Author: skyevans

Pushing the Reset Button

/ skyevans / 2 Comments
(Dear Readers, this is not a usual art related post.  If you read my blog looking for an image, well, you may want to skip this one.  Thanks for following along, next post will be about my newest commission, a dog portrait of Elton the wonder cur!)

Pushing the Reset Button

When an electrical system has an overload of current, a circuit is tripped, effectively breaking the connection of electrical power to the receiving agent. Be it a motor or a relay, the object no longer has access to current and thus maintains its ability to function. Without the tripped circuit, too much amperage can disable the object, rendering it broken or useless. After the power surge, one can reconnect safely to the electrical source by pushing a reset button.

And so it happened to me. Metaphorically, of course.

On Sunday, March 13th my head exploded violently. Sudden nausea, vomiting and pain which felt like I’d been shot. It’s called a thunderclap migraine episode, and usually signifies something very, very bad. The next day, my head still aching, I did some internet research and learned more about this phenomenon. I was ignorant about migraines as I had never had one before, I rarely get headaches for that matter. I called my physician about it and she promptly sent me to the hospital for a CT scan. It was inconclusive, no hemorrhaging. Was there an aneurism waiting to go off? Only a MRI would show. I didn’t have to do it, but the on call doctor said, (when I asked what would she do) that she would. “For peace of mind.”

Now, I know my busy mind, my creative-worrying mind, my alarmist mind… so I agreed. I needed that peace of mind. Big time. I was wheeled back down to imaging for another test after which I was wheeled back to the emergency room to wait. The room was darkened and quiet. I had no reception, so my phone could not entertain nor inform. I told my husband who was out of town working, that I was driving myself to the ER under doctors orders. That was the last he heard from me until later that afternoon when I was released. He was going to have to wait as well.

In the meanwhile, I started my second solo wait. I didn’t mind, I had wanted to be alone. I didn’t want to be thinking about anyone else during that time. I disobeyed doctor’s orders by driving myself in; the idea of calling a neighbor then corralling my thoughts about how I was messing up their day, their schedule, their whatever…. silly of me, yes, but I wanted that space. I didn’t want to allay anyone’s fears or concerns or have them reassure me and mine. Because as odd as this sounds, I didn’t have any. To worry is to think about the future. To get creative with what could happen, to what my life would be like when they gave me the news, whatever the news may be. I just wanted to focus on the moment and I needed to be alone in order to keep my focus.

Lately I’ve been working on that busy, creative mind of mine. Getting a handle on all it’s wild ways… the over thinking, the catastrophizing, the micro-manager of my life. It has been said that worrying is a waste of imagination. Well, in my case, I seem to be blessed with a massive supply of imagination. I often have to dial down the imagining; worry and talking myself out of worrying is an Olympic sport. And yes, it is fucking exhausting at times. In the previous months I had been subjecting my mind to a barrage of high voltage imaginative current… a continuous assault of intense thought, worry and mental gymnastics.

I finally found something that seemed to work like a surge protector, or maybe more like a ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI) outlet. It came to me as a book, The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I heard about it in January but it took me a month to get my hands on a copy. There is so much to this book, I don’t want to get into it, read it for yourself if you feel intrigued, but the main premise is a simple one: now is all there is. If you can focus your mind on being here, being present in the now, then you can erase your worries, your ruminating, your anxiety and depression which are all based on the future or the past. I loved Be Here Now by Ram Dass, which spoke to my 20 year old self quite deeply. But The Power of Now made more sense to my older self, it has affected me in a powerful way.

As I lay in the curtained cubicle of the Emergency Room, I focused on my breath. On listening to the sounds around me. Not thinking about “what if”. I just focused on being there, in the room, being alert, aware and waited. Which was all I could do… just wait. I don’t know how long I waited, time seemed to stand still, though I do know I was there for well over 3 hours. And then the waiting was over.

The doctor beamed back into the room. They found nothing. No enlarged vessels, no aneurysm, no tumor, no bleeding, nothing abnormal. The MRI was clean! The sudden migraine? A fluke, who knows? But whatever it was, I made her day and I was cleared to go. The nurse was all smiles. He said, “We give people bad news all the time. They come in here with a massive headache like that and then we see something. Usually not good. I’m so happy for you!”

I couldn’t get out of there fast enough… out into the cloudy skies. The sun broke through a gap as I walked back to my car, pausing on the way for an ambulance to pass. Someone else on their way to bad news perhaps, but not me. Not today.

I’ve been thinking about this moment for the past few weeks. I finished my Eckhart Tolle book and started another. I’ve watched his videos on Youtube, perused his website. Learned more about him and how he’s met with the Dali Lama, worked with Ram Dass, been interviewed by Oprah for her Super Soul series. I had never heard about him before this January and he’d been teaching these universal truths for years and moving in some pretty famous circles. I keep thinking about a circuit breaker… how I had felt overwhelmed and how learning about Tolle’s teachings gave me a respite from all that high wattage.

I’m not the same person I was before. I am, but I’m not. Maybe in an alternate reality I did have a brain aneurysm and was changed. How imaginative of me! But in this reality, I got to walk out of there with all my electrical parts in good working order, that surge didn’t fry my circuits. Now I can push that reset button. And start all over again.

 

Blue on Blue

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PCT in the Goat Rocks Wilderness, WA  A field of blue lupins echo the deepening sky as day turns to night.  (Based on the photo by Gabi Fulcher 2014)

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When I started this painting I had no idea how blue it was going to go.  I had been doing a lot of inner work, thinking about my inner self, my concepts, my ideas, my integrity, my weaknesses.  Why do I think this way, what lessons are there to learn from our emotions… when I get frustrated or upset, what does that come from? Does it come from the situation at hand or from a lifetime of similar situations that make the current crisis seem bigger than it is?  I examined all my inner wounds like a forensic investigator, trying to make a case for guilt, innocence or acquittal.  I had no preconceived notions of the outcome but one word rose to the surface and I followed it like a flashlight in the darkness.

That word was compassion.  That I find the compassion in myself, that I nurture the compassion and choose the compassion rather than the hard edged anger and meanness that was trying to gain a foothold. I don’t like the hard edge… though I admire the strength anger has given me.  Anger is a good emotion, it’s a powerful one, but not one that should be driving my car.  You can’t make anger go away, but you can recognize it’s usefulness.  Anger is the fire that burns away the pain and takes you down to ash so you can rise again, clean and new and reborn.

Anger turned inward is depression.  There were too many times I had taken that anger and smoldered the flame with my body, inhaling the toxicity, allowing depression to take a toehold deep inside. And so, with the gray skies of the Pacific NorthWest dumping their seasonal load upon my home and myself, I found a deep blue streak staining my life. I had a hard time getting into the holiday spirit.  I just couldn’t do it, that blue funk was everywhere.

But then there was compassion.  And compassion led me to stories and places and videos and chat groups and forums and a greater understanding.  I followed every lead, turned over every rock, searched in all the drawers, cupboards and forgotten shelves.  The anger that had masqueraded as depression was swept out and dealt with.  The light began to shine again as we rounded the equinox and the sun literally returned to my part of the world.

With gratitude, I stood before a blank canvas and painted yet another in my Wilderness Of Women (WOW), a series of paintings from the trail.  All paintings are from photos taken by women hikers.  So far I’ve only done one from my own photo, the rest were taken by other women hikers.  This image of the PCT is from the Goat Rocks Wilderness in Washington State. It was sent it to me last winter by the photographer/hiker, Gabi Fulcher.  It’s been hanging in my studio for some time now… and well, now seemed to be it’s moment.

All these WOW paintings have a vivid saturation of color that connects my deep love of these wild places to my heart.  This one was the same in intensity, but different in just one word.  The word is “I”.  As in “I” painted it, because it doesn’t feel like “I” actually did.  I stood before the canvas after sketching it out in my normal fashion.  I was between the 6th and 7th chakra painting in my last series (see previous post) and using the same palette of color I was about to start when I hesitated.  I’ve done this before, and usually with good results, so I trusted the pause.  And I said to my muse: go ahead… you got this one.  Do what you like, I’ll just hold the brush.  And so, she did. Or he… it doesn’t matter, my muse is gender neutral.

Blue on Blue can speak for itself.  It’s so much more than me.  Just like the word compassion.

 

Getting Balanced

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I’ve felt somewhat out of sorts lately and have been focusing on getting myself back on even ground.  To do that, I’ve been meditating and learning how to trust my instincts again.  A healthy, mostly vegan diet along with more exercise and physical therapy on old injuries has contributed to getting my  body in better shape. My mind has been occupied with new ideas and philosophies, I’ve been working on old wounds there too, so that just left my soul. Body, mind and spirit are part of the whole and I realized I’ve been neglecting this last part for some time now.

I had been drawing mandalas and coloring intricate patterns as part of a meditative effort to balance my mind. One day I noticed I had used rainbow hues every time I sat down to color; page after page in my book was full of bold and brilliant color.  Suddenly it occurred to me, without even thinking about it, I had been choosing chakra colors. Chakras are thought to be centers of spiritual power within the body; if I ever needed a hint on where to focus my spiritual attention, this seemed a good place to start.

In an effort to blend my art and my soul in a more purposeful way, I set out to paint the 7 chakras. With each one, I focused on the corresponding color and let my muse take ahold of my brush. I really had no idea where I was going with these, but decided to trust the process and see what happened.

I started with the root chakra (red) and progressed upwards from there. Each one became more and more complex, unfolding before me. As I worked through these small canvases, I noticed a change in myself.  I felt lighter, happier, more relaxed. Information came my way and seemed to reinforce what I was learning about myself during the process. Even difficult issues leveled out and didn’t knock me out of balance.

I finished the last one the other day, and as I hung them together for the first time I noticed the changes from one to another.  From simple to more complex, one flows into the next. I think of this series as a personal workshop for my soul, an exercise in returning my energy centers to a state of equilibrium.

But because of the blog scroll, to show them to you in the order in which I painted them would be to misalign them.  So, to counter this, here they are in a top to bottom orientation. Just to note, they are opposite of the order in which they were created.

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Shifting Consciousness

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I used to be a teacher.  I used to be a painting contractor.  I used to be a glorified factory worker for a large technology company.  I used to be a lot of things.  Lately I’m wondering what I am now.  Things that seemed to be clear cut are no longer clear anymore.  It’s as if I’ve awoken from a long sleep and someone rearranged the furniture while I was unconscious.   Everything looks the same but it’s all in the wrong place.

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Now I usually love rearranging the furniture.  There is something very satisfying about opening up my space and redirecting the traffic patterns throughout my house so that I use my home in a new way.  There’s an energy shift in moving furniture, I love the feng shui-ness of it all.  So the metaphoric rearranging of my brain, my thoughts, my goals and who exactly I might be is giving me the same boost I get from actually moving a couch across the living room.

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Only this time, I’m having a harder time deciding the final pattern… it all seems in flux.  But in the spirit of going with the flow, while still maintaining a concrete grasp on reality,  I’m drawing and journaling my thoughts.  I’ve just completed my second on-line Mandala workshop (check out Julie Gibbons if you’d like to know more… she’s a darling Scottish teacher making magic on the internet) .  It’s been inspiring and very satisfying to draw mandalas but I can’t say I’ve reached any clarity of thought.  Maybe it’s the circular nature of the mandala… or the zen like meditative state I find myself in while coloring tiny intricate patterns.  Maybe it’s digging down into my subconscious and stirring up the silt that’s muddying up the waters of my present.  Maybe it’s mind blowing thought porn that has me watching YouTube videos on math and science, spiritual growth and psychology that’s got me lost in the swirling tornado of ideas.

 

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Regardless of what it is… my blog is for sharing art.  And yes, ideas too.  But until I can focus on those ideas, get a handle on what exactly they are, the art will have to do.  Some of my thoughts are too personal to share on a blog…  there’s a vulnerable quotient to being so transparent, especially since clarity right now is exactly the issue at hand. Until the dust settles and I can see what the hell is going on, these mandalas seem to be serving as my touchstone. Because right now, it’s as if everytime I look away, someone keeps moving the furniture and my only safe zone is drawing.

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Is it possible to be drawing for your life?

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Orientation and Wine Labels

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A month ago, I got a call from a friend to create an image for her wine label, Bluebird Hill.  Neil and Sue Shay have a local vineyard/winery and needed some art to grace their new label.  Bluebird Hill Farm hosts a small craft wine enterprise and along with the vineyard and wine, they are running a bed and breakfast in their private hilltop retreat.  You can learn more about them here:  Bluebird Hill Farm  and on their Facebook page : Bluebird Hill .

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This morning, Sue and I photographed the bluebird painting and discussed whether it was flying north across a sunset as the view looked west (as I thought), or was it flying south across the sunrise to the east?  Since Sue provided the photo of the view (and  I inserted a bird into the final painting) I figured she knew the image better than me!  But I can be stubborn… having lived out here for going on 30 years, and having seen these mountains for that long and having spent last month rendering the view, surely we were looking west.  Right?

Well, I just looked at their web page again, and Sue’s landscape photo is the star of the home page.  The whole time I was painting it, I thought I was painting the coast range behind our homes (I live south of Bluebird Hill Farm).   It took me a moment to place where I was in Sue’s photo, but I see now the actual image does look to the south/southeast with the sunrise coming up exactly where it should be!

For someone who prides herself on maintaining her orientation, this took me by surprise. I had spent all this time thinking I was facing one way, when I was really facing another.  There’s a lesson here somewhere, probably something about not making assumptions, or maybe even being more careful when cropping images for reference material.  All  I can say is, I’m glad I wasn’t actually out in the woods trying to make my way to the trail head or back to the car after tromping around off trail (as I frequently do).  Lesson actually learned? Don’t get too cocky thinking you know where you are!

Also, laughing at yourself is a good thing.  I’ll post the actual label once Sue gets the image to her graphic designer and they work out how the design nests together with the painting.  Until then, it will grace the walls of her home and eventually, the tasting room.  Cheers everyone!

The Bluebird of Happiness

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My husband is kinda cute.  Years ago, there was a family of bluebirds that would periodically try to use our seasonally dormant chimney as a high rise condo for a nest.  This “try” never got farther than the “Oh shit, what have I done?” stage when the lesser brained bird would flutter all the way down the chimney pipe and into the actual dormant wood stove where he (?) would summarily get stuck.

Thus necessitating a daring rescue from the occupants of the actual home these feathered invaders were trying to “squat” on.  Or in.  Whatever.

The cute part is coming up.  I came home from work one day to hear a tale from previously introduced husband.  How he heard a sound.  He ignored it, then heard it again.  Frantic, fluttering.  Fluttering?  He got up from his relaxed state of couch surfing and tracked down the odd noise.

The house terrier was jumping excitedly at the glass panes of the wood stove when the hubby saw a brief movement within.  Then the flutter sound.  He quickly sussed it out…. a bird!  In the stove!

Upon opening the door, he saw, there, in the ashes of winter passed, a small bluebird. It peered up at him with eyes of beady black, then, in a flash, it leaped up and flew OUT!  Out, but INTO the house!  There was a bird, at large, in the house.

The terrier leaped, to no avail.  The bird, he was quicker!  The husband yelled and fell back.  There was a bird in the house.  A WILD bird!

The little bluebird flew to the window and discovered the force field we use to protect our nest… we like to call it glass.  The bird made a slight thump and bounced off and into my fast recovering husband’s outstretched hands.  Touchdown!

He held the small bird and did the thing we all do when fortunate enough to hold a wild bird in ones hand… he looked it over very carefully.  It’s blue feathers, its small beak, those round eyes rimmed with a band of gray.  There are delicate intricacies of patterns, color, fletching, these things you don’t see when a bird is on the wing.  To see it up close, without your own eye pressed to a binocular lense, is to see it in the real.  To feel the warmth and the tiny heart beat in your hand is to feel the spirit of nature herself.

The hub and the bird regarded one another.  Eye to eye, for a moment. And in that moment they were awed and touched.  Knowing time was important, to hold the bird longer than necessary was to trap him and harm him with fear, my husband opened the door to the outside world.  He stepped beyond the porch and held the bird to the open sky.  In a blink, the bird leapt and was gone, swooping off in long arcs across our meadow of spring grass.

In that moment, my husband was happy.  He felt blessed by the bluebird of happiness.

And that, was the story he shared with me.  It was the story I remembered when a week later, that bird forgot his error in judgement and found its way into my living room again. This time, I got to hold the bluebird of happiness in my hands.  And you know what?  Happiness is a fragile thing.  It has to be set free in order for it to fly and be and create more happiness. It’s a rare thing to hold it in your hands.

We both were blessed with that story.  As for the bluebird?  He found a better home and didn’t make that mistake a third time. If I want to look closely at them, I have to dial in the focus on our Bushnells… and then close one eye because they never seem to work right for me.  They are lovely to admire from a distance and I’m glad they are taking a pass on the chimney pipe these days.  But that brief encounter was a small blue miracle, one of the many magical moments that make up a life and make one happy to be alive.

The bluebird of happiness:

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Wait?! Summer’s over already?

/ skyevans / 9 Comments

Hello everyone!

I was going to title this How I Spent My Summer Vacation, but after seeing the title of my last post… well, I just had to go with the theme. Quite the span of time, from late June thru to mid Sept, and while I may have committed the blogging sin of allowing too much time!! to go between posts and losing readership… well, consider me a sinner then. The weather was beautiful and there was just too much to do outside than sit inside hunched over my laptop. As it was,  I barely got around to paying the bills and keeping our financial world afloat. What I did do, was pay homage to my love of all things Laura Ingalls Wilder by making jams, juices, canning and drying assorted veggies/fruits, pickling and other homey pioneer type chores.

We rebuilt the pump house, upgraded our water system, fenced the garden.  I fixed gutter, gate and shed as well as replacing porch boards and molding around doors and windows.  In between the myriad of chores and duties of the small farm owner, there were the half a dozen or so camping trips (with horse and without), visits with friends and family, a new puppy and the 24 chicks in my coop that are growing up to be our new layers and fryers.  All amidst the crushing drought and crazy ass wildfires of the Pacific Northwest.

We are not out of the woods yet with that, major fires in Northern California and Washington are devastating lives and homes.  We escaped a lightning strike fire just last week as fast acting neighbors and the local fire department put out the flames on a 100 foot tall Douglas Fir tree a mile from our home!  We are all looking forward to the rain these days and hoping for cool weather that won’t bring thunderstorms our way.  While careless people do start fires, the majority of fires out here are started by electrical storms.  Hot summers, drought and thunderstorms are a bad combination.

Storm clouds roll in on my camp... this was taken moments before a storm hit my tent. Scary!

Storm clouds roll in on my camp… this was taken minutes before a severe thunderstorm hit my tent. Scary!

And so, my art has taken a back seat.  The painting I started in June became a thorn in my side, so it was removed from the easel and is awaiting a time when I can look at it objectively as opposed to the sneer I give it now.  However, good news on the muse front!  Inspiration was found on a wonderful 4 day solo backpacking trip to the Pacific Crest Trail.  After painting visions of other women’s journeys, I have found my own while traversing the famous PCT.

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My backpacking art kit got some use!

It’s funny, I knew I was on a mission to take photos of the trail so I could add my own image to the Wilderness of Women series, but the one I picked to paint wasn’t what I had planned.  Well, life doesn’t work according to plan sometimes.  The second I took the shot, I knew what I was going to do.

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It was time to put my studio dog, Scout, into another painting.  Dogs have been a big part of my backpacking experience and she especially has been an integral part of my studio life.  It all just made sense.

Scout on the PCT

Scout on the PCT

The balance needed for my painting however, is different from the snap shots I take in the field.  Sometimes a photo is perfectly put together and I don’t have to do much manipulation, but that day, in that place, I couldn’t get the exact image.  The painting is a compilation of 4 images, strung together and overlapped into a panoramic view.  It captures my actual view while Scout and I sat at an elevation of 6850 feet and had a well earned lunch. It was a beautiful day and as I studied my position, I realized that by climbing up to this pass, I had hiked every bit of the PCT, from top to bottom on my map.  It was a very good feeling, which must have made my muse happy because as soon as there was a lull in all my food preservation activities, she gave me this: (click on image for a full view)

Lunch with Scout on the PCT

Lunch with Scout on the PCT

Wait! It’s summer already?!

/ skyevans / 2 Comments

Dear lovely readers,

Summer came in and hit the PNW with a bang.  We had some record heat early on and before I knew it, I was gardening, mowing, riding horses, camping and doing everything BUT getting into the studio.  Just wanted to let you know I was still around, but not painting.  I have been working on a piece, (another in the Wilderness of Women series) but with so much to do (and a short window of summertime opportunity to do it in) it’s going to be awhile before I post new art.  In the meantime…. I want to share the summer studio with you all and beg a bit of forgiveness while I get out there, live life and make some memories.  Blogging all my new work will have to wait until the weather turns rainy and cold, and I actually make some new art.  Funny how I never paid attention before to my creative processes before starting this blog.  Now I see, how clearly seasonal my muse seems to be!  Apparently she’s on vacation, because even the days I get into the studio, she doesn’t seem interested in showing up and helping a girl out.

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Well, she’ll turn up eventually.  And as soon as she does, I’ll post again!  Till then, the garden will have to suffice.

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Painting Mt. Hood

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As part of my Wilderness of Women series, I decided to paint the iconic Mt. Hood.  Judy Flexer sent me a fabulous photo of Mt. Hood from the PCT, and while I liked it, somehow living in Oregon and actually painting the one big iconic volcano in our state was… well, maybe too big of a project.  I was so reluctant about the subject matter that I pretty much filed the image under “do not paint… like, ever!” in my mind and that was that.  Until I was searching for my next project.  And I kept coming back to that image, it was big, and bold and compelling as all hell.

So I wondered… why not?  I proved to myself I had the ability, so what was stopping me?  I couldn’t think of anything other than my own little fragile ego.  If I compared my work to the quintessential hero of the landscape, Albert Bierstadt, I felt I was falling short of greatness.  But why compare?  He was a great painter, yes, and while it is true that he has a particularly nice rendering of Mt. Hood that happens to hang in the Portland Art Museum, surely that’s no reason.  Intimidating, yes, but really, that’s a silly reason to not paint something. It’s not like the PAM is calling me anytime soon to ask what was I thinking?!  Damn it, I wanted to do it just because at first, I didn’t.  It may be a perverse kind of determination, but it’s how I spurred myself to get over myself and just do it already!

In Judy’s photo, Mt. Hood is bathed in sunset colors, the viewer stands between the sunset to the west and looks east at the mountain.  The eastern sky is a deepening blue, as opposing sky lines often are; the foreground is shadowed, you only know it’s sunset because of the spectacular glow of Hood.  The Multnomah Indians called it, Wy’east, and he was one of the sons of the great spirit.  Wy’east is a big beefy volcanic guy and without his deep mantle of snow, we see all his orange, golden, tan and ochre tones. You can tell it’s late in the summer and the white cape he usually sports has mostly disappeared.  Hood is pretty much naked in this picture… and something about that really appealed to me.

And now, for some other perverse reason, I decided to not only paint him, but document myself in a whole new medium to me, film.  Well, digital anyway.  Last time I made a film was in a class where we actually spliced real film!  So, not only did I have to learn the software, I had to hang up my phone on a tripod and upload, upload, upload.  Argh!!  It tested my patience and because it was a distraction, I skipped filming portions of the painting.  So, it’s not a great piece of movie making, but it is kinda fun and explains my delay at posting to my blog!

Without further ado, Painting Mt. Hood.  A digital short by Sky Evans… enjoy!

Mt Hood

Mt Hood

If you’d like to learn more about Albert Bierstadt and his amazing talent, here’s a quick link to his version of Mt. Hood:  http://www.wikiart.org/en/albert-bierstadt/mount-hood-oregon-1865

Sold!!

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Endurance Night Ride

Endurance Night Ride

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This is my first print sold on FAA.  Very excited!  My first sale ever (on FAA) was a phone case and then a couple of cards, but selling the print feels like such a bigger deal for some reason.  Thank you all for supporting my efforts to support myself as an artist.  I’ve finally reached the place in my life where I acknowledge and am comfortable with the concept that this is who and what I am.  An ARTIST!

And that’s a very good thing.