lisateasley

Circle of Angels Holding Hands

This is a page from one of my more recently finished sketchbooks, it's a watercolor of a dream from last year in January 2020, while I was living parttime in Bangkok, around this time.  Sometimes when I am driving and listening to a great song, I will imagine in my mind most of the world dancing together to the song in the sky. I have been on a spiritual path since I was kid, and I got ever more serious and disciplined about it during the past 13 or so years. Yesterday, I experienced waves of bliss coming through the top of my head and filling my heart and extending beyond, it was so overwhelming that I logged off of Zoom yoga, since our teacher was speaking to us afterward and I thought I likely looked distracting, as if I were on mushrooms or something. I went and sat outside and endured these strong waves for what must have been about an hour and a half. I decided I would just go about my day and they remained gently in the background until by the time I went to bed, it was a bit like an afterglow.

 I spent half of 2019 on scholarship to Eckhart Tolle's School of Awakening, class was daily for six months, and then I got another scholarship from him last year in 2020 for his class Being the Light. As a teacher, he has helped me enormously and beyond any words I could say, but I also listen to and read many many teachers at any point in time. Our beliefs and the way we live our lives impacts every aspect of it, so naturally my spiritual beliefs influence my art and my writing-- even if, particularly in my writing, which can be seen as harsh or gritty or dark, there for me the point is to explore, to examine, to excavate, to process and to hold the darkness to the light where there is no judgment or punishment, but rather an understanding of cause and effect, and in that realization, a kind of transmutation. This is how I lift my consciousness about issues I would otherwise get stuck in the mire with. I could go on about this, but will just continue to share as we continue on this journey. I am so very grateful to all of you here, so much more than you will ever know.

Musician/Composer Imogen TV in my Vintage Painted Shirt Design of Daisies and Arrows

OUR ART COLLECTIVE HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN? UK DEBUT SCREENING

Yesterday the London Short Film Festival debuted the opera by our art collective aka The YAMS for their opening night, and afterward I was one of five from our panel who took part in a Q&A. The opera film is called Good Stock on the Dimension Floor and debuted in the U.S. at the Whitney Biennial. We eventually pulled the film from the Whitney due to the curator/director's racist decisions and practices, and if you are interested in the details I can comment further below. But yesterday, was a good, satisfying and successful event.

Octopus in Progress

This is the current painting on the easel, which I was working on today as I have been for the past week, along with a picture of the Yantra painted in his/her center, as well as a picure of the live octopus. I started this painting quite a while back, and was striving for more subtle realism, then after seeing the documentary My Octopus Teacher last month, I put the painting back on the easel and went back to a more graphic approach, inspired by the boldly intense psychedelic colors of the deep sea, and the glorious souls who inhabit the space.

Venus of Culver City

Venus of Culver City is the portrait of a friend, Gabrielle, whom I have painted many times over the years, and who was born in Los Angeles in the area near Culver City, by Kenneth Hahn Park, where the oil derricks are. This painting has a beautiful home in Beachwood Canyon with its owner, who was an attorney in Belgium but returned to L.A. for chef school and is also now creating exquisite soaps. He had a dinner party for me and the painting, upon the occasion of its hanging, and his guests asked me questions throughout dinner. I was reluctant to answer many of them since I have always thought that what the viewer feels the paintings is about is what the painting is about. Obviously, we discussed the environment, feminism, activism, Culver City, and Venus, but I welcome your comments on these subjects, as well as on what you feel or think when you look at this painting.

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