whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves.” So, based on this, how we pay attention – how we attend to everything apart from us, creates our relationships with all of it, which then creates our reality. He uses the example of a mountain: to a navigator it’s a landmark, a source of wealth to a prospector, a many-textured form to a painter, a dwelling place of the gods for another. He says there is no way to distinguish from these points of view, what the “real” mountain is. I find this fascinating but also really key, if we want to be intentional about not only our own lives – but the future of life on earth.

I just spent the weekend – along with 195 others – with Alison Armstrong – one of my teachers. We explored the questions that we consciously – and more often unconsciously – “live in” and the impact they have on us. In looking at it, I see the questions we live in determine the quality of our lives, because they govern our attention. If – as I realized I do sometimes – I am living through the filter the question of: “what if I don’t know enough, have enough experience, have what it takes?”, then I pay attention to all the things, for example, how many more years other art teachers have been teaching – I compare myself to them and I don’t measure up. This can stop me from moving forward on my ideas and inspirations. But I also realized that I don’t just live in that question – I also have come to live in the same question shifted: “what if risking not knowing enough, is exactly what is required and what will give me the knowledge and experience I fear I don’t have?”

Alison had a guest, Bill Harris, an author and teacher on the brain, who talked with us about the role awareness plays in our lives. Without it, we have no choice in how we feel, think or act. We operate on autopilot. Awareness is the observer that pays attention to us as we do what we do. If there is something that isn’t producing our desired results, with awareness, we can choose to do things differently in the future. Without awareness, we have no such choice. We are stuck.

And of course awareness and attention are critical in our painting lives. Maria a new retiree, who has just taken up painting and is really throwing herself at it, came in one day to report that she’s seeing differently. She is noticing things she hasn’t before – like, while crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, the interesting view of the far tower through one of the openings in the tower close to her. I hear others report similarly – in the middle of their days – wondering how to paint clouds or trees, or whatever is in front of them. I find myself noticing light and how it casts itself on things in the world – all the time. We start painting and our attention shifts to the ways our visual world is calling out for us to paint it.

I realize that mostly what people want, when they are drawn to paint in one of my groups, are painting skills. They want to know how to paint – a water drop, a fuzzy background. I’m really happy to share all I know about painting watercolor, in order to help free the art that is within whoever is in front of me. And what I’m really, more deeply, called to do is to help grow your awareness – your capacity to see. I want for you to be able to discern – color, shape, shade in your subjects – the what you are painting, as well as to pay attention to what happens with a certain amount of water, paint, size of brush – the how you are painting.

What I was reminded of this weekend, is that the more we focus our attention on things, become aware of things and practice things, we actually change the physical structure of our brains. We grow our capacities. And by becoming more aware of our surroundings, by paying closer attention, we shift our experience of the world. When our experience shifts, everything changes.

I’m often amazed by the incredible specialization that people have in our world. The internet has revealed this – and even fostered it. You can find out about anything on Wikipedia – all because there are people who pay attention to these things – giving the rest of us the gift to grow our awareness of them. I’m so glad that all these bases are covered, so that I can do my part – attending to the transformation that we undergo, as we bring forth the art that is in us. We make our art and this changes us, and it changes the world.

With my love,

Cara

January 19, 2016 – Left and right brain – not what we thought!

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There are a couple of themes that have taken ahold of this life of mine – one of them is a seemingly insatiable curiosity, about how we work as humans, why we do what we do, how our consciousness grows and changes, and leads to the evolution of our species. And the other is the dance between the masculine and feminine – not necessarily male and female. Rather than physical biology, I mean energies and modes – yin and yang, passive and active, receptor and provider – elements that we all embody and live out to varying degrees.

These two elements have come together recently in some new discoveries. My Sister Mary (my spiritual-director, not my sibling) pointed me to Iain McGilchrist – a psychiatrist and author who wrote a book called, “The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.” I’ve started reading it and it’s interesting but dense, and I’m not making much headway. So I’ve found other resources – including a TED talk and a much shorter e-book, “The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning” (which is downloadable for only $.99) that gave an idea of what he’s discovered and the conclusions he’s made. It’s completely fascinating to me, and it’s something that I think is useful to our lives and art-making.

In it, I’ve learned that how we think of the left and right brain, means something completely different than we thought. Common thinking of the left and right brain, have been along these lines: the left brain is rational, logical, language and math-oriented and deals in symbols, while the right brain is spatial, emotional, and creative and sees the world in shapes and curves and lines – rather as “things.” It’s been known in the scientific community for a while, that this is false. We use both halves of our brains for language, for visuospatial imagery, emotion and reason. Yet, there is a very distinct difference in our two hemispheres, both physically and how they operate, as is revealed in stroke patients who lose parts of their brain function.

What he reveals is this. It’s not so much what the two halves of our brains do, it’s how they do it that is the big differentiator. Here’s how:

Looking at this list, I can imagine how some of us may have a preference for the right brain. It goes without saying, though, that we need both in order to function. So that we are not on overwhelm, we have to be able to draw upon what we know and understand already. I cannot imagine a life where everything was new all the time! I remember when I was a teenager, learning to drive a manual transmission car. It took all my attention, to manage the timing of releasing the clutch as I pressed the accelerator, in order to not have the car lurch or have the engine die.

The way I interpret what he says, this was an engagement of my right brain. But then once I became skilled, how to do this became second nature, and I didn’t have to think about it. My intense focus is no longer required every time I get behind the wheel – but rather my left brain guides my driving based on what I already know. Please note, though, I could be entirely wrong here. What he says may not apply to motor skills (that is mine, not the cars!). It’s just that this was a really powerful memory of learning something new and – to me – it seems relevant!

It’s also how it goes when we learn to paint – we rely upon our left brains. There is knowledge – about paints and pigments, about paper and brushes – and our experiences of working with them, that we use to do the work of making our art. If every time we sat to paint, we were enthralled with everything, as if it were the first time we used it, we’d never progress in our skill and be able to evolve our capacity to express what is inside us – in the form of paintings.

I also think that we use our left brains, when we evaluate our work as we go. When I’m in the process of painting something that doesn’t quite “live” like I want it to, I use my powers of evaluation and comparison, to determine what information is there for me in the photograph I’m working from, that differs from what I’ve painted. Is it darker or a different shape, what might have I left out? I also think that it’s our left brain that causes us a lot of heartache, in its criticism of what we’re painting – especially as it is in progress. The left brain can tend to fixate on little parts of the painting, that aren’t “right” in its estimation. Just recalling the experience of that kind of thinking, and I feel heavy inside.

But it’s our right brains that hold the big picture in our work. This is where we respond to a composition, where we sense the spark of inspiration – that “I want to paint this,” where we find things interesting. It’s the where we find the motivation to do our work and the meaning in it. It’s also our right brains that have us really see what’s there – which is consistent with what I’d previously though was domain of the right brain.

I take a photo of everyone’s painting, at the end of each painting session. They often – especially at the beginning of a painting – tell me there’s nothing to take a picture of. But I insist, as the germ of their genius is already there, and it becomes really useful and interesting, once the painting is done. As well, it’s fleeting – as soon as more is painted, that particular state is no more. When the paintings are further along, they are often surprisingly pleased when they see their work in my phone. Since the right brain sees the big picture, when we are in progress with our work, it takes distance to catch the glimmers of what’s coming to be. The image in the phone provides this distance. We can’t make the critical judgements, so we can see the painting more as everyone else does – and we see that it’s not that bad!

I just had a conversation with my coach Lissa, who was bowled over by my latest painting – Firelight. Her reaction was powerful, emotional, and it touched her so deeply, it brought her to tears. This was after I just wrote two weeks ago that, “it’s not my most inspired work, but I think it’s ok.” She clearly saw this painting in a right-hemisphere way, while I was/am still stuck seeing it in my comparing left-brain. I am grateful that in time – though sometimes it takes months – I do develop the capacity to see the spirit in my artwork as others do – who were not in the nitty-gritties of painting it.

We live in a world that is dominated by our left brain sensibilities: rules, facts, being “certain” about things. Iain McGilchrist makes a strong case, for the need to bring our right brains into our lives more – he even intimates, that our survival may depend upon it. We need to grow our capacities to see the inter-relatedness of everything, to have our intuition guide our decisions, to seek meaning in life. He says this: “the left hemisphere’s values are those of utility and pleasure. But meaning cannot come from this linear project any more than happiness can be pursued. Happiness and fulfillment have to be the by-products of something else, of looking elsewhere.” We can practice this in our creative endeavors. This says to me, that we have to make our work largely with one part of our capacities, but then we need to see it, receive it, find its true value and meaning with the other.

I’d love to know what you think.

With my love,

Cara

January 12, 2016 – Showing up

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Last night while I was painting, I was having a conversation with my dear friend, Vicki. At one point, she said “You show up. You show up for your family, for your friends, for your students, you show up in your life.” I love Vicki and our friendship. She affirms me in a very particular way, that provides such support to me. After she said this, we had a whole conversation about “showing up.” It then occurred to me, that I could write about “showing up” this morning. I continue to be amazed by how ideas for these posts come to me. There’s something about having made the commitment to write every week, that puts the sources of inspiration on notice – that by first thing Tuesday morning, I’ll be needing some!

Vicki is right, I do show up. I was born to a family of people who all really show up. We show up for each other, for our work, for the people in our lives. It’s what we do. Vicki and I wondered what has us show up – what causes our engagement. Environment seems to play a part – either we were raised in a family that shows up, or we show up as a response to having been raised in a family that didn’t. What occurs to me this morning, is that showing up is related to being connected. We show up for who and what we feel connected to. And – in order to show up, we have to have a sense of our own value – somewhere along the way we got that who we are matters, what we bring matters, and our making a contribution matters. All of this energizes us to show up in life.

My writing this morning was interrupted by my brother-in-law, Paul. He’s a plumber and he came over to fix the leaky flapper in the upstairs toilet. So, I asked him what “showing up” means to him and why he shows up. He told me: I don’t have to show up. I’m an independent person, and have the freedom to show up or not show up. But I choose to show up because it increases my humanity. It’s a vitamin. Showing up is important – there’s a power in showing up. If I don’t show up, my humanity is eroded.

I think he’s speaking to that connection.

I have so many people in my life who show up for me – my husband, my mom, my friends, the artists in my groups. All of you who come to shows to see me and my work, show up for me. Being on the receiving end of showing up is both wonderful and challenging. It’s wonderful to be so supported, and it’s hard sometimes to receive all that comes my way – all the ways in which I’m contributed to. It takes a sense of our own value, to fully be on the receiving end of showing up too.

If you look for it, the pull to show up to in life is everywhere. Our help is needed in all kinds of ways. Events lure for our attention. People invite us to be with them. And we can’t show up for everything. Our lives offer us a limited amount of time, energy and attention. Showing up too much for our work or causes in the world, can mean we don’t show up enough for our families or our bodies – or to listen to the whispers of our souls. It’s a dance, a balance. Showing up, as Paul said, is choosing.

This got me wondering what it really means to show up. The definitions I found online though didn’t seem complete. They center around making an appearance, being present, materializing. This is part of it, but it misses a whole lot. There’s also a being quality to showing up, as in being present, focusing, paying attention – as well it also means taking action, supporting, pitching in.

Woody Allen is famously quoted has saying, that “eighty percent of life is showing up.” On his Wikiquote page, there is a more extensive quote which expands upon this, talking about the difference between wanting to write a novel or screenplay, and actually writing one. Yes, we also can show up – or not – for our creative work. This means making an appearance at the keyboard, or in the studio, present, focusing our attention – and taking action. Showing up for my painting requires me to sit down and paint!

Yesterday morning our group show came down – the Incredible Edibles show at the Marin Civic Center. There was lots of art to pack into the truck, and deliver to Larkspur and to my house. There were calendar orders to pack and get to the post office. Then I had my regular Monday admin work to do – this meant I didn’t get home until 7:30, and by the time I had a bite to eat and cleaned up, it was almost 8:30. I really, really wanted to cozy up on the couch, and watch Sunday’s Downton Abbey episode. (We were out Sunday night, so I missed it.) Because of how the day went, I hadn’t painted yet, so instead – because of my commitment to paint every day this year – I showed up and painted while I talked to Vicki. I made this commitment, because I’m connected to the creative source and expressing it through my art. Connection and commitment leads to showing up.

In the Strenthsfinder world, my number one strength is “Connection.” Connection is the filter through which I see all of life. It may be because of this, that for me “showing up” is directly related to connection. Having started this conversation with Vicki, and continued it with Paul while exploring it here with you, has me wanting to look for the ways in which we show up for each other – for life. I imagine I will see the connectedness that is everywhere. Try it on. See if this way of looking at it works for you too.

They say that ministers have only one sermon, and each Sunday they offer a slightly different version, another perspective on the same message. After 14 months of weekly posts, I’m starting to see the same. There is a thread that winds through many of my posts. The way in, the starting place may be different, but there is something about the connection that is there amidst the dual nature of our incarnate world, that is what I want to share in this life of mine. Today, I see that showing up is a way that this connection is made real.

With my love and gratitude for our connection,

Cara

January 5, 2016 – The story of a painting – and a video!

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Over the weekend I finished a painting, I started two and a half years ago. The finished painting is so far from what I’d imagined and what the original photograph inspired, so I thought I’d share its progress with you. I had no conception of this as the finished painting, nor how much time it would take.

I took the original photograph in May of 2012, just after I’d left working at Light Rain and had re-joined my mom part time, to help promote her real estate business. I was out “on tour” with Mom and Gary, looking at houses for sale. I saw these sunlit roses in the backyard of a gorgeous house in Kent Woodlands. I had my iPhone handy and took this picture. It sat in my phone for a while and every time I saw it, it said, “paint me” or it said “paint me?” There was so much red and I’m just not a red person – but I loved the light!

In preparing for a trip to Kauai, I drew it on a full sheet of Arches 300lb cold pressed. I started it there, while on vacation in April of 2013. The background was nearly black in the photograph, so I just made up something with greens and a few spots of cobalt blue, because I just can’t help myself! Not sure if the background was done, – I can always go back – I moved on to the bud in the lower left, then the start of the flower. I remember sitting there on the covered front porch, working on these “hot” colors in the soft tropical breezes and it just didn’t feel right.

So, I picked up a plumeria painting I had started sometime earlier, and worked on it the rest of the vacation. I named this one “Melia,” Hawaiian for “plumeria” – which was just what I was in the mood to paint. I also had “Chocolat”- also in progress – with me on that trip and painting rich browns wasn’t working either! Time and place matters to my painting process.

So there it sat, among the paper collection in my studio, for a couple years. At the start of this year, I attempted to see why I wasn’t interested in finishing it, by doing a color composition. Those of you who’ve taken my two-day color class know what this is. It’s a way to abstract color from an image, to see how the combination of colors play with each other. It’s amazing how these compositions can be instructive. I find myself either loving them, or… not. I didn’t love this one. I didn’t even have enough in me to finish the composition! So there’s something not right in the color for me. Hmmm.

I thought about my painting “Awakening”, with the combination of pink, orange and yellow. This gave me the idea to play with the colors of the image in Photoshop – shifting away from so much red – to both pink and yellow-orange. Better!

Ok, so I started in with the bud at the top and some of the orange part of the left rose. This was in February, not quite a year ago.

Other paintings then crowded it out for my attention. I had Eternal (my clock painting) to paint and something for Open Studios… There it sat again until just after I finished the grapes called “Juicyfruit” this fall. Without a lot of energy in me, I thought it might be nice to get it done by the end of the year.

In late November, I got a call from someone who had seen “Lustina”, at the Marin County Fair this past summer. He wanted to buy it for his wife for Christmas! Holy cow! Pretty fun, except, she – “Lustina” – already has her home – she was on loan from Pam, for the show at the fair. I emailed him the image and current status of this one. He was interested, but said his wife liked all the green in Lustina, and he thought that there wouldn’t be enough green in this one to please her. I thought “Why not? Why don’t I do something else with this background?” I dove in with a big soft scrubber, and stripped away as much as I could of that dark background I’d painted in. The tricky and painstaking part, was all the edges along the tops of the roses. I really wanted to keep them clean and white, and not mess up all the parts I’d already painted!

I found another image with some sunlit rose leaves taken on our side yard, along with a few other images with good fuzzy backgrounds, and collaged them all together in Photoshop. I am so incredibly grateful to Steve Kimball and my time at Light Rain, to have given me the ability to work with images like I do. It’s become a major part of my creative process.

I projected this new collaged image in, to draw the leaves in the upper right. Painting then, was a problem. The previous background had stained the paper – there was no white. I had to use opaque paint to get the whites in. I used Acquacover, mixing it with yellow, yellow-green and turquoise to get the sense of light. I’d recently read about gouache and learned something. It’s not meant to be mixed with water like watercolor is. I had played around a bit with gouache in the past, and found it not all that different from watercolor – because I’d been mixing it with water! I painted it straight and this did the trick! I also learned that I’m such a sucker for the way watercolor paint, with the bright white of the paper shining through, it gives a sense of luminosity. I’m not switching to gouache anytime soon!

I also needed some opaque paint, to give the rest of the background some sense of light.

The new background in, I returned to the roses.

I heard from the guy who was interested in this for his wife, that he was instead, interested in a piece from someone else they saw at the fair last summer. It happened to be Karen, who painted with us for a while at the beginning of the year. I knew exactly the painting he was talking about – I’d watched her paint it! So, I put him them in touch with each other. Karen sold her first piece, they got a beautiful painting for Christmas and I didn’t have to then rush to get this one done in time. All is just as it should be. And without having had the discussions with him, I’d not have re-visited the background. I really was liking it – so much better!

Then Christmas came, and I was pulled away from my studio. I picked it back up on the last day of the year, and got it done by the end of the weekend.

It’s not my most inspired work. But I think it’s really ok. It is so far from where it started. And the transformation it took, wasn’t anything that I could have planned. It took the time it took – and the inputs from both inside me and the world outside me. It’s a confirmation that paintings do have lives of their own – and we as artists are really along for the ride.

Here’s a color composition I did just this morning, based on the new image. So much more pleasing to me!

And as we all start a new year, it leaves me with great expectancy, for the art that will come through me this year – and through all those I have the privilege to paint with every week. It’s fun to have no idea what that will be!

With my love and appreciation for your companionship on the journey –

Cara

December 29, 2015 – Patience and practice – my wish and intention

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A year ago, at the end of my last post of the year, I wrote this:

“Tomorrow is the last day of 2014. Though it’s rather arbitrary, the calendar is a structure that we live around. As such, we look at endings and beginnings. I’ve been shying away from New Year’s resolutions for several years. I’m so susceptible to the “bright-shiny”-ness of the hope for a “whole new me.” Though it’s still useful to reflect and envision. Looking back on this year [2014], much of what I was so eager and hopeful for at the start, has not come to be. But what I do see, is a profound deepening of my understanding and appreciation, for who I am and what I’m here to do and offer…

…Looking into 2015, with a tender heart, I wish for Life in Full Color to expand, to find its way to bring life, light, color, inspiration to other hearts that resonate with it. I wish for whatever is needed in me, for me to understand, that Life in Full Color is so much more than me, and that bringing it more fully into being, will take much more than me. And I trust that at the end of December 2015, I will look back and see, that something has moved and changed and grown. It’s the nature of the universe.”

Reading this and reflecting on where I was when I wrote it, I feel the tenderness of my heart and the hopes and dreams it held for the coming year. There is a daring in sharing these hopes. We have no idea what will unfold – or how. Things did change and expand and grow this year. I reviewed much of what happened in a post at the end of September, marking a year of writing every week. Right after that was the Pilgrimage to Paris – an enormous expansion! And, the “team” that makes Life in Full Color happen, is no longer just me. Since sometime in the spring, Shonna Hirney with Heart and Soul Virtual Assistance – a lovely, lively and capable woman near Calgary, Alberta, Canada, takes my words and images, and creates these posts – here on my site and on Facebook – and sends the emails, so that I can get back to painting.

On a deeper level, as compared to a year ago, I have a visceral experience of both how resilient I am, and how precious and valuable what I have to share is. It’s not that I’m really any more resilient or that it’s more valuable or precious than a year ago, it’s that I now see it, I know it, I have it in my bones in a way I did not. I also have more clarity about what is possible through making art a major part of our lives. We wake up and become more conscious and present – to who we are as people – and to life. This all provides another place for me to stand, at the edge of a new year. But looking back, I see that the growth I’d hoped for was bigger than this. I know I’m not alone in my hope for change to happen really quickly.

I keep forgetting this, but my endeavors, my business, Life in Full Color, is my creation just as any of my watercolors – only on a larger scale. All that I observe and learn about the art-making process – in myself and the artists who paint with me – applies to creating my business as well. In a wonderful book on making art called, “Art and Fear”, I read this: “The artist’s life is frustrating, not because the passage [of bringing our imagination to life] is slow, but because he imagines [emphasis mine] it to be fast.”

In the same book, there is a story of a pianist, who laments to his master that he can hear the music so much better in his head, than he can get it out of his fingers. The master asks him “what makes you think that ever changes?” It’s the distance, the mismatch between what we envision and the reality of our work, and life that keeps us working towards our vision. It is a really good thing that our hopes leap out ahead of our lives.

I have no idea where it has come from, but I’ve been ambitious about my endeavors as an artist from the start. I found these synonyms to the various meanings of “ambition”: aspiration, yearning, longing, goal, aim, drive, force. There is a forward motion in these words. They seem to move from one to the next – almost accelerating. Ambition is the force that brings our work out of us. But ambition must be also be balanced – there’s the cautionary term “blind ambition” for a reason. The purpose of my work as a creator, is to be in service to those who are there to receive it. My work must be done in relationship with the world, with life – my partners in evolution. If I’m blind to what the world has to show me, I can’t include it in my work.

To the impatient parts of us, a year seems like a long enough time to have all we dream of in our endeavors to come to be, but it’s hardly any time at all. It takes lived experiences to reveal things to us, that we couldn’t have thought of. The clarity and specificity that is required isn’t there… until it is!

What I’m wishing for, for the New Year is patience. I will faithfully hold my hopes and dreams for expansion, and I will endeavor to remind myself, to trust that all things come in their own time. I will also faithfully do the work. There is no substitute for sitting my butt down and doing what is mine to do. There will be emails to send to let you know what I’m offering, another Pilgrimage to Paris, maybe a watercolor retreat on Kauai, maybe another in the wine country, a calendar for 2017, and of course my regular groups to lead and my paintings to paint.

I don’t have a regular spiritual practice, and I’ve been told so many times (including by myself) that I really need to. It has occurred to me, that my painting is my devotion – and in that, it is my spiritual practice. But, there are many, many days that get by me – like the past two weeks or so – when I don’t paint at all! I know! With that same tender heart, I set this intention for 2016: I will paint every day. I’m saying here, that I’ll paint for at least a half an hour – but 5 minutes will do. Every day. Off-to-the-airport-travel-days, staying-in-a-hotel-room-days, not-feeling-so-well-days – I will put brush to paint to paper – every day.

It’s scary to share this publicly. But, I’ve shown myself that I can keep to a practice with these posts. And doing so, has me hold myself differently. Now, I’m upping the ante. It will take arranging my life (like bringing art supplies with me wherever I go) so that I can keep the commitment. And I’m guessing that doing this will shift my relationship with my art-making. I look forward to the post at the end of 2016, when I’ll get to share with you how!

For 2015, I thank you for your faithful following of my journey each week. Knowing you are there is what has me corral myself to get writing every Tuesday morning. And for 2016, I wish for you what you wish for yourself (thanks, Lynda Wise) – in its own time and way.

Love,

Cara

December 22, 2015 – Being Christmas

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I wrote a story several years ago, as a contribution to a friend’s site: tellourlifestories.com. It was about a Christmas that was unlike any of the others in my life so-far. It was 1996, I was newly divorced and had just come back from my six-months in Paris. I was in the very fortunate position to have been able to buy myself a little two-bedroom house in San Anselmo. This was before the real estate market around here went into the stratosphere, and I was able to swing it on my own. Escrow closed on December 12th and there was work to do. My brother and his crew and subs (including the love of my life-now my husband, Joe), were putting in a new kitchen and some recessed lighting – and I was doing what I could too. After work in the City (in San Francisco) and on weekends, I scraped and sanded woodwork and prepped and painted walls, soft colors. I was so, so excited to have a little place of my own, I didn’t care that everything except the new bed I’d bought myself, was still in storage. I had a few clothes in a suitcase on the dusty floor and my toiletries. That was it.

I spent Christmas Eve day in my grubbies – working.  I decided not to join in on a family celebration that evening. I wanted to work as long as I could on my new little house. I got myself a Duraflame log, poured myself a glass of chardonnay (I don’t remember where the wineglass came from!) and baked a Marie Callendar’s chicken pie in the old oven, that was still in place. Wearing a big baggy sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up to my elbows, old paint-stained jeans and tennies, my hair full of dust and a little paint, I sat myself in front of the fireplace on the rolled up piece of carpet that was to become an area rug in the living room. I can still feel how incredibly peaceful and content I was – blissfully happy, even – all alone on Christmas Eve. I was home – in my very own place for the first time in my life, and it was perfect, just perfect.

I’m sure that my contentment was related to the fact, that I also had plans to get cleaned up and dressed up to go to my parents for Christmas the next day, but it was still an unusual way for me to happily spend a Christmas Eve. Christmases and Christmas Eves before and after have been filled with people and presents and rich, yummy food – and furniture to sit on! I’m certain I also had no latex house paint in my hair!

There is a lot that is said about the hassle and stress this time of the year, but this year I’m really feeling the magic too. When I was little and still believed in Santa Claus, I remember waking up on Christmas morning overwhelmed with anticipation and excitement. I almost shivered with the intensity of my wondering what Santa Claus had brought us. Decades past really thinking that a big-bellied man in a red suit with a white beard actually came down the chimney to bring presents – and I still feel it. Christmas morning sparkles.

Christmastime means such different things to us. For some, it’s all about the tree and decorations, presents and Santa Claus and sweets and big feasts. There are those for whom it’s a sacred celebration of the birth of Jesus – the Christ child – the Christ spirit. And for many of us who celebrate this holiday, it’s some form of both. If you type “Christmas” into a search engine (yes, I Googled “Christmas”), the first thing that comes up is a Wikipedia page that is rich with history and background. Assuming it’s all correct (which I mostly always do), what we know as Christmas now is an amazing mix of ancient traditions and relatively new influences – including earth-based winter solstice rites that celebrate light in the darkness and the eternal life of evergreens, a Roman celebration of the Everlasting Sun , the ancient Germanic people’s celebration of Yule, a 4th century Greek bishop (St. Nicholas) and Charles Dickens who, with “A Christmas Carol,” sought to create a family-centered celebration based on generosity. Much of this has been folded into the celebration of the birth of Jesus, as practiced in the Christian tradition. This year I’m feeling the connection between it all.

For me the magic of Christmas is all of this – it’s light in the darkness – (I especially love colored light), it’s the generosity of life – feasting and making offerings to each other, it’s feeling an open-hearted, joyful spirit and wishing each other goodwill. To me this is all part of celebrating the birth of the Christ spirit that lives in all of us – in all of life, really – whether we are “Christian” or not. And I love “Merry Christmas” – all of this is in these two words in a way that I don’t get with “Happy Holidays.”

For many people, this is a very difficult time of year. There are loved ones who are gone or estranged, or life is not particularly abundant.  The magic everyone else is feeling can be a reminder of their pain. But even that it’s a hard time of year for some people points to that it is a special time. There are also lots of expectations that cause that hassle and stress. I’ve been finding myself for several years now wanting to pare down what I take on. To me “taking back” Christmas, means listening to our own voices for what it means to celebrate – and deleting emails urging me to shop!

In my late 20’s, early 30’s, I used to make a dozen, dozen of a dozen different kinds of cookies. I started in November, and put away tins and tins of cookies in the freezer. The day before Christmas,I put together cookie baskets,with jars of jam I made in the summer and little mini loaves of nut breads – all wrapped in green or red cellophane with a big ribbon. Baskets went to everyone in our families and many good friends. Of course I was younger then – and I wasn’t painting – but thinking about all this makes me want to crawl back under the covers!

For about 4 or 5 years I’ve been saying “I’m not going to bake this year.” Then this week comes around and I start thinking about the little pecan-pie like cookies that my Baba (our step grandma) used to make – and I buy a package of cream cheese for the pastry, and get out the flour and brown sugar and nuts. I’ll also make some gingerbread – everyone in our families loves it – and a just few loaves of homemade panettone – not twelve of them like I have in the past.

Even as I pare down, I’m plagued by the pull of feeling like I need to do more – especially since I used to do so much. Procrastination is actually my friend in this. It keeps me from going overboard, and hopefully only that which is strong enough to pull me into action is all I need to be doing to celebrate. It’s tricky. There’s an enormous Christmas cyclone that can sweep us up into it. This year my aim is to be Christmas more than do Christmas.

Whether it’s your tradition, your holiday to celebrate or not, I hope that this week holds all you want and not much of what you don’t. I wish you light in the darkness, I wish you generosity, I wish you good will and a bright spirit.

I wish you Merry Christmas.

Love,

Cara

December 15, 2015 – What I want for you

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We had the last of our “Special Saturdays” this past weekend. Ten artists joined my mom and me, to take a careful look at leaves – and how we might paint them. And we explored greens: green pigments and mixing greens with different combinations of blues, greens, yellows, golds, oranges… This past summer I found myself challenged, by representing the complexity of a hydrangea leaf in my painting “Douce,” which gave me the idea to offer this as one of our Saturday themes. When the regular Saturday painters asked for a December class – I thought everyone was too busy! – I had a theme ready to go.

It’s hard to put my finger on exactly why, but it was an especially “special” day. There was something about this group of ladies – though we missed you regulars who weren’t there. There seemed to be extra appreciation of the opportunity, to be together and explore and discover. I was left with the feeling that it was the perfect way to end our Saturday series for the year.

I’ve been grappling with how to describe, what happens in our painting groups. It is very clear to me it’s something beyond practicing the skills of painting watercolor, beyond what I offer about color and beyond the technology I make available. I hear often that coming to paint is better than therapy – which means something, but what exactly? This morning when I woke with this bouncing around in my head, it occurred to me that maybe this “something” might be related to my intentions. In four years of having watercolorists gather around me on a very regular basis, I realize, that there are things that I actively want for them – and want for you – whether you paint with me or not.

First, I want for you what you want for yourself. I thank Lynda Wise, a coach and one of my leadership tribe-mates for this. She signs her email newsletters this way, and I’ve always wanted to steal it! Even before this though, is that I want for you to want. Wanting is a muscle – “a wanter” – that we can exercise. This flies in the face of spiritual teachings like letting go and non-attachment. And some of us have not been granted permission, or have not granted ourselves the permission to want enough. It’s connected to our sense of entitlement – in the Elizabeth Gilbert sense – that we are entitled, not because we are special, but simply because we exist. It’s primal too – wanting keeps us alive.

I want for you to be known, for your voice to be heard. My mom went to an art critique session once, and was told that she didn’t have a distinct style. Really!? My mom goes out into her garden and zooms into one flower. She takes its photo and she paints it. She’s done this over and over, on dozens of paintings. It’s where she stands – zoomed in – taking in what’s before her, as if it is all the world. One look at her paintings, and she has such an obvious style. She was really crushed by what this person said. She wasn’t gotten, her voice wasn’t heard. Our art is an extension of us and is to be celebrated.

I want for you to not be stopped by your own resistance. A couple of years ago, there was a beautiful Anders Zorn exhibit at the Legion of Honor, in San Francisco. It was a rare treat to see such refined and masterful watercolors – I went to see it twice! Towards the end of the exhibit, there was a canvas of a nude, that he had slashed up. A friend had rescued it and put it back together. There it was with all its scars, evidence of its creator’s frustration. Resistance is real and it will not only destroy some of our work, it will keep us from even getting started. Its counter is desire – see why it’s good to work our “wanter” muscle? When you follow that desire and sign up to come paint and yes, even fork over money, (funny how that is) it gets you going. It’s a structure that overcomes the resistance, that prevents us from bringing forth our art.

I want for you to feel safe to risk, explore, expand, grow. Somewhere along the way, I was told or read or heard that in order to learn something new, we must open ourselves to let it in. And we can’t open ourselves if we don’t feel safe. If we fear that we’ll be criticized or judged or put down by trying something new, we will head the other way. We all have, factory installed, a well-functioning machine that provides plenty of all of that. There’s no need for voices outside us to chime in! There are only three rules in my groups. The most important one, is that no one is disparaging of anyone else’s work – hopefully even our own. In this environment you can paint a new subject, try to “loosen up”, or even just take the enormous step of putting color onto paper, for the first time.

I want for you to be curious, and to expand your capacity to see. Learning how to really see and honing what we pay attention to, is really what we are up to in our groups. In order to function though, we need to filter out the vast majority of the sensory input we’re bombarded with, in every second. I know of two children whose filters are deficient and life for them – and their families – is really, really hard. They are hyper-sensitive and have little capacity to cope. And, these same filters get in the way of how we see in order to create representational art. Cultivating curiosity, being really interested in our subject matter and slowing down, we can learn to really see. We practice seeing the shapes, the colors, the textures as they are – rather than what we think we see, based on past information.

I want for you to have a good time. Pleasure is powerful. When we experience pleasure, our bodies produce nitric oxide. When I first read this, it sounded toxic. It’s just the opposite – it is a helpful free-radical. Its effect is to relax our blood vessels, increasing blood flow to important places – like our hearts (it’s also a component of Viagra!). So a feel-good experience is not at all frivolous – it’s good for our health. Stretching ourselves to learn to paint – a never ending project – is hard work. I want for that hard work, to be done in the context of having a really good time. The caring, engaged attention of everyone in the group, brings pleasure. The connections we have with each other, bring pleasure. Looking at beautiful color, beautiful imagery and the beautiful artwork we make, brings pleasure. Witnessing the realness of people creating something tangible, from within them – that never before existed – brings me enormous pleasure.

In writing every week for over a year, I’ve discovered a process. I mostly don’t know what I’m going to write, I start with a germ of an idea, and then stuff comes through, that is either new to me or is clarified in a way I’d not seen before. Today I started with “what I want for you” and this is what came through. Though I’m not certain that it really is the “something” else that I’m grappling with – but – and – it’s really helpful to me to have articulated what my intentions and desires are. I also see that not only are they my intentions for you and your creating, but for me and mine – my paintings, my writing and my endeavors in the world. Physician, heal thyself.

With my love,

Cara