Category: Blog

When: TBA

Cost: $300.00 + a couple supplies

Where: Alongside the Beautiful Nicola River, Merritt, BC

Three years ago I dregged up out of the back closet, way down underneath some long forgotten totes, single socks, shrunken western shirts and in amongst the dust bunnies….my passion for Art. It was moldy, barely recognizable and so sad and tattered, but I tenderly carried it out into the light, had a good cry and am now nursing it back to vibrant, shiney happy health. it takes some nurturing by kindness, patience and buckets of compassion, faith in the outcome, wonder in curiousity and JOY…oh the JOY of actually creating cannot even be described! I feel this guilty, gleeful, skippy feeling when I allow myself time to ponder what I may paint next, staring at photos, buying canvasses(FUN!) and paint, taking a workshop to help guide me and direct this rag tag drive to MAKE STUFF..

Soooo in my journey of doing all this, guess what? well well well, imagine that! There are all kinds of you! Others, just like me that never had the time, one day, blank canvas fears, no talent (but oh so want to), no energy, one day, too busy, other obligations…one day. So so many of you who really really want to do SOMETHING with art…but what and how and when and and and where to begin.

Well, guess what? Begin here, with a three day Art and Horse camp with yours truly, fellow “One Day”-er. I tried this a couple years ago…and surprise surprise! No one showed up! hahahaha! So trying again….gently nudging any of you who have ever or never but wished to pick up a paint brush, squeeze some clay, or even write to come out with your horse, or borrow one of mine and hang out together and paint stick horses, stick trees and stick sticks…no pressure, just play. My vision is to experiment with the paint, experiment with some plastisine clay, hang out with the horses, sketch them as badly or goodly as we want, hang out by the river, paint our horses( literally, on their hair) day dream, ride in the evenings maybe, see what unfolds in a nurturing, supportive inspiring, safe way with other kindred spirits who are every bit a daunted at creating and juet gently coaxing your Lost Art to come out, come out come out and play….

Sooooo Ear cropping may be contoversial, but there are a few things to consider and I ask you to, and go to http://www.appd.ca/pettion-results.html and sign The Objection to Ban Cropping. “Natural” ears on Danes ond other typically cropped breeds are NOT natural. Created by human kind selecting for other traits ie size, herding, guarding ability, temperment etc. the ear cartilage broke and a flop ear was created. It is a by product of Human genetic engineering and to say cropping is for easthetics only is not not fully comprehend the subjct. NO WHERE in nature is an animal created with floopy ears…its just not advantageous at all. To ban cropping on the grounds of “It’s just an unatural man made desire” is to fail to recognise that ALL dog breeds have been created for exactly the same reason! Let’s be aware and fair in our assements…and dogs that spend their lives chained, forgotten in back yards, puppy milled and posted for sale on Pet Find, abused, neglected and forgotten and filling shelters and rescues from unethical breeders who care not about their chosen breed, with no buyer screening, questionaries, responsibilities outlined. As I search for my new Dane Puppy…I am shocked and staggered by the number a poor breeders out there looking to make a buck. It is so dang hard to get a hold of a great Harelquin Great Dane from a responible and ethical breeder who does comprehensive health checks and breeds once every year or two.  We all owe it to ourselves to be enlightened and awre of breeds origin, heritage and welfare as we created these  beings for our use and pleasure, like it or not. Chromadane has a wealth of links that detail domestication and inherited selection of traits that impact animals.     http://www.chromadane.com   With gratitude to JP Yoshua for complining such a fascinating and comprehensive body of work….

  Well…we’re home! It’s been a busy, busy time moving all six horses, dogs, cat…and more ‘stuff’ then I thought was possible to fit in a single wide mobile! WHERE does all that ‘stuff’ come from anyway??? I was astonished by boxes and boxes of accumulated “well, I might need this to fix that broken coffee pot”or tax reciepts from last decade or  socks with just one hole in the toe….yikes! So this has been a time of change, purge and re fresh, all the way around. And boy….it is starting to feel so much lighter and open. Remember ‘the spaces in between’? Hard to allow when everything is jam packed with real and metaphorical crap, and I have been in this haul everything to the dump and Let Go mode for a month now. Start fresh I say…

I have been surprised in any number of ways with this move. Just how deeply down my roots were at “the Dot” and how comfy I was there and how intimidating this whole thing has been for me. Clearly I needed to do it if the change was unerving me. Old fears floating back up to the surface that had fallen down into the still waters of complacency happily allowing me an opportunity to see them again or even for the first time. Now, I will admit there may have been some knee jerk reactions to some of them….like our old friend money. lol what IS the deal with money anyway? Why does it bring up such terror? That we spend so much precious energy in resistance to it when it is after all…just energy itself? My choice this winter to focus on the Art side of me has brought up all my old favorites for a nice replay….like” You’ll starve” and “No one can earn a living doing Art” and my favorite “I’m gonna lose it all, become a street bag lady freezing to death in the corner of a doorjam”… No really that’s what I hear when I actually listen to myself…eesh! So throw in a nice move after living in a place the longest I’ve lived anywhere and winter and well…let’s just say it wasn’t all the pretty in my head for the first couple weeks here…(shaking my head…:)

Part of me wonders…are these big fears around not being good enough, worthy, talented, useful, valuable coming up BECAUSE I am getting closer and closer to my wonder filled, life long dreams?

The more light shines on something…the darker the shadow? Is it BECAUSE I am actually not only creating, but publicly showing (Kamloops Cowboy Festival Art Show) and LOVING creating that I begin to sabotage myself? Or….maybe I am not, maybe it is really all in my head (oh man…I am spending FAR to much time alone) and everything is perfect and flowing along nicely and I just mentally create resistance? Questions like ” who am I?” “What or who am I becoming?”  ” How do I want to live?” ” What is my true hearts desire?” keep coming up for me right now and its all mighty disconcerting. I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time saying ” I don’t know.” And oddly, in one of my morning free writes I wrote back to myself (see? FAR to much time alone…) “You need to get good at not knowing.” well, huh.
I spent the most blessed winter painting, sculpting and riding and hanging out with my personal horses and dogs something I had been trying to do for years and lo and behold…did not end up in a drafty doorjam squabbling with the Danes over their Alpo somewhere.

Actually…I ended up in this most magical of houses in this most magical of valleys with kind and welcoming neighbors, a couple of training colts, a new website in the works and a summer just nicely full of camps I am super excited about and a strong commitment to allowing myself time to paint, sculpt and walk in the hills…or laze around on the back deck absorbing that strange but oh so welcome feeling of warm sunshine on my face.

I am rereading a translation of the Tao and the first verse is ” Ever desireless, one can see the mystery; ever desiring, one sees only the manifestations. And the mystery itself is the doorway to all understanding.” AKA get good at not knowing. hmmm Such a human condition it seems; to know what,when,how,why,where with whom…to Trust is so foreign, so lame feeling, so controless (ahhhh), so vague and wishy washy somehow, so lacking in focus and drive and the big Kahuna…safety. It is not lost on me as I begin to dust of my colt starting ‘feel’ muscles again that of course that is what I am asking them to do. Trust me. And every single one is like…what? When? Why? Where? With YOU??? And so it inevitably comes full circle for me. Its a Paradoxical Unity and I love it…

I am attempting another Open House/Warming here again now that break-up is over and the road in has promised not to swallow any small cars or children(well maybe still children:), so if you feel like a road trip…come on out…I’d love to see you! April 6th, its Sunday from say noon til?