I am reading a bit most days of A Year To Clear by Stephanie Bennet Vogt and finding it often chimes with what I am thinking about or doing. (Although that could be, as with horoscopes, just because most of what she talks about is relevant to most people much of the time!)

I've been paying attention to my instincts lately and found what she has to say about 'inner knowing' quite interesting. She also calls it intuition or sixth sense and says this about deciding whether or not to do something...

If it feels right do it.
If it doesn't feel right don't do it.
If you don't know wait until you know.
and
You can decide not to decide.

..or more poetically, my heart.

In her charming book My Heart Wanders Pia Jane Bijkerk asks What would happen if one day you decided to follow your heart?

My Artist Date was a day in the city, wandering and wondering my way along Glasgow's West End. Following a whim to look in some shops I'd not even noticed before, browsing the bookshops, escaping the rain by having a leisurely lunch at Kember and Jones, fantasising about furniture and decorations I wouldn't usually consider, ditto clothes. I found the perfect birthday card for my daughter and some Christmas cards i love, stocked up on a shampoo I like which is about to  be discontinued, and had a gentle meandering time.

Delightful.

There's a case to be made for letting go of being efficient for a time, of being goal-driven and focussed and organised - just following your instincts and giving yourself a break from yourself for a few hours.

Simply live. Letting your heart wander...

..on a dark winter morning with the sound of rain lashing against the bedroom window.

Loving what is..

..at dawn and at dusk of late takes my breath away..

Yesterday saw the first snow on the hills this winter, and today around dusk I went for a winter paddle.  After the initial shock my feet felt wonderful! They are still tingling almost an hour later.

The little walk back up my path was gorgeous.

I love living here.

Glasgow Print Studio have an excellent feature on different kinds of prints (see here) and it was where my print was created by artist Elizabeth Blackadder in 1988.

I've always loved her work for it's vitality and honesty. Here is a video of her working. No pretiensions here, just brilliant observation, skill honed over many years of consistent work, and that 'je ne sais quoi' which makes the magic!

Have you bought any original art?

As I often say, there's nothing like the real thing....

The parcel arrived this afternoon..

Bigger than I expected...

Very well packed! Will I really like it?

YES! I do.

And I quickly found the right place....
I can't stop looking at it.
And smiling.

Still Life With Iris by Elizabeth Blackadder.

...or a Happening as they used to be called?

I stepped into a crowded large room in Edinburgh's Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and found that, oddly, no-one was moving. Or talking. All that could be heard was a faint buzz from the headphones that everyone without exception it seemed, was listening to...it was surreal and I hesitated to go in, wondering if this was in fact the 'exhibit' a staged event perhaps?  Someone moved and the spell was broken. I laughed out loud and went in to see the paintings. The Scottish Colourists if I remember rightly..


i am awaiting delivery of an Elizabeth Blackadder print i bought on eBay.

Exciting.

I am loving your comments about visiting art galleries.

I adore art galleries. I know some people find them intimidating, but for some reason they embolden me. I strike up conversations with strangers. I ask the staff what they like. I open my mind. If I don't like something I think about why. I look before I read anything and I turn down the offer of headphones - I don't want someone else's interpretation before I have made my own.   I go at my own pace. I can't stand the blockbusters where you have to move along at the pace of the crowd. I'd rather see a couple of things well than just glance at everything so my first quick pass is to decide what I will go back and  look closely at. In huge museums like the British Museum the postcard rack can help narrow down the options.,,.

Have you had an Artist Date with yourself lately?

The point about doing it alone is an interesting one.

Barry and I loved to visit art galleries together, but it was our habit to go around separately and agree to meet at a certain time then take each other to see our favourite thing or things then discuss them over coffee.

Alone and together worked for us.

I'm still planning this week's Date....

..to Christmas!  Once the weather turns cold I don't mind beginning to plan.

From FlyLady I learned how helpful it can be to start thinking about it all in advance and doing some things in plenty of of time to make the holiday relaxing and fun with no last minute rushing around.

I start with a list in my notebook and have my calendar to hand -

Advent calendar - needed first. Along with the spare cards I put it in a more accessible place last year, separate from the main decorations boxes which are in a cupboard under the eaves.
Travel- dates need to be confirmed
Cards and stamps - I need more cards and like time to find ones I love
Decorations  - culled last year, but lights will need checked in good time
Gifts - write the list
Wrapping paper - check if I need more, and look for some I really like while out and about
Food, baking ingredients - two main menus to plan and a little batch baking now to put in the freezer will be good
Clothes - will I have something new?
Guest room - check the warm bed linen is ready and bring out the thick blankets from the linen cupboard and have an extra heater on hand in case....and I need a new lamp.

Since I reached this last phase of clearing

 I have some paintings in galleries, am coaching a small group of artists, have arranged for the muddy drive to be skimmed and gravelled, and made some exciting new travel plans....

I always suspected Marie Kondo would be right about this aspect.

The point is not to have a tidy house. The point is to make space for new ideas and things which rather than take up my energy, really give me energy.


Has this been your experience too?

Before I had made any Artist Date plans an offer came of a lift to the city and I said yes.  I arrived  in the Merchant City area which I don't know very well without my usual plans and lists, and realised this was the perfect opportunity for an Artist Date - just to wander and look, without a purpose, but with my camera.....

I also popped into some posh shops (a bit outside my comfort zone). Gorgeous fabrics - tweeds with a twist. Not really my style, but I did enjoy looking.

This was too far outside my comfort zone though! So I stayed outside it.

..with your creative self.

I'm reviving a habit I picked up many years ago from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, and that is the Artist's Date.  Essentially time out, once a week,on your own, doing things that spark joy.

It says a lot about my current habits that I am having to think quite hard about what they might be, and I have to be careful not to let it become just another thing on my to-do list! Not that I don't have fun (this blog is fun) but I need and like something different now and then. It's purpose is to delight and enchant you'says Cameron and to take you out of your comfort zone.

(Gulp. I can get very fond of my comfort zone., especially in winter.)

If you Google Artist's Date and/or Julia Cameron, check out YouTube, or click on See Inside on the book on Amazon you will get lots more detail if this concept is new to you.

This will be part of my Winter Plan, and I'll be checking in once a week with my friend M.

Will you join us? We are going for the widest possible interpretation of Artist and of Date by the way...

There are not many posts in this category (as I have said before we were taught to be modest about them).

I went out for a walk at dusk and found the road like a river although it had not rained very  much, so i investigated and found the ditch which runs along the roadside blocked. Although by this time it was getting dark I couldn't resist going back to the shed for a rake and clearing  the leaves and mud that were blocking it - the satisfaction of hearing the water gurgling along again was worth it!

And I got a nice photograph of the house from a different angle as I walked back home almost an hour later..

Don't be shy and tell us of your latest good deed!


NB  I'm sorry that sometimes my replies to your comments do not appear directly below  but get mixed up and appear in the wrong order. So confusing Weebly!

Altars, still lifes, islands of beauty, arrangements, gateways, shrines, tokonoma, homages, we  all have a word  for our groups of objects we love.

Secular or religious, for worship, as offerings or love tokems, about memories, healing, spirituality ....the things which are important to us in whatever way we treat as precious. It is a universal thing.

My arrangements are intuitive and spontaneous, often created on a whim, and I find I don't want to lay too much meaning on them but want to keep them lighthearted and fun. But after they are done I find it is rather nice sometimes, to put into words what they mean to me.

Of course another word is tribute. All the railings and benches in the town today were adorned with poppies in remembrance of the ending of the First World War and in tribute to those members of the forces who died in it.

..that Human beings can only truly cherish a limited number of things at one time.

Marie Kondo

I like this fact - it's like a relief to know this!

And I think that I do cherish the things that are left more.

Loving it.

..that the 'click point' is when I have no more stuff than I can properly handle.

Getting there...

Are you?

 ..is sometimes translated from the Japanese as 'secular shrine'. The literal translation is alcove and this alcove in my sitting room is probably the most photographed place in my house!

I change it often. It's simply about things that give me pleasure.

One man's junk...becomes two womens' treasure!

I know you will enjoy a browse through the website of my friend Lucy and her daughter Cath.



(The Conservation Group made £464 at the Pound Sale.)

I like the sound of this word in French.

I remember seeing one on the top middle stone of the Rialto Bridge in Venice in the  early hours one morning about twenty five years ago. It was a small candle, a leaf and if I remember rightly a piece of fruit. A beautiful mystery. A homage to beaury or love, an offering to the gods, who knows...

Another in a remote part of eastern Sweden - a large flat stone, almost circular, part of the top of a low wall. Something about it had prompted an unknown person to carefully place a tiny bunch of flowers in it's centre. A homage to nature perhaps
.
I've always called my little collections of things arrangements but looking at this arrangement on the bathroom wall - something to look at while I dry my hands - I see it as un homage to a friend in Sweden whose barn I sketched, to Venice, to joy and to hope in troubled times.

I'm referring to Amazon pricing.

I thought I'd buy a copy of Altars by Denise Linn (thank you Gail) and found one Used Good for the princely sum of £0.09p plus postage. I could have paid £233.09 for a Used Good copy, or a New copy was available for only £396.19!

No-one has yet been able to explain this to me.....

Here is the passage from A Year To Clear by Stephanie Bennett Vogt which got me thinking about altars.

Though we mostly associate altars with churches or temples, they can be found everywhere. The special flowewr centrepiece on a Thanksgiving table and the good china place settings are a kind of altar. The photos on the refrigerator, the grouping of rocks or shells from a favourite beach or summer experience, the portrait holding court over the mantel, and the wreaths we hang to celebrate the seasons are just some of the ways we remember and connect with something timeless, somthing larger than ourselves.

She suggests we look around at the altars we have created....