by Heather Plett | Jan 12, 2010 | art, Creativity
Last night I started my drawing class. At the Winnipeg Art Gallery, no less – a place for SERIOUS artists. (My last class was through the local community centre, so this is me “kickin’ it up a notch!”) I’m so excited. My teacher is just the right mix of down-to-earth, approachable, relaxed, wise, and seriously talented. I know I’m going to enjoy soaking in her wisdom. We spent last night learning about shading with cross-hatching and smudged charcoal – playing with light.
This is what I wrote in my journal on the bus ride home. “My first drawing class is over. Loved it! Oh yes I did! Teacher, looking over my shoulder, said ‘you have a great sense of light!’ Woohoo! Light! I am elated! Let the light shine on me! And may I recognize the value of the shadows for the way they bring out the light.”
Yup, I was just like Maddie coming home from her art class – silly and imaginative and just plain giddy. I didn’t tell goofy stories like she does (not sure my bus-mates would have appreciated it), but I’m sure I was grinning all the way home.
This morning, in honour of my desire to “bask in pleasure” just like a kid, I want to share a blessing from one of my favourite books:
For the Artist at the Start of Day
May morning be astir with the harvest of night;
Your mind quickening to the eros of a new question,
Your eyes seduced by some unintended glimpse
That cut right through the surface to a source.
May this be a morning of innocent beginning,
When the gift within you slips clear
Of the sticky web of the personal
With its hurt and its hauntings,
And fixed fortress corners,
A Morning when you become a pure vessel
For what wants to ascend from silence,
May your imagination know
The grace of perfect danger,
To reach beyond imitation,
And the wheel of repetition,
Deep into the call of all
The unfinished and unsolved
Until the veil of the unknown yields
And something original begins
To stir toward your senses
And grow stronger in your heart
In order to come to birth
In a clean line of form,
That claims from time
A rhythm not yet heard,
That calls space to
A different shape.
May it be its own force field
And dwell uniquely
Between the heart and the light
To surprise the hungry eye
By how deftly it fits
About its secret loss.
~ John O’Donohue ~
by Heather Plett | Dec 22, 2009 | art, fearless
At first, I hesitated to share this picture from my travels last week, even though it’s one of my favourite moments of the trip. Why did I hesitate? Because you can see just how much weight I’ve gained in the past six months, and… well… ugh. I hate that I’ve gained weight, but even more, I hate that it matters. Double ugh.
But here it is, none-the-less, because I like it, and it’s beautiful, and I’m trying to move past those issues. Really – I am. Look closer at the picture – past the size of my imperfect body, up to my face, and you’ll see a tiny smirk on my face. I was so happy in that moment – so full of what gives me pleasure in life.
This post is only partly about the weight thing. More than that, it’s about chipping away at things. I was in the magical studio of Regina Coupar and she was teaching my friend and me how to chip away at glass and stone to make tiny sparkly tiles for mosaic art. None of them were symmetrical or perfect, but each piece was just right. Blended together, these imperfect, assymetrical pieces make the most beautiful works of art.
It’s what I’m doing in my life too – chipping away at it. Trying to find the beauty at the centre of what looks like rough and ugly rocks. Trying to make the broken pieces into a work of art. Trying to trust the pain of the hammer and anvil. Trying to be brave enough to reveal what I’ve kept hidden under layers of protective covering.
I’m chipping away at what it means to be an artist too. Breaking off pieces of fear and hesitation. Revealing the shiny bits underneath. Taking chances and making mistakes. Trying new things. Risking failure. Learning from others… but in the end, trusting my own way of seeing and being.
This year has been full of so much “hammer and anvil” work. Chipping away at growth, change, pain, renewal, and fear.
I am artist and I am art, all wrapped into one imperfect package. I strive to create beauty and trust my own beauty to shine.
by Heather Plett | Dec 4, 2009 | art, business travel, travel
It’s been a full and exhausting week, but oh the good things that have come in the midst of all this craziness! To cap off the goodness, I won the bid on this AMAZING bag from Joyce, and now I can truly embrace the peace-lovin’ hippie in me!
How perfect is it that I’m buying a peace-sign bag from re-purposed fabric in support of justice and food for the people of Darfur!?! Everything about it just screams “this is meant to be Heather’s bag!” I hope to have it in time for my east coast tour next week (Joyce lives a half hour from me), ’cause I’ll be able to tell myself I’m just a free-spirited hippie out to convene with mother nature and a community of other hippies on the coast. Smile.
If you haven’t checked out Joyce’s Darfur Project yet, then WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! Go there NOW. Bid on a bag. (It’s okay – go – I’ll still be here when you get back.) Bookmark it for future reference, and keep going back. I kept forgetting to visit until it was too late to bid on the bags I wanted, but it turned out to be serendipitous, because I showed up at just the right time to buy the bag that is my favourite of the bags I’ve seen so far (and she makes lots of cool bags).
While I’m wandering the East Coast with my hippie bag, one of the coolest things I’ll be doing is visiting the artist Dale Cook in New Brunswick. Dale is putting on an art show in support of the organization I work for (Canadian Foodgrains Bank), and some of her paintings are based on my photos from India and Bangladesh. Here’s one of my favourites from a photo I took in India. Isn’t it beautiful?
I SO wish I could afford to buy it, but with kids who’ve suddenly outgrown winter coats and boots at the same time AND have this ridiculous expectation that they’ll get Christmas presents (sheesh), that would prove to be a little difficult. Hopefully it will go to a good home. 🙂 Check out Dale’s blog here.
I’ve got lots of other fun things lined up for my trip, including lunch and a studio visit with another artist/writer in Nova Scotia (whom I’ve admired from afar since I learned about her a few years ago and I’m in awe that I get to meet her face to face), and a meal in a restaurant/bakery that’s developed a special bread recipe that they’re dedicating to the Foodgrains Bank (every loaf they sell will support the work of ending hunger overseas). Plus I get to stay with my friend Randy (who gave me my triple spiral necklace on my last visit), and some other people that I really like (and expect to like once I meet the ones I’ve only spoken to on the phone so far) in three of the Atlantic Provinces.
It’s a good life for a peace-lovin’, art-lovin’, bread-lovin’, people-lovin’, justice-lovin’ hippie!
by Heather Plett | Feb 21, 2009 | art, Creativity, fearless, painting
I used to visit art supply stores and stand and gaze longingly at the rows and rows of paint tubes and brushes. I’ve done that for years. I wanted to paint so badly, but it was completely overwhelming for me. I had no idea what brushes to start with (what if I used the wrong one?) or which kind of paint did what (what’s the difference between watercolour and acrylic?), and besides, I could barely draw a stick figure, so what made me think I could paint?
Friends would take up painting, and I’d be so jealous, but I never signed up for a course. “I’ll probably fail,” I told myself. “I’m not very artistic.”
That was before my year of living fearlessly. This year, I knew I couldn’t let those layers of fear and doubt stand in the way of something I’ve wanted to do since I was a child. This year, I would paint, even if I accomplished nothing more than a stick figure and a tree that looked like a 6 year old’s fingerpainting. This year, I wasn’t letting failure stand in my way.
I signed up for a class and started buying supplies. But every time I took my supply list into an art supply store, I got that overwhelming, choking feeling again. What was a #1 brush? Was I supposed to buy the paint in tubes or in little cakes like the kindergarten paints? I bought a few supplies, but put off most of it until the night before the class.
Then the worst happened – the night before the class turned out to be the night OF the class. I’d looked at the dates wrong. I had to rush to the only store within easy driving distance, grab whatever I could find, and show up at class 15 minutes late with only half of my supplies. My heart was in my throat. This was NOT the way to start something this scary!
The first 15 minutes of the class were horrible. Others had already started and I didn’t get the instructions right. Plus I had to borrow a few things from my seat mate. If Marcel hadn’t dropped me off and left me without a car, I might have packed up and gone home.
But then, when water mixed with paint and paint started hitting paper, a transformation began to unfold. The paper, the paint, the paint brushes – they all took hold of me, lifted me out of myself, and the stress began to seep out of my body drop by drop. How incredibly good the paint brush felt in my hand! How incredibly right! I almost started crying right there in that high school art room. This was what I had been waiting for all these years!
Even though we only painted in monochrome that night, and the result was hardly worth bragging about, I knew that I had fallen in love. For too many years this passion had been waiting for fear to loosen its grip so that it could be born – now it was time to let it see the light of day.
Five classes later (too quickly it passed), we were getting ready for the final class. “Bring in a picture to the second last class,” she’d said. “Something that is special to you. You’re going to paint your first masterpiece during the final class.” I selected a few that I thought I was capable of (some easy landscapes and silhouettes), and threw in the one I really wanted to paint but doubted that I could – one of my favourite photos from Ethiopia. “These are easy,” she said, flipping through the top of the pile, “you can paint these.” Then she looked at the last one – the special one. “You want to paint that?” she said, a little incredulously. I felt the doubt rise again. Maybe she didn’t like it. Maybe she thought I couldn’t do it. Oh what was I thinking – of COURSE I can’t do it! I nodded sheepishly. “Yeah, I think you could probably do that if you tried hard enough.” Really? “You probably won’t finish it in one day, and you’ll have to do the sketching before the class so you use the time in class well.”
Gulp. Was I really going to try? What if I failed? Would I want to come back for another class next session, or would I give up? Maybe I should just do the silhouette of the acacia tree from my Kenya pictures. It was so much easier.
But “easy” wasn’t what I’d signed up for. I decided to try regardless of how it scared me. I did the preparation work and showed up at class early this time. I was determined. This was not going to be the end of painting for me. I was not going to let fear hold me back. I was determined, but nervous, and almost positive I would fail.
And then, the minute I touched paintbrush to paper, I entered that zen-like state and got lost in the painting all over again. The hours drifted away while I let the paint carry me. Bit by bit, I watched the art unfold. First grey sky, then the landscape. That was the easy part. Would I be able to paint convincing people? The first one turned out not bad. The second was even better. By the third one, I began to believe that I could actually DO this!
I didn’t finish that night, but the next night, while Marcel was away and the girls got to watch a little extra TV, I finished the last piece – the baskets. When I was done, I stepped back and… well, it was GOOD! I had actually painted something I could be proud of!
I have been on cloud nine ever since. Who knew I could paint? Certainly not me!
(If you want to see my progress throughout the classes, you can see all of my attempts in a slideshow here.)
by Heather Plett | Apr 12, 2007 | art, Beauty
How much are we missing every day? The sunset? The child skipping down the street? The poem we don’t have time to read? The way the petals on the lily curl at the edges? The music wafting out of a subway station? The intricate arc at the top of the building we pass every day?
I was intriqued by this article and accompanying videos. (If it doesn’t load properly, keep trying.) A world class musician plays in a busy subway station, and almost nobody notices. Too much work to do. Too many deadlines. Too many meetings to attend. Too many bosses breathing down their necks.
Would you have stopped?
Updated to add: So, I’m sitting here thinking about beauty and art and – on a whim – I typed the following into my browser: www.beauty.com. Oh, this is too rich. You have to look. What do YOU think the wise ol’ internet thinks beauty is? I think that’s one of those words that has lost its power. (What was that quote from C.S. Lewis again, ccap?)
Perhaps if some of the people who are visiting beauty.com spent a little less of their time looking in the mirror for beauty, they’d have a little more time on their hands to stop when it’s right there in front of them in the subway station.
