Certified Zentangle Teacher

I am now a Certified Zentangle Teacher (CZT). I attended a 3 day workshop in Providence, RI, last week and am now certified to teach Zentangle art. People learn to draw abstract patterns using black ink on white tiles. Zentangle practice is a relaxing and meditative form of art.

https://www.zentangle.com/zentangle-method

Here are some examples of my recent creations.

Joan Miro — Planting Seeds of the Spirit

Growing up in a conservative Mennonite family, I was not exposed to art as a child. My maternal grandfather even forbid photographs and television.  My parents did not buy a TV until after he died. 

The Garden 2

Joan Miro

My first exposure to art came my freshman year in college where in one of my classes we had to choose an artist to study. I chose Joan Miro, a Spanish artist, and his paintings planted in my soul a love of art. I had an opportunity to study art history about 30 years later and fell in love with several painters including Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Eastman Johnson, Edvard Munch and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. When you fall in love with a painting, you come back to it again and again for it to refresh your soul. 

A great novel stays with you long after you have read it. My all time favorite novel is Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  I first read it college and have read it 3 times since.  

How many times do you listen to the same piece of music over and over. And each time you hear it years later, it brings back waves of emotion. Roberta Flack, Harry Chapin and Kris Kristofferson remain some of my favorite singers more than 40 years after I first heard them.  

Artists, musicians and writers all plant seeds with their works of art. What seeds are you planting with your writing, your painting or your music? How is your art impacting your audience? What seeds have you planted in their souls?

Christina Baldwin — The Gift of Creativity

Sometimes as writers we become caught up in the business of publishing and experience the hurt and pain of rejection. We become frustrated and sometimes quit writing because we don't think we are good enough. The need to write, to express ourselves, is not about being published. The need to write and to create is the gift in itself. Celebrate and honor the gift you have been given. Write for the sake of writing.  Write for the sake of the gift.

The same can be said of painting and any of the other forms of creative expression. Painting is not about selling your art to the highest bidder or having your painting hang in a museum somewhere. The art of painting is a gift to be honored and treasured. Respect and appreciate the gift that you have been given.

Diego Rivera

"Only the work of art itself 

can raise the standard of taste."

— Diego Rivera

Mexican Artist / Muralist

1886 - 1957

The Flower Carrier

People talk of taste as if it was real.  It is an illusion of judgement.  Every work of art, every poem, and every story has value.  When people begin to label art as good or bad, they are creating false categories that are based on artificial judgements.  What the majority label as good today may be considered bad tomorrow.  You may like something or not like something which in itself is okay.  Liking or disliking reveals something about you.  There is nothing inherently bad or good within the work of art itself.  The sense of good or bad is in the eyes of the beholder. Any judgement made about a work of art is actually a judgement of the person who made the statement.

While there may only be one person today who likes your art, it does not make the art bad. Two hundred years from now the majority of people may consider it a masterpiece.  Taste is fickle and useless.

Diego Rivera, the great Mexican Muralist,  painted a number of murals in the United States during the 1930's.  Edsel Ford hired him to paint a mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts which is still on view today.  John Rockefeller commissioned him to paint a mural in New York.  Since Rivera was a communist, he included a portrait of Lenin in the mural.  When Rockefeller demanded that he remove the portrait from the mural, Rivera refused.  Rockefeller had the mural destroyed.  In the 1930's, a portrait of Lenin was unacceptable to the American public taste.  A work of art was destroyed because the subject matter was unacceptable.  Three hundred years from now, most people probably will never had heard of Lenin and nobody will be offended.  Remember public taste is fickle and arbitrary.

Richard Wollheim

"Learning appears as a way of staying young, perhaps of staying alive, and also as a way of growing up, perhaps facing death."

— Richard Wollheim

British Author, Philosopher

1923 - 2003

Commentary
Life-long learning is a powerful habit to develop. Learning something new keeps us in touch with our youth and helps us to stay active and alive. What have you learned in the last week? The past month?  Who has taught you something new about yourself or your art?

We experience the world through our senses — hearing, seeing, tasting, touching and smelling. And what we experience teaches us much if we are paying attention and alert to the possibilities. Did you smell the wind today? Did you hear the approaching storm? Do you taste the rain on your face?

From the time we are born until we die, our purpose is to learn, to grow, and to change. Most learning does not occur in school and we don't stop learning once we graduate. Cultivate a learning attitude. Unfortunately, many people do not learn from their mistakes. They are not willing to change and grow. To be a great artist or writer, you must be constantly learning about the world in which we inhabit.

And when we face death, it will teach us much that we have forgotten. Do not be afraid of death. Understand that it is a gift. It is a door through which we pass, a gate that leads to another world.

Biography

Wollheim was the son of actress and a theatrical agent.  He participated as a soldier in World War II and for a short time was a prisoner of war.  After the war, he studied philosophy, politics and economics.  He taught at the University College in London, Harvard University, Columbia University, University of Minnesota, the University of California at Berkeley as well as other universities.

Wollheim married Anne Powell in 1950 and had twin sons.  He married his second wife, Mary Day Lanier, in 1967 and she gave birth to a daughter.

Richard Wollheim is known for his philosophical work on mind and emotions as related to the visual arts.  He was president of the British Society of Aesthetics from 1992 until 2003

Wollheim wrote and published 14 books including a biography of Freud (1971), a novel entitled, A Family Romance (1969) and several philosophical books including Painting as Art, Art and Its Objects, The Thread of Life, On the Emotions, The Mind and Its Depths and The Germs: A Memoir of Childhood.