HOLLY FRIESEN ~ The Roaring Inside

Towards the Within

2012-02-09T23:03:00.005-05:00

Towards the Within / 12' x 12" / acrylic on panel board

Today I filled in applications, took a walk, took the subway downtown to proof some postcards, picked up a prescription, went to the post office, made phone calls, answered emails, bought food, did computer stuff... and all the while restless thoughts chattered in my head like a flock of twittering birds. I finally made it to my studio and picked up my brushes; the twittering birds slowly dispersed, my thoughts quieted and I found myself immersed in a palette of grays. Remarkable how paint can settle the mind and open the heart. I don't know how that happens but I couldn't live without it.

The Artist Project in Toronto

2012-02-08T17:43:00.001-05:00

I will be participating in The Artist Project 2012 from March 1st to March 4th for those of you in the Toronto area I would love to see you there! Booth #203 If you are interested in complimentary tickets let me know as I receive a few free ones every year and would be happy to let them go on a first come, first serve basis.
From the Forest is a recently published book of some of the paintings that will be on exhibit:

From the Forest by Holly Friesen | Make Your Own Book

Painting up a Storm

2012-01-30T08:30:00.000-05:00


Storm / 48" x 48" / acrylic on canvas

These are my favorite months to be in the studio. The holiday festivities are over and there are few interruptions to the flow of my work at this time. One painting seems to lead to another and I love to work on different series at the same time. I am so often surprised by where the paint leads me. For example, I was completely absorbed in some highly textured, hot colored paintings when all of a sudden this piece appeared. I always chuckle to myself when this happens, its as if I am being reminded that it is not really me in charge but the paintings will decide when and what is to appear on the canvas. At least I have learned to trust that process and follow where I am led. I truly am painting up a storm these days! This was so fun to play with the muted palette and let the tree forms emerge and recede as I applied the layers of paint that veiled them more or less.

Spirals

2012-01-25T09:25:00.003-05:00

In many of my paintings I collage in a handmade Japanese paper called "Washi" One of these papers is made with the repeated motif of a spiral. I am often asked about these spirals that appear throughout my paintings. The spiral holds a dynamic, swirling energy for me that expresses the ever-moving, ever-flowing nature of our lives entwined with that of the natural world and all sentient beings.

The spiral is the universal symbol of the life force, bothcosmic and microcosmic. Spiral forms are seen in nature from the great galaxiesof outer space, to the whirlwind and whirlpools, to coiled serpents or conicalseashells, to the tips of the fingers—our finger prints. Modern science hasdiscovered the double helix structure of our DNA, the very basis of every cellof our body.

The spiral is also an archetype for the spiritual journey, representing spiritual growth.

Unexpected Joy / 30" x 24" / acrylic / 2010

Roaring RIver ~ Final Version ~ a painting for and of the earth

2012-01-24T11:15:00.001-05:00

Roaring River / 72" x 54" / acrylic on canvas
I think this one is finally finished! I have been dancing in this river for almost a month now! I started without my usual
reference photos or sketches and just from the inside of my belly! I let the paint splash and fall how it wanted to as I
thought about and felt all the pain of the earth as it sighs and heaves under it's heavy human load. I am so in love
with this planet and it breaks my heart a thousand times to see what we have become as we stand apart from the
earth and think ourselves to be greater than the whole. This painting is for the earth and of the earth. I can think of nothing else to do but paint my way through these turbulent times of change.

Color is a language with soft whispers or passionate vibrations.

Some details of the canvas that are difficult to see in a jpeg. Lots of tar gel, sometimes applied with tenderness and love and sometimes applied in a violent release of anger.

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River Roar

2012-01-14T23:25:00.000-05:00

Roaring River / 54" x 72" / acrylic on canvas

Forest and River

"I wish I were like you,"

Said the forest

to the roaring river,

"Always travelling,

always sightseeing;

Rushing towards the pure domain

of the sea,

The kingdom of water;

Water,

The passionate, vigorous spirit

of life,

The liquid turquoise of light

With eternal flow ..."

"But what am I?

Only a captive,

chained to the earth.

In silence I grow old,

In silence I wither and die,

And before long

nothing will remain of me

But a handful of ashes."

"O forest, half-asleep, half-awake",

Cried the river,

"I wish I were you,

Enjoying a seclusion

of living emerald,

And illuminated by moonlit nights;

Being a mirror

reflecting the beauties

of Spring;

A shaded rendezvous for lovers."

"Your destiny, a new life

every year;

My life, running away from myself

all the time;

Running. running, running

in bewilderment;

And what is my gain

Of all this meaningless journey?

Ah ... never having a moment of calm

and rest!"

"No one can ever know

what the other feels;

Who does care to ask

about a passer-by

If he really existed

or was only a shadow?"

Now a passer-by

Aimlessly walking in the shade

Comes to ask himself,

"Who am I? a river? a forest?

Or both?

River and forest?

River and forest!"

~Jalal al-Din Rumi

Forest Incantation 2

2012-01-12T09:25:00.000-05:00

Forest Incantation 2 / 28" x 22" / acrylic on canvas

Painting from Inside the Landscape on the Behance Network

2012-01-02T09:57:00.000-05:00

Painting from Inside the Landscape on the Behance Network

Every moment of light and dark is a miracle. ~ Walt Whitman

2011-12-26T11:57:00.002-05:00

Jina Wallwork: The Art of Holly Friesen

2011-12-04T11:27:00.001-05:00

Jina Wallwork: The Art of Holly Friesen: 'Blood of the River God' by Holly Friesen This painting beautifully depicts how water reflects colors. The scene is being captured from two...

Lumen Naturae

2011-12-03T09:08:00.002-05:00

Knowing that it knows,
The light of wisdom is clear and void and timeless and has no objects
Not knowing that it does not know,
The light of nature is dark and void and timeless and has no subject.
Both reach for us; from above and from below: through the clarity of the sentience of our minds and also through the dark processes of our body.
The mind of an angel and the mind of a stone.
Lumen Sapientiae & Lumen Naturae

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Violent Beauty

2011-11-27T11:50:00.001-05:00


Violent Beauty / 24" x 40" / acrylic & mixed media on canvas / 2011

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?

and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,

and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.

~Rainer Maria-Rilke

Blood of the River God

2011-11-24T18:05:00.001-05:00

Blood of the River God / 36" x 48" / acrylic on panel board

Lumen Naturae

2011-11-24T14:43:00.000-05:00

Lumen Naturae / 48" x 36" / acrylic on panel board

"Never the Same River Twice" by Holly Friesen | RedBubble

2011-11-10T10:31:00.000-05:00

"Never the Same River Twice" by Holly Friesen | RedBubble:

Ever-Evolving Earth and a Meditation on Texture by Annie DIllard

2011-10-28T09:06:00.001-04:00

Landscape consists in the multiple, overlapping intricacies and forms that exist in a given space at a moment in time. Landscape is the texture of intricacy, and texture is my present subject. Intricacies of detail and varieties of form build up into textures. A bird's feather is an intricacy; the bird is a form; the bird in space in relation to air, forest, continent, and so on, is a thread in a texture. Wherever there is life, there is twist and mess: the frizz of an arctic lichen the tangle of a brush along a bank, the dogleg of a dog's leg, the way a line has got to curve, split, or knob. The planet is characterized by its very jaggedness, its random heaps of mountains, its frayed fringes of shore.

What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek. ~ Annie Dillard Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Ever-Evolving Earth 72" x 54" acrylic

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The Shock of Touch

2011-10-25T09:57:00.001-04:00

Movement, change, light growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials and weather, the earth as my source. I want to get under the surface. When I work with a leaf, rock, stick, it is not just that material itself, it is an opening into the processes of life within and around it. When I leave it, these processes continue. ~Andy Goldsworthy

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The Tree with the Lights Inside

2011-10-24T09:34:00.001-04:00

When her doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw "the tree with the lights in it." It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell bursting with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly on fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I'm still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells unflamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. I have since only very rarely seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment when the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam. ~Annie Dillard "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"

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The Painter Eva Hesse

2011-10-18T12:17:00.001-04:00

The hell with them all. Paint yourself out, through and through, it will come by you alone. You must come to terms with your own work not with any other being.

-Eva Hesse

Forest Paintings

2011-10-14T17:02:00.004-04:00

Several of the forest paintings done recently and presently hanging in Montreal Exhibition "Painting from Inside the Landscape"

Natura Imaginalis 24" x 30"

Breathing 48" x 60"

Invest in Gold 24" x 30"

Primal Source 24" x 30"

Telluric Rhythms 36" x 48"

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Montreal's Atwater Market

2011-10-09T22:51:00.002-04:00

A short walk from my studio, the Atwater Market is a constant source of ever changing colors, scents and beauty to nourish all the senses. My absolute favorite season however is autumn, the golden change of light falling over all the rich earthy colors. The market is humming with the bounty of the harvest, crisp apples of every possible variety, the last of the luscious field tomatoes, multi-patterned squash, and just before the Canadian Thanksgivng a dazzling array of "mums" that seem to be the earth itself expressing her love for life. I walk through these jewels of and from the earth and feel a deep, satisfying gratitude for all that is.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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New Portfolio Book of recent paintings

2011-09-08T11:59:00.000-04:00

Painting from Inside the Landscape by paintings by Holly Friesen | Make Your Own Book

Love Song

2011-09-06T16:08:00.000-04:00

Love Song / 60" x 48" / acrylic & gold leaf on panel board

Red Lines

2011-08-22T00:35:00.000-04:00


Red Lines 60" x 48" acrylic on panel board

Blackwater Pond

2011-07-31T20:45:00.001-04:00

At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?

~Mary Oliver

Rocks and Forest Pool 24" x 30" acrylic on canvas

Tree Love

2011-07-27T09:31:00.002-04:00

From this small 12" x 6" study of carving and paint emerges this larger 60" x 48" version.

Trying very hard to stay with the image and not "think" too many thoughts about this piece.

Letting the image come through and speak for me, totally enamoured with this dual tree image.

Entwined yet separate, coexisting and interdependent, like humans and the earth.

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Just published: The Wilderness Within Exhibition

2011-07-25T12:19:00.000-04:00

The Wilderness Within by Paintings & Exhibition by Holly Friesen | Make Your Own Book

Listening to the Trees

2011-07-21T10:13:00.003-04:00

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A Collaboration with my friend, Detlef Cordes across the ocean in Germany...

2011-07-18T20:14:00.001-04:00

Painting in Progress

2011-06-29T10:38:00.001-04:00


48" x 60" acrylic on panel board

Learning to live comfortably with the unknown. As soon as I slip into a tried and true method or a way of painting that I am comfortable with I also feel boredom. Boredom becomes a barometer of my level of commitment to pushing the boundaries of what I know. It is so easy to just ride on what I have already learned in painting/life (the two are interchangeable) and not push forward to new places, so much more comfortable but alas the painting won't allow this for long. There are times in the studio when I sincerely wish painting wasn't such a damn struggle. I know how hard my whole being is working to silence my ever chattering mind and allow what already exists to emerge unhindered onto the canvas. I need to be present for this, I cannot be lost in thoughts about how am I ever going to survive doing this? How is my daughter doing in school? What am I going to cook for dinner? Will anyone actually like this painting? I must just show up and paint. As soon as I enter the studio, the scent of paint stills these thoughts but I still pace around in circles and fiddle with brushes and tools for a time before I am focused and present enough to approach the canvas with the first tentative strokes of the day, at first there is confusion, struggle, wanting it to look a certain way...and THEN, the magic happens and we start to sing together! I stop resisting, trying to lead, being in control and I follow the paint. Sometimes I am led down scary paths, often imagery from my dreams crops up, I try and just hold onto these images and not think about them. I don't always like what emerges but soon liking or not liking falls away as well and there is just the paint, the colors, the textures, the forms and we dance with each other. As in life, surrender and trust are an implicit part of this process.

Hangin' out with the Trees

2011-06-26T13:44:00.001-04:00

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The Sensual Language of Trees

2011-06-26T10:43:00.002-04:00

These days

whatever you have to say, leave
the roots on, let them
dangle

And the dirt

just to make clear
where they come from.

~Charles Olson

"When I lived amongst the roots. they pleased me more than flowers did..."
~Pablo Neruda

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Over Flow

2011-06-06T00:01:00.002-04:00

Source: None via Holly on Pinterest

Over Flow 70" x 60" diptych acrylic

“The experience of beauty is an experience of nostalgia or pathos. It is a longing for the literally unattainable… There is a great bottomless well of grief in our existence as human beings, and the garden of the soul is watered by the over flowings of these wellsprings in the soul’s experience of beauty.”
~Archetypal Imagination ~Noel Cobb
an excerpt from Judith Reeve's blog: Attentive Equations

Dancing Trees of St-Henri

2011-05-27T19:30:00.002-04:00

SOLD

This series of small trees was inspired by two things: A week-end of dancing the Five Rhythms Workshop which seemed to wash away the internal cobwebs and clear my perceptions so that I could see clearly again without the foggy blinders of beliefs and assumptions clouding my vision. I stepped back into the world refreshed and aware of the teeming life streaming around me in small and large gestures of movement. The second inspiration came when I walked through the park on the way to the studio to feel the century old maples dancing their forms back into life as spring surged through their magnificent textured bodies of bark and history. I could feel the trees celebrating the return of green and growth in swirls of energy throughout the park. Hence this series of 12" x 6" multi media paintings sprang forth from the interaction of my own body's energy and the tree's anchored yet flowing movement from deep within the earth. Many of these small tree works are still available if any one is interested in having a small swirl of energy for themselves. They are small but potent pieces vibrating with earthiness and sensuality.

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Natura Imaginalis

2011-05-21T10:10:00.001-04:00

This painting has taken me on an inward journey of the imagination. I have played with the colors, texture, paint, forms endlessly changing and flowing into different solutions. I finally started to carve into the wood to create the lines on the tree trunks which added the final element that I was searching for. Allowing imagination to flow through the forest leaves and blow against the ancient rocks is a magnificent journey of heart and soul. Painting can be like a series of gateways that one explores and feels from within, always pushing up against the unknown, digging from the unconscious and allowing that which surfaces to become color, light, texture and form. Often what emerges is confusing, unclear, sometimes frightening. A huge amount of trust and energy is needed to continue and not quit or give up on the piece. I feel shifts happen within that are beyond verbal expression but a deep satisfied sigh is released when the painting looks back at me and declares that it is finished. My imagination has carried me to where I need to be in this moment and I will let it wander afresh through the hills and forests seeking new adventures.

Open Studio

2011-05-19T09:00:00.003-04:00

For the next three days our studio will be open to the public. Both Walt and I have been working away for the last couple of weeks. Our process is completely different so it is fascinating to work in the same space and bounce off of one another's ever fluctuating energies. Walt's huge graphite drawings are filled with a high energy charge that seems to fill the space when he is working. I have just returned from a Gabrielle Roth Five Rhythms Dance which unleashed all sorts of movement and colour from within. I have been dancing with the larger pieces and painted a whole series of "Dancing Trees" inspired by the century old maples and poplars in the St Henri neighbourhood that I live in. I love open studios as people enter into our workspace that is alive with imagination and creative energies, not all resolved but dancing through the air. The process is where all the work and play are for a painter so it is wonderful to be able to share that with friends and visitors...off to the studio!

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MONTREAL ~ OPEN STUDIO ~ WALT PASCOE & HOLLY FRIESEN

2011-05-07T11:58:00.003-04:00

Sweet Tides 64" x 48" graphite on panel

Ouroboros 40" x 30" graphite on panel

Walt Pascoe and Holly Friesen Open Studio:

Complexe Lachine Canal,

4710 rue Saint-Ambroise, Montreal, Studio 349

May 19th to May 21st ~12h to 17h

We would love to have you drop by for a visit to our gorgeous NEW studio and see what we have been up to all winter. If you can't make it and are interested in visiting the studio another time, please

don't hesitate to contact us for an appointment.

514 484-6583 home

819 429-3797 cell

Rocks Listening to the Roar of Autumn 48" x 36"


Forest Qualia diptych 72" x 48"

Ever-Evolving Earth

2011-04-24T00:18:00.004-04:00

Boundaries of Perception

2011-04-23T10:57:00.002-04:00

Where does the outer world touch the inner world? Where do dreams touch imagination? How is our world defined by our perceptions? Where does heaven touch hell? The more I paint, the less I know, the more questions that surface, the more the layers break down, the more ambiguity and mystery is revealed.

A year before Rilke's death, he explained his idea of the interpenetration between life and death in the Eligies:

"It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately that its essence can rise again, "invisibly," inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible. The Eligies show us this work, the work of the continual conversion of the beloved visible and tangible world into the invisible vibrations and agitation of our own nature..."

~excerpt from The Demon and The Angel by Edward Hirsch

"But because truly being here is so much; because everything

here

apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange

way

keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.

Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too,

just once. And never again. But to have been

this once, completely, even if only once:

to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing"

Rainer Maria Rilke

"The Ninth Elegy", lines 11-17

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Coming into Existence

2011-04-08T11:07:00.002-04:00

Often another smaller painting or two pops up as I paint the larger piece, this one is lying on the floor beside me as I splash and reverberate from the horizontal surface to the larger vertical surface on the easel. Informative and necessary for me to interplay between the two as I work, a dialogue is created between the works in progress and myself, a triangle of energy sets itself up in the studio. I am in uncharted terrain at the moment, treading water and just keeping afloat as I try new ways of being within and without. Colors and edges speak in different tones and sounds as they bump up against each other, revealing new ways of singing and dancing together.

painting in progress / 24" x 30" / acrylic & mixed media

painting in progress / 54" x 72" / acrylic and mixed media

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Slashing and Burning and Hearing the Crying Within

2011-04-06T21:29:00.003-04:00

Painting in Progress / acryic & mixed media / 54" x 72"

Yesterday I avoided returning to the studio for a million reasons, I didn't WANT to paint, I didn't want to face the painting. I knew what was coming was going to be uncomfortable and visceral and I chose to avoid it for as long as possible. In the end I had to return another painting to the studio and caught a quick glimpse of what was on the easel, I barely took my coat off before picking up the brushes and slashing and pounding the painting. I had so much anger and pain welling up inside...people hurting other people, thoughtless insults, careless abuse of the earth, humanity against humanity, why? I try and stay focused, be proactive and engaged, live with the unresolved but there are times when the indifference and mean spiritedness of humanity just crushes my spirit. I feel inadequate and frustrated so all there is left to do is paint! And paint i did! With a ferocity and intensity that frightened even myself as I smashed the board with paint (fortunately it is panel board and not canvas). Today, I returned with less reluctance to the studio and the energy, although subdued to begin with, started to roar again as I started to paint. On returning home today an excerpt from artist, Judith Reeve's excellent blog, 'Attentive Equations' caught my eye, "Recognizing the Duende in One's Own Work":

"One needs to put oneself on a threshold of risk where the immediate engagement with the image unfolds in unknown and unexpected ways. It is difficult to put oneself on this level because there is a prevailing uneasiness, a feeling of inadequacy. One feels out of one’s element and all appears at risk, that this image will take more ability and inventiveness than one is capable of. Lorca states,”duende loves the edge, the wound, and draws close to places where forms fuse in a yearning beyond visible expression.” But only in this position can one truly wrestle with one’s own “daimon” and be open to a revelatory correspondence that is not premeditated and therefore reveals itself in the “living” moment."

This is a frightening place to paint from but also intensely physical and as such, serves as a release for some powerful emotions that are surging through at the moment, a storm of energy seeking an outlet. The journey continues.

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A Mind that Thinks Shapes

2011-04-01T18:23:00.001-04:00

"Space is an open hand, a mind that thinks shapes, not ideas, shapes that breathe, walk, speak, transform and silently evaporate." Octavio Paz

I took these words to the studio today and let them float around inside the room with me. I am full of ideas, another idea is always blooming up from somewhere, one idea leads to another idea. I sometimes have so many ideas that I become paralyzed by the ideas and can't even pick up a paintbrush cause I am lost in my head of ideas. I think of the painter Agnes Martin who says she's careful not to have ideas because they are inaccurate. I was also thinking about the painter Jake Berthot talking about "intuitive geometry" and the "method" of investigating a painting: At a certain point the painting takes over. It is for this reason that I am posting these very first marks as I blunder my way into a painting with my "clever ideas" and suddenly the painting takes charge and I am noticing and feeling "the volume of the space and light". I am very enamoured with this particular place in the woods, it is deep and mossy and dripping with mystery. The place expresses it's incredibly complex and intricate web of life through a riot of colors and textures that wind around each other into a seemingly chaotic embrace. I work from photos, I make sketches, I lay down the bare bones and then the memories begin to fill in the smells, sounds, quality of light, density of air and so on. I am back inside the moss becoming squishy and moist within a symphony of greens. Ideas evaporate and light, air, shapes and texture replace the thoughts. I move to these shapes as I move to music and release their sounds onto the canvas...it is an incredible experience! One I will never cease to be completely in awe of, as I become a servant to the painting.

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Rilke Poem, Music and Painting

2011-03-31T18:28:00.000-04:00

A video collaboration between Detlef Cordes in Germany and myself, here in Canada. Detlef is a talented musician, poet, writer, philosopher and thinker. I love the way Detlef combined the music, words, birdsong and urban sounds to create a distinctive pattern of sounds allowing the images of a painting in process to unfold, much as a tree unfurls it's new leaves every spring to the passing seasons.

My life is not this steep hour,
Where you see me hurry.
I am a tree in front of my background.
I am just one of my many mouths,
and the one that closes most early.
I am the silence between two tones,
which do not ease into each other lightly:
as the sound "death" likes to rise.

But in the dark interval they reconcile,
quivering
And the song stays beautiful.

~Rilke translated by Detlef Cordes

The Artist Project Toronto

2011-03-31T16:45:00.001-04:00

It has been a busy, busy month...first The Artist Project in Toronto and then another trip to NYC to see the Artist Project in action over there! I have learned a lot and met many helpful, insightful people, had an incredible amount of stimulation and fun but now I long for the solitude of my studio once again. I am overflowing with ideas, so many that I don't know where to begin, I am immobilized by too many ideas. I need to walk in the woods and quiet my

chattering "idea" mind and let the paint flow and take me to where I need to be right now. Difficult to switch gears from "doing" to "being" but I am working on it. The new spring sunlight always infuses me with a hopeful, optimistic energy that allows me to just close my eyes and follow the warmth.

My booth at the Artist Project Toronto

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Lover's Limbs

2011-02-16T23:30:00.001-05:00

Lover's Limbs (for Walt) 36" x 48" acrylic on panel board

Amidst a tangle of chaos images breed, arise and become the roots of love.

"The instinctive need to transform experience into image is a mysterious phenomenon. Discussion of it must take place in the realm of

philosophy or poetry for it serves no objective function. Forces are manifest in poems and paintings that do not pass through the circuits

of knowledge. These forces, vital and inexplicable, pass through the circuits of the soul. They are responsible for the joyful sense of

recognition, interior resonance and blissful confirmation that attends the sight of certain paintings." ~ Roxana Robinson

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Two new small paintings

2011-02-16T10:12:00.001-05:00

The Edge of the Island / 16" x 20" / acrylic on panel board

Silver Moon Night Road / 16" x 20" / acrylic on panel board

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Alchemical Nature

2011-02-03T09:40:00.001-05:00

Alchemical Nature / 72" x 54" / acrylic on canvas

Amy with the rocks and river.

This painting is dedicated to my eldest daughter, Amy. These particular rocks are found along la Rivière du Diable in Mont-Tremblant National Park. I have canoed, hiked and painted this river for many years. These rocks have become the landscape of my soul. It has taken me a lifetime to understand their wordless language of textures, colors and forms. Being a part of the oldest mountain range in the world, these patient beings have profound and ancient ways of knowing and seeing that I sometimes catch glimpses of when in their silent presence. Several years ago, Amy and I canoed this particular stretch of river and I have done a whole series of paintings from that memorable paddle: River Solitude, Cloud Spill, River Revelations are a few. This particular painting began with a photo that Amy took of these beauties and inspired a whole new vision. When paddling this meandering, lazy section of the river on a hot summer day, you are lulled into a blissful tranquility as the shoreline drifts by, suddenly you turn another corner and there they are! This magnificence takes you by surprise as you come around a bend in the river, just as life often does.

"I would like to live my life as a river, constantly surprised by my own unfolding" ~ John O'Donahue

The river and the rocks have been teaching me for years to listen patiently within. An alchemical reaction takes place as imagination is united with nature and soon we are no longer sure where our own wildness ends and the wilderness begins.

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River Reverence ~ Completed Painting

2011-01-27T22:47:00.002-05:00

River Reverence / Acrylic with collage on panel board / 16" x 20"

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River Reverence

2011-01-24T20:03:00.001-05:00

Today I returned to my Montreal studio after spending a week wandering along La Rivière du Diable in Mont-Tremblant, Quebec. I have painted this lively river for over twenty years and feel a strong kinship. Having moved away from her presence to live in the city I didn't realize how much I carry this river's presence and soul deep inside me. When I returned to spend a week exploring her wintery shores I felt a reverence for the river that verged on mystical. I could feel her silvery song filling up the neglected places within my own soul that cried out to her. I felt fed and nourished just being close to the river's presence. A new vitality seemed to seep into my bones as I listened to her frozen stillness reverberate through the forest and snow which surrounds her. When I entered the studio today, I started to play with some sketches but I had forgotten the many reference photos of the river at home and had decided to start a painting of something else entirely. Only once the brush touched the board, everything changed. I was not painting, the river was. I just let the memories of her sounds, textures, colors and forms flow through me and this delightful painting appeared all by itself. The river painted a self portrait while I stood by and watched in fascination. I am not so sure who is painting whom anymore.

River Reverence 16" x 20" acrylic and collage on panel board

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Late Afternoon River Reveries

2011-01-21T09:28:00.001-05:00

A gift of winter days filled with the rare & precious light of January, daylight is short in it's reign during mid January and so seems more golden. I am drawn to the light outside like a moth to a flame, irresistible.

Today I carried a sad heart with me into the forest and walked with my head down, lost in thought, when I finally looked up from the path this is the first sight that greeted my eyes. It was such a breathtakingly loving image that I stopped in my tracks and physically felt my heart soften and melt into the warmth with grace and gratitude.

The light continued to hold me and led me, steadily to the river's edge.

Where the rhythm of the river's sounds slowly soothed my breath.

Snow, ice and water; all various forms of the river, vibrate at different intensities.

An old friend stands by her side, listening closely.

Punctuated with the most ancient of calligraphy.

A small discovery creates a joyful ripple through time.

A longing for the light to return even before it's gone.

To live near the river always, to follow it's flow of seasons. I want to paint the river's portrait.

Tree language, a story of branches and limbs.

The sound of feathers falling on blue water is the source of language.

The way the light caresses a curve resonates in my own body as a vibration of Love. Peace holds my soul for a moment.

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Textural poems heard along the river today

2011-01-16T19:41:00.001-05:00

Holly Friesen

hollyfriesen@gmail.com

www.theroaringinside.blogspot.com

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Surprised by the Morning

2011-01-14T09:42:00.001-05:00

Surprised by the Morning / 36" x 48" / acrylic on panel board

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Sketch & Study for Tides of Eternity

2011-01-11T20:06:00.002-05:00

My dreams have been flowing in a steady stream of powerful images every night, perhaps because I am reading "Alchemical Psychology" by James Hillman and stirring up the unconscious realm? Whatever the reason, I am carrying these images with me throughout the day and especially as I paint. I just start to mix the colors or dip the brushes and I am flooded with the previous nights dream images. If I just ignore them and don't try to grasp or understand them with my head but let them speak through the colors, movement and shapes they become even stronger and emerge from a more visceral level. A few nights ago I dreamt of a man eating from a gleaming oversized, silver dish. The dish was writhing with luminous lines all tangled and twisted into one another. I realized that he was eating a living snake. The next night I dreamt of this same image, a mandala of writhing lines, all moving and flowing into each other but this time there was a woman behind glass and she was singing the sounds of this mandala. I went behind the glass, opened the back door and saw only her empty bed but woke myself by screaming, "Mama!" Lots of juice in these dreams but what keeps returning in my waking time is the movement of those lines which my body responds to deeply. This is a sketch and a painting that I began last summer but that was practically screaming for me to finish it by painting the movement that I could feel swirling down my arm into the brush. I don't pretend to understand any of this, because I don't, but my body does and that is where I paint from.

Tides of Eternity / acrylic / 18" x 24"

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First painting of 2011

2011-01-05T18:34:00.001-05:00

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Painting 2010

2011-01-01T19:19:00.003-05:00

A full year of intense painting and exhibiting. Last winter, up north in Mont-Tremblant I managed & operated a gallery of artists, reopened the "Art Barn" for the fourth summer season, had a solo show in Montreal "The Wilderness Within" and presented my paintings as part of an environmental conference at the University of Mount Royal in Calgary. I make my living from my art but sales are very low in the current economic climate and it has been a difficult year financially. Oddly enough, the painting is thriving in unexpected ways. I am constantly tempted to paint "what people may want to buy at any given moment" but whenever I do I fall into a depression that kills all inspiration so it appears that I must keep painting "the earth paintings" as they seem to want to be painted more than anything else!

Of course the present painting on the easel is always my "preferred" painting (whether it is driving me crazy or soaring me to heights of ecstasy!).However, these are the paintings that stood our for me this year as the pieces that spoke most clearly and showed me what I needed to know in the language of form, shape and colour. I am back in my studio today, this first day of 2011 and feeling grateful for a new studio, new love, new energy and a burning desire to paint all the pulsating life that sings, cries and dances it's way into existence through the brushes but only if I manage to stop the incessant "mind chatter". Mine is a visceral approach and the less I think and the more I dance the better the work is! My head constantly interrupts with new ideas and concepts and egocentric suggestions but as long as I turn up the music and dance all the babble stops and the paint flows in ways I never could have "thought" of.

Green Man, Earth Angel / acrylic on panel 48" x 60"

Singing Rocks, Howling Wolves / acrylic on canvas 54" x 72"

Rocks Attending River / acrylic on panel 18" x 22"

Rocks Listening to Moonlight / acrylic on panel 18" x 22"

The Edge / acrylic on panel 16" x 22"

Poems from the Stones / acrylic on panel 16" x 22"

Wild Earth / Diptych 72" x 48" acrylic on canvas

Weaving Roots of Time / Triptych 48" x 72"

Forest Qualia / acrylic on canvas Diptych 72" x 48"

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Dark River Voice

2010-12-26T17:04:00.001-05:00

As I walk I begin to leave behind the visual noise of town. A welcome insulation of stillness falls around me. I breathe in the cool air and breathe out the hot fire of pressing thoughts.

I notice how the light falls and illuminates certain patterns, my eyes begin to open to what is there before me. I start to notice all the life within the pulsating silence.

Patterns begin to emerge.

A surprise bridge brings a direct encounter with the thick, slow movement of a partially frozen river in all her delicious darkness.

She unfolds herself leisurely, sensuously winding along the frozen shoreline.

I am taken with her dark beauty and pause to watch & listen as her shimmering reflections speak in all their nuances of grey.

An unexpected light thrills me with warmth, illuminating the river's wintery & somber demeanor.

She radiates a glowing smile from her sleepy winter journey.

I watch attentively as she reveals more of herself in undulating curves of such beauty that I feel myself falling...

in love again. Her beauty has no limits, as she begins to speak through her curves, her shapes, her sounds, her colors..

I can feel only love, expressed in curves so sweet I want to cry out in wonder.

Shapes shift.

Water moves.

Perception is altered. I am restored. I will return to my studio and attempt to translate into paint this river's rich and resonant voice of winter.

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Singing Rocks & Howling Wolves

2010-12-09T11:02:00.001-05:00

Five years ago while painting in the woods, I had an encounter with a wolf. That creature's golden eyes pierced through my heart and opened up a much neglected wild place within. My life tore open in ways I could never have imagined prior to meeting with his feral gaze. I started to paint ferociously. My "safe" lovely watercolor landscapes could no longer contain the wild energy that I felt building within. I began to paint larger, then I changed mediums, first oil and now acrylics. I left behind any people, places or habits that could not support this new passionate energy surging up through my body and spilling out onto the canvas in a frighteningly violent manner. Several months into this explosion I was diagnosed with breast cancer and in between daily radiation treatments I would paint, paint, paint. I walked through the woods and started to experience the earth's body as my own. I recognized a deep connection that I had always understood intellectually but now I was feeling it inside my own body. This is now the place I paint from, that deep wilderness within. A wilderness that sings, and screams and howls with terror and beauty. Yesterday was one of those days in the studio where the earth's voice just came flooding through my body and bursting onto the canvas in all her textures, shapes and forms. I am in love with paint and all it teaches me about this bond with the earth, and that wolf keeps howling deep within.

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Holly Friesen on The Arts Map

2010-12-08T13:03:00.000-05:00

Holly Friesen on The Arts Map

A haunting meditation written by Henry Corbin in 1932 at the edge of Lake Siljan in Sweden

2010-11-20T14:44:00.001-05:00

Everything is but revelation; there can only be re-velation. But revelation comes from the Spirit, and there is no knowledge of the Spirit.

It will soon be dusk, but for now the clouds are still clear, the pines are not yet darkened for the lake brightens them into transparency. And everything is green with a green that would be richer than if pulling all the organ stops in recital. It must be heart seated, very close to the Earth, arms crossed, eyes closed, pretending to sleep.

For it is not necessary to strut about like a conqueror and want to give a name to things, to everything; it is they who will tell you who they are, if you listen, yielding like a lover; for suddenly for you, in the untroubled peace of this forest of the North, the Earth has come to Thou, visible as an Angel that would perhaps be a woman, and in this apparition, this greatly green and thronging solitude, yes, the Angel too is robed in green, the green of dusk, of silence and of truth. Then there is in you all the sweetness that is present in the surrender to an embrace that triumphs over you.

Earth, Angel, Woman, all of this is one thing that I adore and that is present in the forest. Dusk on the lake; my Annunciation...

The Mystery of Holy Communion where you will be ushered in, when all the beings will be present, yes, you can only say it in the future. Because at each moment where you read in truth as not what is there before you, where you hear the Angel, and the Earth and Woman, then you receive Everything, Everything in your absolute poverty. But as soon as you have read and have received, as soon as you consider, as you want to understand, as you want to possess, to give a name and restrain, to explain and recover, ah! there is only a cipher, and your judgement is pronounced...

...you are the poor one, you are man; and he is God and you cannot know God, or the Angel, or the Earth, or Woman. You must be encountered, taken, known, that they may speak, otherwise you are alone...

~from Tom Cheetham's Green Man, Earth Angel

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The Studio Yesterday

2010-10-28T09:57:00.001-04:00

Inside the Forest 28" x 22"

Inside the Forest 2 22" x 28"

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What we most need to do is hear within us the sounds of the earth crying. ~Thich Nhat Hahn

2010-10-26T10:37:00.001-04:00

Crying Rocks 40" x 60"

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2 new paintings from "Poems from the Stones" series

2010-10-23T19:00:00.001-04:00

Rocks Attending the River 16" x 20"

Rocks Listening to Moonlight 16" x 20"

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"Under Western Skies" Environmental conference in Calgary, Alberta

2010-10-15T11:33:00.001-04:00

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Two of my paintings being exhibited at the environmental conference being held in Calgary, "Under Western SKies" http://www.skies.mtroyal.ca/ I have learned much from so many brilliant minds and hearts gathered together from around the world to share in how we can best protect the future plight of our ONE shared planet. Another beautiful example of our inextricably woven consciousness within and without.

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The Wilderness Within ~ Opening Night of Montreal Painting Exhibition

2010-10-03T00:45:00.001-04:00

The exhibition looked great opening night...it is a satisfying feeling to have so many completed paintings given the space they need to breathe in a big beautiful room full of light, music and friends. The gallery was energized and flowing with the earth's magnetic energy from within and without. My dear friend and spoken word artist, Moe Clark, performed a beautiful sound meditation allowing each viewer to take a journey into the painting through sound, a remarkable way to connect with and enter into the work. I would like to continue working with this form of collaboration between the visual and sound, allowing for a deeper experience of each.

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The Roaring Colors of Autumn

2010-09-28T21:45:00.002-04:00

Rocks Listening to the Roar of Autumn 48" x 36"

Becoming Red 48" x 36"

Autumn, excessive in her exuberant expressions of color! Color that screams in ecstatic bursts all around me. I am dangerous on the road, constantly swerving in every direction as wanton displays of crimson surprise me around every corner. Exquisitely sensuous, autumn tumbles into robust colors that smell of earth and eros, nature drops her green mantle of modesty and reveals all her hidden passions in one last visual explosion before the silence of winter descends. I can almost hear the colors roaring like fire around me as I walk through the flaming maple forests of the Laurentian mountains. This is the season that fills me with a passionate lust for life and fills me with a burning desire to paint, paint, paint!

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Four Small Poems from the Stones

2010-09-23T09:48:00.001-04:00

Poems from the Stones #2

Poems from the Stones # 3

Poems from the stones #4

Poems from the Stones #1

A series of smaller pieces (20" x 16") Visual poems that emerge from the rocks when I manage to be still enough to listen

to these ancient pulsating beings of patient wisdom.

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Today's paintings from the Barn

2010-08-28T18:54:00.001-04:00

Unexpected Joy 2

DSC02500

DSC02502

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A Tale of Expansive Energy at the Art Barn

2010-08-05T21:24:00.001-04:00

Walt Pascoe (@waltpascoe) came up north to Mont-Tremblant to visit our Art Barn and left his beautiful energy behind as a gift in the forest behind the barn. He quietly created this cool "earth spiral" out in the woods.

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He began with the twigs in the centre and slowly spiraled outward with mounds of pine needles...he continued with larger twigs and sticks arranged around the spiral as rays of energy shooting outwards!

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A few weeks and several storms have started to fill in the path but you can still see the outline, I love the morning shadows of the pine trees falling horizontally over the spiral! Difficult to photograph but this is taken from above.
The photos do not begin to communicate the effect that this has on the whole forest! It is profoundly energizing and peaceful at the same time. I have eaten my lunch there, cried with my daughter and laughed with friends. I have sat with great stillness beside it and felt Walt's energy emanating from it, just as from the painting of his that lives in my Montreal apt. Now the expansion begins. This structure of Walt's led to one of the sculptor's at the barn, Luis Paniagua, cutting several dead pines and creating this piece the next day:

Then Bruno Dufour, another sculptor from the barn was inspired to create his own piece, "Earth to Earth" beside the Earth Spiral. Bruno dug and sculpted earth all day. The photos definitely don't capture the mystic silence
that surrounds this beautiful negative/positive rendition of a figure in the fetal position. The trees seems to become even more alive as these artworks are created within their sacred presence.

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Finally today, I added my small contribution to all the delicious energy swirling throughout the forest. A hand-drawn tree on linen, an addition to the poetry walk that winds it's way through the forest with images and words:

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Holly Friesen, la lumière du silence - Activités culturelles - Culture - Laurentides Express - Point de vue Mont-Tremblant

2010-07-21T14:09:00.000-04:00

Holly Friesen, la lumière du silence - Activités culturelles - Culture - Laurentides Express - Point de vue Mont-Tremblant

Art Barn Poetry Walk Book

2010-07-18T22:28:00.003-04:00

Behind the Art Barn where I work and exhibit for the summer have been various "Poetry Walks" that I have collaborated on with different poets over the years. This year's version of the walk is a combination of poets whose work deeply inspires me as I feel an increasingly profound love and respect for the earth, which intensifies with each painting that releases itself from within. Below are several photos of the walk which really don't don't compare with the experience of walking it. The swaying pines click and whisper above, the wind caresses you, and the scent of pine needles washes over you to awaken your senses in a flood of memories, reminding us of who we are to each other and all living beings. The images included in the book are mostly of one painting, "Weaving Roots of Time" as it progressed in my studio from day to day and week to week. The layers and stories beneath the painting and the woven roots of all of us, so interconnected at times it is difficult to tell where one begins and another ends. The poets are Susan Griffin, who expresses with words what I feel with paint. I end the walk with a poem by Barbara Deming, "Spirit of Love" a poem that I made copies to hand out at one of my first exhibitions over 25 years ago. And finally a joyful poem of recognition by Joy Harjo.

The Poetry Walk has been made into a book which anyone can preview and/or order a copy by clicking on the link below:

Art Barn Poetr...

By Paintings by: Holl...

Book Preview

"Wild Earth" paintings

2010-07-13T14:37:00.001-04:00

Wild Earth

I am so excited about this new body of work that is emerging from my own body and encompassing the earth's body. These paintings seem to be using me to paint themselves into existence. The flow is on and the work just keeps coming, such a joy to have the earth reveal her stories to me through color, texture and shape.

Below is the next sketch that I have begun translating into paint.

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Connecting across Time and Space

2010-07-11T08:26:00.001-04:00

I love all the artistic connections that are made on twitter and thought I would acknowledge a couple that have blossomed for me!

@carlicastellani wrote a inspiring piece featuring my work in the cool Artzine for writers, artists and musicians entitled "Status Hat"
http://bit.ly/9TLq08 for which I am most grateful. Definitely a zine worth checking out!
@semaphore wrote an insightful and moving poem inspired by one of my paintings entitled: "River Solitude" which I have posted
on my blog: http://theroaringinside.blogspot.com/2009/07/river-solitude.html

Just like the giant net of Indra, spreading it's webbing and each connection resulting in multifaceted jewels that we all contribute to,
a positively scintillating experience!

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Artzine ~ Status Hat ~

2010-07-10T09:02:00.003-04:00

Cool artzine publishes a feature on my paintings in their July issue themed "Water"

Solstice Paint

2010-06-22T11:29:00.001-04:00

Yesterday while I was painting all the mundane trivialities of daily life that have been threatening to swamp me, all started to fall away, like drops of water drying in the sun. The power and force of what starts to well up inside me as I paint always amazes me! Energy enters through my feet and surges through my body, exploding onto the canvas. My brain stops chattering and it feels as though my whole body is entering and breathing into the painting...I take a "little trip" and return at the end completely nourished and energized and clear about who I am and what I was meant to do in this lifetime! I LOVE painting the EARTH! When I am engaged in these earth paintings there is nothing I would rather be doing, I am completely and fully present in the moment.

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Wild Earth

2010-06-18T21:08:00.001-04:00

The paintings of the "wild earth" continue to emerge, more slowly at the moment,

but she is painfully present as her wound continues to bleed beneath the ocean.

A beautiful passage by Susan Griffin was sent to me by the @septembermay (Jesse Mendes)

which moved me profoundly:

"As I go into her, she pierces my heart. As I penetrate further, she unveils me. When I have reached her centre, I am weeping openly. I have known her all my life, yet she reveals stories to me, and these stories are revelations and I am transformed. Each time I go to her I am born, like this. Her renewal washes over me endlessly, her wounds caress me; I become aware of all that has come between us, of the noise between us, the blindness, of something sleeping between us. Now my body reaches out to her. They speak effortlessly, and I learn that at no instant does she fail me in her presence. She is as delicate as I am: I know her sentience; I feel her pain and my own pain comes into me, and my own pain grows large and I grasp this pain with my hands, and I open my mouth to this pain, I taste, I know, and I know why she goes on, under great weight, with this great thirst, in drought, in starvation, with intelligence in every act does she survive disaster. This earth is my sister; I love her daily grace, her silent daring, and how loved I am how we admire this strength in each other, all that we have lost, all that we have suffered, all that we know: we are stunned by this beauty, and I do not forget: what she is to me, what I am to her."

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A forest is erupting in my studio

2010-05-14T11:05:00.001-04:00

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Another painting emerging from the roots and rocks

2010-05-11T22:05:00.001-04:00

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Weaving Roots of Time / Completed Painting & New One Started

2010-04-29T22:05:00.002-04:00

"Weaving Roots of Time" is completed. I will let it "simmer" for a while in the studio but it feels resolved and complete. I feel like I live in those roots and rocks, my body is so incredibly connected to this particular piece. A new painting has emerged directlyfrom it. Side by side in the studio, I begin again, time unfolding moment to moment, integrating the future into the present moment and folding time into the past, creating eternity.

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Deep, Ancient Strength of Rocks and Roots

2010-04-26T19:57:00.002-04:00

Today's progress: Weaving the earth and the roots, feels like braiding hair somehow. My heartbeat is the earth's heartbeat. I can feel the earth is my body and I am hers. I am so humbled and awed by the deep, ancient strength of these roots and rocks.

Have been thinking about the post by @Thomasart on The Nature of Order: http://amplerain.posterous.com/christopher-alexander-the-nature-of-order The secret lies in knowing, as nature does, what must happen in what order: what sequence of events allows a living form to unfold successfully. How slowly and beautifully nature unfolds herself as she integrates previous life forms into her constant, deliberate transformation while forever strengthening the whole.

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Going ever deeper beneath the roots and the rocks

2010-04-25T20:26:00.002-04:00

So the painting that began so effortlessly and with much joy turned into a great struggle on Thursday...what happened? I don't know but suddenly everything becomes

difficult and unruly, I feel like I can't even hold the brushes properly, I curse, I flail, I am drowning in my own angst! In a fit of despair I marched home and went to

bed, overcome by a sudden exhaustion, in the middle of the afternoon!! I awake and am feeling completely listless, don't want to paint, don't want to do much of

anything. My energy is low, lower than it's been in a while. I decide to stay away from the studio for a few days, spend time outside w/ the earth. Listen to what she might have to say. She replenishes and restores. I dream I am climbing back up a very slippery, muddy slope that I had descended for the sole reason of climbing back up. I think this is rather pointless in the dream but because there is a woman ahead of me who seems to be my guide, I have no choice but to follow her instructions and she is telling me to stick my hands deep into the mud and search out the roots as they will help me to pull myself back up. I do this but it is hard work, messy and difficult to find the roots, often they break off in my hand and I slide backwards. I have no idea what this is about but the dream kept resurfacing as an echo of my painting process today. At the same time a delightful little sketch for a second piece just spit itself out and awaits me in the studio tomorrow. Perhaps w/ a new piece to work on beside this difficult one, a new rhythm will be established.

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Deepening and Darkening

2010-04-20T23:20:00.001-04:00

Lately there is a huge explosion of energy from within and without for me, life is full to overbrimming, everything seems so ALIVE! I am intensely aware of this as it translates into my work. I feel I am no longer observing the natural world around me but rather, in a reversal of roles or perception, the natural world seems to be observing me. Beautiful article posted by @lindahollier last night on twitter, called Subject-Object Reversal: http://integrallife.com/member/balder/blog/subject-object-reversal-tsk-practice-notes Linda commented on the blog post by saying, “I have a definite sense of being held intimately 'within' a sentient field -- like I'm re-entering an animistic worldspace, surrounded by many different intelligences or knowing presences.”

I know that feeling well as it is filling my whole body with it's presence and knowing. This body experience is what I am so desperately trying to recreate on the canvas.

My head continually intervenes w/ thoughts and concepts but I am able to relax into a more intuitive space through listening and moving to music.

I consider every moment of the day to be part of the painting process. Walking and breathing w/ the trees in the park, inhaling the fragrance of the earth, noticing the trembling of the tender new baby green all stirs me deeply. On the way to the studio yesterday, seduced by the spring light and warmth, I sat in the park reading for a good while before going inside to paint. Reading "Ecological Intelligence" by Ian McCallum and want to share some of what I was reading and found so beautiful and integral to this particular painting:

"Our humanity is not defined by human fellowship alone but includes a subtle yet essential dependency on animals and landscape as well. The web or the field of life is inclusive not only of our immediate surroundings, our geology, and our biology, but of deep space and time also...be continually mindful of the patterns of connections between all things, vigilant to one's participation in a field of life. It is what Rumi meant when he said: "If you are not with us faithfully, then you are causing terrible damage, but if you are, then you are helping people you don't know and have never seen." The poet is asking us to hold the patterns of connection, to hold the chemistry, To pray unceasingly is to think molecular. It is to see the small things, including oneself, in the bigger picture. It means being able to look at a green leaf differently, to see the science and the poetry in it, to be aware that you and the leaf are linked. It is an invitation to experience the transformation process of carbon dioxide and water to provide not only the energy necessary for the growth and survival of the plant, but producing the life-giving molecules of oxygen that we breath in. It is to have a sense of privilege at being privy to the powerful yet delicate connection and the interdependence between chlorophyll molecules that produce oxygen and hold one's breath and then to give it back again in the realization that the chlorophyll and hemoglobin molecules are almost identical. What makes them different is the presence of a single trace element in each molecule-magnesium in the former, giving plants their green coloring, and iron in the latter, the reason why blood is red.

This is EXACTLY what I was painting! And I knew today was the day to darken and deepen the painting, beginning to add the greens of the forest breath atop the

blood red pulse of Life, all of life, ours, the animals, the plants, the earth herself. The process continues...

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Weaving Roots with Fire

2010-04-16T23:34:00.001-04:00

DSC01719

DSC01723

Today's underpainting is all about cadmium red, my favorite paint pigment lately! The fire, blood and heartbeat pulsing underneath it all.

Exhilarating to paint it in but it also feels risky as the painting moves into an entirely new direction with the addition of hot cadmium red!

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Today's Underpainting from Yesterday's Sketch ~ Weaving Roots of Time

2010-04-15T17:16:00.001-04:00

Today's underpainting from yesterday's 6" x 8" sketch. Three panels, each 24" x 48". This piece is just painting itself. I have been thinking a lot about synchronicity and how time and space seem to melt and disappear when I am painting. There is a relaxing of cerebral processing and a surge of energy that seems to come through my body. I can honestly feel these roots winding and weaving within my own muscle tissues. I am holding the brush in my hand and making the marks but it is not by "thinking" about them, it seems more intuitive, almost like I am "breathing" them into existence. Whatever it is, I LOVE doing it and feel so energized and ecstatic after an afternoon like today! It feels as though I have just gone on a journey w/ the rocks and roots and they have filled me w/ marvelous tales of "elsewhere". Part of a Neruda's poem kept rising to consciousness today,

"When I lived amongst the roots

they pleased me more than flowers did,
and when I spoke to a stone
it rang like a bell."

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The Rain-Maker Story

2010-04-14T11:07:00.001-04:00

The Rain-Maker story (told by Richard Wilhelm in a lecture at the Psychological Club of Zurich in the 1920’s)

Wilhelm told Jung that while he was living in Qingdao, China, there was a long dry spell in the region. The land in the countryside was utterly parched, and the crops were failing. As a consequence, many people were facing the prospect of starvation. Desperate, they tried to produce rainfall by performing all the religious rites they knew: the “Catholics made processions, the Protestants made prayers, and the Chinese burned joss-sticks and shot off guns to frighten away the demons of the drought, but with no result. Finally the Chinese said, ‘We will fetch the rain-maker.’” So they sent a message to another part of the country asking for the assistance of a well known rain-maker. Eventually a “dried up old man appeared. The only thing he asked for was a quiet little house somewhere, and there he locked himself in for three days. On the fourth day the clouds gathered and there was a great snow-storm at the time of the year when no snow was expected, an unusual amount, and the town was so full of rumours about the wonderful rain-maker that Wilhelm went to ask the man how he did it.” When asked, the old man replied: “I come from another country where things are in order. Here they are out of order, they are not as they should be in the ordinance of heaven. Therefore the whole country is not in Tao, and I also am not in the natural order of things because I am in a disordered country. So I had to wait three days until I was back in Tao and then naturally the rain came” (Visions, 1, p. 333). It was quite simple. He put himself in order, and this put the surrounding natural world in order. In turn, this brought into play what the community needed in order to survive, i.e., precipitation. Jung uses this story to illustrate the phenomenon of synchronicity.

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Tumbling Into Ecstasy

2010-04-01T21:50:00.001-04:00

60" x 48" oil (work in progress)

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3 Small Stories in Stone

2010-03-31T18:35:00.001-04:00

These are three small paintings (12" x 24") that I completed last week. I find that working small is much

more of a cerebral process than the gut inspired dance I usually do w/ my larger works. These three

pieces became a story from the stones and rocks that I love and admire so deeply. They each taught

me something new about painting from the inside/out of the rocks and though they were painted w/

much focus and direct intent they still whisper secrets from within the nonverbal realm.

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Sky Road

2010-03-24T20:45:00.001-04:00

The newest painting in the road series. Feel like I'm taking a "road trip" with my paints when I work on this series.

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Perched on Eagle's Nest

2010-03-13T18:56:00.001-05:00

Snowshoed up this mountain side to listen.

WInd whispered spring secrets,

earth released her sweet scent and

woodpeckers drummed in rhythm with the beauty

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Sky Falling into Water

2010-03-03T20:53:00.001-05:00

Two new pieces that I have been working on since September. These two paintings have gone through many

variations, transmutations, alterations, dissolutions & integrations...now, finally, they feel fully absorbed. So

much takes place on an instinctual, nonverbal level when I paint...at one point, the brushes were interfering

with the process so I dropped them and started to paint with my hands, it felt like I had become the rocks,

water and sky...sometimes painting is like a portal into a more integrated world, an imaginary world, but somehow

more real in it's visceral body revelations.

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Today's Moon Sketches

2010-02-19T18:34:00.001-05:00

The moon knows that if you deny the dark you make a mockery of the light. ~Marilyn Krysil

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Dancing in the Flames

2010-01-29T21:59:00.003-05:00

The progression in the studio over the last two days. Small watercolor sketch translated onto larger canvas and now I am dancing with fire

in the studio! I love this dance with paint, everything else goes away and there is just the dance of colors and swirls and movement! I am

right inside the painting and letting it spin me and spit me out when it's done! Today I l was listening to Coleman Barks reading/singing from

the Persian Ecstatic poets as I worked, these poems enter on a nonverbal level and dance their way into "a place where language is inside seeing."

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Three Muses

2010-01-28T09:50:00.001-05:00

These are three small studies (9" x 12") done on panel board. Washi paper collage w/ acrylic paint & graphite...a fun process that feels more like building and sculpting than painting at times. I have donated the 3 Muses to tomorrow's Montreal exhibition entitled: "Un Don, Une Oeuvre pour Haiti" Montreal artists have joined w/ the Haitian community to create an evening of art and music to raise funds for relief efforts in Haiti.

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Help Haiti Blog Challenge

2010-01-16T10:13:00.011-05:00

Feeling overwhelmed by the suffering in Haiti, I was inspired by Kelly Diels "Help Haiti Blog Challenge" and realized the best way to give of myself was to donate the full proceeds of a painting to the Red Cross. "Rushing River" is an acrylic painting 30" x 24" value: $950 Please start offers at $200 You can contact me at hollyfriesen@gmail.com

If you feel you would like to contribute to this collective blog effort in coming to the aid of Haiti please check out Kelly's blog for more info.

Road Running Through Forest and Hills

2010-01-11T13:43:00.001-05:00

I have become obsessed with this road. I travel it back and forth every week, in and out of two different lives, two different worlds.

It brings me home and takes me away again. I head south, I head north; like a swinging pendulum finding it's equilibrium. Forest/road,

country/city, return/leave, north/south, in/out; are these not just poles of the same thing? In between are infinite shades of gray that slowly return me

to one side or the other. By moving between black and white so often, slowly the whole becomes an ambiguous gray that envelopes and

absorbs the harsher, sharp definitions of opposites. Merging with the landscape and becoming both the road and the forest, I find

somewhere to rest. As within, so without.

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RIver Running Road

2010-01-09T22:05:00.001-05:00

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Imaginary World

2010-01-02T23:19:00.001-05:00

Sometimes the roaring inside flares into chattering,

Chattering wild birds gather into a flock of

forest fire reds, oranges and flames of yellow.

Bird's scorched feathers, hot beating breasts

spit sparks of mental heat

into a curtain of

steady

falling

snow.

Breath inhales silence.

Breath exhales burnt ghosts.

A portal is suspended in the

dripping stillness of the air.

Wild mind clears as

dark river gods

penetrate the orchestra

of birds and fire and trees.

With a singular finger a

dark opening is carved

into the earth

and we surrender our

bodies fully to an

inner landscape.

Time folds open

to expose our

own beautiful sadness.

Spirals of deep blue rivers

swirl in intricate patterns

as earth spins on

her axis and

welcomes

us home.

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Today in the Studio

2009-12-15T20:32:00.001-05:00

Outpouring of emotions, few words, works in progress...

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The Road Home (now less travelled)

2009-12-10T21:51:00.001-05:00

Here is the completed 36" x 48" painting of the 8" x 10" graphite and acrylic sketch done previously http://hollyfriesen.posterous.com/the-road-home-11

I enjoy doing the small version first as I can plan things and then let loose in the larger version with more confidence and zest!

Today I read (on @KellyDiels blog) these words.. "leavings have led to profound findings" http://ow.ly/JSs7

Sometimes letting go of old forms is so frightening and painful that we cling fast to them which leaves little space for the new forms to emerge and grow.

I have managed to let go and a vast expansive space has opened up before me, far greater than I ever even imagined was possible.

This "road home" serves as a metaphor for leave taking, expanding and a rediscovery of the home that lives within.

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Sounds of Release

2009-12-01T00:34:00.001-05:00

Painting by @holly59 / Poetry by @lilyofoz

you cannot give
what you never had
your soul caves in
your mind scrambles
for a shovel

release the sounds
send them on their merry way
back to the sorrow filled houses
where music lay still
as a graveside after the weeping

send them back to the carnivals
the smoky bars
the houses of shouting
the wanting
the wanting
the gaping mouths of need

beads of sweat
on my forehead
roll down my nose
drip onto my chest
i absorb them back
into my body

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Wild, Psychedelic, Studio Trip!

2009-11-17T20:24:00.005-05:00

Today was like a psychedelic trip into color! My brushes started to move in a new way, partly influenced by @katost and her use of dancing lines, and partly by an impressive exhibition I recently saw by landscape painter, David Alexander . The colors and brushes just started to sing on their own, it felt like learning a new form of calligraphy but one that I already knew how to read and write intuitively. As long as I didn't stop to analyze or think but just kept moving and dancing, this flow of "writing colors" kept flowing! It was all I could do to contain myself and relax into this new freedom of mark making that I was experiencing. It was like trying to remember a dream, the more one relaxes and doesn't "think" about it, the more the dream is revealed. It felt so simple and familiar yet it is something I could never have done consciously or even have attempted before today. The painting process never ceases to amaze me!