On diets, from a letter to a friend...

Posted this, took it down, and received a beautiful comment from Ken, who couldn't find the post, so it's back... and then added a bathroom-mirror self-portrait, which I'm sure I'll feel silly about after I've gone out dancing, & want to come home & take it down, but which somehow seems part of a post on diet.

~

I like some weight on a man. They're always so self conscious about it too. It's quite funny. Perhaps I don't find that lean and mean in a man who's heavier? They're not happy with their bodies and want you to see pics of them when they were 'in shape,' but just as they like eating, they like sex. A man with a girth is more sensual, there's no doubt about it. In my experience anyhow. And maybe softer inside too, which I really adore.

How I would apply all that to myself I don't know. I've lost about 10 lbs since moving, but it's mostly due to lack of work, income, settledness, even kitchen supplies. I love food, tastes, textures, colours. But dislike being overly full. And wheat gives me heartburn, so I stay away from breads. Well, most carbs. They're just too heavy for me, give me indigestion. So lots of vegetables, dairy, meat, chocolate, and a slice or so of 12 grain bread a day. Like a yogi, I rarely eat after 6pm at night. I dunno. In my early 20s I was severely bulimic. It was quite a journey out of it. But I did it, on my own, it was my 'secret,' and found after I stopped binging and throwing up that my weight remained the same. I didn't put on any weight at all. Part of the journey out of bulimia was discovering that I don't need 3 meals a day, 2 is enough, and that wheat really makes me feel quite sick, and was often the reason I threw up I guess. Mind you, I still love a fresh white flour poppy seed bagel slathered in butter, but I know I'll pay for it with acid reflux some hours afterwards. My treats, then, aren't pastries, sigh, but chocolate things, coconut is ok too. All of which keeps my weight down. Since breads, starchy foods are real weight putter oners. Diet has been a long process for me. And I see my 15 year old daughter going through it now- and is trying to limit foods like pancakes, donuts, bread since she does see a direct correlation to her weight. I mean, we find that pigging out on a half a dozen buttertarts doesn't put weight on the way half a dozen donuts do. It's so interesting the way the body metabolizes, or doesn't metabolize, foods. Some foods just get converted into and stored as fat cells, I guess. Or that's how it seems. There's no reason why indulging in a large bar of imported chocolate shouldn't put on weight like a box of Krispy Kreme donuts, but it doesn't. I've always wondered if it's got something to do with evolution, and that we're optimally healthy on a 'pre-farming' diet... that wheat, corn, rice, all the cultivated crops, while feeding us in multitude, aren't really suited to our digestive systems. Evolution takes a lot longer to catch up, perhaps. I seem to do very well on what I would consider to be a modern version of the hunting-&-gathering diet. Don't laugh, and please laugh. When I talk like this people usually studiously ignore me as a crackpot.

The artist as doctor

A friend, SavonDuJour, asked of the merge of the process of Prostrations, "Interesting. How do you know when to stop?"

When you can't do anymore? Actually when my daughter came home the day I painted it she said, "Don't you dare do another thing to it - it's my favourite!" But, then, she's so sweet... (mostly, that is -:). However, I'm not sure I don't like the earlier incarnations of this piece better... the two in the middle in particular, but then I remind myself that they were soaking wet and when dry would be much faded in colour and vibrancy.

Don't we stop when we can't think of anything more 'to fix'? I don't know about you, but most of my art is trying to save 'disasters,' which makes it a very adrenaline thing. Not peaceful at all. My whole life is thrown on the line each time. When it's done, it's such a relief.

I live in acute embarrassment over my work- it's so on the edge of collapse into disparatenesses that when it works I feel like a relieved doctor who's sent someone stitched but alive into the world.

Is that fair to say? Or is it my mood this morning? The Willow Women piece got accidentally splattered with coffee and so I poured water all over it and painted it last night and it's not worked, and I can clearly see that in the morning light. Which also had something to do with my mental apparatus last night. Not being in the meditative moment. Perhaps I'm being too hard on myself. But it wasn't meant to be a water drawing, didn't take kindly to being immersed. I'm thinking of covering it in spider webs of lines to see if that might resuscitate it. Short of blasting it with volts of cardio-electricity, what can I do? There's the morgue of the paper recycling bin. Or perhaps I could cut it up, organ-transplant-like, and collage it into something else.

Share your process with finishing pieces?


"Enfolded Luminosity" Series: Pulsing Hea(r)t, the eye of Ra, 25.5cm x 31 cm or 10" x 12 1/2", india ink, watercolour pencil on paper, 2006

I finished it this morning quickly- thank goodness for white pencil spiderweb lines. And I've forgotten the difficulties, not understanding how I could ever have thought "stitched," odd how that is...

Process of a painting...

Click on it to increase the size. A history of a painting... where it's been before it got to where it is. There are other histories, like 'where,' 'who,' 'why,' oh and perhaps most important, 'what'- :)

Window in the Earth

When do major shifts occur? In small moments soon gone?

Enfolded Luminosity: Prostrations...

It's still and always a dance, of colour, form, energies, bodies.

This technique is not the same as paint on canvas, and I'm learning that.

I'm not, well, no, it's not, well, sometimes the idea you had in your mind and what emerges aren't, and, well, it's about acceptance. Dancing a new dance that is always different from all the other dances you've danced.

Still learning the ways watercolour pencils and paper work together; yes, her back is a little 'rubbed over,' but I don't mind that. Aren't all of our backs a little 'rubbed over' with life, what we carry, what we prostrate in our spiritual practice?

I don't know why the Fauvian slashes of colour.

This series (these pencils, this place of residence, my relationships, both in daily life and on line) I'm calling, "Enfolded Luminosity."

Willow Women was splattered this morning by a coffee spill. Maybe I'll throw a heap of water on it and see what happens... it can't be an unwetted drawing anymore.

Dance, Dream, Disappearing into each other is sold; it went quite quickly (thank you beautiful man, dear Bill); there were email exchanges with a few interested people (can I call you that, Mary? it's hardly a fair description of you, your work, our connection), and then the watercolour drawing got betrothed and is awaiting it's suitor now. These pieces are for sale, and thanks, Jean, for reminding me to be more clear about that. Now that I have a working relationship with a woman who manages a print shop, I can also offer 'art prints' on satin finish photograph paper of anything you see here...

Prostrations...

This doesn't exist in the world. It was between a drawing and a scribbling colouring episode. It only exists digitally. The water that the figures are washed under would have dried anyhow...

It's probably part of my series on temple art, the celestial dancers...

Bowing: a bent, curved, or arched object.

Whew, we have a minority government...

In Canada, we have a minority government! Harper leads, but hopefully his hands are mostly tied:

"During the lengthy winter campaign, Mr. Harper focused on issues like tax cuts, crime and cleaning up government. He also vowed to resurrect the gay marriage issue and pull out of the Kyoto Accord on climate change, but also said he wouldn't look to change abortion laws."

However, he was born and bred in the extreme right - the Western Conservative party has roots in the Reform and Alliance parties; we could be facing some difficult times ahead with Charter rights, abortion issues, education (a Conservative government in Ontario a few decades ago pulled loans from graduate students, effectively crippling higher education in this province), and other threats to individual freedom.

But I project fearful imaginings. It is a minority government. There is no strong leadership at present and we await the emergence of Canada's next leader... I'm betting, down the road, on Michael Ignatieff (I'm all for intellectuals as leaders), and Justin Trudeau.