(Let’s have a jacaranda-coloured post, in keeping with the season)
The Seven Trees of Us
Sally Swain © art
very mixed media on a small strip of paper
I ting a Tibetan bowl and lead a guided contemplation for the six women participating in the Art Garden playshop.
We sit with four elements that potentially nourish the self-garden.
Soil
What’s your ground? What helps
at the same time?
Yeah. I reckon so. It’s called Divine Play. Or ‘Lila’ (which means Divine Play in Sanskrit). Or Creativity.
Ancestor Boat
Sally Swain
© original art
I travelled to
That’s what I called my 2013 exhibition at
Beyond the Ordinary Teahouse. Surprise surprise – lots of teacups.
Would you like to see the painting I called ‘Space Odditea’? It’s never before been seen by non-Sally eyes.
If not now, when?
Space Odditea
Sally Swain © original art
I thought it wasn’t
I didn’t.
But I do now.
What do I know?
(Read on for Art and Soul Queen Sally’s Creative Christmas Message….)
I now know that Brian Eno is elegantly, eloquently wise. He recently rocked my paint-splattered world. He speaks with both divinity and great ordinariness of the value of creativity and the arts.
Fabric Swirl by Sally
just the ordinary beauty of clothes soaking in the bath
I recommend
What will YOU do on your artist date?
So I’m in the middle of a national park, in the middle of a bad hair decade. Decade.
I can’t avoid the fact that I’m a Middle-aged Crazy Lady wearing baggy pants, collecting plastic junk fragments from the beach. Plastic junk fragments.
Not to throw away, like any Sensible Middle-aged Crazy Lady does, but to PLAY with, as any Unsensible Middle-aged Crazy Art Lady does.
Plus oyster shells, seaweed and string. Treasures.
Beach Mandala
plastic, shelly, junky, funky, probably smelly and washed away by now
A gaggle of teenage girls walks past and
to be viewed one blossom at a time
‘A Paintbrush was Sacrificed in the Making of this Picture’ (long title, little picture)
Sally Swain © original art
Flower Power Point Three
CG Jung said, The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
Play is an essential part of creativity. You can explore, try out different perspectives, respond to what happens when it’s not going the way you planned…in painting or in life.
You had a fully-
formed picture of a waterfall in your head, but you have absolutely no idea how to represent it and your painting looks like a mushy blue stripe. This is where creative play kicks in. You could turn the picture into a whole host of mushy blue stripes, full of life and vigour, informed by essence of waterfall. You could rip the page into morsels and reassemble them in a rhythmic collage. There are lots of options.
‘Lila’ is a lovely Sanskrit word meaning ‘Divine Play’.
Check out a slice of Lila in POG.
It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.
Let us play.
(so said a sign I saw years back in the wonderland Nimbin Museum, northern NSW, Australia)
and thank you, Lemonia Cafe, for this particular PLAY reminder
I am Aunty Art and Soul. I’ve been hosting niece Ruby (age 9) and sister Jennie (age not telling). We have two hours before I drive them to the airport.
Ruby says, ‘Let’s make a magazine just like POG.’
see previous post: ‘From POG to BLOG in forty years’ to discover what I’m talking about
Frenzy of paper, pens and paste of the non-Perkins variety.
VAGUE
by Ruby, Jen and Sal
(apologies to editor, designer, model, possum, bug and Ian Thorpe)
I am sixteen. I sit on the beige 1970s oval rug in the family room, with my sister and my best friend. We are surrounded by pencils, paper, Perkins Paste,scissors and magazines such as POL.
POL is supercool, stylish. I dream of living among its pages; of being tall, slender, popular, with a floppy crocheted hat.
We cut the title from its glossy cover page.
POG
We design, laugh, arrange, laugh, cut, laugh, paste, laugh, rearrange. Oh. And laugh.
We don’t know it, but
Art and Soul Space 