Chiaroscuro Circus Workshop

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This article is written by Jan Murphy of Wild at Heart Studios

In the Fall of 2012, Wild at Heart Studios, in the lovely town of Friday Harbor, Washington, held a workshop entitled “Chiarscurro Circus”. It was hosted by two well-known mixed-media artists, Lynne Perrella and Anne Bagby, for four days of amazing creativity and fun.

Lynne Perrella and Anne Bagby hosting the mixed media art class

Twenty four students from across the U.S. and Canada attended the workshop where they learned a wide variety of techniques to create lavish backgrounds and vibrant face focal points using oil crayons, ephemera, and hand-made stencils and stamps.  They explored images of clowns, jesters, theatrical ceremonial figures and more.

“Chiaroscuro” (key-ah-squoor-oh) is an artful term that encompasses the dramatic contrast of light and dark and everyone left with several pieces of gorgeous art!. A great time was had by all.

 mixed media art class  with Lynne Perrella and Anne Bagby

To find out more about Wild at Heart’s upcoming workshop, visit their website.

mixed media art classes

 

Street Artists of Florence

Florence is a beautiful city with it’s galleries, churches and palaces but my favourite memories will be of the many street artists that could be found in the shady corners and streets of the city. Many of the street artists getting the tourist’s attention were drawing amazing portraits; their quick skills and incredible likenesses gaining the attention of many. Others were creating lovely water colours, others rough works with acrylics.

The symbols of Florence where everywhere in these paintings – Ponte Vecchio, the San Maria Basillica dome, the skyline from Piazzale Michelangelo, the Tuscany country side; all represented in the muted shades that are well known in this part of the world.

The one that caught my attention was this lady, creating lovely water colours on cotton and finishing them with sepia ink. I could have watched her all day and it created a yearning for my own paints and art supplies.

Street artists in Florence, outside the Uffizi Gallery

When you visit Florence, make sure you allow time to wander the street without aim and spend time watching the street artists; you never know which corner you wil find them around.

Uffizi Gallery forecourt with artists

Doorways of Rome

There are themes we often see reoccurring in mixed media art and the doorway is one that fascinates me. It wasn’t until I visited Rome that I truly fell in love with the ornate doorway. Every street, at every corner and through every alleyway, a new vista opens and another streetscape is presented. And they are filled with different sized doors with patterns and ornate knockers and knobs.

using doorways in our mixed media art

And the streets themselves, with the housed lined up so tightly, also inspire artists delight – the shapes and symmetry of the windows, the shutters, the planter boxes with the tiny collection of colour that stands out against the weariness of the buildings walls.

Rome alleyway

The colour pallette is also gorgeous in the summer light; through a range of whites to browns that words simply can’t describe.

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Where is your inspiration coming from today?

Wrapping Your Presence in Rainbows

This article is written by Marney K. Makridakis, Artella

People have often told me that I tend to see things through rose-colored glasses, and I take it as a compliment.  I know that the idiom tends to have a negative connotation, but I tend to think of my own rose-colored glasses as being one of my most helpful tools for creativity, productivity, and happiness.  Seeing the bright hues in any situation allows us to focus on what we want, rather than what we don’t want.  And having a clear vision of what we want is, I believe, the first step in actually taking action to get there.

(c) Can Stock Photo

I recently was reminded, however, that taking off the rose-colored glasses can be pretty amazing, too.  I experienced this quite literally, when looking at rainbows through my polarized sunglasses.  Typically, these sunglasses tend to make everything more vibrant, including the beautiful rainbows that are so frequent where I live.  The sunglasses make rainbows really pop into an even more spectacular sight.

But the other day, my husband commented on the vivid rainbow, and oddly enough, when I had the sunglasses on, I couldn’t see the rainbow at all.  Once I took them off, then I was able to see it in all its breathtaking splendor.  Now, I’m sure there is a scientific reason that explains this phenomenon – why the color frequency in this particular rainbow was so dramatically different from most rainbows I had seen.  But, science aside, the experience reminded me of how important it can be to take off the rainbow-colored glasses from time to time, and see exactly what really is. What really is can be even more breathtaking than what might be.

So which is better – to see life for what it can be, or see it for what it is?    I think the answer lies in making a choice to fully experience the powerful elements that each perspective has to offer. Balance, of course, is necessary, since we can’t become so focused on what is that we forget the value of seeing what can be.  And perhaps even more bravely, we can’t become so attached to our rainbow-colored glasses that we forget what can happen when we really allow ourselves to actually be with what is, and feel the gravity, and resulting power, of our lives’ truth.

I believe that making brave choices, even the very act of choosing to become comfortable with this type of duality, is easier when we utilize creativity to support our choices.  “Choice” and “Intuition” are two of the ARTbundance™ Principles that trainees in the ARTbundance™ Certification Training Program have been studying, learning how to help their clients develop intuition, so that they can innovatively use it to make many kinds choices in their life.

I’ll close with some words from a poem that I wrote for an early issue of Artella magazine:

I gathered embraces and cuts
grace and guts
but one is not more lovely than the other
I gathered it all.

A load like this never gets lighter
but if you feel it for true
let the weight ruin you
dare to feel the pinch
if you feel it
and really feel it
you’ll sing so fast, you can run
dance so loud, you can rhyme
and close your eyes so light,
you can fly.

 
 Blessings to you and your gorgeous, rainbowtacular flight!

Marney K. Makridakis is the founder of ArtellaLand.com, the author of Creating Time: Using Creativity to Reinvent the Clock to Reclaim Your Life (New World Library),  and the inventor of the ARTbundance Philosophy, which uses ARTsignments™ to change lives through the power of creativity.   If you are intrigued by the idea of exploring a new vision for yourself in which you apply the ARTbundance™ philosophy and ARTsignments to your own professional dreams and goals, you are invited to apply for the next ARTbundance™ Certification Training (ACT).