It is a over year since my last post and I wish I could report that I am doing better. But I am not. The major difference is that my health issues -- ironically immediately after I applied for disability-- have gotten much worse. At times I can hardly walk and stand up. My right hip-- which had been the strong one-- finally gave up and let me know it was tired of doing all the work, and is now bone-on-bone. I have Osteoarthritis in both hips and my lower back. On good days I can't really work, except for the barest minimum of tasks. On bad days, I cannot move.

Living with chronic pain is the hardest thing I have ever done. It makes emotional and psychological anguish seem like a cakewalk. I have heard that one can get used to it. I think I will lose my mind first if I have to keep going through such pain -- just to live everyday -- to go to the bathroom, cook some food, wash and dress myself. Forget about such important stuff as going to the bank, shopping for groceries, and going to the post office. And fun things are completely out of the question if they involve walking more that a few yards-- going to the movies alone, taking a class, going to the farmer's market. I was able to get a disability parking placard. What a game changer that was! I am so grateful to be able to park close by for some things and not have to walk forever. But I am still very limited in my abilities.

Unfortunately, my creative life is not as it could be as well. I have received a lot of encouragement from friends to pursue writing. I really want to, but when my heart is breaking most of the time, I feel as though I have nothing to offer anyone but sadness and bad news. I occasionally do some sketches and watercolors, and am always doing abstract drawings, but nothing really feels like art to me anymore. It feels like useless wasting of time when I should be looking for a job and a home. I try to keep a perspective, and I realize it is very difficult to create culture in the face of such dire circumstances.

Applying for federal disability is a long process. In October, it will be a year ago that I first applied. I have already been denied once. They say I can still work, therefore I am not disabled! I wish I could tell them I am working DESPITE being in chronic pain, and because I HAVE TO WORK TO SURVIVE! I have no one to support me, no family, spouse, children, friends, or support system. The legal firm helping me assures me they will continue to appeal. The appeal can take over six months. I also applied for state disability last week, but I am not too hopeful about this. I have not been working very much, so my award will probably be $50. I'll take anything I can get at this point.

I have a care giving situation now and am living with friends of friends, but have just been informed that I will have to leave. Not right away, but there is a timeline. And the clock is ticking. More stress.

My health decline actually coincided with the receiving of this information. Yep, stress is a big factor in my health. Fortunately, I am working with some practitioners who are helping me immensely and enabling me to stay mobile, to a certain extent, and work the barest minimum so I will be able to survive. Community acupuncture is the greatest invention known to humans, and I am so grateful for the healers at the Oakland Acupuncture Project for their dedication and care.

I was feeling pretty down last week, but in the midst of it all I had an epiphany: Do I really have it so bad? Haven't others had it worse? How about Frida Kahlo? Even though she was wealthy and could afford all those surgeries for the injuries she sustained in a childhood accident, she still was not ever made completely well by them, and was in pain and bedridden a lot of the time. Despite this, throughout her life, she still managed to make a lot of amazing art, much of it no doubt because she chose to place her focus on creating instead of feeling apathetic and suffering, and being a victim.

This is my world right now. There is pain, there is loss and anguish. But the choice is mine -- where do I choose to place my focus? Maybe I can turn away from the past and face the present-- regardless of the challenges-- with my creativity intact-- writing, painting, drawing-- seeking to connect with my world and my relationship to it in a new manner, despite the pain. Yes, this surely must be the way.

It is now late summer and another whole year has passed and I am still homeless.

It is four days until my 57th birthday and I am feeling down.

I am now (barely) earning a living as a house and pet sitter locally. I love what I am doing but since my rates are still a bit low, I am still not able to pay all my bills. Car insurance. Gas. Food -- even with food stamps.

My friend, who has allowed me to stay in a spare room he is not using for free just told me he could be making money by renting it. So....

Another friend invited me over for dinner and then told me I had to leave before the meal because he wanted to have some time with his daughters without me around.

Sure I am whining and it is pathetic. But I am also feeling very misunderstood and maligned because my 'friends' have no idea what it is like to be asked to leave when you are homeless. I truly wish anyone who doesn't understand, and even if you do, would open their mind and heart, and hear me.

Imagine for a moment YOU are homeless. Try to get your head around that idea. You have NO HOME. No place to store your stuff, NO PLACE TO GO. But today, joy of joys, it is different for a moment, a few hours. You are with someone who is sheltering you, or providing you with a means to shelter (like buying a meal, shopping, going to a movie, etc) and enjoying the momentary peace that can bring. Just as you start to relax for a second,  BANG!! Everything changes and where there was peace there is now panic. Your pleasure is torn out from under you and you are back on the bus bench again! And all you can feel is the searing hot poker of yet another rejection by someone who said they understood....Now they are telling you to leave! They do not want you in their home or in their presence! Do you get it yet?

And why do they not want me in their home?  Because in my currently economic poverty, I am homeless.

 Another friend asked me, what would it take for me to get out of poverty? Easy answer: A WELL PAYING PROFESSIONAL JOB!! I have been trying to get one since 2009. Like other states, the civil service sector in California continues to shrink. These were the best paying jobs, with the best benefits. Union jobs. It was fair, to a certain extent. But now the jobs go to younger people who will take lower pay and only work part time. They expect people to work more than one job part time, and still have health, life and happiness. This, I have found--for me-- is impossible. I have found it very difficult to work more than one job. I just do not have the stamina of my youth. At this point, I would love a customer service cubicle job or even a library technician job or a delivery job. But I cannot earn a living and be expected to survive on $9- $12 per hour. Not in this area. The rent for a room is now $1000 and up. For A ROOM! Something has to give.

If a museum, gallery, collector or critic took an interest in my art and began to champion my prophetic, visionary, and highly controversial creative attitudes and imagery, that could change everything in my life for the better.


I am dreaming of the days when the economy goes back to normal and money will be worth what it is truly worth. It will take some getting used to, but we will manage, I am sure. Cars will be less than $500. Rent will be $50 and less. Gas will roll back to 20 cents a gallon, because all the new technologies will make the combustion engine obsolete. We will ALL have less, because there will be less. And the inflation will stop.

Maybe that will be happening sooner than we expect. Maybe if we start to envision the future we most want to see it will actually become a reality. Do we have that much power? I believe so.

Power here inside, power out there. Power everywhere. So here it is -- the power of sharing pain: I started out writing this post feeling a bit down. Now I am feeling positive and empowered. No drugs, no therapy, no exercise necessary. I just wrote and shared. I could have written in my journal, but I do not think I would have had the same transformational experience. Thank for witnessing, for listening, for hearing. It is much appreciated.

I do not really know what I will be doing. Maybe I will be doing more art. The fact that I feel better and more positive means something has changed, has shifted. I want to move on. I can envision the future now, where before I could not.  That, at least, gives me hope.

Letting go over and over

Well, hello. It has been awhile so get comfortable for a little read.

Instead of painting, I have been dancing with scarcity and abundance.

I just read my last post and was embarrassed at how long-winded and wordy it was. Too much. So I am going minimal.

I have been expanding creatively and spiritually and enjoying a lot of growth.

I have been letting go of a lot, and sometimes it has been painful. But since I am using it as an opportunity for self- awareness, the pain is instructive and not quite as devastating.

At the end of 2013, my cat died. Last year I lost six jobs. Now I am homeless, after leaving my home and jobs in Sonoma county last month for a live-in caregiver job in the East Bay that fell through. If my friend did not allow me to stay at his place with my small pile of stuff ('for a very short time'), I would be sleeping in my truck on the street.

I have been working as an In Home Support Services caregiver since March 2014. My body can barely manage the work, and I am often exhausted, but I keep working. The money is OK, but not great. My friends have been helping me survive for the past three years. They are the reason I am still driving my truck, still have my stored possessions (artwork, household goods, art supplies and furniture) and still have my ability to feel somewhat secure in what little I have, even as it is being taken from me in small and large ways everyday. They have helped me find jobs and offered other resources I desperately needed. Their care has helped me more than anything I will ever do for them. And what my friends have done has helped the culture because they are keeping a culture creator alive and able to create another day. It is an incredible direct arts investment, and a win for everyone, really. I try to make sure anyone who helps me understands this.

I am making some art and exploring crowdfunding sites. 

I am continuing to look for a place to live and am hoping for a friendly and kind home. I keep believing I will find one soon. I am hoping to make some new good connections. Please let me know if you hear of something in the East Bay, San Francisco Bay area.

Since change is rapid, I will try to check in again soon with any updates. I am staying positive, for now.

Please let me know if you are interested in purchasing any cards, small art pieces etc. I can ship anywhere!
Thanks for your caring thoughts.

Well, hello again. Sorry for the long silence. Again I have been painting and not painting and doing other things instead of painting. A lot has happened. A lot of it is not happy or pretty. But I am not a victim.

Because I believe in the power of telling my story to heal, I am writing about the last three years of my life as concisely as possible. There is so much I do not understand about what has happened. I am hoping writing it down will help me to see the threads appearing and disappearing and appearing again in ways I cannot when I am the weaver everyday and glean some kind of underlying message or purpose to this seemingly random and unrelenting downturn in my life.

In July of 2009 I lost the job I thought I would be doing until I retired. The firing was politically motivated. I collected unemployment and lived off of a dwindling inheritance while doing my art and looking casually and confidently for the next good job I was sure I would find. I lived and worked in some very cool studios and made a few really good, high-quality, visionary paintings, along with drawings, sculpture and other crafts. Aside from a couple of very small pieces and cards, none of it sold. Insulated from poverty with my UI and savings, and already starting to feel anxious about the future, I wasted a lot of time and money trying to buy other people's love and affection, and pretending that I was already successful, among other misguided things. I wish I could have been more realistic, focused and self-disciplined. But life was good for a couple of years.

In August of 2012, my unemployment insurance ran out. My savings were gone. I liquidated a retirement fund, started selling off my possessions and living off my credit cards. I began looking for a job in earnest and found that I was now unemployable because I had been out of the job market for too long. Every professional job I interviewed for was probably going to someone who would start at a lower rate of pay and was younger. I lost my studio in an up and coming arts district because I could not pay the rent and insurance and my work was not selling. I set up a studio in the house I was renting, knowing it would be temporary. Little did I know how temporary everything in my life was about to become.

When I realized I would have to move and had no place to go as the month was ending, I was very anxious. Out of the blue a former neighbor offered to let me move in and stay rent free with my cat and a few possessions. Not knowing her well, I was hesitant. We would be sharing a room with only a folding screen in between for privacy.  I tried to warn her of my cat's quirky behavior, which she waved off, and thought all would be well as she is a pet sitter and already knew him from taking care of him where we were neighbors.
I had no idea that she would refuse to let him sit on the couch with her, she would not feed him or give him treats when it was clear he was upset and missing me, and that she would start to crazily say he was 'evil'!
Things went downhill until she told me I had to remove him or move out. I was fortunately able to find a decent place to board him. But unfortunately his stay there contributed to some health problems he is having now and may have definitely shortened his life. He was boarded for nearly four months, while I worked at an $8 an hour job cleaning in a gym, and used up my remaining credit on boarding fees, when I had planned on using it for gas and food. I moved out shortly thereafter and have been renting a room I can barely afford. I lost my job at the gym. I have appealed the denial of my unemployment insurance (UI) and it is pending. I still have no job and no income. A dear friend has taken in my sweet suffering cat, and has generously been paying his vet and food bills while I cannot. It is a terrible burden to know that my choices have made another being suffer so much needlessly. It is almost too much for me to bear.

I received a grant to go to bartender's school in August and have been looking for any kind of culinary job since I graduated. I am so motivated about getting into the culinary industry now, I am sure I will be getting something soon.The competition is fierce, but I am determined. I am grateful I no longer have to hide:  I am a PASSIONATE FOODIE PUNK AND PROUD OF IT!!! All I need is a foot in the door. I am ready to work HARD. I might dye my hair and paint my nails black.

Another thing I never planned for is the income needed to house my artistic legacy. And what would happen when I had no income at all. I can no longer pay for the rent on the storage space that contains my entire lifetime of art making -- 18 meduimu -to large sized  paintings, many boxes of journals, sketchbooks, portfolios and loose pages of drawings  Boxes of framed art, small table-top sculptures. Most of it amazing beautiful powerful. Frames. Tools and supplies. My entire lifetime of work. And all of my other stuff. The people who run the storage facility so far have been very kind have have not removed my stuff. But they could any day if I don't pay something soon. More money. More pressure.

I have been making small pieces of art in sketch books, as always. I have also been doing larger collages filled with the ephemera of my daily life -- parking and grocery receipts, want ads, magazine photos, etc -- which I attach to watercolor paper, then draw and watercolor around and over, making a dense, deplorable looking-- mess. I call it 'stupid' art because it looks so stupid and meaningless to me and I am sure to everyone else. It is like looking at a badly written diary entry. Too grim, too real and raw to be taken seriously. But what else can I do where there is chaos all around me and I just keep having everything taken away as I grow poorer and poorer...Sometimes I am so confused and tired that I cannot even think straight.. But I create anyway because it is the DOING that gives my life meaning and if I could not do it I would probably stop living. Maybe this is what I was supposed to get. Well, I know it now. I cannot live without making art. Even when I am not aware of it I am making art -- in true Dada, anti-art, punk, anarcho- fashion. I could not not do it. It wasn't like that before. I approached making art more as a necessary hobby and sort of was dabbling at times. My interest would wax and wane and I had little passion for it. But not anymore. Do or die has new meaning to me today.

In 2009 I met an amazing gallery director and curator whom I instantly respected greatly and from whom I took two workshops. He reviewed my work and told me he believed  he could sell a painting from my student days for $8000. I have been following his advice for career development ever since and wish we could be in contact because I just adore him! And to tell him I have had to alter my career plans a bit.
 
Because of my economic situation, I cannot really pursue my art career development as I had planned. Why didn't I plan for the times when would have no money? --because I didn't want to believe that would happen!  I am doing what I can trying to market small art pieces and cards. It has been difficult. It is hard to not get discouraged. I am unable at this point to approach galleries because I neglected to get high-quality reproductions of my work made, and this is pretty much a requirement if one wants reputable representation.

I am not giving up. I am taking the long view. My art has a life of its own and when it is ready to be seen it will create the time and space and all I will have to do is show up with it. I am just hoping that I will not lose what I have already created. It is really all I have.

(Photos to come)

NEW bumpersticker: Friends don't let friends not paint!

I am back again after painting and not painting for awhile. I finished a new painting for a local restaurant where I have had work hanging since 2008. I have been attempting to start a new painting for another cafe show where a dear friend is including me in shows.

I love seeing my work hanging out in the world. This alone is inspiration enough to make me want to create. But I have felt even more inspiration from my friend, who believes in me, supports my efforts, but most of all understands because she is an accomplished painter and very creative person herself. We were distant friends at art school in the '80's, and have been reunited via another friend via Facebook.

So, instead of painting, I have been enjoying her delightful company, learning about her life and sharing about my own in the years since. And it is always so good to 'talk shop' about creativity, our own processes, etc. It heartened me tremendously when she confessed her process for 'getting ready to paint' -- making coffee, arranging easels and chairs and lights, choosing music to be played, laying out supplies, being sure everything is in order. Only then can the real work commence. I told her this is exactly what I do too and we both had a good laugh. But what we both know is that once all these seemingly insignificant preparations are made, we will be able to work, focused and uninterrupted for however long it takes.

I don't know if I will get another painting started before I move or not. I have a large canvas stretched and ready, but I am currently relocating my home/studio to more rural area about hour to the northwest. I will be leaving the small factory town that has been my home for almost 2 years. I am leaving sadly: I really love my studio, the amount of space and garden. And I am leaving gladly: Living so close to the factory and its parking lot has been a real pain. My new place is a bit smaller and has a deck, but it also has a garden plot in a community garden adjacent. And a pool. And more nature nearby. I know I will be inspired to do some plein air painting and drawing along some of the country roads. As for this canvas, I am hoping to 'get ready' soon.....

I am feeling very positive, relaxed and hopeful. A new phase of my life is about to begin. I am grateful for friends, old and new, grateful for all the changes I have weathered this year. I certainly never thought I would be where I am now a year ago. I am looking forward to a future of more painting than not, and right now that feels very, very good.

I have a confession....

... and I might as well get it right out in the open at the start: I suffer from lifelong depression. This will definitely be a factor in my 'not painting'.

I have tried to make peace with this condition, but it is constantly showing me I still have much to learn about myself. People tell me I apologize too much. It is because I feel so badly about inflicting my form of personal dementia on them at any time. Some love me and some don't put up with me. I think I am difficult. I have other outstanding qualities, but one of them is not self-love.


As I struggle these days away considering my life's options, I am grateful for the chance to explore the multidimensional aspects of my life at this time. I have been trying in my own way to express what I am experiencing in my drawings and writing. My latest journal is an 11 x 14" drawing sketchbook with completely blank pages. I was hesitant at first to use a blank page for text. I guess I was afraid of revealing too much through my changing handwriting and sloppiness. Well, something shifted, and I have been happily using it for about three weeks, enjoying the new freedom of the blank page. I just remembered-- it started the day I was fired.


Today I am attempting to work on the drawing I was finishing when I realized (psychically) that something was very wrong at work. On the night before I was fired, I was drawing busily, somewhat distracted by the fact that my boss had rushed out without checking in as she usually did. I had been musing on it as I worked.

At about 11:30, I had a very grave and dark feeling. I knew that they would be doing something to me at work the next day but I did not know what. I thought that they could be firing me, but I was not sure... all of this went into the psychic content of the drawing. After I had this realization and feeling, I could no longer work on the drawing at all. As I tried to work on it in past days, I would feel these feelings all over again.

It is only today, after nearly three weeks, that I feel strong enough to face it again and revise and continue. It is what must be done now, before anything else.



Since I have been a bit depressed over the past couple of weeks, I haven't been out much. I don't have an art related recommendation, but since this is the time of the Perseid Meteor shower in the Northern Hemisphere, I recommend getting away from city lights so you can see this amazing spectacle. Nature is the best artist, anyway.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=8301535&page=1

Fired!

I was fired from my job in the IT world last week. They tried to make me feel very bad about myself for it, but I refuse. I see it as complete confirmation from the universe that I am really supposed to get on with what I really came here to do. I know now that I always have been destined to derive my income from the pursuit of my creative passions and projects. All around me I see others trusting this calling and themselves and somehow they are always supported. So I am intending to explore this possibility.

So now I have time to paint. And not paint. So I am starting this blog to help me focus my attention and energy when I am not painting. I plan to write a lot about not painting, as I have regular massive blocks. I have already decided that if I am going to pursue creativity as anything more than a hobby, I will need to have a different relationship to my creativity. I am hoping I can find some ways to heal some of these traumas, some of them art school/art world induced.


Based on this, I would like to respectfully and compassionately ask for your experiences with being creatively blocked and unblocking.