A day of Yoga & Creativity & the Exhibition

First, thanks so much, all of you for your kind & supportive words. I've been so focused on the show, the physical aspect of running it & traveling there & back every day ( a beautiful but windy 40 mins each way) I just haven't had any head space for reading anything much & I can't wait to catch up with you guys....once my parents have finished their visit by next w/e. I'm so glad to have my Dad here for father's day, so special, & it's their 57th wedding anniversary too. We can also wish the Middlest well as he goes off to sea on Monday for anywhere between 6 weeks to 3 months. The Youngest is well into his new season of work at the local hotel so we grab him for a meal together when possible. I'll rehang my work in the studio so I can show off to my parents oh, & there's B&B to look after too - it's all go! So, I thank you for your continued patience.

Helping me get thru all this, the day before my exhibition (more of that in the second half of this post) was a fabulous day of Yoga & Creativity with Satyananda teacher Kali, up from London. Meg, one of my teachers organized it all, thanks, Meg (if you follow the link, you'll see the next Yoga day I'm doing!) The pics are no works of art, just record.

We spent the morning practicing asanas (postures) & pranyama (breathing) leading up to Yoga Nidra, a deep relaxation technique, after a silent tea break which was not as difficult as you might imagine.
The first image above were my thoughts & images after Yoga Nidra; during the practice, once relaxed you might be led on a journey, like a walk along a path by the sea, say & you are encouraged to observe texture, smell, the feel of wind on your face, how you feel when observing these things, for example.

 Once 'awake' we revisited our journey & were encouraged to record the significant aspects. I honed in to a close up of a rock which when I added grasses & changed the proportion seemed to turn it into a map. It was pink with black fissures & silver bit of glinting Mica. We then got into small groups & put our thoughts together which in our case became balance being made up of opposites. The 3D 'mountain' part in the middle came about because I'd started drawing them too far apart & so joined them by folding; simple ;)

After a wonderful shared lunch we practiced Trataka gazing. I've done this before with a candle but here we drew a shape & colored it in - you can see the blue square faintly on the back of the above image. Again we drew our observations - gazing unblinking at a blue square, for example, will give you a complementary color of orange when looking at the latent image behind closed eyes & when my eyes moved slightly I also saw Cyan. There's mine, top left. Put simply, the practice of Trataka concentrates & calms the mind.

Our last exercise was to draw with the non dominant hand using freshly made charcoal, oh what fabulous stuff! Kali & Meg made it in her wood burning stove & I would love to learn how to make it. I delight in the non dominant hand thing, having come across it in the book  'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' by Betty Edwards, lent to me by my arty friend, as I'm pretty ambidextrous so am comfortable 'drawing' using both hands. As a child I used to practice writing neatly with my right just in case I broke my left - altho I write with my left I do almost everything else with my right

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The point of this technique is to free us up, think less, be more physical in our approach to the surface we're drawing on I think. I certainly found the use of the charcoal freeing, just mark making, swirling, smooshing it about, the serendipity of  marks from the irregular piece of the charcoal which might make one or two lines simultaneously. I also enjoying hearing the sound of it passing over the paper. wonderful, it was a fabulous day & I'm pleased with my rock drawing & markmaking.

So, to the exhibition. My faith in humanity is restored, the right demographic turned up, well, mostly. I had a couple who came in & I heard her saying she liked the watercolors, then she saw my work & said to her other half, 'I don't like this kind of work' I just giggled in my corner, perhaps she thought I couldn't hear? The last comment in the book was 'we found this exhibition quite interesting' which gave us another laugh. I know what she means, really. I enjoyed all the other lovely words that were written in the book & particularly the  woman who exclaimed that my work was 'joyous' Well, you can't ask for better than that, can you? I can buy my machine (still haven't chosen yet - I won't hurry myself) & still have some left over that I can call a living. Quite a contrast to the craft fair, thanks goodness ;) Exhausted but exhilerated.

 Again, not the greatest pics in the world but you get the gist.

 I did borrow a couple od pices fom last year - my arty buddy did say to 'be kind to yourself' so I did.

my book page Curlews, trussed up so that I could hang them as I was too mean to frame them properly ;)

 Ooh, bad reflections, took this just so you could see the layout - I sold one early the first morning!
you can see 4 of them a bit better here actually, there were 9 of these I may have cut 2 off, oops!

 My rock & sleeping cat - I sold the rock, delighted!

 the DH's corner

 Sunny Plockton

My first glasses case I made for my textile buddie's birthday

Primary school kids visited the day I had Tam over - the DH was collecting the Middlest from college in Glasgow - their Gaelic Medium teacher is my neighbour & I was so pleased she brought them all to see my work - they were delighted to get Tam as well ;)

3 beautiful gardens along the front - they are at least 3 weeks ahead of us on Skye.

I'll try to get some visiting done while my parents are off in their cottage 'having their rest', I miss you all & can't wait to get back to 'real' life. I find having an exhibition is sort of like being in a different time zone. It'll be good to get back to it all slowly & will hopefully be back late next w/e. If not, please wait for me again!