Cherishing Summer

by Nada Clyne

Summer!  Soft breezes, the warm air caressing, fragrant flowers, birds singing, wet grass underfoot.  Oh how I adore this gentle nourishing time of year!  I say thank you every morning.

I created this image to express the feeling of summer's embrace. May I always remember to be grateful, remember to cherish each moment, and remember to appreciate the exuberant beauty!  And remember to stop saying, "I wish it was always like this." 

Compassion

by Nada Clyne

Downloading images of art I've produced over the past seven years onto my new computer, I came across one of my favorites, called Compassion.  It is part of a series on the virtues I created by photographing flowers under water, then writing contemplations on the quality.  Here are the words:

Notice

Those around you

Their happiness

Their suffering

If you can help

Do so

Compassion

The flowing lush softness of the colors remind me of that essential human virtue.  I've found that feeding myself beautiful sights -  both from nature and on the walls of our home - keeps my mind nourished and happy.  Over the years I've also discovered that when I'm happy within myself, then I have the capacity to help others :-)

There is a big difference between commiserating and compassion.  When I commiserate, identifying with another person's hard times, there is a downward spiral of energy.  When I'm able to give love and support from a state of happiness, not echoing another's hard times with my own, then I'm not depleted.   The other person receives that state as well, and sometimes it helps!

Tiny Worlds to Wear

by Nada Clyne

I've been creating these miniature scenes in a pendant for a year and a half now, and I keep discovering new delights! Lately I've been reveling in one to two inch abstract iridescent landscapes that seem to sparkle and glow as they catch the light.

As you might imagine working in a one to two inch space requires focus and patience.  As I pour the layers of resin over glass and acrylic paint, it creates an underwater feeling. Sometimes I make the little scenes more identifiable, like these.                                                                                                  

I just love that people can walk around with these little creations!  It's great fun to come across friends wearing them on a chain. And yes, I still create larger art and am discovering that what I learn on such a small scale carries over and influences the larger pieces. However, I must admit it has been a big surprise to find myself making - jewelry.  After all, is this ART?  :-)  Well, I'm having too much fun for it to matter!  And I'm looking forward to sharing these tiny worlds at CAG's upcoming art shows and craft fairs.  See you there!

DREAMING OF SPRING

by Nada

I'm ready for this spring view out my living room window!

It's that time of year where cabin fever and grey skies have me Googling Florida vacation sites and checking out my air miles to see how far away I can fly.  I welcomed winter's arrival, relishing its peace, the silent snow, the lack of color.  "Color is so demanding," I thought.  "It seems to require a creative response.  This quiet serene surrounding is just what I need.  It will be a time for regeneration and contemplation."  Well, it was that, however ……..

Enough winter already! Long awaited signs are appearing all around me. The red winged blackbirds are back and the groundhogs are coming out of from their burrow under our house. Daylight savings time has arrived. Color will return, the red buds, then the soft green leaves. 

Let the creative energy flow - Let the party begin again!

Nada

Patterns

A message from Nada Clyne:

I've been going through a fallow period.  

It's a kind of hibernation with no

interest in creating anything at all - 

a time to simply be and do what is 

before me without initiating new ideas and projects. I work on tasks I ordinarily shirk, completing a framing job, putting together an inventory, cleaning my studio.  And when I'm not doing, I sit and look out the window, go for walks, be quiet and at ease with myself.     

It used to be that I feared these times or felt guilty that I didn't embrace the artist's work ethic.  After all, don't books say that we should show up and do something in the studio every day? But I've discovered the artistic process doesn't work that way, not for me at least. Now I embrace these times of simply being and absorbing, knowing that one day soon, I'll be at the behest of the creative energy, working and working to manifest the impulses and ideas that come so thick and fast I can hardly keep up with them.  And I love those times too! 

Over time and (and with much struggle!) I have come to honor the patterns. These energetic ebbs and flows that impel me to create have a life of their own.  If I stay attuned to their rhythms, I can fully enjoy both riding the creative wave and floating in the shallows that engender new work.  It's a way of being fully in my own life as it is. It requires trust and not defining my worth by my output or by my role as an artist. It's embracing myself as I am moment to moment.

  

These words came to me this morning just as I woke up:

….I wrap the world around me

     like a blanket

     and snuggle into my life

     as it is

A Sense of Wonder

A message from Nada

The Colors of Morning Move Across the Sky

From Wonder into Wonder, Existence Opens. --by Lao Tzu

I've always been attracted to the feeling of wonder, that sense that the world is filled with amazing possibilities and can open up in unforeseen ways.

Another ancient sage encouraged cultivating appreciation and wonder when observing the creative flow of energy expressed in theatre, music and the visual arts as a means entering Divine Consciousness itself. While we may not put it in those terms, I'm sure many of us are moved and transported into feelings of delight, wonder and expansion by artistic expressions.

That is the allure of art for me - its unique ability to open me up to new ways of seeing, feeling and interacting with the world around me. We all see the world so differently, and our experiences and perceptions are unique to our own viewpoint.  So when I look at the work of my fellow artists in CAG, I find myself smiling at Kathy Jeffers' whimsical clay creations.  And when I see the delicate coloration of Tom Kelemen's gentle photographs, I relax into nature's bucolic scenes.  Hank Schneider's vases make me appreciate the wonders of wood, each tree uniquely growing in its own patterns formed by wind and weather over the years - just as each artist's creation is a piece of their experience and perception that emerges from entering their own creative flow.

My own artwork is inspired in moments where I've been touched by the beauty of nature, a strong feeling, or an inner experience in meditation.  That seed moment informs my creative expression. I don't always plan out the piece, but rather go to my studio and begin working with materials: clay, gold leaf, resin, silicone, glass paint, transparencies of photographs I've taken, and objects from nature. I get completely absorbed for hours in the interplay of these materials. Then - Surprise! These disparate elements have come together to express that seed moment. And guess what happens then? There is an experience of wonder, of revelation, of delight and expansion!

I do think those sages are on to something.