Happy New Blog!

Swept up in all that new year – new decade – new beginnings energy (and even a new moon today) I suddenly got it in my head to begin a new blog.

As you good folks who’ve been with me since the early days know, Ephemeral Gecko began as a place I documented my early mixed media experiments. I never expected anyone to read it, let alone follow along with me over these last eight (crikey!) years.

For a start, would I have chosen such a peculiar name?

(maybe I would)

Anyhoozles.

Having meandered to where I am now, I’m ready to be more purposeful in my online voice. I’m in no rush to remove or delete anything over here, but will be retiring this site.

So join me, will you —

My colorful adventures are moving to Mixy.Art.Blog

This is where I’ll be sharing all my makings and doings in my colorful world.

Beginning with a new year full of color.

YES! TWELVTY is back!!

This year I’m not running it as a formal course, but as an open invitation to anyone who would like to play along. No cost, no commitment – the more the merrier – so do spread the word!

If you get my newsletter you’ll have already seen the TWELVTY Guide (and if you join up here you can get it delivered straight to your inbox now!)

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I look forward to seeing you over at Mixy.Art.Blog where our colorful adventures continue!

New Moon Momentum

Last month I began a new practice of creating an art journal vision-board type spread with the New Moon.

New Moon Vision: Nov/Dec 2016

I’ve used the new moon as a time to sow seeds of intention for many years, usually in a journal or diary. This got the intentions out of my imagination in the form of words on paper, but within a day or two they were lost under the ensuing pages.

Transform Your Life: I have high hopes for this book!

Now I have this visual reminder I can keep in my eye line in the studio – for now it’s propped up against a shelf opposite my workspace. The simple beauty of it being in a book means it can travel with me wherever I go. (Even though it’s quite a BIG book – it likely won’t travel that far!)

A Lifetime’s Obsession with Collective Inspiration: I am the culmination of my thoughts so far

It’s now the second time I’ve done it … and I’ve lived through hundreds of new moons, so it’s early to judge… but so far I like this method much more.

Bright, Vibrant, Unique Art: subconscious reminders… in case I forget!

I expect over time it will evolve to include more writing too, the process will fine tune and evolve, as all things do.

This and last month both have writing under the collage, so in that sense those words are even more buried than usual. Meanwhile it’s a place for all those collage bits I snipped out of the lifetime’s supply of magazines I dismantled last year.

Heavy on Metaphor: planting seeds for new ideas

Do you have a new moon practice? or a vision board practice?

How do you find they work for you? I’d love to know. 

Happy Serendipity of Collage 

This Moon/Month I’m pushing all my energy into launching my biggest project yet:

The TWELVTY program.  After a final flurry of readying, I opened the doors yesterday, and the first subscribers jump right in. I’ve got a really good feeling about this – we’re building a community of makers and doers, artists and creatives, and together we’ll explore how color impacts our lives, our moods, our work and our art. We’re going to delve deep into one color at a time and soak up all its lovely juicy spirit.

If you want to find out more, it’s all here on my website. If you’ve got any questions or want to find out more, comment below or message me through my site and I’ll be happy to answer all I can.

Let’s join together in 2017 and Create the Marvellous!

New Moon – New Plans

New Moon – New Plans

I got back from my travels last month so wiped out with jetlag, post giddy-with-deleriously-excited induced tiredfulness that I lost most use out of almost a full fortnight. Then no time at all later I went and took off again. I’m back now, this time long enough to catch my own tail, to take a deep breath. And again. And to make some plans. 

Last weekend brought a new moon, which on this side of the world was the second new moon in the month making it a black moon. I’ve loved the mythology, the tradition, the woo-woo – the whatever you want to call it – of aligning with the lunar cycle since I was a wee scrap. It’s part of my way of fumbling through this life.  The new moon is the time to sow seeds – literal and metaphorical. Actual plant seeds want you to pay attention to the season for best success, but the seeds of ideas can be planted any time. I like the belief they get a head start when fuelled by intention and belief.

 

Inspired by a couple of dear friends I’ve met this year, this new moon I was inspired to begin this new moonly ritual.

A New Moon – Moodboard – Art Journal – Scrapbook. … Snappy title, right? ha!

The idea was introduced to me by  Kate Robertson, I love it so much as it brings together a bunch of things I already do – the art journalling, the new moon intention setting, my unending love of cutting up and gluing together images… I haven’t moodboarded much before, for want of getting around to it, and finding a space for the thing to live, so to have it in a book is the perfect solution for me. Said book is now propped up open at the current view and in my line of vision where I sit and do my artly doings.

The process was enriched by the influence of Hali Karla, who I was delighted to meet up with in real life on my travels. Hali is an artist, intuitively in tune with an astrological practice that she weaves into her creativity, she provides an Art Practice New Moon audio recording each month you can listen to here. On Sunday I settled myself down with the big ole box of magazine pics I’ve been hoarding forever, a big new art journal, and as I listened to Hali’s words I chose the images and thoughts that shone out to me as what I want to bring into the coming month.

 

These shorter darker days call in more than ever the warm bright glowing colours for me, for cosiness and comfort, for the mental hibernation and reconbobulation I’m looking to toward the end of a year of big changes and personal re-routing.

I’ve got a sense of releasing the past, letting go and lightening up. Looking into the place where the dreamworld meets the real world, matching the edges together and seeing what I can make next.

In doing this I’m piecing together new plans for 2017, plans I intend to nurture this month. (Much more on that soon)

The Stretchiness of Time

 

2015 was tied up in this book, in the rigidity of one page: one week, when some weeks felt empty of expression and some pages felt too small for all that was flooding out of my imagination.

 

By mid year it had taken on a thick, heavy persona with paint all gooey and chewy and some weeks where no amount of layers would cover up the uncomfortable truths of ugly: a parallel to the world it was illustrating. Something intangibly off. Something meh. Some things I didn’t like, didn’t like confronting, didn’t like to witness. I didn’t want to relive, repeat, or even properly acknowledge.

The book served a purpose: A lesson in being a grown up is knowing when to persevere, and when to stop. I persevered. And when the year was up I was glad the book was full. Finished. Finally time to move on. Onto what next. 

What next?

 

…And then a really long time seemed to pass, and I rested. A really long time that went quickly, and dragged slowly and passed in a flash.
Because Time is Weird like that…

 

I found myself cutting out shapes from magazine pages, scrap paper and junk mail. Something was stirring, I didn’t know what…

Last week I fell into a new facebook group run by the gorgeously art journally Orly Avineri. It was the catalyst I needed to jump into this new book.

I’ve got gesso under my nails and ink on my face again.

I feel like I’ve come home! 

This book is different, there are no limitations and no rules.

Free to fly in and out, land a while –

‘Take a closer look’ –  the serendipity of the cut up.

– chat with my thoughts, flit off again.

It takes as long as it takes.

I’m getting more and more aware that by pouring out my unconscious I can steer myself through this life in a fashion not like anything else.

It’s a compulsion.

You get this too, right?

Everything that was feeling stale and sludgy has dropped away since just this first page.

Life feels like spring time: new pages are beginning to blossom.

From Early Circles… (12/52)

When I set out on this page a week journal at the start of the year, I didn’t know what insights it would throw up. And just 12 weeks in, I’m sure there will be many more yet to surprise me.

Like, how much transformation can take place, in little bits of time, in some oddments of just seven evenings.

Beginning with no fixed picture and letting the ideas percolate silently round the back of my imagination. I don’t know… maybe just loads more circles? Keep doing circles til something else happens. Cos it will. Something will always happen.

Last week the New (Super) Moon, Vernal Equinox and Solar Eclipse all happened on Friday. There. See what I mean?

Another opportunity (if you’re that way inclined) to send wishes out to the Universe. Planted under the word Wish.

Reiterated in Big Bright Blue.

And surrounded by the meme I attached to my week.

And then an explosion of not-just-circles amid more spirals and scribble and circles.

That Big Bright Blue of the wish was the catalyst for the page to take shape.

My week began with a gathering of a newly formed tribe of creatives. And it closes today having taken up an extraordinary wealth of new doings and thinkings, which I’ll share with you in future postings.

From the sublime to the magnificent. Life is Love.