A New Look At Jesus

Sorting out my stash before the move, I found a little book called "365 Laimes zibšņi" (365 Flashes of Happiness). It's a compilation of  quotes - one for each day.

This year, I started to use those as prompts for my daily reading, research, pondering, and writing.

And I'm amazed about the many personalities that I didn't know anything or very little about (most of them passed away already) and happy to get to know them and their work more or at least a bit.

Today, I "made an acquaintance" with Eric Butterworth, among other amazing things, the author of "Discover the Power Within You" (first time published in the sixties, when I was a school girl behind the "steel curtain") and "Spiritual Economics".


Right now, I'm reading his article "A New Look At Jesus" and am really amazed how much his view resonates with they way I currently see "the most important individual figure in the history of the world".

"How many times have you heard or read or perhaps seen scrawled in public places, the words from John 3:16: "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life"? That seems to imply that we should believe on the son, and it is understandable to assume that it means Jesus. Here is what Meister Eckhart, a medieval monk, who was a delightful person and a tremendous philosopher, said of this passage: "God never begot but one son, but the Eternal is forever begetting the only begotten." The "only begotten son," as he puts it, is that which is begotten only of God; this refers to that of man, that of you and me, which is not human, not of the world, that does not come from a certain heredity or environment. It refers to that of us, which also means that of you, that is the pure creation of God. It is our unitive relationship with God. It is that of us which is forever at one [with God], forever God's Child, forever God expressing through us, even beyond the seeming limitations of life. When we believe on this innate unity, this innate Divine Potential, then he shall not die, "but have everlasting life.""

Read the whole article here.

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My First Ralire Experience

Yesterday, I stumbled upon a couple of new posts on Facebook by Milliande Demetriu, that led me to her new blog Random Linear Remnants, where she shares her study.

Being a thinker and explorer myself, I wanted to dive into the posts on that blog right away. But it was too late for that.

Today, although, I had a new translation project to work at, I couldn't help, but read them all in my first break. :)

I really love marks and patterns, that appear random and organic, so those posts really resonated with me and triggered quite some pondering in me.

Especially, about the marks left by human beings and the potential of their randomness.

• Conscious drawing must be one of the most controlled ways of mark making per se.

• Drawings by small children and people with particular brain damage often are very random.

• The brain is controlling the drawing process by coordinating the motion of the hand through the eyes.

• There are ways to loosen up the drawing process, f.e., to close ones eyes, to take some alcohol or some other substance dampening the control centers of the brain.

• Although, there are laws and regularities behind seemingly chaotic natural lines and patterns, they must differ pretty much form the ones created by a fully developed control center of a human brain. :)

I even tried to "draw" a couple of sound patterns inspired by Milliande's latest post.

Thoughts that emerged from that experience:

The lines seem to resemble the motion of the object creating the sound. When I closed my eyes, it was much easier to merge with the sound and the motion of its source, but it was hard to stay in the frame of the 2 D surface.

You know I always love to hear from you, right?

Please, feel free to leave a comment here or contact me at ritajc(at)inbox(dot)lv

My Creative Space

During the last week, I haven't created much.
First of all, because it has been really dark in my studio. It's all covered, grey and rainy outside, and the never ending twilight always weights down my creative activities.
But I have completed something this week: 4 papier-mache apples and their boxes for a good cause. When I worked the last layers on them in the dark studio, I had to think about the artists centuries ago, who created their masterpieces before electricity became available. :)

These are some of the phases they went through.

By the end, my hands were all golden :)

Secondly, the CAPI course with Milliande and some of the artist groups I'm in on Facebook have flung up impulses for intense inside work and research, mostly, about my place in the (art)world. There are thousands of artists using the same brands of art supplies and substrates. There seems not to be a chance, that I could get to them in a serious amount ever. I'm gradually ceasing to feel like I'm lacking something essential to create significant art. Instead, I'm pondering and researching, what resources I have and what ways are open for me. It even starts to be a privilege not to have too many of them, as there are less options to be weighted. :) As the motto for my latest research, could serve the words Daisetz T. Suzuki uses to define the Wabi Sabi in arts: "an active aesthetical appreciation of poverty", of a quasi (material) poverty, that is an actual (spiritual) abundance and blessing. For instance, I lately found a new use for my abandoned art journals: I'm using them as a kind of art grimoire, i.e., I'm trying out new ways of using all kinds of stuff in my art in them, even food. :) And fricken loving it!!! :)

To see more creative spaces visit this site and be inspired!

Or join us for A Piece A Week or Creative Every Day

My Creative Space

Last week has been very rich on stuff to ponder.

First, Milliande invited us to do some pondering about our Body of Work in the CAPI course. I had never heard of it, so I did some research and stumbled upon this article, that gave me quite a shock. "Generally speaking, people don't want to know how versatile you are! With very few excerptions, I think you have to specialize for a long time before you can allow yourself the luxury of versatility." says Martha Marshall. It gave me some really heavy stuff to ponder, as I always found series of art works boring as a creator and as a viewer as well. My conclusion so far: a series of cohesive art works is kind of one work in many (at least a dozen) pieces. And I discovered some small series among my creations already created without ever thinking about it. Another participant from the CAPI course showed us this article, that helped me even more to see the point in creating in series. So I have my pondering cap on and am ready to create more in series from now on :)

Another object to ponder emerged, when I started a new intuitive painting and discovered not for the first time, that I really like the first layer and am not sure, if and how much I should add to it.

This happens again and again, and not only once I've liked the end result after many layers less than the first ones. Maybe I should start looking for ways to sell my "backgrounds"? Discussing this in my favourite art groups and doing dome research, the theme of a focal point emerged as well, and this article by Dianne Mize helped me to move forward. So I started to add to the painting, but was doing it carefully not to loose, what I had. After the second layer it looked nice, but gave me a somewhat shallow and incomplete feeling.

That day, I stumbled upon the 7 Painting Tips by Daniel Edmondson and they helped me to be brave and push forward. After 3 days of intense painting-scrubbing off-painting, the "Blooms of the Night" as I call it could be overall finished.

I still see some spots, that need a little tweaking, but I really like the result and am happy I didn't stop earlier. I'm not sure, if this will help me with my next creation, but one thing I'll probably do never again. The pretty large piece (27x70 cm) of corrugated card board I used as the surface is all deformed and was really hard to handle in my tiny painting space of about 3 square meters, as I couldn't hang it on the wall.

Sorry for the many words in my strange English, but all that pondering was an important part of my last week's creative process. Sorry for the still shaky quality of the images as well. The card reader sent by a dear Facebook friend all the way from the US arrived (YAY!), but I haven't figured out yet, how to make it work with at least one of our computers.

To see more creative spaces visit this site and be inspired

Or join us for A Piece A Week or Creative Every Day