Found Objects and Art Doll

Today at Uni, we made art using materials we had found during the course of our journey in to class. I carefully gathered my bag of found objects and waited to see what would emerge.

I was totally unprepared for this amazing doll!

In response to our artwork we were invited to write a short poem. This is mine – let me know if you like it.

The Great Round of Mandala

Mandala Magic, Julie Gibbons year long Mandala course started this week, so I’ve been busy creating mandalas for the first round. The course is based on exploring the twelve archetypal stages of the great round of mandala developed by Joan Kellogg and written about by Susanne F Fincher in her book called The Mandala Workbook: A Creative Guide for Self-Exploration, Balance, and Well-Being. I had already bought the book before I signed up for Julie’s course but you really don’t need it as Julie provides an amazing wealth of information and the group members are a constant source of inspiration and encouragement.

These are two of the mandalas I made for this stage of the journey. The mandala on the left represents the Void – a place to rest in the darkness. The mandala on the right draws on traditional wisdom drawn from many sources in which the spiders web is used to represent the darkness and safety of the womb.

This next image is a blend of acrylic prints digitally altered to create a 3D effect.

And this final image, created with acrylic paint using various palette knives, reminds me of an ancient battle scene. I can see lots of fighting figures in it – can you?

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you all!

December flew past, taken up with finishing my dissertation followed by a really relaxing family Christmas – it seems like ages since I last posted. But I have been busy creating!

It’s become a habit over the last few years to use this workbook from Susannah Conway to review the passing year and look forward to the New Year, including choosing a word to represent the coming year. This year I chose ‘Emergence’ as my word and placed it in the mandala from the workbook.

After I uploaded it, I just couldn’t resist pushing the invert button to see what happened. I’m not sure if I like it. What do you think?

A couple of days ago, I was inspired to create this large painting by these words from Leonard Cohen‘s song ‘Anthem’:

“…There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”

Today, I couldn’t resist the call of a ball of yarn in my supply box. It was calling to be made into a doll. This is the result!

I devised this method of creating a doll from yarn last month when I was playing with a few scraps laying on my desk one evening. With the exception of the head, which was stuffed with a small ball of tissue to give it shape, the entire doll is made from wool wound round on itself. This is the original that I made last month.

They’re so simple to make, and have endless possibilities from a therapeutic point of view which I’m working on developing at the moment.