Edgar Degas, Dancer Stretching at the Bar.
Challenges are hard to come by these days unless you really “push yourself” or work with or for a tyrant. Both self-judgement and supression are not an ideal scenario. Both situations provide zero fulfillment, zero reward, and allow for very little growth.
When is the last time you actually challenged yourself to make a change, pursue a dream, expand the limits of the walls within which you live—- and the walls of your very crafty mind that can spin in circles—- just for the hell of it? When is the last time you lived for fulfillment rather than just achievement of an ideal to fit in with other people or feel better than they are?
Although I am a big proponent of baby-steps toward growth these days, I am very emphatic in my desire to have my clients think of their life without boundaries. In that thinking comes the real goals and directions of a life still unlived.
Ask yourself—-
Basically, I am challenging you to find a challenge. Even a small one. And say you can do it. Then figure out how. Then take a bigger challenge and knock it out. Then another…And… Soon, your walls will reconfigure themselves.. maybe with new decor… or maybe a move is in store? Your routines might start to look unfamiliar….or you may just feel lighter and more focused and…yes, more happy. Perhaps elated?
Give it a roll. You deserve to do cool things with your life. Really: You do!
I’m heavy on the inspirational quotes these days because, well, just because.
(Source: natashanicoleann)
(via interiordecline)
OHHHHHH those are killer window treatments! My mind is teeming with possibilities!!!
( via nevver)
“play is just as important as work.”
Rafael Soto, Penétrable BBL bleu, 1999
“The painting is just a surface to be covered. Paintings aren’t about the person who makes them, either. My paintings have to do with feeling, yet it’s pretentious to say they’re about feelings, too, because if you don’t get it across, it’s nothing.”
~ Joan Mitchell
On Twitter. Hit me up!! I can’t really read much this week (more on that in a bit…), but I’ll always answer your questions and love to see cool twitpix, interesting blog posts and every ounce of artful stuff you can throw at me!
Oh, yes, the art this week, my favorite week of the year, my birthday week, brings Cecily Brown, my favorite artist that will ever live, someone who makes paint dance with passion, stirring sex from color and diffused forms… KILLER!!! :) Have a great week!!! xxx Dana
As many of you may know, I have embarked on THE ARTISTS WAY, a colossal life-changer of a book that prescribes action for each week, rules and exercises, to grow beyond creative blocks, to outgrow outmoded thinking… TO BE AN ARTIST.
This week, the theme is reading deprivation. No reading. NOTHING. NO magazines, cereal boxes, coffee cups, subtitles, etc, etc, etc. Somehow this exercise also includes TV/INTERNET SURFING (including FACEBOOK) and all other reading. I am quite emotional about this, as I’ve slipped up three times today, once in a near panic after seeing that I broke my own rule which I was desperate to enforce.
I CAN NOT FIGHT THIS. I have to flow with it. Silence is many things and top on that list of what SILENCE is to me today: UNCOMFORTABLE. True, I can listen to music, but no music could quell my deep appetite (addiction!!!!!) to images and stories and blogs and you tube and research and magazines… YES, its an addiction. The idea is that reading (stuffing yourself full of images) leaves little hunger to create your own sentences, phrases, ideas, pictures and stories. Reading like crazy is numbing, hiding, escaping… The idea is to monitor the amount of time you spend ingesting words and balance it with both empty space and your own thoughts.
Can you go a week without reading anything? Or… can you actually track how much total time you spend both online and on the TV and reading for a few days and let me know….?! I am SO curious. until I quite smoking I did not realize I spent TWO HOURS of every day engaged with cigarettes. TWO HOURS! How much do we read/suck up words/graze images/TV/internet surf on average?
Please let me know! I am so curious about what you discover about your habits!
In the meantime, I am going to bed with the thoughts in my own mind… no other words, no other ideas… :)
UVA.
light shapes space, createse a mood, directs the flow, sets the pace of time.
LIGHT is powerful stuff.
