Did you know that all the women of the Renaissance had bulgy, overactive thyroid, eyes?? It was to show women as pious. Go figure. I guess we are far off from being pious and anyone woman with bulging eyes best go see a specialist for thyroid problems. It is not that we are nom-religious’, and all about ‘faring God’, it is, I believe, we are afraid of everything from environment to our inner being being victimized and have lost the ‘miracle’ factor. We are not women who blindly follow or allow ourselves to be subservient to anything man-made. Does it make us any less ‘pious, to take out religious, in Patriarchal connotations, to the meaning? We do not make eyes like that any more, in modern art. We, as Divine Feminine, have changed over the decades and change with society, change with situations of body, mind, heart and soul. Most of us have learned to reject subjugation. We are more self-regulated and self-discerning and know it is only us that can resolve the situation of being called to develop more resiliency.
Change is a constant down here on Mother Earth. We desire control more than much else, and use different names for defining what we mean by ‘control’, and we think we deserve more control than we can have. Fighting the inevitable is useless use of energy. Sometimes, ok, most times, acceptance (following surrender) is what it is and what we have to find a way to make and take. Using the energy for control for things you can control is what we need.
We need to give ourselves permission to surrender to what is and to accept such and get on with living in the Present ---not the past---not the sad stories of our past. We WERE now we ARE. We control only our reaction to life. We control our emotions around events.
We cannot deny that much is being asked of us, right now. We must acknowledge them, feel them, let them go. The intensity of feelings will dissipate, if you allow them too. Those of us who have had Grief and its massacre of who we were, know that it can be as ugly as hell’s whatever. The loss felt is huge and it is unique to each of us. It takes one of the greatest brave things we have ever done to walk through that valley of grief. Again, we were able to surrender to it (I waked out under a harvest full moon and stood there for an hour, allowing her to bathe me in comfort, her shine like a quilt a mother wraps around you when you are sick.) She allowed me to accept…the surrender part came much much later. I wanted my life back. I wanted who I WAS back. I wanted US back. Logical had nothing to do with it. I felt punished and that the punishment was unfair and too hard to bear. Yet, I surrendered and accepted and I will tell you, it has taken seven years and I still, almost daily surrender and accept again, though it lasts less strong and less impacting. As I surrender, each time, I gain a little more resilience. Perhaps it is because I know he is waiting for me and I feel I am merely putting in time. I surrender to it all.
No one can hand you resilience. No one can tell you how to surrender nor accept or even that you should. It is a basic need to need the one who is gone and we find ways to figure out how we can gain back some control after you have been scythed down.
We are drained. We tired of news, the not-news, and the conflict. We are stressed and our immune systems are crashing. We are exhausted. We do not even think of ‘our purpose’ for being down here on earth at all. At this point, most of us could care less, we just want to get through the day. Some of us are not even thinking about God, he is late too. We do not know who we ARE. We hardly know, for sure, who we WERE. We feel powerless and now they are telling us they are going to relax things and we are to go it on our own, that we have the tools, and doesn’t that just grind your teeth? I mean, they have been telling us this, and then no, this… and then now this and suddenly it as if the experts are washing their hands of it as well.
For me, having that one good friend, family on the line, and art that keeps me busy, has been the biggest blessing I could have had. It kept me from turning in and reside where worry and anxiety lives and look out where I always have, for inspiration and sustenance.
May we not be pious, but be resilient.
I love this painting. It took me days to do a I was really very ill. I am still crawling out of Invokana fog.
I no longer have to do the lines for placement, but I have done them for you.
Really, faces are just a bunch of ovals. Sometimes I am more successful by simly painting the face rather than drawing it out. But I spent eyars practicing the placement. It matters, even when doing whimsy and Modigliani face shapes.
Sometimes I start painting by finding the darkest areas and outting an undercoat on to the face to jsut get started.
I do love liquitex paints. the are nice to spread and I am able to get a smoother finish with them. I try ot to add water and, as well, I scrumble or drybrush the cvolor on to jsut get a base colkor down.
You can see that the eyes are smaller than they shoould be and higher than they should be. Once you get the math of the plaements on face, you can break the rules.
I need some cokir, niw, and, if yu itice, the face, thus far, is warm tones and now I add a purple that is a cooler tone. There are no real rules. You can paint the whole face yellow and purple if you choose. And, I tend to believe that my Muse takes over when I enter that place where a face is being given birth to.
It makes a huge difference to add soime color.
I use that same color to tint the lips , a bit to my eye shdaows, neck shafows, and dstart adding some flowers, ala Rika's inpsiration.
Flower petals are all about loading your brush with two or three cokloirs and using the brush ti frm the petals by starting at the outside, pushing your brush and ulkign down towards the cetner. There are many Youtube presentations to learn how to load the brushes for petals. And, does this mean I know what the heck I am talkugn about. of course not, I am always going to be a beginner.
I am always draw to turquoise and for this type of headcovering. I think it began when I read The Red Tent and my Muse recognized the women in the booik and keeps expressing the figures with head coverings. I refused to bulge the eyes as if the woman had thyroid problems. The bulging eyes, as I blogged are about Patriarchial ideologies about women being seen and not heard and all that 'stuff'.
I really suck at flowers but Rika has inspired me to give some more a try. I scrumbled the background and added some green stems.
This pan pastel is my absolute favorite. I really suggest you get some. Once you have painted the face, jsut adding a smear of this on the face immediately sets the smoothness of the skin. I use it almost every time I do a face. ps: a makeup wedge is something I use all the time for everything from imprinting to txturizing.
This explains itself... doing some detailing.
use different colors and kinds of pens to get details to the face. I have containers of pens of every kind I can find. I never know what color or kind my Muse is going to want.
More flowers with triple-loaded brush
I adored her the moment I strted the underpainting. Is she fabulous? No, but she is a charcter coming to life.
I have about ten bottles of color shift type paints. They add luminescence to areas. This brought her even more to lfie and gave her a look, to me, as divine glow.
and, so she is. She steps out of the frame of my inner soul on to the substrate.
©Carol Desjarlais 2.09.22
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