Making angels and moments

 Angels everywhere!  Letting go little by little. Scribbling with pastels or conte marks speak to a vulnerability I can’t shake and never want to shake. Play with the brush.  Dry strokes over dryish painted layers, create an unpredictable backdrop…some parts blend a little.   Some parts scrape over leaving two or more distinct colors. They don’t have to be conventionally beautiful together, as long as they feeeel true. Honestly, I love them when they’re a little off or even ugly, but they come together in a soul-pleasing way. Bonus if the grid of the canvas material gets in on the action!

I call these interactions of color and canvas “moments.”  I look for moments when I paint.  For me, if there aren’t moments where I can look at a piece and feel, then there’s more (or less) work yet to do.

And, I’m melting.  The more angels I paint, the fewer questions I have.  The fewer addictions I have…  I loved the Red Velvet Oreos, but I didn’t need them. It’s a funny space… It’s a blank space and I’m learning what to do with it. I’m learning not to fill it with things that don’t satisfy me…things that can’t save me from being a painter,  a feeler, a laundry doer, a grocery buyer, a mom-er of a teetering on teen, and a partner, and more. Not that I want to be saved from this stuff.  I sometimes want to be saved from failing at them or hurting in some way. But life is moments…layers of one thing on top of another, even if there’s something ugly about it, right?!  Ahhh, there’s more.  I shall return, but for now, here are the newest angels:

Deeply loved, Angel #6, Sold

Grow, Angel #7, available

She dances (because she found a safe place), angel #8, Sold

Entertaining angels and the mourning of the miniscule

This is Angel #5 in my 100 angel series.  I sold her two days ago.  (She had two feet by then.)  Some day,  I’ll show you angels 2-4, but I chose her next, because she is really close to my heart.  As I show the rest of the series,  I think you’ll see why.

I’m also mourning little things.  I cleared out my voice mail and saw a phone number of a friend that I don’t talk to as much and one other woman who I thought would become a friend,  but life takes its own twists.

I want to be an amazing yogi and meditate regularly.  Maybe I want to impress god in some way… To be a spiritual and physical specimen that escapes hard news like cancer and job losses. But I can’t seem to find the time to do more than a few stretches and breathe while I paint.

Then there’s middle school homework.  It makes me crabby.  I bark at my kid because I want him to get all the checks and points he can. .. How else will I know I’m a good mother?  I try to soften the bark,  but I feel it more in my gut and I wish I could be softer. .. which takes me back to the angels.

The angels are softening me.

Of oatmeal and 100 angels

Strange magic, 10" x 10" mixed media (acrylic and charcoal) on canvas

Over the last two days,  I’ve had oatmeal for breakfast.  How did I forget that I love having oatmeal for breakfast?
*****

A little while ago, I got this idea to paint 100 angels. Part of my rationale was to completely give myself over to my current obsessions: angels,  tutus,  and finding lightness/vulnerability through lines and color. This is #1.

I wanted deep blue and play.  I found her in the process. I discovered the magic of too small wings and star earrings. (Well,  I already knew the magic of star earrings,  because I have my own pair. )

I’m finding that is hard to just love what I love. I’m asking myself why a lot.  I’m getting comfortable with, “I just do, ” as a perfectly acceptable answer.

Oh hai, anxiety-ishness that almost brings me to a screeching halt every time, all of this happened

This weekend, we had a new couch coming and 6 boys sleeping over for my kiddo’s birthday.  I was about to explode with anxiety. I needed to get a copy of the lease for the delivery guys…Anticipating asking for that copy almost made me throw up.  I won’t even mention the muck I hacked through to get the email invites out to the boys.  But I did it. I did it! 

Feeling anxious can choke creativity off in the worst way. There are so many colors, marks, and words seeking life, but my mind gets in the grip of this thing that says “DANGER! STOP!” even when there is no danger.  Even when I need to keep going…  I decided to create through it.  With calming colors and words.

I chose to breathe instead.  Breathe through the tension,  breathe through the fear that something would go wrong,  breathe into the possibility that everything could go beautifully.

It did go beautifully. 

And then I met a toad who thumped me on the foot while I was walking the dog. I picked him up,  but he hopped away when I tried to switch hands. I felt like the luckiest woman on the planet.

And this sunrise.

There was vegan chocolate cookie cake,  because of a nut allergy and a dairy allergy.  The boys loved the cake.  My kiddo (who can’t have dairy) didn’t even have any.  Some years he doesn’t eat his own cake. He’s not much of a sweets person, but he always wants a birthday cake.  It cracks us up.

The boys played fetch with Coal late into the night.  Coal usually goes to bed around 9pm, so he was so sleepy all day yesterday. He slept like a log…a log on a new couch,  ha!

I want to do another sleepover for my kiddo.  I’ll feel like throwing up as I write the emails.  My jaw might be tight and I might have to breathe through it, but I know what those feelings mean now.  They don’t mean “don’t do it.”  They mean, “I’m scared to do it.”  And I can still do it, even if I’m scared.  (When I listen, I know why I’m scared, but that’s another post!) Maybe one day I won’t be scared at all.  

All of this ♡

Voice 2

There was a knock at the door and I felt panicked. After losing a house,  a car, a beloved family member (not listed in order of priority)… I never lost the fear that something could be taken away from me in an instant or slowly over time. Why do I focus on that stuff sometimes? None of those things was initiated with a knock anyway.

Who knows, maybe I could have won a sweepstakes. There could have been a person with a giant check on the other side of the door. Or a better religion… or a nice vaccuum. 

I don’t like it when I feel afraid like that. I don’t like it when I feel afraid to get it wrong.  It’s too much work to be afraid.  The brush will do something I hadn’t expected.  Life will take a funny turn.  I’ll disappoint, be impatient,  or I’ll even be thoughtless. I was once too quiet because I didn’t have enough money. I wish I wouldn’t have done that. But I didn’t think I deserved to speak. I was afraid to speak because I got the worth of my voice mixed up with the number in my bank account.

I think a lot of us stay too quiet because of money or we just say what we think is going to get us money.  Not in a terrible way, but because we want to thrive. We want to eat. So we say what we have to… or what we think the people with money want us to. Job interviews… What we create. .. How we talk about what create. .. Maybe it’s just me.

Anyway,  I write all of this to set it free.  My voice has hooked up with a raven and she’s flying all over the place with her mouth open. She wouldn’t let me paint her with it closed.  And she wanted a feather tattoo.

Willful disobedience: The day of the loud, full, hell-bound woman

Face 3, willful disobedience is available. Click on the right hand toolbar.

Nah, I don’t really think I’m hellbound…I just like playing with that which is not to be touched…  I like dancing on the edge. I’m so glad I made it here.

First, I need to tell you this story. It’s all true:

When I walked into the church wearing pants and my self-cropped hair.  The pastor preached a fiery sermon about disobeying the shepherd (him, the leader — shepherd — making the rest of us sheep, hmmm.)  A move of willful disobedience would get you sent to hell…pants and short hair were my ticket, if I didn’t repent. I wasn’t repentant.

I’ll be 40 in April of 2015 and I feel like someone has shaken me awake. (Really when I writing about my old church has made me realize that I was writing about 20 years ago like it was yesterday — that woke me up!)… I’ve been shaken awake into my own magic and magnificence…into a deep self-love that woman aren’t supposed to just have.  Especially not the pant-wearing and hair-cutting kind.

And, for the most part, I obeyed. I was afraid that everyone would think I was a fool if I didn’t.  They’d think, “She’s so dark brown and her hair so not straight. She’s so short and chubby.  She deserves nothing. She’s lucky for anything she had.”  So I stayed quiet and hungry. 

But, I worked hard to not appear fool enough to believe I was loved, and valuable, and gorgeous.  I worked hard to be quiet and to tip toe under the radar.  I preferred to fail over being seen… I worked hard to  be self-deprecating and I waited for someone else to green light my deepest desires.  (No one will do that.)

And everything suffered.  Not enough money.  Not enough energy.  Not enough… I have felt so disconnected from this wonderful and awful life.  Working hard to obey what a woman is supposed to be takes too much.  It costs too much…too many days, too many laughs…too many walks in comfortable shoes and moments of not holding in my belly.  

So I’m declaring a state of willful disobedience.  

Loud.

Full.

Hell-bound.

And they shall be given over to their obsessions

Gray splotches. (Inspired by my son’s stellar color mixing on cardboard.)

Turquoise.

Spots.

Peach.

Face 2. Available for purchase.

 

Antiquing.  (A new obsession.)

The smell of raw wood.  

Lipgloss when I’m feeling anxious or need to be able to think clearly.  These go hand in hand for me.Back at that old church I mentioned a couple of posts ago, we read the King James version of the Bible (holieth coweth!)  In the Old Testament, God would sort of threaten that the people who were misbehaving would be given over to their sins or something to that effect.  In essence, that’d be handed over to whatever was carrying them away. That wasn’t a good thing.

And yet, when I’m deep in my obsessions, I feel carried away and so alive.  When I’m at a certain point in a piece, I ask myself “What are you obsessed with?”  If I don’t see it in the piece, it seems to lack depth and emotion.  I’ve ruined pieces that way too, ha!  But was it creativity without ruining a piece or many?

When I’m in that juicy, obsessed place, I think I’m “given over to my obsessions.”  And I giggle, because there is a part of me that is so terrible.  I really like that part of me 😀

 

What’s the word for a form-phobe?

Today I painted to ease the overwhelm that comes with the end of the summer and endless school forms.  Why do forms give me so much anxiety?  It’s the lines.  The deadlines and details.  The little things…and I worry that I haven’t filled them out right…or that I won’t fill them out right.  

Did you notice that I forgot to put the “R” in my name?  I have since fixed that, but gah!  I need to get these forms done.  What is the word for being a form-phobe?  

Anyhow, I finished this face and a trunk that I antiqued for my friend.  What hands can do never ceases to amaze me.

Fixing women and exorcism (Hey! That sort of rhymes!)

 

Back in the day I went to a church where women couldn’t cut their hair (and straight was preferred if yours was of the kinky/tightly curled variety.)  We weren’t allowed to wear pants in the church and little or no make up as well.  I think it used to be no make up, but then they figured that God likes a pretty face with a nice glow, ha! (I should also mention that I found this place on my own.  It wasn’t my upbringing.)

What was I doing there?  Looking for belonging?  redemption?  exorcism?  Yes.

 

This place offered it all willingly.  There was a lot of work to do, for women in particular.  We had to watch the length of our skirts and wait for a husband.  We had to learn to shut our mouths and smile at the sexually harassing deacons who were just boys being boys.  Only they weren’t boys.  That was about 20 years ago now…another lifetime…

Only, just a couple of weeks ago, I got an email from a list I’m on.  The writer realized that she needed to feel pretty and she has a friend who offers that service.  That’s fine.  I won’t even ask why we’re not questioning a system where  any woman would have to experience not feeling pretty.  The thing is, I didn’t subscribe to fix my pretty.

And then this nice-enough guy has come up with a plan for a woman to get the guy she wants. Maybe it works.  I just don’t know how fixing a woman fixes a commitment-phobic guy.  Can I get an, “Amen?”  I’ll totally give myself one on that. (For the record, I don’t think guys as a whole are commitment-phobes. I married one such man and I lurve him dearly.)

And where between pretty and winning over a commitment-phobe does a woman go to learn her own truth?  Luckily it lives in her.  Like right about here ❤ don’t you think?

(Truth is available for purchase at www.jenniferpricedavis.com/store)

 

Making Space: Art for sale! and disappointing my mother

I’m feeling the need to make space so I’m having an art sale in my shop! The price of every item has been reduced and includes shipping. 

I’m making space for back-to-school necessities, art supplies, and dreams.  I’m making space to create flow and room to breathe.

Creativity needs room to breathe.

I’m also afraid that I’m disappointing my mother, ha! I publicly shared my painting of a nude figure for the first time and there’s this part of me that thinks, “Oh gosh, my mother.” My mother is a fantastic woman.  In fact, she’s on her way to bring me medicine for my back (and hopefully a chai soy latte) as I type.  In return for her beautiful spirit, I paint nudes!  Why God!

But I can’t resist the call to paint raw and nude. There will only be more from here and I’m so excited about it.  The other night I dreamt of faces of people from different cultures smiling at me. I felt a deep connection to them.  I think the connection was owning my truth and self-expression.

My mom would laugh at this and say, “You’re such a rebel.”  I love that woman.

Please do check out the sale if you feel compelled.  Each of the paintings here is available for $27 and $10 respectively (not the journal piece.)  I’ll also be adding item’s over the next several days, so keep checking ❤