New wip and a rant

Haven't posted much this month.  I have been real busy painting and getting ready for this coming weekend's showing and next weekend's juried art show.  I promised you a rant in the title so here goes....
People who complain about art costing too much have no idea the amount of work that goes into being an artist.  I think most people think artists just happily paint for a few hours everyday and that is it.  We also collectively have this idea that to earn lots of money we must be working extremely hard at something we hate.
I wish that all I had to do was paint, but that alone would still take up a big chunk of my time.  Each painting I do takes me anywhere from 12 to 40 hours to complete, depending on size and difficulty.  This is usually spread out over many days, painting anywhere from 3 to 6 hours a day.  Once a painting is complete I have to varnish, wire, and sometimes frame.  Varnishing alone can take me hours to do, as I seem to have bad luck with it and often have to go repaint things I messed up with the varnish.  I do all my own framing and this is by no means easy or quickly done.
The other time consuming aspect of being an artist is the copying of your work, or taking photographs, scanning, etc.  I spend a lot of time photographing my pieces.  I have to do it outside on a good weather day.  This can be challenging at best.  Then I have to edit all my pieces in Photoshop to make them as close to the real work as possible to post online.  All of this can take me anywhere from 3 to 5 hours to do, on just one piece of art.  Next you spend time uploading art to all of your websites where you sell prints, Etsy, Red Bubble, etc.  This can often take up an afternoon.
Next you have making prints, packaging prints, shipping prints, making other things to sell like pendants (this takes up lots of time).  So if you add all this up we are going over 40 hours of work a week. 
Pricing your art is one of the hardest parts of being an artist.  What is it's value?  That is a hard question.  We certainly do not get paid for our time.  Just to make a nice round $10 bucks an hour we would have to sell a $400 painting a week, every week.  Then there is the obscure question of how good is it.  We all have seen artwork that sells for thousands that we wouldn't pay $10 for, and ones that sell for $100 that seem to be worth a lot more.
My pricing is random and somewhat based on how much I am attached to the work, and the size of the piece.  I am usually flexible though, and willing to hear offers of course.
Okay, that is about it for my rant, although I haven't even mentioned the high cost of art supplies.  Most of you reading this are artists too, so I am probably preaching to the choir.  But many of my friends that are not artists, even my own husband, have no idea what I do all day.  Somehow I have to fit in cleaning the house, grocery shopping, and taking care of my kids and myself in all of this.  Oh, and I left out the self-promotion on the internet time....like this blog....there is another few hours a day, just trying to get your work out there and seen (advertising).
Okay, on to my current work in progress.  I have been experimenting with different surfaces.  This one is small because it is a sample that I got from Raymar of one of their polyflax cotton canvas panels.  It is a very nice surface that I will definately try again.  It is also what sparked my rant, because it is only 9x12 inches, but I have already put about 12 hours into painting it and am still not totally done.  Just because it is smaller than many of my other works does not mean it is worth less.  I am also really loving it, it has changed a lot already from this pic I am posting now.

May Events and new wip

It's been a busy. busy Spring.  My kids were just on Spring Break and it seems I haven't gotten much done in the way of painting, which has me fearing Summer break.  I have been hard at work getting ready for May though.  I am going to be doing a few fairs starting in May.  The first one is May 1st at Seventh Street Gifts in Newport, Ky.  I will be the featured artist that day during their Spring Sundaze event.  There will be live music provided by Poke, a herbal workshop, food, and readings.  It takes place from 1-5 pm and you can read more about it at the website here.
The next weekend, May 7th-8th, I will have a booth at Mayfest in Lexington.  This will be my first official juried art fair.  I am pretty excited, but also a little stressed.  Anyone who has done a juried art fair will know there is a lot of stuff you need to have to do it.  For instance, most require you have a white canopy tent which are not cheap.  Then there is the structures to hold your art.  The cost is starting to add up, so I will be attempting to do many more of these fairs in the future to justify my expenses :).
  Thanks to my good friend Barbara Glatzeder I will have a whole bunch of pretty cameo art pendants to sell at Mayfest.  I am hopeless when it comes to making these kind of things, so she volunteered to put them together for me and ship them to me all the way from Germany.  I have been hard at work now putting together the chains and cords for them and the ones that are finished are turning out so beautifully.  Mayfest is over Mother's Day weekend, so I am hoping these will be bought for some lucky mamas.

The next weekend in May will be the opening of a group show I will a have a piece in called "Gods and Goddesses" in Richmond, VA.  It will be at an awesome little place called C'est Le Vin Wine and Art Gallery starting May 13th and running to June 5th.  The show will have work from 6 women artists and 6 men artists representing gods and goddesses from around the world.  My Lilith will be there, along with work by some other amazing artists like Helene Ruiz and Lynnette Shelley.  If you live close to Richmond try to make it out for this amazing exhibit.

Lastly, I wanted to share some other big news.  I recently signed on with Kats Magical Patches to license my work on fabric blocks.  These are fabric patches that you can sew on quilts, handbags, throw pillows, or just about anything your heart desires.  This is a new company, but she has already signed on over 60 amazing fantasy artists.  Next month she will be having a little contest amongst the artists on her Facebook fan page.  The fans will like their favorite image and one lucky fan will win a fabric block of the winning design.  Go and become a fan now to participate next month here.

And here is a little preview of the piece I am working on for this little contest.  It is Titania, the Faery Queen.

Magdalene and the red egg

This morning I am thinking of Mary Magdalene.  She comes to me at different moments in my life and when she does her presence is amazing and for me, life changing.  I have been mainly drawn to the Celtic myth for so many years now.  I have by no means covered all that I want to paint there, and yet these Gnostic yearnings come to me now and then and distract me away from the Holy Isles.
I have painted Mary before, but only her face.

I do love the emotion I captured in her face.  I always imagined it as a young Mary Magdalene meeting Yeshua for the first time.  But now I am being pulled to paint a larger work of her.  I am channeling many thoughts about the work right now and I almost feel like I need to write them down before I lose them.  Sometimes I get triggered like this and have strong impulses to create a new work but can't do it immediately and then I lose that space I was in and the thoughts that were flowing. So I thought I would share one piece with you, in an effort to preserve this energy for later.
It starts with Mary and the red egg.  Often in Eastern Orthodox icons Mary is painted holding a blood red egg.  There are a couple of legends that surround this egg, one being that after Jesus died Mary went to the Roman Caesar to tell him about the poor treatment of Jesus by the Romans and that Jesus had risen.  Mary was sitting at dinner and holding an egg in her hand and Caesar responded that Jesus could no more have risen than that egg could turn blood red.  Of course the egg immediately turned blood red.  Another story is similar but has Mary pulling off the same miracle in front of a group of Russians she was telling the tale of Jesus' resurrection to and when the egg went red it marked "The Way" being brought to Russia.
There are many symbols associated with Mary and what intrigues me is their connection to the chakras and the ascension, or the mastery of death.  I am starting with the red egg as I feel it is a strong symbol for the root chakra.  The egg is the creative potential that we hold at our root.  Red is the color of blood, of creation, of the Earth.  Out of the blackness of the womb the egg and the blood create life.  We connect with the creative energies of the Earth through our root chakras.  All possibilities lie in this energy.  By raising this energy up through the chakras to the sacred marriage chamber of the heart (the place where the goddess meets the bridegroom) we transmute the energy into Love, and from there we can conquer death.  We raise it into consciousness at the third eye, where mind, body, and soul align into one.  We take the hidden potential that lay in the egg and bring it into the light of consciousness.
I feel that in this uncertain time that we are in now, connecting with our red egg is more important than ever.  We need to be bathed in those creative energies everyday to be able to create the new reality that is called for.  Once a symbol is unlocked in your consciousness you begin to see it everywhere, and suddenly it makes more sense what it is speaking to you.  Here is another old work of mine called Bindi:

The root chakra is the way to the third eye.  The root is the primal mother Earth goddess creative force.  You have to tap that before you can evolve into the higher realms of consciousness.  Many, many people are stuck in their root because they ignore the goddess.  This only leads to survival issues and greed.  They ignore their own creative potential.  The way to change the world begins at the root.  This seems more apparent than ever as we sit here fearing for the people of Japan as they are dealing with nuclear meltdowns.  We all know that nuclear weapns are the ultimate result of greed, destruction, and fear; and maybe now we know that nuclear power is not so safe an energy source after all.  Then there is Japan's flag, setting there showing us the way to release the fear and "the way" to ascension is through the root.  The red dot on the flag is called the rising sun (son).  It is time to raise the red egg.

Oh, and I just thought of another red dot...the site I put my artwork on Red Bubble.  It is full of creative people working with their red egg energy.

The Phoenix Keeper finished

I finally finished up the Phoenix Keeper today and I thought I would write a bit about the symbolism of the Phoenix, but first here is what she looks like finished.

The Phoenix has appeared in myth in cultures spanning the globe, from Egypt to Japan to Native American lore.  It is always associated with the sun and usually immortality and rebirth.  This legendary bird was believed to die in its self-made flames periodically then rise again out of its own ashes (some say after three days and therefore often connected with Christ in Christianity).  Linked to the worship of the fiery sun and sun gods such as Mexico's Quetzalcoatl, it was named "a god of Phoenecia" by the Phoenician. To alchemists, it symbolized the the destruction and creation of new forms of matter along the way to the ultimate goal: the philosopher's stone.
But I wanted to show the connection of the Phoenix with the Divine Feminine.  Often the Phoenix, because it is connected to the Sun, is connected to the Sun gods and the masculine.  Once again, this is a goddess symbol that has been stolen or rather hidden.  The Phoenix is truly a symbol of the Divine Feminine that is returning now from the ashes.   Those ashes are of all the women that were burned as witches when the Patriarchy tried to stamp out the goddess once and for all.  But now many of those "witches" have returned and are bringing the Goddess back out of the ashes.

It is interesting that just recently it was all over Facebook about the news of the 13th astrological sign and that everyone's astrology sign had changed.  Well, astrologers have known about this for centuries.  The Phoenix is the 13th sign, 13 is the number of the goddess.  We are just now becoming aware of her resurrection and rebirth.

The Divine Feminine is essentially our connection to our souls.  For some reason, as human beings developed their minds, most lost their connection to their soul (I say most, because a few spiritual movements taught how to develop the mind without losing that connection like the Taoist).  Also as we developed our minds we lost our connection to nature.  The Goddess is connected to our primordial nature.  She is always connected to animals, birds, plants, and the oldest of symbols the serpents and dragons.  The serpent represents our reptilian brain that acts on instinctual impulses.  As we developed our minds the prevailing thought became that this was a part of us that needed to be conquered, the dragon that needed to be defeated.  With the goddess the snake is often showed as a companion and protector.  To have the serpent as guardian rather than adversary means that what was blind and unconscious and in its primordial state in us has been raised to consciousness.

The Phoenix in myth is often a blend of a bird and a serpent, thus making it the perfect symbol of the balance between spirit and matter.  Birds have long been associated with the goddess as they are a symbol of the spirit and are messengers of the Otherworld.  The Phoenix is a messenger bird of the goddess, and is returning to help us remember our true connection to our soul and to the soul of the Earth.  We are now being reborn into a new consciousness that is one human beings have never experience before.  We have developed our minds and can now use our spirit to raise what was unconscious to the light of consciousness.

I painted my Phoenix white to represent the purity of the soul (and I was influenced by the Phoenix in the Harry Potter movies, big fan :).  I gave her some peacock like feathers to represent the third eye opening.  Also my Keeper has 6 roses.  Six is the number of Venus and the roses can be connected to love and the heart chakra among so many other associations.

The Phoenix Keeper...getting closer.

I am getting so close to being done with her.  I am having a great time with this one.  I really love the colors.  I am a sucker for green/red or turquoise/rose together.  Here is what I have right now.  When she is all done I plan to write a whole bunch about the Phoenix and it's ancient symbolism, I am sure you will be waiting with bated breathe ;).

Facebook Art Auction March 13th-19th

I have a lot of works that I am ready to let go of.  I have decided to try a little experiment, a little Spring cleaning art auction on Facebook.  I have picked some of my older works, mostly ones from 2009, that I still have.  Most of them are soft pastel on paper.  Pastels are hard to store because you need to frame them as soon as possible.  Some of them I have framed, but many are just stored in plastic sleeves.  They need homes.  Most of them I will probably not ever submit to shows.  My current style is also beginning to change a little from these.  So my point is, I would rather see them go to good homes then live in my basement forever, and I am willing to let go of them for a shockingly low price.
Here is a little snippet of some of the works that will be in the auction:

If you want to be a part of the fun you will have to first join my Facebook fan page HERE .  Then on March13th you can comment on the piece with your bid.  You can go to my Facebook page now and look at the album entitled "Dirt Cheap Spring Cleaning Art Auction" to check out the low starting bid prices.  All works have an opening bid of less than $100, some as low as $15.

The Spirals in the sky

Because I have that neat little flag counter doo-hickey on my site it lets me know how people end up on my blog. I have noticed a few people that end up here were searching for something about spirals in the sky. Ironically, when I named my blog I was just trying to think of something connected to MoonSpiral, which is my user name on most sites. I also sign all my paintings with the symbol of the crescent moon and a spiral. When I first started doing this I honestly was doing it just because I thought it looked cool, and until just now when I went searching for spirals in the sky, I had no idea this was an actual phenomena.
Evidently for the last couple of years people in Norway, Russia, and Australia have noticed these spirally lights in the sky at night. Here is a nice pic of one of the Aussie spirals:

Pretty cool, huh? Of course there is talk of UFOs and the overly-rationals saying they are being caused by rockets or test missiles. Hum, I wonder.
I have been thinking a lot about the Pisces energy today. Mainly because today there are 5 celestial bodies in Pisces and the New Moon tomorrow will be in Pisces. Then the biggy comes next month when Neptune, the ruling planet of Pisces, moves into Pisces. It has not been in Pisces since the 1960's. We can look forward to false institutions and belief systems being broken down, and a vibe of peace and love returning. Maybe if these spirals are connected to UFOs Neptune will help the truth come out, and maybe if they are missiles...Neptune will help us stop firing them on our fellow humans.
Peace and Love to all my brothers and sisters,
Tammy