Third Chakra Rising

"Metamorphosis" by primalpainter 

Yesterday I was feeling kind of rebellious and my post was a little on the....shall we say.....unprofessional side.  I've never been known for having great timing, and of course I would have to choose the same day that Etsy artist  Sybillinart featured my third chakra painting "Fearless" on her blog which sent some people my way, and what do they see?  A monkey sticking a finger in his butt, smelling it and falling over backwards from the horrifying stench. (Good Gawd, my timing is horrible, still, though, that video is so hilarious.....heheeeee!)

Anyway, I'm sorry Sybillinart for that unfortunate timing and I'll make up for it today.

Sybillinart is a decoupage artist on Etsy. She has something for everyone in her shop from pendants to boxes, cards to wall decor, vases, journals, you name it.  She really made my day when she included my third chakra painting "Fearless" in an Etsy treasury within hours of me listing it on Etsy.  Then she bought it which sent me into a wild spree of happiness, confirming to me that working on my chakra paintings is the right thing to do.  Thank you for that Sybillinart!

I'm really honored that she did an Artist Feature about this painting on her blog Sybillin' Art News.  Go to her blog and check it out!  http://sybillinartnews.blogspot.com/2011/03/artist-feature.html    She even has a photo of it hanging on her wall right above her desk, which I thought was super cool.

For those who might be interested in the behind-the-scenes story concerning this painting, I did a couple of blog posts about it awhile back.  The first post is called "Third Chakra Issues" and chronicles the intention behind the painting and the emotional debris that emerged as I was working on it.

The second post is called "Fearless: Third Chakra" and shows the progression and visual evolution that took place from the first and second chakra paintings to the third and my thoughts on the process.

Thank you Sybillinart for including my painting "Fearless" in your world, I know it's found the perfect home!

In other news, I got my prints from http://www.adoramapix.com/  yesterday, and they were awesome!  I had them printed on this metallic paper that has some kind of subtle  pearlized metallic glow to it.  The colors are deep and rich, they're really beautiful.   They're small, though, 8" x 10", and I'm thinking I'd like some bigger ones, say 16" x 20". Maybe I should figure out what I'm going to do with them first....

I made and airbrushed a wooden frame for my first energy art creation that I  printed on my own printer and gave it to Andi for her 21st birthday.  She's my biggest fan, so I thought it would be appropriate to give her the first of something new that I'm starting.  I called it "The Beginning" and unbelievably forgot to get pictures of it. It turned out good and looks really nice hanging on a wall, though. 

Here's a picture of it without the frame, (the frame or maybe more appropriately the wood mat was 3" wide on all sides, 1/4" thick and painted with a gradation of turquoise and aqua to deep blue).



"The Beginning"

Well this is one gorgeous day, gotta get out there an enjoy it!   By the way, maybe we could all send some white light, prayers, healing thoughts and good energy to all those affected by this terrible tragedy in Japan.

Later,

Laurie

Professional? Me? LOLOLOL

I had a terrible nightmare last night, one of those where you wake up with a pounding heart, heavy breathing,and a generalized feeling of alarm (no, it wasn't a sex dream involving oompa loompas or scary clowns).

In my dream, my hair was really messy and I was wearing my usual  jeans so heavily covered with every hue of paint I own that they're really stiff, and I can only bend over  from the waist while keeping my legs straight. Then a disembodied voice, sounding suspiciously like Julia Child says "It would be-hoooooove you to present yourself in a more pro-fessh-ional manner." 

First of all, that voice......(shudder) and second of all,  who says behoove and what does it mean and third of all, professional? Me?   I've pondered the wisdom of this advice, so in an effort to present myself more professionally, I present you with this video:

Take that Julia Child.......How do you like me now!.

Rebelliously yours,

Laurie

Thursday's Random Ramble

This is a warped out digital abstraction taken from a photo of my orange second chakra painting.   I've decided I like it after a period of Yes? No? Yes? No? Ok ....yes. Sometimes I'll look at something I've created. and I'll like it for a minute, or maybe even for a few hours but then it's like my brain twists around, my eyes flip out and I'll start to hate it.  The creative mind is a strange one.   Below is a slightly different darker version.   I like it too, in some ways, even better than the one above.

What really sucks is when I like something I've made and declared "I'm finished!  Me likey",  then days or even weeks later, I look at it and say "Ewwwwwwww, I...... hate it!!!!!".  This is usually accompanied by my usual eye rolling, groaning, throwing my hands in the air, spinning around with copious amounts of hair tossing and acting generally overly dramatic.

Eventually I'll resign myself to the fact that what's done is done.   From that point on, though, I'll cast the occasional sideways glance at the offending piece (never a full frontal gaze ever again) with a look on my face that probably looked like the face I made yesterday when the bartender accidentally gave me a drink with grapefruit juice in it.  (Eeee-yuck...that's some sour sh#t,  grrr-ossss.).

 I survived my hour at the bar with Andi, by the way.  She ordered for both of us like some kind of pro.....(what the.....?)   It wasn't too horribly painful,  however, one drink and I promptly forgot my coat at the bar and almost forgot my purse at her friend's house.   Me no likey the alkee-hol..... I'm spacey enough as it is.

She was in a hurry to get back to Fayetteville so she could meet her friends for dinner, but I forced her to stay and have some cake.  I could have sworn we had candles but the only one I could find was a #7 candle which I found in the bottomless pit we call the junk drawer. I think it was from when she was 7 year old which would make it...what....14 years old? It looked like maybe a mouse had chewed part of the bottom off of it, but I pretended not to see that.   I brushed it off a little, stuck it in her cake deep enough to hide the chewed off end,  told her to make a wish and blow it out.

I wonder if she wished for a normal mother?  lol

Have a good one!

Laurie

My Freak Out Moment Over Andi's 21st Birthday

 

Today is my daughter Andi's 21st birthday.  Good..........GAWD!!!!!!!!!  Am I freaking out?  YEESSSS!!!!  She's an adult now, I tell myself, but dangit, that doesn't mean that I have to treat her like an adult (said with great defiance).  Or does it.... (said with a moan superimposed with a whine). Craaaapp.

I suppose I'll have to face the music when we go out this afternoon and I buy her a drink.....in a bar.......and watch her drink it.......  (Oh, I  had a stomach heaving moment there.)  As I stare into space with a daydreamy look on my face,  I think "Maybe it would help if I drank a few shots of whatever liquor they serve these days to dull this disturbing moment."  As the fantasy proceeds, I see myself being carried home in a drunken stupor mumbling  "My daugher's 21 and I'm old,  my daughter's 21 and I'm old....."

At least it isn't as bad as when I dropped her off at college a couple of years ago. That little incident was freakin' traumatic, TRAUMATIC I tell ya.   I acted out quite a bit after she moved away but thankfully nobody was killed, injured or emotionally crippled during my empty nest  period of psychosis.  I won't go into the sordid details..........

Seriously though, without all my drama queen antics, I'm really proud of her.  She's way smarter than I was at her age.  (Well, except in the area of handling money which again, I won't go into the sordid details.)  She works really hard and alot (she makes more money than I do, how disturbing is that?), supports herself, is bright and goes to college, works out all the time, has lots of friends, a good boyfriend (that I haven't met yet), she's got a good head on her shoulders and seems to learn her life lessons much faster than I ever did (except when it comes to money....ack!), she's a talented artist and writer, she's courageous and adventurous, she's pretty and has loads of self respect and self confidence, she has integrity and knows right from wrong, she's my biggest fan and I'm hers. 

Awwwwwww, ok I feel better.  Maybe I just needed to write it all down and see it in black and white to realize that I don't have anything to worry about.  After all,  she's most definitely smarter and more together than I was at her age and I turned out ok, (although there might be some debate about just how well I turned out. lol). 

When I was her age, I was a......well..........I won't go into the sordid details.

Later on,

Laurie

Personal Development: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

This photo is a warp-ization of the view from my balcony.

I was thinking about personal development yesterday and how for me,  it's been like a slingshot.....I'll get pulled back further and further with  more and more tension, then at the breaking point and just in the nick of time, I'll shoot forward and end up with some new revelations and epiphanies, and maybe even make a little progress.

Here's a story (one of many) about an event that triggered a big jump in my self awareness.  Ever since I can remember, I've been told by those who had the most influence over me, that I was just too sensitive, like it was a bad thing or something to overcome...."You need to grow a thick skin if you want to get by in this world, you're just too sensitive".  And I was sensitive, things affected me deeply and I bought into it.  I learned to laugh and joke to hide it.

At the time, I had no clue that much of what I was feeling was actually the emotions of other people and that those emotions didn't even belong to me yet I was taking them in and making them my own.  It wasn't until I was thirty years old that I finally had that "what the......?" moment when I realized what was really happening.  I'm an empath, but not some big magical empath with great powers, just.....an empath.

I was renting space at a place called Englers Block in Branson, Missouri.  I was doing woodburned portraits from photographs on cedar plaques at the time.  This lady walks up to me, hands me a small photo and says "Can you do a portrait of her?"  It was a school photo of a pretty girl about 8 years old.  I looked at this photo and within seconds my chest started to get tight, my throat started to get tight, my stomach felt sick and I burst into tears.  And I'm not talkin' a little tear in my eye, I'm talkin' a full blown loud sob session, enough to turn heads and make a scene. Rather embarrassing.......

She remained completely dry-eyed and stoic and said "That's my daughter, she died a month ago."  Whaat? Well I just lost it......full blown, uninhibited melt down.  I pulled myself together eventually, apologized to all the concerned people who had gathered around, but I don't remember what happened with the portrait or the lady.  She had served her purpose, I guess.

I do, however, remember the astonishing realization that apparently I pick up on and express other people's emotions, most noticeably unexpressed grief.  From that point on, I started to see myself in a different way.  Maybe being too sensitive wasn't really a bad thing, I just needed to work with it and either allow others emotions to  come into me and pass on through without owning them, or  put up an energetic shield that protects me from feeling those emotions altogether.

I always seem to forget to put up that shield, but I've gotten much better at recognizing when something doesn't belong to me .  I don't really understand what purpose all of this serves, but I do know that I'm one of those people that gets confided in alot and sometimes I stumble across the right thing to say.  I have a tendency to isolate myself, though.

Now I get accused of being naive about certain people's bad behavior.  I see it as more of an awareness of  the root emotion behind the behavior which seems to feel more like a wounded child than a bad adult.  

Now the trick is to avoid being co-dependent and taking on too much responsibility for another person who needs to learn their own lessons at their own pace.

Maann, there's always somethin'........!

Well that's enough deep thought for today.

Have a good one!

Laurie

LOL Monday

Warning:  If you don't like hilarity, Richard Simmons, Whose Line Is It Anyway, and possible risque content, view this video at your own risk.  If you're a LMAO kind of person and aren't easily offended, this video is freakin' hilarious!  Some might find it to be in bad taste, but one person's bad taste could be another person's Dove Dark Chocolate, so who knows.

I had already written this entire blog post for today, had some really great stuff in it, too, and somehow it just.....disappeared!  Frankly, I'm a little nervous about where it went, because I've had some "uh oh" moments already this morning.

 First, in my clumsy attempts to upload a different video, a video that was  much  worse than this one in terms of inappropriateness, I accidentally posted it on the Etsy VAST team blog.  Now as awesome as the VAST team is, that blog is mostly about  two dimensional fine art.  I can just imagine their shock and dismay if they were to wake up this morning, check out that blog and there's a  video of "the world's drunkest guy" on there posted by none other than primalpainter!  Good Gawd!  Now that was a close one. I think I got it off of there, but I can't help but wonder where that other post went.......

In my defense, I was going to title it "Just Say Noooooo" or put some other "Don't be a Stupid Drunk" spin on it, but I decided that maybe it was too inappropriate even for this somewhat unserious blog. (Although I'll probably show it to everyone who comes over today because it was hilarious!)  I'm starting to become suspicious that I have junior high mentality......not that there's anything wrong with that.

In other news, I ordered some prints of my altered art photos from adoramapix.com last night so that was exciting, although  I have no idea how they'll look as prints, or if the resolution is right, or the "whatever that is" is correct, or if "that thingy" is at the right setting, or blah blah blah blehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...   Huh, I'm sensing an attitude of some sort.......

In a perfect world, I would learn new things by osmosis.  All that technical jargon and understanding would just be painlessly absorbed into my head without any of the rolling of the eyes, pulling of the hair, banging of the head on the table, stomping around, locking myself in the bedroom to protect my loved ones from my horrible wrath, and last but not least, the gnashing of teeth. (Gnash, that's a weird word, guh-nash)

It almost sounds like it's Monday......

Have a good one,

Laurie

Sunday's Vibe Lifter

Lots of Hearts

(A happy stepping stone in the evolution of my recent sunset photo warping frenzy)

My brother sent to this to me today, I thought it was sweet and a nice message for a beautiful Sunday afternoon.  I don't know who wrote it, but it makes me think of my Uncle Al (who's still alive and feisty at 98 years old) and his wife, my Aunt Gladys, who died years ago from Alzheimer's.  She didn't get to meet my daughter Andi, but her birthday is next week, the same day as Andi's birthday.  I still marvel at that synchronicity!

The Rain

It was a busy

morning, about 8:30, when an elderly

gentleman in his 80's arrived to have

stitches removed from his thumb.

He said he was in a hurry as he had an
appointment at 9:00 am.
I took his vital
signs and had him take a seat,
knowing it would be over an hour
before someone
would to able to see him.

I saw him looking at his watch and
decided, since I
was not busy with another patient,
I would evaluate his wound..

While taking care of
his wound, I asked him if he
had another doctor's appointment
this morning, as
he was in such a hurry.

The gentleman told me no, that he
needed to go to
the nursing home to eat breakfast
with his wife. I inquired as to her
health.

He told me that she had been there
for a while and that she
was a victim of Alzheimer's Disease. As we
talked, I asked if she would be
upset if he was a bit late.

He replied that she no longer knew
who he was, that she had not
recognized him in
five years now.
I was surprised, and asked him,
'And you still go every
morning, even though she
doesn't know who you are?'
He smiled as he
patted my hand and said,

'She doesn't
know me, but I still know who she is.'

I had to hold back
tears as he left, I had goose bumps
on my arm, and thought, "That is
the kind of love I want in my life.'

True love is neither physical, nor romantic.
True love is an
acceptance of all that is,
has been, will be, and will not
be.

The happiest people don't necessarily
have the best of everything;
they just make
the best of everything they have.

'Life isn't about
how to survive the storm,
But how to dance
in the rain.'
We are all getting Older
Tomorrow may be our turn

Have a beautiful Sunday!

Laurie