The River of Silence

Becoming Visible
6x6

Silence helps me see, hear and feel. Silence helps me create.

Stillness puts me in touch with what is mine; the authentic, the quirky, the gift from the deep well from which we all draw up our creative water droplets.   I enjoy discovering the surprises that surface when I work in connection with stillness.

Only when you drink from the river of silence

shall you sing.

~Kahlil Gibran

Yet to Become

11x11  

Never talk away the magic. 

Danish Saying 

Silence is not the absence of sound. The birds still sing, the fan softly whirs, the stream continues to rush to the sea. 

Silence is the absence of chatter, of distracting noise and loudness. 

Silence allows me to respond to what is happening on the surface as I work. 

Silence is a conversation without words between the work and and me.

Remember

6x6

I sat staring, staring, staring - half lost, 

learning a new language or rather the same language 

in a different dialect. 

So still were the big woods where I sat, 

sound might not yet have been born.

~Emily Carr

Silence is the space between the coming and going of my own thoughts. Quietude is the midwife of my work.

Shut up and play your guitar.

~Frank Zappa

In the Flow of Creativity

Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Have you ever been in a flow, when things just kept getting better and better? That’s happening now for me, and I am having so much fun! I am barely noticing that my studio is under construction. I hauled paints and paper and brushes to the house and have set up a tiny mobile studio in a bathroom, so you know it’s a very small space. I put a board over the sink and away I go!

Earlier this year I set up two pieces of paper on board to do warm-up mark making prior to a painting session. I just kept painting and painting on them, layer after layer. When I had a go at painting with smoke (see my last post) I used those pieces for my trial runs. I took a small section of one of those and did additional mark making to create the piece above. I wanted to let you know that if you decide to paint with smoke as Dean Nimmer outlines in his book Art From Intuition, I suggest you wear a respirator. The fumes, especially if you are working over acrylics, were very unhealthy. Dean outlined a number of safety factors to keep in mind, but not that one. When it comes to sensitivity to vapors and fumes and air born particles I am the canary in the coal mine. Just thought I would share that precaution.

Do you do it for the money, honey? The answer is no. Don't now and never did. Yes, I've made a great deal of dough from my fiction, but I never set a single word down on paper with the thought of being paid for it... I have written because it fulfilled me. Maybe it paid off the mortgage on the house and got the kids through college, but those things were on the side--I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.

Stephen King

Meanwhile the Re-Fresh Your Creative Practice program is coming together and we are set to start Tuesday, January 19th. There is still time to join us if you wish. I am having so much fun with that creative project! If I had to choose between my love of creating art and my love of working with creative people, I would not be able to do so.

I’m in the kind of flow that fills time to the brim, and I find I am inspired even in the early morning and late night hours. I am making every effort to visit your blogs. It looks to me as if there is a great deal of creative flow going around!


We have so much to celebrate!! There is a permanent party rocking the Universe! We are all standing on one giant revolving dance floor- get out there and do your thing and do it well! Dance the dance of life, and let your own unique and beautiful rhythm flow.

Katharine Dever