Tag: art

Posted on

What a glorious damned day

Been playing at this one book for years, finally wrote it and now I am full of angst about whether or not I should just print it for myself or actually sell it. And I want to talk about it but there’s no-one really to talk to about it. So here I am.

My site has cobwebs, no-one has been here in so long, including me. Need to get to my class work but can’t focus. Urgh. Coffee and go! Motivate! (I just want to hide in bed all day. Perhaps I deserve it, I have been writing 12 and 14 hrs a day for over a week. Edits, re-writes.) No wonder I lack motivation.

Also, I get no encouragement and pats on the back these days and that is hard. I am writing in a tunnel, a vacuum and that is so so hard.

Maybe I need to switch to arting for a couple days. Getting on with my day. It really is a glorious day.

Posted on

Life is Good, Bad and Ugly.

Blog for today. Hello lovelies. How are we today? Yesterday and today I’ve made lists and I’m going through an item at a time and getting some things done. I have not been productive every single day of the lockdown (nor was I productive every single day before the lockdown). But this week, for right now, today, I seem to need to stay active. It helps.

Getting some sun seems to help me, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. It’s close to 11 and I still have 8 or 9 items left to go. I’m actually happy about that.

When it comes to writing, I seem to be in a real poetry mode. I had started a fiction book a month or two ago, but haven’t touched it since the first week of working on it. Maybe I’ll schedule a day to work on it next week. In the past, once I start a book, I don’t work on anything else until it’s done. These last four or five years, maybe because I’ve been focusing a ton on my mental and physical health, the idea of shorter/smaller projects has greatly appealed. I can finish quickly and get that feeling of accomplishment faster (like checking things off a list).

Then there’s art. I started painting (acrylic on canvas) a couple years back and I find a lot of satisfaction in it. It’s therapeutic and really energizes the creative mind for me. Then I began to take art journaling classes and that has been life-alteringly beneficial for me. I can do longer, more in depth projects, or even just draw or use color pencils, or whatever, and it keeps my hands active as well as my mind. I can do layer after layer, collage or mixed media, or whatever strikes me.

Finding out how to draw faces is something that has been huge for me over this past year or so. I have studied a lot of tutorials, noted what my art journaling teacher does as well as many other artists, then began to practice for hours and hours, trying to find my own unique style. I think I’m beginning to, and it has been such fun. I don’t know how many sketchbooks and journals I’ve filled with faces, but it’s a ton. I try to at least draw and doodle every day. I tackle the larger projects as I feel up to it. Art has–I know this to be true–saved me in so many ways.

This lockdown and virus mess is hard, it has been and it will be, and nobody really knows for how long. I’ve been through hard things before. I didn’t want to go through something like this, nobody does, but I’ll just keep plugging through the best I can. And that’s life, isn’t it? Facing the mundane, the beautiful, and the horrible and living through it all.

Keep plugging away, dear friends.

As always, Peace Out

Posted on

Welcome Friends!

Journaled Lady: Intimacy

Welcome if you’re new here, if not, welcome back!

I’ve been slack in updating and blogging since the move to Florida. I came here sick with bronchitis, it got worse, and long story shorter, it took me quite a while to get back on top, so to speak. I’m feeling great now though, and really enjoying my Art Journaling classes I began to take last December.

Art Journaling has been such a THING for me, it has changed my life. I’ve learned a ton about how to draw, I’ve come a good way in finding my own unique style, and it is a fabulous way to process emotion. I’ve always found doing my abstract art and paintings to be therapeutic, but journaling has taken it to the next level and has helped combine both of my artistic loves together; writing and painting. In journaling I use pencil, colored pencils, markers, acrylic paints, watercolors, pastels, and just any and every medium.

I’ve even started my own YouTube channel (Pam Swyers is the name of it), and I am beginning to share some of what I’m doing in order to encourage others to grab a pencil and paper (start with the basics!) and dive in. You will not regret it. Having done some traditional therapy, I found going from that to the art journaling to be quite a natural segue and helped me transition into working out my emotions on the page or canvas. My focus is very much Art as Therapy for beginners (because there are many out there doing so many amazing things in this area and I’m still relatively new at it!) but I’ve had friends ask me about it so I found that doing videos is a much easier way to SHOW someone what I’m doing, rather than just trying to TELL them about it.

If you are at all intrigued, give the YouTube channel a look-see. There is not a ton of content up yet, but working on it weekly to add more.

So this is a big thing for me these days, as well as trying to get plugged in to our new community, make local friendships, and go out into beautiful Central Florida and just ENJOY being here.

I’m so happy to be feeling good, out walking in the park again, and back to living my BEST life right now.

Have emotions to process?? Join me! We all do!! Have a great FALL my amazing friends!!

Posted on

Hangin’ In (Enjoying the Journey)

It is such an incredible joy to be able to do what I love to do and focus only on creativity and artistic endeavor at this point in my life. I know that people often feel the need to do what it takes to pay the bills (and responsibility is a very good thing), but these days I can’t imagine spending 40 plus hours a week having to do something to further someone else’s agenda rather than my own.

I’m incredibly blessed at this stage, that I can work at my own pace without the lights being turned off for lack of payment. But I don’t know many who got to such a place quickly or easily.

Even so, I’d encourage every person to search after work that feeds their soul as well as their tummy. I was always pretty good with office work, and I find that if you’re good at something, you tend to enjoy it a little more. I also have an undying love for coffee, and worked at coffee shops more than once in my life. I’ve had several “normal” jobs in my life (meaning outside the realm of artistic endeavor; writing, painting and the like). But even while you’re doing what you have to do, try extra hard to make it something you’re passionate about. It will make those work hours go by faster and easier.

My husband, BFF and business partner is a tech genius in my estimation.  I couldn’t do what he does any more than he could write a fiction novel, but he’s good at his job, which makes it a little bit easier to expend a lot of his life doing it.

We only get this one life. I find it to be a necessity to do what you love, (even if you have to do something you love a little less until you can do what you love a little more–later on down the line.)

Hang on, don’t give up on your dreams. I’m holding on and hanging in, even when people aren’t throwing money at me for doing it. Because I insist on enjoying the journey–every single day that I can.

Posted on

Artistic Priority (When My Worlds Collide)

I’ve been writing for many years, but that’s not to say there weren’t times that I went for long spaces of inertia with writing. During one of those down-times I began to get into painting. It felt like the right thing to do at the time; focus on something else for a while.  (I began writing full-time in ’09 and have written ten novels, and have put together and published other’s work as well, and now write a lot of poetry.)

Painting has settled into a spot in my life I didn’t even know I had. It soothes me, inspires me; it’s meditation as well as creation. It’s therapy for me.

When I first began to feel like I was figuring it out (to any degree) I got very excited and set up this site to sell artwork and my books, as well. I still sell one on occasion, but now my writing has kind of taken it’s place back (first place), for my time and attention. It may be possible to give 100% to both things, but if so, I don’t know how to manage it. So, as writing has always been there, a part of my DNA, I’d say, it will stay top priority for now. I just don’t have time to write and paint and try to market and sell books AND artwork. So, I’ll leave the ones up that I have listed for sale, and may continue to sell one from time to time, but painting has settled into a spot that’s just for me. It’s a special thing, like massage for the soul.

Recently I dreamt up ideas for two new fiction novels, so those will keep me very busy for a while, and I have a poetry compilation due to publish next summer. I plan to do more anthologies for young, aspiring writers and poets as well, so this must be my focus…. at least for now.

It’s very cool that art (painting) discovered me (or I discovered it, either way). It’s become a very welcome part of my life. For now it is priority two, but it is still very special for me. I adore combining both of my loves when possible (like the above poem posted on a piece of my artwork). It’s the best of both worlds.

Posted on

Come at me, Canvas.

So today was stinky in the art studio. A day of utter frustration and dissatisfaction. Nothing looks the way I want it to. I’ve come to the conclusion that painting pretty pictures doesn’t come easy for me, not like it does for others, and that both annoys me and challenges me. In fact, it’s probably why I started doing it in the first place. The challenge.

Writing comes much easier for me, it always has. Put me in a room with a pad and pen or a laptop and tell me to write for ten or twelve hours straight and I could do it. Not a problem. Give me a subject and I can write a story about it, maybe three or four stories, given enough time.

But a blank canvas…. (shudder). That still intimidates me. It mocks, me, challenges me, dares me to create something worthy, something that ANYone could find value or beauty in.

I suppose that’s just the sort of thing I need in my life right now. These things tend to come to you when you need them. Something that baffles me, puzzles me, makes me try harder.  Persevere. I don’t want those “muscles” to go soft on me, after all. I don’t want to just be spoiled to doing only that which comes easy.

So. Tomorrow I will face the canvas again with new resolve. It won’t get the better of me, it won’t beat me down or scare me away. Gonna put on my Big Girl Panties and my painting clothes and get after it.

Bring it.

Posted on

There is very little I need

 

Life is made up of many little epiphanies throughout it. I had a mini one today. There is very little I need.

I have a good roof over my head and more than enough food within reach when I’m hungry. I have a soft bed to sleep in. I have a man who loves me freely and without condition, and a handful of friends that do the same.

I realized that–if someone wanted to get me a gift today–I’d be hard-pressed to name anything.

When I was younger (and still on occasion) I loved to shop. There was always a list of things somewhere that I wanted, some purse or pair of shoes that I thought I might die if I didn’t get. With age comes wisdom in many areas. I don’t ever remember being this content or having such a lack of need to shop, purchase or acquire.

The needs I feel in my life now tend more towards those things less tangible that I can’t grasp in my hands. I’d like to have more influence, to expand my boundaries so that I might reach someone or teach someone something that I came by the hard way, that I might make a difference in someone’s life.

I’d like to share my art with the world.

I’d like to pave pathways for those that come behind me, to point the way and show them how NOT to stumble.

It was kind of shocking to see and know the difference in my desires from then and now. I’m so much happier now, so much more content. I seek for soul-affirming, spirit-reaching, life-affirming things and people.

Music, art, poetry, the thrill of finding a new fiction novel that will transport me to a new world, a new poet that will encourage and inspire me, these are where it’s at for me, and still, as I enjoy these things I realize more fully every moment

There is very little I need.