Newsletters and Features
Dear Beautiful Friends and Students,
This is our first Art Newsletter, where we will feature a painting and tell its story. Please, read along and let us know what you think. Each featured piece is available and can be purchased by emailing us.
The Creation of “Goddess”
As I looked around my exquisite Dancing Brush® Studio, I realized that each one of the paintings that I have created has a story. Paintings that have Chi or Spirit, have something that grabs on to the viewer and speaks to them in a non-verbal way. The unseen energy that is created is another way of communication that is layered and beautiful.
There are two “Goddess” calligraphic paintings. The calligraphy is composed of the characters for Woman and Spirit. So if we take the literal meaning as The Spirit of a Woman, it's even better. This last year certainly has shown the Spirit of the Woman and the Spirit of Women collectively. "We have something to say and we want to be heard." The energy of the Goddess.
All of this is so appropriate for how I decided to do these two paintings. I was contacted and then hired by Fortune Magazine in 2005 to present the Creative aspect of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women’s Summit. We had two classes during the 3 day summit in Pasadena. My task was to teach these “Most Powerful Women” how to create with a brush. I taught them how to create a painting using my “Stroke In A Breath” technique, followed by another painting of a Zen Circle or an Enso, then how to show the essence of something in the fewest amount of strokes (this is where I demonstrated my Zen Cat, “Theda Bara”), and finally something from out of their imagination. Also how to create their artists name and signature to sign their paintings. There is often quite a rush when a student first sees something they have created that pleases them and that lovely feeling continues when positive feedback comes from those around them.
None of what I teach is drawing. It is stroke oriented using a brush in varying sizes from small to giant to create an image.
So many of the people that I turn on to their own creativity are amazed at what they can create. So many of us, including me, were discouraged from doing art and subsequently from being an artist, because we were not born with the ability to see an object and transfer it to paper in an accurate scale which is “drawing”. In aptitude tests it is referred to as Memory for Design.
The two Goddess paintings actually work together as a bit of Yin and Yang. Soft and Bold. The Ink painting on handmade textured paper has an energy of "let’s keep moving without hesitation, definitely representing yang." The painting with the color purple, which has more of a yin quality, shows variation in color from light to dark, has “flying white” in the strokes of a freer style, and the many layers of woman on a slightly lighter and less textured handmade paper.
Both paintings are sealed with my square “Beautiful Joy” chop that was carved in Shanghai at place that has been carving seals for 1000 years and my natural shape seal was carved in Taiwan to represent a Global Village. I love how the Chinese think. The actual translation of the poem on the Global Village seal, “We are Brothers and Sisters because we share the same sun, moon, sea and stars”, takes away time and space and brings us together as family.
In this era of Women’s voices being heard and now, representing us more widely, these two paintings have come into their time.Click HERE to Reserve Goddess -1
Click HERE to Reserve Goddess - 2