11 November, 2007

Face Painting - my new passion

This is good, I haven't really had a passion I could actually follow through on (besides parenthood and, you know, conjugal activities) for a long time. I tried window painting but my poor sister-in-law had to spend hours removing a bazillion acrylic snowflakes from her kitchen window. I love the ephemeral nature of face painting. It feels like the old story about the (Zen?) artist who paints a blossom a day when commissioned to paint a masterpiece over the course of a year. It's also somewhat akin to the sand paintings of Navajo and Asia (I think it's Tibet?). They're made to be blown away by the next strong wind, or danced away in prayer. I'd like to get to a point where I really enjoy painting on canvas. But right now it feels better to paint on a kid, despite the occasional booger, whine, wiggle, or smear. I love the collaborative effort of trying to meet up with their imaginations. I've gotten a lot of support from other face painters and plenty of very positive feedback from kids and parents - have even painted a few adults and would like to do more. I don't think I want to take it beyond a g-rated level, though. I've always enjoyed drawing or painting the figure but ... painting ON the figure... hm. I don't want to cross any fuzzy lines about physical intimacy (literally and... haha... figuratively!)
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The Door is Open

I took this phrase from two sources:
the U2 song "Gloria", and my favorite Rumi poem:

"The Breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you
Don't go back to sleep
you must ask for what you really want
Don't go back to sleep
People are going back and forth
Across the doorway where the two worlds touch
The door is round, and open
Don't go back to sleep"

I have spent a fair amount of my life wide awake and dreaming, other times sleeping where my dreams were so vivid I wanted to go back and figure out how to make them real. How do I bring dreams into the waking world - dreams of creativity, of joy, of peace, of fun? How to take the shadow of my psyche and use it to heal myself and others instead of hurt?

I have eclectic taste - possibly insane taste - ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. I like silly humor more than I like sarcasm. I have a lifelong interest in why the heck the world is the way it is... cause and effect? G/d/s? Quarks? Who knows. Even if I thought I knew, that would be faith. The intersection between faith and knowledge - a dangerous and blurry place.

As the Firesign Theater states ".... a force that can only be used for good... or evillllll..." but I don't remember what they were talking about, was it a time machine?

I'm blessed with brilliant and creative friends; you'll find links to their blogs, art and ideas here. I'll add my own art and interests as time permits. Daring to put ourselves out there is one of the greatest challenges many artists face. Creating is easy, sometimes it happens all by itself. Communicating... hard.