Caol Ait!! Painting of the Day

The word Caol Ait (thin places) is a Celtic term that describes space and time.

In certain places like sacred sites or in nature, the veil from this world to the next is thinner.

My paintings are an exploration of Caol Ait or the in between. In the creative process time and space merge and hours can pass with the blink of an eye. Another of my great passions is traveling to sacred sites around the world. In 2008, I went to Ireland (my ancestral homeland) and visited New Grange, Tara and Knowth. True inspiration for my work.

Caol Ait is showing and is looking for a good home in San Rafael at the Terra Firma Gallery.

This amazing painting have perfect companions, the very meaningful,Shona Sculptures and the phenomenal Ethiopian painter, Wosene Kosrof.

Please stop by and say hi to Danielle, the Galleries Director and my work!

As always!!! Thank you Danielle for your continuous support!!

Re visit from 2008 "What are my Goals as an Artist"

This is such a serendipitous question as I graduated on Saturday with my M.F.A. (yes!) and I need to focus on what is the next step and what does that look like.

On my pragmatic page it looks like my need to create a list of goals of what I need to accomplish to “make it” in the art world. I need to put on my business hat and create a website, a marketing strategy, apply to shows and galleries with proper documentation. I have to update my business cards. I have to search for opportunities and it goes on and on. My goals need to be carefully mapped out for me to make it all happen. It is a high-risk business and my product is my art and my grand vision.

My ultimate goal is to be self-sustaining artist creating, selling my work and teaching art. I also want to open a healing arts studio, which I call the Green House Studios. This would be a community space for new paradigm artists and thinkers to build alternative systems in various communities. Ideally it would create an all-inclusive dialogue about art and its ability to empower. This would include art workshops, gallery space, and community outreach art programs. Lauren and I speak about this Blog as the virtual beginnings of such a studio.

For me equally mystifying is my passion for what I am doing.
Pragmatism seems to fly out the window as I create the work that I need to do. I became very comfortable just being a conduit and having creativity flow through me. I have come to believe that I am merely a channel for something greater than me that manifests through my art. As the artist Paul Klee wrote, “the artist does nothing other than gather and pass on what comes to him from the depths. He neither serves nor rules ---- He transmits…. he is merely a channel.”
My personal quest is to reunite art and the spirit. Akin to the alchemist’s work, which is the transformation of gross material into spiritual substance, I see my art as artifacts of my ever-transforming consciousness. My art and its process represent a humble quest to resurrect divination in my personal journey and into the community at large. As an artist my work gives the viewer a personal glimpse of my internal revelations.I speak of divination in its broadest sense, meaning that through my art and process I find myself in a continuum of discovering the unknown within myself and in the world that I live in. The motives and impulses behind my creative process are my shamanistic belief that through the process of creation, I align with dynamism and the divinity that is animated in all life.
Another goal of my work is revelation. I believe the core social issue that I am exploring in my painting, photography, site-specific works, and my teaching is abuse, which plagues society and the planet Earth. My approach to this work is not criticism, but a gentle revelation of what was and what can be. In all my work I explore and reveal the shadow of humanity by facing it, bringing it to surface, and on a personal level, finding a way to transform it.

To surmise, essentially my goal as an artist is the marriage of the paradox between pragmatism and pure creativity. As well as my service to the world at large. On an interpersonal level one could say that my art is my Yoga, the discipline that promotes the unity within myself. Carl Jung called this individuation.
I apologize for this got a little wordy.
Namaste, Lisa
I am interested in hearing what are your goals as an artist? And how do you keep one foot in each world to make Art your life and profession?

Image of the Day: It is time to let go...

Letting Go
Mixed Media
4"x 5"

Transformation: Alchemy Series
Pretty much all my Art is about transformation, but this is from a series that I did art around the science of Alchemy, and my own personal transformation. I was courageously confronting/addressing one of my personal demons through art. It was formalized in an amazing class taught by Mary Webster that I took at JFK in Arts and Consciousness during my M.F.A. program. I grew substantial in my own Art and within myself during that quarter. The art that I created is a marker of my experience.
The piece is a mixed media piece with acrylic paint, dead leaves, and the figure I got in Caba San Lucas Mexico,from a vendor on the street, who was selling the amazing and potent art of Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). She did sadly say that this art form was dying, because of the youth were traveling to the cities and buying into American Culture. I combined each medium to create a composition that honored my internal demon and my ancestors. As I now know "it" has been passed unconsiously down from generation to generation.

For me during that powerful class I think I manifested my stuff that I wanted to heal via art, but I do not think I ever let go of my personal demon and today it is time to let go. After over four years of intensive Jungian Therapy.....

I am transforming my WV- I, you , me, and you again are so brave and courageous to be in this world. We all have brave hearts. Now it is time to take care of our Mama EARTH and THE amazing beings the exist with in. And so it is...

Here is good resource if you wish research and engage in Alchemy. Alchemy
& The Philosopher's Stone or take the class with Mary Webster at JFK in Berkeley it will change your life and you ART!!

Back in the Studio! Happy 2011!

My sword for all my dragons is my creativity!!

"Taking the mirrors handed to unsuspecting purveyors, the artist smashes them with subconsciousness, yet idyllic, imagery. The artist personally guides the viewer into her private life of meditative memories, artistic discipline, and spiritual discovery." JJ Levine-Art review

Back in the studio!!Re working a piece from the last Lunar Eclipse. It is drying as I am told there is partial lunar eclipse tonight :)

The Ocean brings me such Clarity!!

After the strong wind and rains of last night, the morning was clear and beautiful I went on my daily bike ride on the ocean bike path to Venice"zoom." Part of my practice is to walk to the beach to sit and to be present.
Today was extraordinary~ the dolphins were maybe twenty feet from shore. And they were surfing in the waves and jumping in the air. The really cool thing is as I sat down to ground~ I thought to myself were are those dolphins. When opened my eyes ahhhh...hah...
The imagery of the playful ones is still so fresh in my mind. great day... In the evening I had to go out and photograph the magnificence of the Ocean i.e.Mama!!

Review of Paintings!!

Review Caol’Ait
Artist Lisa Rasmussen
11/7/08

Lisa poured out The Thin Places for all to see. And in her hand the bending spree, in wistful, flowing, calming traumic interface, the witness be. Thinness of distinction. Thinness of discrepancy. The space between, the space unseen, the space where the twilight and the knowing sheen, find in each other the harmonic mean.

Spices emanating upward from the nestled mandala-savory-space, lubricating the nostrils with memories chased from deeper places sight unseen. Light and scent (!), we enter the scene, diving in towards the hidden seam. Paintings cast in measured care, with wildness constrained by just the bare mounts in the frames ringing evenly the room, holding in each a lingering tune, of the place where spirit and thisness meet.

A lozenge for the eyes and mind. Symmetries nestled in fun-filled calling mysteries bind. Pneuma. Anasazi. Darknesses, incomplete, faint, whistling memories that you barely taste again. The deeper reaches of the mind, trickling away in kind. Lingering whispers haunting so, bartered through the colors claimed in Ka and Bardo, the journey from each piece to another bringing with it a glancing blow. A living, feeling, beautiful, explosion inward away from the evening glow.

Linearity in Lil, shocking still, organized and regal. Containment stressed on that thinness undressed thoroughly saturating the acrylic finesse of boundary and order on yet another sinking beckoning regress. Moving me back and out and around, to touch and caress, the space, the place, my girl’s soft press. The art, for me, is a seeping, see, from hand and thought outward, and in to me. The expressions from you are a simple plea, for a return, a dance, some part of me.

Art that inspires, art that plants a seed, art that pushes and bleeds.


-Cameron Thrash, 11/25/08

Latest Treasure 4" x 6"

It was my friend Billy Goats birthday celebration last Saturday. I was so happy to give her this little treasure. This what she had to say "Thanks so much for my beautiful painting, it is sitting beside my vase of bamboo and matches perfectly! The back of it is so lovely too! It's my favorite Lisa painting of all time. I really love that it sits so I don't have to hang if on the wall and you can see the gold thread on the back. Ronnie was saying how beautiful it is this morning too."

I am also liking the idea of mini artworks. I will start creating a new series of small treasures

Please Help the Moon Bear

Help the Moon Bears Moon Bear Rescue
In countries across Asia, thousands of bears live a life of torture on bear farms, so that their bile can be extracted and used in traditional medicine to cure ailments ranging from headaches to haemorrhoids. Bears are confined in cages which vary from agonisingly tiny "crush" cages to larger pens, all of which cause terrible physical and mental suffering.

My character Kitty Bliss is going to help the Moon Bears. I recently heard about these poor guys and how they are tortured. Kitty Bliss says "Humans please start evolving as fast as your technology." This is one of my Moon Bear characters. Please bring awareness to everyone you know about this horrid situation for these,beautiful,feeling and amazing beings.

#5 Collecting Random Interactions with the other Series

"happiness is not all, people have a responsibility."
幸福不是一切，人還有責任 translation, A comment left on my Blog from someone in China.




"Can you please take our picture with us and Gwen, the old Dog." two old men having coffee with an old dog in the lake merrit area. It is always such a surprise when folks ask me something on the street.
they thanked me and I had to run....


Time Pics of Pollen Tree Shrine,five days after with my cat Paulo.

So Be It! We all Should Really Love Pollen.

3/26/10
Stream of consciousness...
Today on my walking meditation to the "rock" and the "rose garden" I had an amazing revelation. Over the past couple months, this walk is were I have been gathering my quotes from strangers in my collecting random interactions series. Today was a little different. As I climbed to the top of the rock, the trees that surround this area really grabbed my attention. It seemed like they were whispering to me. It was a transcendent experience.

This is what came into my thoughts-- As I am really focusing on my personal healing of my negative habits, thought patterns, anxiety, fear, and unrealised trauma....

Through my personal journey of self acceptance--of procuring my inner value--
I will be able to maximize my potential as a human being. Through my own self acceptance/inner value I will be able to SERVE the world more and to reach higher realms of consciousness. This will give me the energy and radiance to change this physical realm--to help heal and save Mama Earth and the animals. And to stop Abuse of all kinds. In this I will reach my potential--opening up unlimited reservoirs of abundance and well being. To myself and the universe. This journey will be told through my cat character Kitty Bliss*
Today I know that Self acceptance/ Inner value is the ultimate form of ART!


What a productive day! Also, today as I walked out my door I was so inspired by the light and the abundance of the beautiful green/yellow tree pollen on the ground. Which most people hate because it causes allergies. What is tree pollen? It is the male cell of a plant needed for fertilization of the female cell and production of new trees. This cell is encapsulated by a very tough membrane to help insure that it will reach its target in tact. It is generally 2 to 100 microns in size making it quite a bit smaller than the head of a pin. Produced in staggering amounts a spoonful can include hundreds if not thousands of grains. Pollen is like the paint,which the artist uses to create a new canvas! It is the elemental in the continuation of life on this planet!
I with a sense of fever created this tree shrine in my garden. Crazy I am---reverence to the trees and pollen.

I love it! This the documentation makes me really reflect.It almost feels like the tree shrine was a marker of my experience. Which I think all of my art is.

This is what I learned Today I know that Self acceptance/ Inner value is the ultimate form of ART! I might forget this tomorrow,but today I knew it!

Mayan Tree Shrine

Tulum Mexico is a Pre-Columbian walled city located on the Caribbean coast in Quintana Roo, Mexico.This is such a mystical and amazing place! It is paradise. We stayed at "Cabana Copal" in a quaint grass hut with a sand floor, literally steps away from the ocean. Outside our magical hut on the beach where we had nightly visits by an Iguana, that is were I created my tree Shrine.
Tulum
While creating this tree shrine my creative process seemed kind of fragile from my near arrest in Point Reyes, National Park,CA from creating the same art. From this state of being I choose the safe palm trees outside our hut to revere. For me the experience was kind of flat and filled with fear of being caught. I let the fear of being caught run the gamete. I actually destroyed the shrine quickly and made one from leaves and stones. But in reflection on an internal and metaphysical level I had an amazing experience.



This is a powerful and sacred place and I look forward to going back very soon and creating some amazing reverent art in paradise!

Response to Art is Magic!

I had to post this comment of Vikrams words, he posted this on my Blog on Saturday. His words are so poetic and ring of Rumi. The web of connection. When I read this I was inspired that I am on the right path. I am so happy to connect with a fellow mystic. Namaste

phoenix said...
Hello Lisa

if I can have your ...a few minutes
Not more than I felt shall I'll express
To express self to selves; I carry the only fear
Of failure, of conflict; Of the lack of divinity
In my eyes, in words; in my visible self

Holding on to 'mysticism', I landed on your land
To find the right themes burnt in bright games
Not surprised I am to find a wandering soul
Wrapped in blue, red,pink brushes; living in the green abode

Burning with a desire to wish you a hello
Believing in words to hear, some skins to tear
I beg you to share your light of a Being
Who seems to be on the path I tend to begin

Why I'll write to you,perhaps, is mysteriously unknown
Like when mirage turns for a thirsty to an ocean of love

Only if the social fabric and the unsure strings be broken or redefined, I'd be much more of myself.
I'm a 23 yr old bachelor graduated (engineering) from the premier institute of India. I'm earning now and I am thoughtful. I am a believer, a traveller who believes in a purposeful living. And thus, extraordinarily attracted, in a dress of desperation, to anything which seems to associate itself with Truth. Though the inner waves have not yet manifested to my exterior domain to the extent I would have liked, a certain chain of events are accelerating its burst.

Your blog (description, about me) had enough life to grant me the breath to explode myself here. Thank you :)


Not a way is what I see here
But the 'light of bright passion' painted in colours

Vikram
PS: Animism is a faith which yields a reason to live