Bumbling and fumbling words rolling my tongue like a gutter ball on the side of this well worn lane. I am a fool now. Ignored. Unseen, laughed at when seen. I am a fool; not your fool.
Faith
Or Me
Category: Experimental design
What Keeps Me Awake – Death and Dying
I have more trust that tomorrow will come than I did six years ago, still I live as if I’m breaths away from dying. I feel overwhelmed with the idea of dying which makes me wonder what will happen to all my plants I’ve worked so hard to nurture? Who will take my frogs if I die? Will they appreciate small moments with aquatic frogs and cute poses by the tree frogs?
And Joe, who will care for Joe? He’s 14. I’m his second home. Being passed around can be difficult.
My CNA has covid and will be gone for a bit. I was with her a day before she tested positive. I’ve consistently tested negative, as well as no fever.
You know what’s funny? I’ve got a very nice fill in but she’s not up to par with my regular CNA. Despite calling her a psychopath lol, her standard of care is significantly higher than others; this, on top of taking the time to get to know me, makes her a really good CNA.
I like the person I have right now, the cat does, too, but would she ever take the time to get to know me and work with me long term? I wonder, if I had to get a new CNA will it be difficult again? I’ve come to understand how difficult my OCD can be to work with.
I wish my regular CNA had to experience two clients before returning to me. The feeling of not knowing what you’ve got till it’s gone, goes both ways.
She most certainly has OCD though it manifests itself differently. Somehow we work well together. We’ve even sit down and talk about the books I have on OCD.
There’s a Japanese artist named Yayoi Kusama whom I relate to very well. She’s got OCD and other issues but it’s her OCD that I relate to the most.
Yayoi shamelessly paints what she sees in her head, in bright colors.
She’s known for painting dots and pumpkins.
Yayoi helped me let go of shame concerning how I express chatter in art form.
I scribble and sketch in order to process the constant talking in my head and the oppressive amount of stimulation I feel.
I have quite a few pieces of chatter art. To me, my chatter art feels different from art that I call chaos in color because the chatter has very little focus, no space unfilled, no place to rest the eyes, yet a legitimate expression of art therapy.
Yayoi spoke of feeling like the “modern day Alice in Wonderland.” I can’t count the amount of times I’ve called myself the Black Alice in Wonderland.
It feels good knowing my art has a place out here and that I don’t have to feel crazy about it. It’s ok to identify with Alice and Wonderland. It’s ok to let the art simply be a copy of inside my head, and to do so in emotive fashion.
Recently I’ve been using alcohol ink. It works well for what I’m trying express, and they travel well.
The artwork above is a combination of acrylic paint, neon acrylic paint, alcohol ink, black ink, gesso, paper.
I love how Yayoi prefers paper, too. I’m strongly considering writing to the 94 year old artist way over in Japan. She’s made a deep impression on me.
It’s encouraged when I find female artists like Yayoi and Freda Kahlo who by example, give my art legitimacy.
Tonight. I’m not sure why I’m overly stimulated. Concerns with death are extreme. Thank goodness I have plenty of art supplies.
Faith
What If. Art Thoughts.
All ‘what if’ roads lead to nowhere.
I got to thinking, what if I get this art table but I still don’t paint? Then of course my head took off, so I decided to sit in my wheelchair at the dinner table and paint a ‘what if’ road map.
What if I struggle with the idea of changing my apartment to something new? Do I want to deal with this change?
After flipping out a bit I realized that I am more than ready for this change.
I’m going to set aside $50 for the table now so that next month I can add the other $50 and make this much needed adjustment. The art table I have now is simply too tall.
Until I get the new art table I’ll use the dinner table very, very carefully. I use my dinner table for letter writing too and the last thing I want is for it to look like an art table with paint all over it. It’s already old and beat up but paint spill free. I’m ok with spills and such on the art table though.
Dr D asked if I think my art will change subject matters once I truly paint again. Well, we’ll see soon, won’t we?
Jordan
Wild Things
Title: Wild Things
Art by: Faith Magdalene Austin
Medium: Acrylic collage on heavy cardstock
Size: 9×12 inches,Â
Finish: Sealed, signed, dated, unmounted
Style: Collage, Surreal, Abstract Figurative, raw
Art details: Cut outs of my own art have been arranged to create “Wild Things.” Sunflowers, koi fish, African faces, Asian faces and more have been mixed together in a wild collage. This is a visual feast, a mindscape, surreal art piece.Â
“Wild Things” and other original art can be found in my Etsy shop at www.sundrip.etsy.com. You may also contact me for a PayPal invoice.
Thank you for visiting SUNDRIP – Art for Life
Art Therapy Work
These pieces were worked on in the last two weeks. There’s been a lot of art lately but hardly any of it has hit the internet. I’m falling behind on it, however, today there are a few to show.
They’re all four different from one another. Creating them was quite emotional, especially the last piece when Robert spoke with Dr. D about some difficulties he was having.
The black and white mask is also by Robert. The other two are by Michelle. All are created in watercolor. The last one has crayon as well.
Today in therapy we talked about how difficult it can be to sit here with our CNA day after day and not have her know a thing about our DID. Today two of our snails died just before the CNA arrived which means we had to just swallow it down and not think about it. That’s difficult for a kid who just lost her pet. It can be difficult for me, Jordan, to stay out for 6 hours, 6 days a week but so far it’s happened. So far we’ve kept our secret.
Jordan
Is there anything creative left in me?
For a long time I thought to myself, I’m all out of art. I’ve got nothing creative left. I just scribble and block in the shapes with color. But after looking at these blocks of color I have to say, this is art, and I like it.
I started off drawing with a black gel pen then used watercolor. This particular piece was created to work with a new watercolor set of mine. I really liked how it turned out and love the watercolor set.
Below is a combination of Windsor Newton watercolors and a generic brand that I purchased. The generic brand has some colors that I really love that WN left out, so, I used both sets quite often.
I still use my bed at times as an art studio but somehow I’ve managed not to get any paint on my bed. Lets hope I can keep up the cleanliness.
This is watercolor art in progress.
Faith
Journal Work in Progress
Journaling until I’m blue in the face. Work in progress.
“Someone Else” in watercolor and acrylic. All work shown is on 8.5 x 5.5 paper.
“Froggie Smiles”. These are photographs. I’m looking forward to scanning so these look right. This is much darker than the actual painting. I’m working on the details of all these pieces. Once I have the colors in mind it doesn’t take long to finish.
This last one was created for the sole purpose of testing out new paints. It’s a paint pallet sheet. Sometimes when I just need to draw but there’s nothing specific to do, I draw lines on paper this way and wait to use it later to test paint or clean brushes.
Faith
Bits and Pieces
Title: “Bits and Pieces”
Art by: Faith M. Austin
Size: 6.5 x 4.5
Medium: acrylic, ink, paper
Finish: sealed, mounted
Style: Modern Abstract
Art for art’s sake
I changed my tea painting and added a short
quote. I couldn’t help myself. I like it better this way. I think it would look great in an all white frame but there wasn’t one on the framing program used.
“Where there’s tea there’s hope” is a small painting of 4 inches by 6 inches. It’s created in watercolor and ink and is on 98lb paper. The details on the flower and cup are easier to see in person.
I’ve also been playing with acrylic and rubbing alcohol. I cleaned my brushes of acrylic paint on a 4 x 7 piece of cardstock then went back and treated the paper with the 91 percent alcohol. I sprayed some it as well as dropped some. I swirled the paper and let it drip until I saw a pattern I liked.
I can save this textured abstract piece for later as pull art or for a collage. I could add a small cut out from my huge stash. Who knows what the cut out would be. I’ve got everything from figures to flowers to trees and animals, all from art that didn’t work out but that had parts worth saving. I use my x-acto knife and save what can be saved for projects just like this. The other thing is, I can leave it just the way it is and frame it as a temporary piece of art just to look at for a little while. I tend to do that. I switch up art on a wall in the living room making the wall an ever changing, energized display of color and texture.
Here are a few pieces in currently hanging in my living room on the art wall.
Faith
Watercolor Play
As I said, I’ve been exploring watercolor. I haven’t done that well with proper techniques but I have played a lot. Here are some abstracts created in watercolor after a session of trying to do stuff right. Play is important. 🙂
Color Rush and Deep Purple Paper are my favorites. In a few of these I dipped stamps in watercolor and stained the paper then began to pile color until I was satisfied. I used a pallet knife to create texture and one had alcohol sprayed on it. That was fun. Three of these have an acrylic finish but two do not. They feel like they could be a small framed painting or even the background for an encaustic art piece.
All are roughly 4 x 6 and are on cardstock, watercolor postcard paper and sketchbook paper.
Faith