What would we do without our friends...

More ideas

A few weeks ago at Carina's Anne came up with some ideas for how to put 'my house together'. I'd originally been thinking about making houses. But if houses represent the psyche and I only have one psyche (I hope and assume) then there should theoretically only be one house, made up of many rooms. Each room, an aspect of my psyche. And that's part of the journey (and this masters); getting to know my house, what's in it, and exploring all its different facets, its rooms. How many floors? The attic, the basement. Doors open and shut. What's behind the closed doors? Discovering new parts of the house. Staircases; where do they lead? Look at the windows, the décor... And so it goes on.

 

 

In an earlier post I talked about a ceramic artist called Hwan Cheun.

 

 

 

 

I have a sense now of how I can bring together the house, made up of rooms, stacked in a way inspired by the images Anne introduced me to and the other elements such as the Hermes shoes I am making. (Remember that Hermes was often described as the bringer of sleep and dreams as he is the god of transitions and boundaries and moves freely between the worlds of the mortal and the divine and significant to me as I am working with my dreams to help me discover what's in 'my house', my psyche. So the shoes will appear at various points of transition and boundaries, for example, the door that takes you from one room into another, from the first floor into the cellar, (and the shoreline in my paintings. The boundary between land and ocean)

 

 

 

 

Mmmm... Found some more images that are very exciting:

 

 

 A building by the very eccentric & incredibly inspiring Hundertwasser

 

 

Jim Kazanjian’s Mutant, Recomposed Houses

http://flavorwire.com/131524/photo-gallery-jim-kazanjians-mutant-recomposed-houses

 

Good grief this photo (above) does it for me although if you look at the link and view some of Jim Kazanjian's other images, baring in mind the hypothesis that the house symbolises the psyche, it suggests some pretty messed up psyches!

 

A multi-level house, on stilts, on the shoreline. SO rich in symbolism and bringing together elements I've been working with and talking about; the ocean, the shore and the house. Though if you look closer... I hope I don't start dreaming about collapsing roads and burning stilted houses out at sea... That could be a little worrying.

 

 

 Lovely blog (Paul and I could go wild with some of these ideas)

http://fromunderthewillowtree.com/2011/05/17/tree-houses/

 

 

A way forward

I apologise in advance. This wasn't meant to be such a long and intense post. It was originally meant to be a great big expression of delight at being shown a way forward with my painting but it has turned into quite a hefty post so I won't be offended if you skip this one...

Since starting my masters I have known that I have wanted to concentrate on painting as well as ceramics but I haven't known how to bring the whole Transpersonal/ dream element into the painting work and tie it all together with purpose. So I've been procrastinating and working on a seascape commission for the last few weeks to keep the 'painting muscle' working. I have found that it is very much like a muscle. The more you use it the stronger it gets.

I do know that I want to include seascapes/shore-scapes in my body of work. I have been dreaming about being on a ship out at sea a fair bit and I know that this is deeply significant. (more on this later.) 

 

Depending on where you look, it is said that the ocean is either symbolic of the Collective Unconscious,'...Thus, the ocean is equated with the collective unconscious... It is out of this collective unconsciousness, Zimmer notes, that the sun of the spirit arises.' http://www.symbolism.org/writing/books/sp/2/page5.html

... or the Unconscious,
Often in dreams, large bodies of water (oceans, lakes, pools) symbolize the unconscious.  As with bodies of water, we often see the surface, but cannot easily see into the depths. Also, the vastness of the ocean symbolizes the vastness of the unconscious mind.  Jung observed long ago that the unconscious mind was much vaster than the conscious portion.
http://www.briancollinson.ca/index.php/2012/11/jungian-therapy-the-meaning-of-dreams-5-water.html
 
I really like the following diagram and piece of text. It makes a lot of sense to me and links our conscious/ego, our personal consciousness and the collective unconscious and relates it visually to the sea with our egos as islands in the ocean of personal and collective unconscious:

'Jung was never clear about his own religious beliefs. But this unusual idea of synchronicity is easily explained by the Hindu view of reality. In the Hindu view, our individual egos are like islands in a sea: We look out at the world and each other and think we are separate entities. What we don't see is that we are connected to each other by means of the ocean floor beneath the waters.' http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/jung.html

... and the shore-break? Need to research this some more but for me, very much symbolic of the threshold/boundary between the Conscious and Unconscious. (One of the places, I dare say Hermes and his winged shoes would like to hang out as god of transitions and boundaries. Another story for another time)

So, anyway, back to the original reason I started this post.

Britta reminded me of the seascape collages I did a few years back.

 
She loved them as did some others... but overall the feedback I got seemed luke warm. I suppose I was disheartened as not many seemed to 'get' them so I tucked them and the technique away. But now it seems like the perfect time to resurrect them and the whole concept as reference for my oil paintings. I loved them. They really resonated for me. They were dreamlike. Shore break and rock pools have always had me entranced and combined with the other dream images, including the doorways, again suggesting transitioning from one place to another, this feels like a real possible starting point for my paintings. No better time, as this masters is about really following that which resonates, and this resonates.

And then as if icing on the cake, Paul, Britta, myself and the dogs went for a walk on the beach. I can't remember it looking so beautiful. So I snapped away and now have a whole series of stunning pictures to start this series off.

Lee Kavaljian

Aren't these stunning. By an ceramic artist called Lee Kavaljian

 

 

 Maui Spirit House

 

Lotus Spirit House

First blog on my new laptop

It's been a while since I blogged. My laptop died. I bought a new one... Dropped it on the floor and broke it three days after having had all my old data transferred onto it. Had a sleepless night beating myself up for being such a flipping careless idiot. Had it mended and then I took time off while my sisters visited from overseas. What a rich time. I am now detoxing after two weeks of beach, bush, merry making and wine and am gently getting back into my own art making again.

A few weeks back Tim, one of my fellow students, dug this out for me to have a look at. I had been thinking about how I was going to make my 'rooms/house' more organic and how I was going to add other elements (I'll talk more about this in later posts) that might not 'fit in the rooms' and then Tim came up with this which has ignited so many ideas. I think it is absolutely stunning. An artist in residence at the University called Hwan Cheun made it. I love how he has created a story with all those elements in such a contained space. A bird, an egg, a boat, a house, a matrix, pods, columns... On a platform... It is at the same time organic and yet has structure. For me it does have a very dream like quality and suggests how one can put elements and images together to create a meaningful visual story.