Dark River Voice

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

 

 

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

Holly Friesen on The Arts Map

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

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

 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

 

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

Crying Rocks 40" x 60"

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2 new paintings from "Poems from the Stones" series

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

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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

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

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

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

Unexpected Joy 2

 

DSC02500

 

DSC02502

 

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A Tale of Expansive Energy at the Art Barn

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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