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HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO FINISH A PICURE?

1/26/2022

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by ROSIE PHIPPS
Picture
In conversation with Rosie PhippsQU “How long does it take to finish a picture?”
​

ROSIE “Well, it depends. There are two ways of looking at it. Contemplation and action. Contemplation belongs to the inner man. Action is an extension of this inwardness. One needs to wait until one is possessed. It is like religion.A painting is not a painting until one is possessed. A religion which lacks possession is not a religion.”

QU “Are you saying that a religion is not a religion unless it has a technique of possession attached to it?”

ROSIE “Yes. A religion is like painting. It is something to be  experienced. This is why it is so uncomfortable to exhibit them. One is turning a private space into a public arena.”
John realised that what Frances painted showed both her pain and her pleasure. Was she, and were the pictures, crying out to be looked at and appreciated by others, or was the act of creation enough in itself?

QU “I listened to John Cage's  4. 33” at a concert last week. 4.3 minutes of silence. The pianist sat motionless at the piano.Her fingers outstretched and tense ready to play.The cellist raised his right eyebrow indicating to her that she should start. She sat there and did nothing. The cellist, reflecting her silence, sat  motionless again with his arms poised as if to strike the first note.”

ROSIE “ I know the piece. He is allowing us to  experience the silence as a composer, not just a listener.The room was filled with people some of whom were drawn into the silence. It felt like a cathedral. We were held in that state of being that perfect attention creates. ”

QU “Yes. He is allowing the audience to experience the power of silence. The possession, and the action that follows from the possession of silence, and from which compositions are made and played.”

ROSIE “ What Cage did was to take that private space into a public space. What the audience then did with it was up to them.”

QU “ Yes. The silence is there for us all.It comes and goes with one's awareness. One has to listen for it. It can come spontaneously when one is alone, or holding someone one loves, or just by walking in the woods. The point is to be able to recognise it.”

ROSIE “There are times in one’s life when one's inner state matches that of the world and there appears to be no way out.There is no starting all over again with a new beginning. One just has to start where one finds oneself, within that silence, and pick up the pieces and start all over again. With art there is always an empty canvas.”​

QU “What are you working on now?

ROSIE “The sensuality of the land. The sheer eroticism of it. It is like flesh. I want to stroke it.I want to grab and mould it.”
 

Recent landscapes by Rosie     250 x 105mm

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HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO FINISH A PICURE?

1/17/2022

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by ROSIE PHIPPS
Picture

In conversation with Rosie Phipps

QU “How long does it take to finish a picture?”
​

ROSIE “Well, it depends. There are two ways of looking at it. Contemplation and action. Contemplation belongs to the inner man. Action is an extension of this inwardness. One needs to wait until one is possessed. It is like religion.A painting is not a painting until one is possessed. A religion which lacks possession is not a religion.”

QU “Are you saying that a religion is not a religion unless it has a technique of possession attached to it?”

ROSIE “Yes. A religion is like painting. It is something to be  experienced. This is why it is so uncomfortable to exhibit them. One is turning a private space into a public arena.”
John realised that what Frances painted showed both her pain and her pleasure. Was she, and were the pictures, crying out to be looked at and appreciated by others, or was the act of creation enough in itself?

QU “I listened to John Cage's  4. 33” at a concert last week. 4.3 minutes of silence. The pianist sat motionless at the piano.Her fingers outstretched and tense ready to play.The cellist raised his right eyebrow indicating to her that she should start. She sat there and did nothing. The cellist, reflecting her silence, sat  motionless again with his arms poised as if to strike the first note.”

ROSIE “ I know the piece. He is allowing us to  experience the silence as a composer, not just a listener.The room was filled with people some of whom were drawn into the silence. It felt like a cathedral. We were held in that state of being that perfect attention creates. ”

QU “Yes. He is allowing the audience to experience the power of silence. The possession, and the action that follows from the possession of silence, and from which compositions are made and played.”

ROSIE “ What Cage did was to take that private space into a public space. What the audience then did with it was up to them.”

QU “ Yes. The silence is there for us all.It comes and goes with one's awareness. One has to listen for it. It can come spontaneously when one is alone, or holding someone one loves, or just by walking in the woods. The point is to be able to recognise it.”

ROSIE “There are times in one’s life when one's inner state matches that of the world and there appears to be no way out.There is no starting all over again with a new beginning. One just has to start where one finds oneself, within that silence, and pick up the pieces and start all over again. With art there is always an empty canvas.”​

QU “What are you working on now?

ROSIE “The sensuality of the land. The sheer eroticism of it. It is like flesh. I want to stroke it.I want to grab and mould it.”
 

Recent landscapes by Rosie     250 x 105mm

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HOW TO FIND YOUR INNER DEMONS

12/23/2021

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by KAMAL LATHAR
​I have been writing children’s fiction for a while now, but then one dark and stormy night, it occurred to me that I had other things to say which did not come under fiction. These other things I have to say came under a completely different category than the fantasy-thriller for young adults. I would hazard a guess that it is probably more personal than any story. It is some of the insights, learnings and understanding that I have acquired in my life-journey and which makes me - me.
I have recently published
How to Find Your Inner Demons, Destroy Them and Set Yourself Free
Picture
​As it is Christmas and coming up to New Year, when typically most people think it is a time to make new resolutions, to create a possible new game plan for themselves, make changes to their life, make changes to their bodies, make changes to their mental perspective. Typically we do these things to improve our life, typically we wish to nudge it closer to the life that we think we should be living, and mostly aspirationally speaking, closer to our inner dreams for ourselves.
 
So onto the self-help book available in kindle now, and in paperback in the new year.
 
I have always been interested in the mad world of adults where rational decisions often seemed to be made irrationally, or at least so it seemed to me as a child. This curiosity turned into more than an interest when I not only noticed that most adults behaved this way, but I did too.
 
It was a desire to escape from my pre-ordained destiny that set me on the path to search for something that works in helping me avoid it. On a personal level, I don’t wish to lie on a psychologist’s couch and have the ‘techniques’ applied to me when if ‘one can be truly honest with oneself’, you will find the gifts within that truth and honesty all by yourself.
 
This I can do. Anyway that works for me.
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BEING CREATIVE

12/2/2021

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by ROSIE PHIPPS

Ones personal truth is always mute – when it is truly expressed it is communicated in silence – and if one really has to speak what results is the translation of that silence into pictures, music, dance and other creative acts – personal, social and institutional.

Every dream is a plan that lends itself to enactment in the outside world, behind every enactment in the outside world there is a dream – or a picture, a note, a movement a thought, an idea – or perhaps something that is only waiting to be discovered. 
​
Keats said – that which is creative must create itself. Creativity arises from itself, you can’t learn it, explain it, teach it – it comes upon one and creates stillness and a presence where the images and colours take on a life of their own. One becomes obsessed by it and it is creates an urgency and demands that have to be satisfied, one cannot avoid it, it has to be done.
Before we talk about this aspect let us first enlarge on a few of the things it is not.
  • We like to think that every child is filled with creative potential that is extinguished by parental control, so that as adults we go around feeling that there is a book inside if only we could get it out. Self expression of personal ideas and emotions do not necessarily go hand in hand with creativity, which goes beyond the personal. The test lies in how relevant it is to the collective mind.
  • The second mistake is to think that creativity is linked only to art, music and drama – this ignores the rest of creativity which manifests in business and technology. Creativity releases itself in many fields of activity. People say to me, “why do you have a marketing college when you can paint?" The answer is very simple: creating an organisation is a creative act, each relationship can also be a creative act.
  • Confusion lies also in equating creativity with production, creating objects that can be judged.Creativity is an end in itself. Just being in "it"  is enough. Rather like meditation the presence is enough, for me. With painting I get the added benefit of the image and the colours forming themselves out of the silence. I would imagine musicians experience the same process as do dancers and actors and so on.
  • Creativity needs also not be confused with the word good – all creativity is not good- one only has to think of the atom bomb. The confusion of goodness comes from thinking that everything that God creates is good – therefore if we create, then we are mimicking an act of God, therefore it must be good. Creativity can also be destructive. It can also have a dual face. With painting one needs to harness both sides, creativity and destruction.
  • Creativity must have a personal "I " that does the creating. However, the "I” has to be set aside, or at least not be in the way. At an art group we were encouraged to walk round with our pictures and say after the experience -“I did that. This is what I did.” But this owning comes after the event, part of the communication process that has nothing to do with the creativity itself. It is part of the selling process which is narrow and oppressive and focuses on the product. Creativity happens unobserved and without judgment. If creativity relied on judgment it would have to rely on the personal ego- the observer who is judging – this process would be destructive. Here the observer and the observation is one. There is unity and no duality. Duality comes after the act; it is not part of the process.The original vision is where one needs to start from.
  • Different artworks also help impregnate other works of creativity – for example I listen to music and that helps set off a hot spark, I dance – one image whether it be music, sculpture or art will set off another spark. Creativity then builds upon itself and continues to pressure one to move to the next work. ​​
Picture
Birth of the Sunchild - painted around 1976
Picture
Mother and Child Bella - painted around 1998
Picture
A Celebration of Life - painted 2020
​Getting in touch with the imagination and the little people (internal objects) that inhabit it is rather like dreaming, the images are able to do as they please, one has to trust the voices, the images, and the sounds and allow them to come from themselves and not control what you want them to say. It is like a dream, one is always a player in a group, sometimes an observer and at other times taking command. Other people in the group are also of value. So what comes first in a painting may not be the final image, as one has to allow other images to speak for themselves. This may involve destroying what has initially been created to allow creativity to reform itself and to recreate itself. In painting a picture this process can go on, over and over again, so that one learns that the act of creation is also one of destruction. The creator and the destroyer work hand in hand. One has to learn to live with that tension.
​
The painting is a mirror that reflects who one is at a moment in time, the images and colours form the archetypal background to one's life and the relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind. The grid so to speak on which one is built, enabling one to battle with questions like chaos and control, black and white, dark and light, creation and destruction, duality and unity – the unification of opposites. These questions flow from out of the paint into being itself, so the work is both meditation on life and a meditation where paint becomes an extension of psyche: one’s battle with one’s soul.
Picture
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QUANTUM BEING - Its creation and use for meditation by Karen L French

6/27/2019

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STEP 1 - First a Brusho water colour background was created, a chaotic cloud of potential, of many vibrant colours in the void. Then I had the urge to create circles in random locations.

3 'major' circles resulted, each a container and also a point, placed a-round a central copper circle. This middle copper circle is the focal Point of the painting.  

Creating accurate circles with clearing defined edges is tricky. Any slight deviation or indent immediately shows. Straight edges are much easier! All the circles were made using 3 layers of lustre, applied with circular strokes, then polished and sealed.
Picture
STEP 2 and 3 - More circles of copper lustre were added, moving freely about the energetic domain. They all lie outside of the space delineated by the Trinity.

Each of the 'major' circles in the Trinity were haloed by a geometric shape - red circle:green square (space), green circle:pink circle (time), rose pink circle:green octagon (Directions). These 'major' circles are bound by force fields (symbolised by the yellow lines) to create a sacred space.


3 is the number of creation, of Mind Body Soul, different states of Being (such as liquid, solid, gas). From the Centre of 3 a created Being emerges.

The central  copper circle, or sphere, has a crystal code within it that is the basis of the structure of the Being emerging out of the quantum field.  

​In Step 3, gold lines and patterns where then added around each of the shapes. Recognising the sacred nature of the creative process through the use of geometry and colours from light.
Picture
Step 2
Picture
Step 3
QUANTUM BEING - So much like the emergence of a form of being out of the Void, constructed out of geometry and light, so too did the geometric grid in the painting Quantum Being emerge out of the canvas.

Using it as a meditative tool for visualisation you can either focus of the centre and move outwards to see what form of being emerges, providing you with some insight for interpretation depending upon what is created. Or, you can choose your own body, or that of another object/animal/person/plant, and move inwards into their central code in the quantum field. At the end of your meditation move back to the point where you started. Reflect on the impressions you had as you move in and/or outwards, and also any insights you gained.

by LiterArties Karen L French
Picture
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BEING CREATIVE

1/2/2019

0 Comments

 

by ROSIE PHIPPS

Ones personal truth is always mute – when it is truly expressed it is communicated in silence – and if one really has to speak what results is the translation of that silence into pictures, music, dance and other creative acts – personal, social and institutional.

Every dream is a plan that lends itself to enactment in the outside world, behind every enactment in the outside world there is a dream – or a picture, a note, a movement a thought, an idea – or perhaps something that is only waiting to be discovered. 
​
Keats said – that which is creative must create itself. Creativity arises from itself, you can’t learn it, explain it, teach it – it comes upon one and creates stillness and a presence where the images and colours take on a life of their own. One becomes obsessed by it and it is creates an urgency and demands that have to be satisfied, one cannot avoid it, it has to be done.
Before we talk about this aspect let us first enlarge on a few of the things it is not.
  • We like to think that every child is filled with creative potential that is extinguished by parental control, so that as adults we go around feeling that there is a book inside if only we could get it out. Self expression of personal ideas and emotions do not necessarily go hand in hand with creativity, which goes beyond the personal. The test lies in how relevant it is to the collective mind.
  • The second mistake is to think that creativity is linked only to art, music and drama – this ignores the rest of creativity which manifests in business and technology. Creativity releases itself in many fields of activity. People say to me, “why do you have a marketing college when you can paint?" The answer is very simple: creating an organisation is a creative act, each relationship can also be a creative act.
  • Confusion lies also in equating creativity with production, creating objects that can be judged.Creativity is an end in itself. Just being in "it"  is enough. Rather like meditation the presence is enough, for me. With painting I get the added benefit of the image and the colours forming themselves out of the silence. I would imagine musicians experience the same process as do dancers and actors and so on.
  • Creativity needs also not be confused with the word good – all creativity is not good- one only has to think of the atom bomb. The confusion of goodness comes from thinking that everything that God creates is good – therefore if we create, then we are mimicking an act of God, therefore it must be good. Creativity can also be destructive. It can also have a dual face. With painting one needs to harness both sides, creativity and destruction.
  • Creativity must have a personal "I " that does the creating. However, the "I” has to be set aside, or at least not be in the way. At an art group we were encouraged to walk round with our pictures and say after the experience -“I did that. This is what I did.” But this owning comes after the event, part of the communication process that has nothing to do with the creativity itself. It is part of the selling process which is narrow and oppressive and focuses on the product. Creativity happens unobserved and without judgment. If creativity relied on judgment it would have to rely on the personal ego- the observer who is judging – this process would be destructive. Here the observer and the observation is one. There is unity and no duality. Duality comes after the act; it is not part of the process.The original vision is where one needs to start from.
  • Different artworks also help impregnate other works of creativity – for example I listen to music and that helps set off a hot spark, I dance – one image whether it be music, sculpture or art will set off another spark. Creativity then builds upon itself and continues to pressure one to move to the next work. ​
Picture
Birth of the Sun Child - Painted around 1976
Picture
Mother & Child Bella - Painted around 1998
Picture
Large Bowl of Flowers - Painted 2020
​Getting in touch with the imagination and the little people (internal objects) that inhabit it is rather like dreaming, the images are able to do as they please, one has to trust the voices, the images, and the sounds and allow them to come from themselves and not control what you want them to say. It is like a dream, one is always a player in a group, sometimes an observer and at other times taking command. Other people in the group are also of value. So what comes first in a painting may not be the final image, as one has to allow other images to speak for themselves. This may involve destroying what has initially been created to allow creativity to reform itself and to recreate itself. In painting a picture this process can go on, over and over again, so that one learns that the act of creation is also one of destruction. The creator and the destroyer work hand in hand. One has to learn to live with that tension.
​
The painting is a mirror that reflects who one is at a moment in time, the images and colours form the archetypal background to one's life and the relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind. The grid so to speak on which one is built, enabling one to battle with questions like chaos and control, black and white, dark and light, creation and destruction, duality and unity – the unification of opposites. These questions flow from out of the paint into being itself, so the work is both meditation on life and a meditation where paint becomes an extension of psyche: one’s battle with one’s soul.
Picture
Small landscape - Painted 2021
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'Capturing our Creativity' - the words, music and art of Maeve Bayton

10/26/2018

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Our vision

LiterArties vision unites us. Each of us is 'Capturing our Creativity' through many modes and mediums. Change is a feature of every moment and as creative people we strive to 'capture' the essence of  a moment, or moments, in our transient lives using our 'creativity' in words, images, music, clay,... any vehicle possible. Not only is this creative process very rewarding, but through it we can share our inner worlds and experiences with others, hopefully to make their life more pleasurable as well. 

Mixing it up

Naturally we can explore our creativity through individual mediums, such a writing a book or taking a photograph, but mixing up mediums to convey our inspiration as an integrated whole is a wonderful challenge.

Maeve Bayton - sound, images and words

Maeve is a multi-creative LiterArties member. A published author, lyricist and musician, her creativity blends writing, music and painting. Here is 'Missing You' (released May 2013), a heartfelt song of loss and sadness, something so many people have experienced. She shares her emotional experience with others through a simple, soothing song.
​"Among those in the know, Maeve Bayton is something of a local hero, or, rather, heroine. She has a long and distinguished musical record in Oxford, fronting the city’s first all-girl band, 'The Mistakes', in the ‘70s, while her second band, 'Jane Goes Shopping', were also a regular fixture. She remains a respected blues artist, has lectured on music at Ruskin and written on the subject of women in rock. That experience comes through in her second solo album – a collection of sweet, whimsical folk moulded in the tradition of Joan Baez or Sandy Denny.

​Featuring only five tracks, each tune has space to breath, particularly on the title track, which weighs in at eight-and-a-half minutes long. And it is genuinely lovely and uncommercial.

Maeve’s heartfelt, pastoral songs, exploring sadness and loss are soothing, pastoral and, at times almost psychedelic in their simplicity and naivety. The title track even comes with a birdsong soundscape recorded at dawn near Maeve’s Otmoor home. The heartmelting lyrics, meanwhile, were written about her husband’s terminal illness.

The standout track is opener 'Missing You' – with Jane Griffiths’s dreamy Celtic fiddle. But really the record works as a whole. The beauty of the music, Maeve’s clear voice and the sparse instrumentation by Griffiths and guitarist Ian Wycherly lend it huge charm. Here is music to soothe most frayed of souls." (The Oxford Times Review, May 2013) 
© Copyright 2001-2013 Newsquest Media Group

Picture

The Oxford Times

A work of pastoral beauty.
Contact
For the full album please contact Maeve.

Picture
The view from Maeve's window
​​Maeve's love for nature, simplicity and colour comes through in her paintings. Her description of the view from her desk illustrates her writing talent and evident inspiration for her paintings and music, especially 'Missing You'.
"​Gazing from my window this morning, I see verdant swathes of  green: many species of trees (viridian, olive, sap), then meadows and fields (pea, salmon pink, yellow ochre) gradually turning into  the misty blues of  hazy far north Oxfordshire.  The few distant village houses and church towers are toytown small. Whilst above, the vast dome of sky fades from cobalt to cerulean to pearly chromatic greys.  In the wetter months this colourscape is further heightened by a reflected silver and blue from the wide flooded fenland of the RSPB Otmoor Nature Reserve.

Closer to hand, I spy three rooks and a green woodpecker, spiking the grass for ants. A horse, a pony and two pheasant, like me, are at breakfast. Above, two whistling kites slowly circle.  At other times I have seen March hares boxing, a row of newly fledged owlets strung along the fence, swallows having their first flying lesson, a fox stalking a rabbit, and deer of course. But today there is sparse activity and also little sound, for it is August and the birds have quietened. Later, dusk will bring bats and a pre-roost gathering of rooks.

Spring is very different. I shall never forget my first May morning here. Living on main roads in cities all my life, yet always yearning for the country, I took the leap in ’97, leaving noisy crowded sociable Iffley Road for pastures new.   I was woken by a cacophony of birdsong. There was a clattering of jackdaws on my roof and a clamour of rooks in the trees. A great spotted woodpecker was hammering a trunk and I counted many  sparrows, a wren, a robin, blackbirds, a thrush and a blackcap amongst others. The church bell tolled the hour, 4 am, and I thought, “This is paradise”. I walked down into the nearby copse and recorded the woodland song. This magical experience fed directly into two of my songs, 'The 2nd of May' and 'Missing You'. A photo of the blackcap adorns both CD case and disc and the title track has my recording of the dawn chorus (with robin) running though its entire length. 

How blessed am I….." (Written for the ​Writers in Oxford newsletter)

Indeed, how blessed are all of us that we are able to create sensory experiences that resonate within us and others through words, images and sounds.

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