April 21, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

World Wide Commonalities

The art of music

It has been a really painful week for many people in the world. Boston and Texas really have suffered great pain and loss.Our prayers continue for the victims and the families and friends, not to mention the survivors. After surviving any traumatic event, from the events of this last week to the unseen wounds of war, healing can take a lot of time, perseverance and guts. Horrors seen and experienced can leave terribly deep wounds.

I found my husband dead of a heart attack, sitting in the study with his feet propped up on the desk and a cup of coffee next to him. He had been there all day while I had been at work at the American Red Cross and had gone grocery shopping. It was dark and I turned on the desk lamp and found him. The diagnosis was a massive heart attack that I could not have stopped.

I had a diagnosis of PTSD and don’t like the dark to this day. The point is that no matter what your lifestyle is, pain and tragedy can find you. There is a wonderful book called, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” It was written by Rabbi Kuschner..

From my experience running a psych unit, through my husband’s death and after being battered as a child, I have found a prescription of sorts for healing.

Beauty and our love for it is an inborn need and many artistic tastes are universal across the countries of the world. People in most countries prefer water and trees in the distance.From writing music to words, from singing your favorite songs to painting your first tulip; we have a need to express the art that resides in our souls. From looking at Degas sculptures to writing your first book, you are working from the instinct to produce what you relate to as Art.
Miriam, the Jewish Prophetess danced, sang and played the tambourine. KISS wears make-up and stick out their tongues and millions rocks to their music and its message for the soul.

Close your eyes and try to imagine a world where everything is utilitarian, political or for business. No music, dance, no sketching, painting, writing for pleasure, no moments of the day savored because of their beauty.Across the world people find many different things they consider art but it all performs to express the basic instinct. So today, work on healing with the creativity in your heart and soul.

The beauty of music

Art evolution

A profile in color

Horse made from drift wood

October 28, 2012 by IdealisticRebel

The Activity of the Mind

The activity of the mind at rest is awesome. We move into altered states of consciousness each night when we sleep. The process is an astonishing creative force. We get cozy in our beds, comfortable and relaxed; it is almost like suspended animation.

Our minds show us visions, created characters and stories. They reveal perceptions that had eluded our waking mind.

The endlessly fertile dream mind is common to all of us. With no effort whatsoever, we are able to write complex dramas, paint magnificent paintings, map strange lands and write brilliant dialogue. We fly, we swim, we run like the wind, we can wear animal bodies and make scientific discoveries. There have been many accomplishments recorded. Scientific work has been done in sleep learning.

Night is vital to us. Can you imagine a life without your dreams? I certainly can’t. To the mind, the day is not more important than the night. Here’s to all of us night owls in the world!

Baby owl;taken in Charlotte, NC; Photo by Barbara Mattio

October 16, 2012 by IdealisticRebel

Your Artistic Voice

Magnolia, Oil pastels By Barbara Mattio

Being a person who has the desire to create is a gift and a burden at times as well. There are some days you are in “the zone” and you are on fire with the desire, the need to create. To create what is bursting to be released from your soul. There are also days when you want to work and your creativity is stuck inside as if it were a geni in a bottle and the cork is solidly blocking the neck of the bottle.

It is important to work hard at developing your artistic voice and equally important to be patient with people who are struggling to find their own voice.

I feel that we can’t really understand all of our work. We create from a place inside which defies even our best attempts to understand it. It is almost impossible for others to understand our work. Many go into great detail describing what an artist meant with their poetry, print making, compositions, paintings or their dance. It is important to attempt to understand as we can grow as artists, but also important to remember in the back of our minds, that we probably have only a glimpse of where that art came from and what its etiology could have possibly been.

The good thing is that the more we use our artistic voice, the stronger and clearer it will become. It is important to remember, all great artists of any medium have worked long and hard before they felt they had created what was striving to burst out of their soul. Dancers, writers, poets, musicians, sculptors, painters, graphic artists,and actors put a lot of time and effort, sweat and tears into their craft before they are satisfied with the results.

Then there are the critics. Those self appointed judges who make a living tearing what you have created apart and then putting it together again in ways they feel is best. This is where you need to be true to your artistic voice. You can’t please all of the people all of the time; please your soul. Do what you were meant to do, even if critics don’t “get” it. You are an artist and this is a gift you were given. Be proud, nurture it. Work hard to accomplish what you know you must do and be fearless.

The more you use your artistic voice, the closer you will be to artistic purity. Remember to breathe, feel, love, live in joy. You are growing alongside your work..