Hannah Albert: Inspired

Precious Landscape of the Soul

Landscapes with water, symbols of emotion, are my subject matter of late. We could say the outer landscape is always, in some way, a reflection of the inner landscape.  Energies come to us in the form of relationships and events, giving us clues on our journey. Tidal waves and water immersion in the dreamworld speak to the depth of our involvement with life.

Water is also the source for all life on this planet. Without clean water, we will all perish. There are so many right now (especially in Pakistan) that don't have clean water. Sending a prayer - in whatever way that feels right to you - be it action, thought, donation to a cause, or spoken word - is impactful.

The moment of power is always now.

This watery painting is about shattering the illusions in our lives, connecting to the Divine, and the letting go that is part of this process. How we are with ourselves is the degree to which we are willing to show up in the world.

Water Soul: mixed media on canvas, 28"x 36"   2010, Hannah Albert

Water Soul detail: mixed media on canvas, 28"x 36"   2010, Hannah Albert

Water Soul detail: mixed media on canvas, 28"x 36"   2010, Hannah Albert

What are you doing today to know yourself more deeply? You are needed on this planet, and we need all of you. Be willing to risk shattering your illusions.

dive into the divine; the art of yoga

I just experienced a profound, life-changing workshop with Anusara yoga teacher Desiree Rumbaugh, and I want to share with you: 

your body is telling you something.

 

"aphrodite's dream," oil on stitched canvas, minneapolis 2010, hannah albert

If you're really in tune with your body, it will tell you everything you need to know.

Go look in the mirror. What's the first thing you notice? Are you open and bright - or contracted and closed?  Your thoughts and beliefs are being expressed all the time through your posture and movement.

Your body is an instrument through which the Divine is continuously expressing itself.

What music are you playing? Is it a song you learned 25 years ago - or is it something new and fresh that's creating your present life? Can you play the high notes as well as the low? And do the sounds inspire you in your daily dance...as well as they lull you to sleep?

Your body wants to be FREE!

It wants to feel the root, the safe haven, from which creativity then springs. The creative center blossoms to our seat of identity. These are the foundation for the heart to fly open, the voice to be born, and the awareness of divinity to manifest in vision. Ultimately our connection to the Divine  both grounds us to the earth and opens us to the heavens, where we can play beautiful music and express with freedom all we are meant to be. 

The biggest deal for me this weekend was simple but not easy; I experienced the deepest understanding (in 18 years of yoga practice) of what it means to ground. Yes, we can open our hearts and connect to the divine - a worthy practice - but without continuously grounding to the earth from the body it's easy to fly up and get lost in a million distractions. The result?  We lose the flow, the grace that happens when we are fully connected. We bounce erratically between happiness and sorrow, forgetting there is a middle path on which we are meant to receive Divine inspiration more consistently. 

Here's to the midline! Go experience Anusara just once, and I promise it will bring great gifts to you.

 

"sorceress", oil on stitched canvas, seattle, 2009, hannah albert

Go Deep

(Photo and poem: Denise Benitez)

This world offers itself to you,
A constant revelation,
An opportunity for the practice of
Diving deep.

Whatever you do,
Go deeply into it.
Inhabiting the timeless place,
Where hummingbirds hover,
And animals breathe.

Here are diving directions
For going deep:
First....pause.  Let spaciousness
Become your ocean.

Your boundaries soften,
Your deep hearing, your deep vision,
Become awakened.
You dive into the seemingly
Solid world like a fish into water.

On the mat, we practice this dive,
Penetrating with our ever more refined awareness,
The texture of our hamstrings,
The motion of our hearts,
The infinite mysterious world of the body.

This body is not separate from
The great undulating trees,
The ever pulsing ocean,
The freedom of the sky.

We come together in the Great Temple
Of our bodies to practice,
To let the light into our bones,
To unite with what we all share,
Our great roots of beingness and depth.

top 10 favorite artists to inspire creativity

Here are some sites that will amaze and inspire your creativity.

If you have any sites to share --- please contribute!

Wangechi Mutu

Gregory Colbert's Ashes and Snow 

Christine Chaney

Song Yong Hong 

Morris Graves

Darren Waterston

Ann McCoy

Kitten Chops

hip Tokyo attire

romantic drop-dead gorgeous couture

 
my apologies I don't have the artist's name handy for this one; a card that has inspired several paintings over the years...

spontaneity in painting; a dancing prayer

All last week I focused on exploring new techniques for a series called the Water Paintings. These works are inspired by a vision of sustainable energy development, my personal expression of hope for the planet, and my desire to give money towards oceanic conservation.

What I've discovered is that the less I consciously try to control the outcome of a painting, the more foreign it becomes to me. The more foreign it becomes, the more excited I am that it came "from me." The more excited I get, the more spontaneous I am. The more spontaneous I am...the more authentic the work feels and looks. It's actually becoming more "me" as I get my Zen on. I'm amazed that this lesson applies so perfectly to my whole life.

A couple weeks ago I was sitting in a circle of people praying (non-religiously), visualizing, and singing -- for the healing of the Gulf (and all the water on the planet) and for freedom from the many ways we are suffering in this world. Watching the stars, I began to imagine what life would feel like if everything was a prayer.

What if Mantra Art was a prayer, created in a meditative state; wouldn't that make the art an object to meditate upon as an entry to that state?

I think about the Tibetan monks making mandalas out of sand and their elaborate meditations which focus on entering a 3-dimensional virtual mandala. Or Tibetan tanka paintings depicting various gods and goddesses, meant to inspire the qualities depicted in the meditator. If prayer is a form of visualization, you can change your state by focusing on those qualities in an image you want to develop in yourself. This concept is consistent with other types of visionary art.

It might be a good thing to check in with yourself re what your attention *is* focused on. Everything being relative in relationship to other things, I'm pretty sure the more we focus on positive stuff the more we bring *that* into our lives. Also interesting to think about: why are you attracted to particular art and design styles, and what does it tell you about yourself??

Speaking of changing your mood or state of mind, While I'm painting I often listen to music by Fabian Maman, Rainer Scheurenbrand, Four Tet, and Juana Molina. When I'm stuck in one of the more downtrod human states, I shake it out to Beats Antique, Hobotech, and David Starfire. Dancing, when all else fails, is my favorite way to pray. 

If you have other good ideas re your favorite way to "pray" please share~

American creativity is on the decline?!

The facts are in and they're pretty shocking; measured by large studies, we are becoming more automaton by the year --- since 1990. While intelligence goes up by about 10 points a year, creativity is declining.

"To be creative requires divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result)."

think about it like this:

exploratory + focused;

inwardly directed + socially interactive;

yin + yang

"The Torrance test—a 90-minute series of discrete tasks, administered by a psychologist—has been taken by millions worldwide in 50 languages. (In this study the correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment was more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than childhood IQ."

 

"Dance 1"

I find it interesting that I've been drawn to making art as well as practicing healing work for most of my life. There were certainly many times I went to one or the other end of the spectrum, searching for some kind of balance. I fell off a few times there and wasn't sure how to get back up. There were many periods of uncertainty and doubt.

Over the years of practicing medicine I've always encouraged my patients to do creative work. Ultimately I feel strongly that we ALL need some outlet for personal expression in our lives. I don't care if that is dancing, making art, music, cooking, gardening, writing, or whatever...every single person has the creative genius and it must be cultivated to be fully alive.

What turns your crank, gets the juicy flowing, makes YOU feel alive? What are you working on this week?

Emoto: water of consciousness

Thanks to Jennifer, a friend who sent me this interview. It reminded me of the power in looking at visual images imprinted by intentional language. I'm going to incorporate this idea of language into my paintings.

This is a crystal exposed to the song "Imagine" by John Lennon. Like the words of this song, it is a beautiful and unique crystal where each individual element grows freely and with perfect harmony.

REIKO: Have you come across a particular word or phrase in your research that you have found to be most helpful in cleaning up the natural waters of the world?

DR. EMOTO: Yes. There is a special combination that seems to be perfect for this, which is love plus the combination of thanks and appreciation reflected in the English word gratitude. Just one of these is not enough. Love needs to be based in gratitude, and gratitude needs to be based in love. These two words together create the most important vibration. And it is even more important that we understand the value of these words. For example, we know that water is described as H2O. If we were to look at love and gratitude as a pair, gratitude is the H and love is the O. Water is the basis that not only supports but also allows the existence of life. In my understanding of the concept of yin and yang, in the same way that there is one O and two Hs, we also need one part yang/love to two parts yin/gratitude, in order to come to a place of balance in the equation.

Love is an active word and gratitude is passive. When you think of gratitude -- a combination of appreciation and thankfulness -- there is an apologetic quality. The Japanese word for gratitude is kan-sha, consisting of two Chinese characters: kan, which means feeling, and sha, apology. It's coming from a reverential space, taking a step or two back. I believe that love coming from this space is optimal love, and may even lead to an end to the wars and conflicts in the world. Kan-sha is inherent in the substance H2O -- an essential element for life.

REIKO: So if we were to develop a car that could run on water instead of gasoline, and return the water to the atmosphere and subsequently back into space in this way, would that be one way of fulfilling our task?

DR. EMOTO: I think that would be a wonderful thing, and for the sake of preserving Mother Nature it is the direction that we need to go. However, since water is the mirror reflecting our level of consciousness, a large percentage of the people on the planet, at least 10 percent of the people, need to have the love and the kan-sha awareness. When they do, then the time will come when water can be used to replace gasoline. And the reason I say 10 percent is that this ratio is mirrored in nature. When we look at the world of bacteria, for example, there are 10 percent good bacteria, 10 percent bad, and a majority of 80 percent opportunistic bacteria that could go either way. In looking at the various environmental issues we are faced with, and the tasks that we need to fulfill for the planet, if we could get more than 10 percent of the people consciously aware, than I believe we could pull the 80 percent in that direction, too.

And so I believe that the people who are following a spiritual path are promoting peace for the planet and for other people. If we could only unite on this level of consciousness, then we will be there.

I feel that my book The Message From Water has given birth to a convincing message through a common language for the whole world. Not because I wrote it, but because I know it was birthed through kan-sha toward mankind. I think this is why so many people from other countries want to interview me about the book. I am being invited to give talks at six different European locations. Things have been coming in non-stop from abroad.

REIKO: Do you believe that water itself is conscious and is reacting to the words?

DR. EMOTO: I understand that many of your readers are people interested in spiritual matters, and I would like to answer this question from that perspective. I believe that prior to Adam and Eve water itself held the consciousness of God -- that God's intention was put into the medium of water, and that this was used in the creation of Earth and Nature. In other words, all of the information needed for God's Creation was reflected in the water.

And then we -- Adam and Eve -- were placed on Earth to be the caretakers for this Creation of God. I believe that water held the consciousness of God until then, but that after the caretakers were placed on Earth, water became an empty vessel to mirror and reflect what was in the heart. It became a container to carry energy and information. Therefore, since this time, I think water has taken on the quality of simply reflecting the energies and thoughts that it is exposed to; that it no longer has its own consciousness. Water reflects the consciousness of the human race.

This excerpt comes from a longer article that can be read in it's entirety here (be forewarned it's a commercial site.)

Find Dr. Emoto's books here or at  your local library.

Mission Blue & the Water Paintings Project

Researching where to make the most global impact with regards to conservation - and most connected to my vision for the Water Paintings project - I've come across Mission Blue. Listen to it's founder Sylvia Earle discuss how intimately connected our lives are with 97% of the water on the planet - our oceans. She brings the big picture home to us. 

My Water Paintings project involves the creation of images intended as healing meditations. While painting them, I focus on the life force of creatures affected by polluted waters. We are just one of those creatures - and our bodies contain 60% water. We are part of that life cycle that needs water to survive, yet also creates the pollution of that source.

The start of this project was inspired by my desire as an artist to take action in response to the Gulf oil spill. Upon launching this series of paintings, affordable quality prints will become available for purchase and 25 % of the profit from the sale of those prints will be donated to Mission Blue for at least the rest of 2010. After this year I will continue to donate some percentage to Mission Blue from this painting series as an ongoing project. Follow me here or on Twitter (Mantra Art) to stay connected with this project.

These paintings will use a combination of media that are both water and oil-based. Water and oils do not mix, yet they find ways to live together on the canvas as they must in our bodies and the ocean.

Many of you know that I have 10 year's experience as a Naturopathic physician and Homeopath that motivates and informs my art. When we focus on healing ourselves, we naturally begin to make choices that more positively impact the global sustainability of life. Each one of us has the power to make choices that protect, sustain, and enliven others. Actions follow thought. Thought provokes language. Let us be mindful of what we are creating in our own bodies, our relationships with others, and ultimately our global community. We can no longer afford to think inside the box.  

 

 

details from works in progress

"Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all. Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.”

Kahlil Gibran

If you are inspired by the Water Paintings project please share this. I'm also in search for other artists that want to collaborate for a water-themed exhibit.

Toyin's gorgeous drawings

more beauty here

new mystical sea creatures to paint

more deep sea creatures here

Art inspired by mosquitos, Oatmeal, and sweaty chocolate

I've been creating some exciting new art for the last week or so since my ear episode. It's amazing what can incubate within the window of pain, though next time I'd honestly prefer to be inspired while bike riding at sunset. Much less drama.

sneak peak of the Water Paintings Project: mixed media on stitched canvas

When I get completely absorbed in making art, all sense of time evaporates. Inevitably, I come up for air (and all those emails, websites, and articles I've been meaning to investigate.) Here's an article that keys into improving your ability to Create Remarkable Things, which many of you are already doing.

I love nothing more than to become a portal for whatever the universe wants me to create. I tend to bring it on with music, oolong tea, "extreme dark" chocolate, and writing.  Sometimes the incubation can take weird and painful forms, but many people I know consciously create rituals like ~

10-day silent meditation retreats

military-style sweaty yoga in a box

rocking the iPod ala Lady Gaga

diving into nature (mosquito purgatory in MN)

extreme food & drink (kombucha melon diet anyone?)

laughing at rediculous sh*t until you weep for mercy

I'm also inspired towards creativity by people that promote a universal vision for humanity through their life's work. Here, Terence McKenna talks about some of the more mystical ways to shed the "cultural operating system" so that we can more deeply connect to our true human nature: we were born to create!

I'd really like to hear what YOU do to get out of the box and into the zone.