Woman. Blanket.

Woman. Blanket.

I totally feel like cuddling up in some warmth right now. I dream of knitting ponchos and socks for the whole family. Maybe I will....

Love!

fragments.

I have this really strong impulse to take selfportraits right now. Portraits of parts of me. Fragments. I have been feeling a bit embarassed about it, as if I ought to be ashamed to want to picture myself. As if these fragments are too banal, too poorly executed. That I am such an amateur and why would anybody want to look at it.

And then I had this conversation with my sister. And she said that she understood the lack of connection I sometimes feel nowadays since I always get interrupted and have to get up and take care of something. She said she thought my existence must feel so fragmented.

And of course that is it.
My need to take pictures of parts of me are of course a way to put my feeling of fragmentisation out into the world. I just had to laugh out loud at how well she nailed it down :).

And allthough the word has negative connotations, taking the pictures make me feel happy and a bit more hole. So I will continue.

This last pictures is of marks baby L has given me. She bites!

I will be going away with the kids for a week to visit my father and his wife and I don't know if I will be able to post in during that week. Hopefully I will have the opportunity to do some textile art that B is fabulous at. If I don't get to talk to you, then take care and have a great week!

All my love to you!

finally.

It took abslutely forever, but now it's done.

Nothing special. Just a little "thingy". I meant to make it available as a PDF, but since I don't know how to do that yet, I decided to post it in the form of a number of images here. I think it's a cartoon.

I read a tiny e-book about finishing projects, riding the wild donkey, just get things done, by Leonie Dawson, and found it highly inspirational. Download it here if you want to. It's free. She completes projects like this one in a couple of hours. It took me a couple of weeks (mister P just a little bit irritated at watercolours, pencils and papers floating about in the apartment for over a month...).

The colours didn't come out great, but here you go!

All my love!

a long talk much needed.

The other day, no yesterday, time is floating but it was yesterday. So, yesterday I went to rehearsal with Kajsa. We wanted to start of by having a cup of coffee in the sunshine and talk through maybe our schedule, the order of things, maybe read the texts through.

But instead we started talking. About all these things that have been stressing me out lately. How do you create a life that functions and still evolve into the artist you want to be? How do you balance the creative life and everyday life? What does being an artist mean to me, now? How to balance one's needs and the needs of the children and the household and looking for a job?

I wanted to recapture some of what we said, but notice now that it is difficult. And maybe the words weren't the essence. Maybe the essence was this:

Laying on a bench, listening to baby L moving about in the grass chewing on cones, gazing up into the moving leaves of a tree, being warmed by the sun shining through the foliage.

One thing that I bring with me in my heart, that she said is this:

I have felt shame for my need to be seen and to show my "art". Sometimes I feel like I'm still five years old, running to mummy, holding out what I made, desperate for acknowledgement - yes, my love, you are an artist. That five-yearold is still looking for recognition, so I hold out my drawings and writings to my friends, to you. Look! Look! And I have felt that maybe it is a bit pathetic. (Well, that was me talking, here comes:)

But Kajsa just said "Of course you want people to see! Who are we if we are not seen? Everybody needs the mirror of others. Especially when we are trying to evolve creatively. That is not something that can be done in complete isolation. At least not by most. To have other people see what we do and acknowledge it is essential."

So, I am so grateful for those words. And will continue to show up here to meet you. Because I need to be seen. And because I want to show you, if you feel like I do, that you are not alone. And maybe some day I will have the honor to be the one to also mirror you. It has happened once during the Playground Project and it totally lit my day up :).

To be mirrored properly, we also have to have the courage to be truthful and show ourselves as we are. No more, no less. The good and the bad. Our brightest glimmering sunsides, and our darkest muskiest shadows.  And we have to have the courage to welcome and see all those aspects in the people we hold dear. Easier said than done, I know. But isn't it necessary if we want to make this world a better place? If we want to be great parents? Friends? I will try to be as courageous as I can!

All my love!

selfportraits.

I was feeling really low.

Like a saying in hungarian: under the frogs ass. Because how much lower could you possibly get?

Anyways I had that annoying critic babbling away in my mind: nothing you do is valuable, you are a fake and a fraud, nobody cares about you or what you do on and on.

So what?!

So what if nobody cares? I care.

So what if what I do has no value for anybody else? It is important to me.

And if I'm a fake and a fraud, than ok, that's what I am then. I'll be a good one :).


And I felt an urge to just capture myself as me, the one I am in this (and this and this and this...) instant. No more no less. Confused, happy, fragmented, sad, philosophing, empty, full of love.

We are all so much.

There is no such thing as a fixed I. We are all made up of millions of fragments, shimmering and dancing, like the sun's reflections on moving water.

Everything changes. All the time. And that is frightening and wonderful at the same time.

And so that was me yesterday.

Who are you right now? How would you picture yourself? How would you like to see yourself?

Love!

Week four of Project Playground.

It is evening again, and I sit again sweating a bit because I want to make this week's prompt tempting. I have so many other things on my mind.  Not only confusion about the future and stress. Also very nice things such as this: 

I have also been digging and planting in my elotment. I hope to get a little bit more order and growth there this year than last year. Last year was the first year I got to use it after it had been unused for quite a number of years, so I think it will take a while before it gives really good crops. If it ever does. It doesn't really matter. Not much anyway. What matters is the happiness I feel while being there. And to see my daughter dig her hands down in the earth, and my son run around it laughing, helping pull weeds and put seeds in the ground. I forgot my camera today, but hope to get some pictures tomorrow.

Now. To the project.

I have been enjoying the sun so much that I feel a tribute is in order. So that is what the project for this week is - to make a tribute to the sun. There are many to be inspired by in all kinds of media (maybe make a collage?). You can of course make a drawing or painting, you can write a poem, but also write a lovesong or other musical piece! Anything can be used. I ran out of paper one day, but found paper plates from a birthday some years ago and drew on that (terrible photo again, sorry about that, hehe):

Love!

The sentence I picked and how I continued it.

Today I went to the library. We had an appointment at the doctors, but had to wait for over an hour (hooray for my doctor who gives you a time estimate when you get in line!). So I took baby L across the street to have a cup of coffee at the library café and she fell asleep on the way.

In the café there was a sale of books that had been sorted out from the library and I found a book by one of my favorite authors. Naturally I bought it. I closed my eyes, flipped the pages and put my finger down on a sentence (the book is in swedish, and I wrote it in swedish, here is my attempt to translate it):

But Jenny came and sang...


She sang so the evening sky paled. The blackbird who always filled our early evenings with his homey chirrups and twirrels sat down by the rail of the verandah to listen. His black suit floated out into the dark shadows around him, but the lights from inside made his eye twinkle. His shiny eye and my dry eyes met and fell into eachother until I no longer knew who was the observer and who was the observed. The I in the tale. All that happened that evening - was it my or the blackbird's story?

The others were watching Jenny of course. Actually she was rather inconsiderable. The hair of no particular colour and her skin was sensitive and therefore filled with blushes and dry spots. The eyes were filled with some sort of light, I guess, but they weren't more beautiful than average. Besides, her lips were thin and pale. But when those lips parted, and she sang - then everybody forgot how inconsiderable she was. Like tiny lit candles they all sat turned towards her, shining. Their faces full of glow and wonder. Some were smiling. Some closed their eyes. Some cried. Only my heart closed. Filled with blackbird feathers.

Maybe it was my hatred that made her fall on the stairs. Maybe my slippery kindness found it's way under her petite shoes and made her lose foothold. I don't know. Strangely enough neither of the shoes fell of. She lay there with her skirts spred out like a fan, a growing shadow around her hair. The beautiful tiny slippers still both on their foot.


Also, I played around with my image from week two a bit. Not great, but here it is :).

Robin's Playground. Week three.

I almost didn't make it this week. I kind of didn't. I only have a sketch, almost, to show. I will have to post the finished picture later.

I imagined the lamps with dreams and thoughts pooring out of them and onto the tired woman at the bottom. Will post it when I'm finished... My children were both sick and I have had almost no sleep so I decided to go easy on myself and not stress the project. It's called Playground for a reason :).

Ok. The second week we were inspired by an image or a small piece of an image. This week, we shall do something similar, but with words. Pick a book - from your bookshelf or a friends, or at a library or wherever - randomly open it and write down the first sentence your eyes fall upon. When you have a small chunk of time, like maybe 15 minutes (or more of course), look at it again and write what ever poors into your mind. Continue the sentence like a story, or a poem, or a manifesto :). If you feel called to draw something as a continuation to the sentence - do so! That would be wonderful as well.

I am sorry if this post is a bit on the short side. I really, reeaaalllly need to go to sleep :).

I leave you with the best hairdo ever (just woke up):

Love!

seven years.

Notebooks filled to the brim. Kept in boxes for a while. By my bed for a while. In the basement and most recently in a bookshelf. Seven years of something I felt I absolutely had to hold on to. Something probalby invaluable.

 

Today I looked to see what there was that was so necessary to keep. Page up and down with draining negative thoughts. List after list of how I ought to improve myself and my life. Boring notes from boring classes at the university. I mean, really. Robin, really.  

And so I lit a candle, paused to gather and center myself. And then I started ripping. I did find a few things I want to keep. Scraps of words. Hastily jotted down ideas of images or songs. Those, I shall keep. The rest - into the fire.

It is so easy to be held back by the past. I sure have been for so long. I know there is a lot I need to let go of in order to be free. And I have refused to do anything about it. Partly because one of the things (paradoxically) I need to let go of is the idea of myself as living my life as an artist. In the sence you can do when you are twenty something. Letting art always come first. Have all the time in the world to explore and evolve. Work late hours at the theatre. Live on lettuce for a month. It is not going to happen. I didn't become the at least rather good actress I know I could have been. I didn't become the singer and songwriter I know lives in my heart somewhere. I didn't go to London to live a wilder life for a couple of years. I didn't travel the world to collect stories. And I am probably not going to do those things either. I need to let go of those dreams, grieve them. They only prevent me from being the person and artist I am now. It is scary to let go of something that you have treasured for so long. And trust that what rises from the ashes can also be great. And more true to what I am today.

What do you have to let go of in order to be true to who you are today?

Love!

Robin's Playground. Week two.

This week has passed so fast I can hardly believe it is time for me to hand out (and do). I wanted to get the video working for this week, but I am just going to have to accept that I don't have the time for anything else than the absolutely necessary right now. And that does not entail swearing over machines I don't know how to work :). Hopefully I'll figure it out further ahead along the way.

Anyways.... I hope you had fun creating your hands. I saw a lovely example of what one of you have been doing on my facebook page, and it filled my heart with joy. I got plenty of more ideas of what I want to do with the theme, but now it is surely time that I present the next theme:

Elaborate! Maybe that is a good name for it. I'm not sure. What you do is this: cut out a picture or a small piece of a picture. Glue onto a piece of paper (or onto something else if you would rather make the image on something other than paper). Elaborate = use the picture as a part of your own picture. Be inspired by it. What could it be? What happens around it? I don't really know of a way to do this with words, but if you do - feel free to do it =).

I am now going to post a crappy example of what I am talking about. I think these "instruction examples" are all going to be like that. Made in the last minute. Taking no more than a minute. Good for my impro skills! Here it is:

Ok I got carried away. Maybe a little bit more than a minute. More like ten. Just like last week I will post what I do as soon as it is finished. Feel free to post on the facebookpage or on flickr! Thank you so much for being here.

Love!

Week one of Robin's Playground.

Hoooooraay! Today we start! I am both excited and a little disapointed. Excited, because it is going to be great, and disapointed because I have suffered a humongous video failure this morning. I had recorded a video so I could talk to you, but I can not get the audio and the visual to sync. And there is no way that I can figure out now to only upload the audio. So we shall have to do with my writing instead.

And so here goes. Welcome all you lovely souls to this project!!! Once a week I will post a prompt, or excersise or theme that I will and you are welcome to create during the week. I will post what I have done as soon as I'm finished, and you are all welcome to post photos or texts in the comment section. If you prefere you can post a link to your flickraccount our some other place where we can go see what you do.

My aim for this is to create a playarea - hence Playground name - where we can create things for the mere fun of it. I was inspired by Julia Cameron's Artist dates (if you haven't read Artist's way, and you are an artist, then by all means - read it!). I figured out, why not do something like that, but in a group where we can inspire and learn from eachother?! So here it is: Robin's Playground. I would like for this to be a warm, welcoming and positive area, where there is no right and wrong in creating, no good or bad, no goals to be met or failed at. Just the play and the fun that creating can be. Just the exploration.

You can follow by popping in here whenever you like, or sign up for the newsletter and get the prompts in your mailbox. Whatever is best for you!

And now let's get to it:

This weeks theme is: My Hand.
Why on earth this? Simply because one of the great masters of painting (I think it was Leonardo da Vinci, can not be sure though...) started up every day be drawing his own hand. So I figured it could be a good first excersise. Now, you can do exactly that - draw your hand as it looks. Or you can draw it symbolically - what is your hand to you? Or you can write down what ever pops up in your mind when you think of your hand and then make a poem or a word collage. If you are very pressed for time: here are some really quick tips:

Draw the outline of your hand on a piece of paper:

If you have time you can fill it in with colours, collage it...
Or do it many times:

Dip your hand in paint (feels good!):

Lovely feeling indeed, so do it many times:

I was aiming for tree, but I don't know.... Hehe.
Ok. Let's get to it! Hooray again! Let me know how you are doing.

Oh, I just realized it is not possible to leave a photo in the comments here :(. How about keeping that exchange in the Facebook area? I have a page there too:
http://www.facebook.com/RobinHasADream?ref=tn_tnmn

Or if you have any better suggestions that I, as the very analogue person I am, don't know of , just let me know ;).

Love!

one layer a day.

I haven't quite been able to make one layer a day, and post it here on that day. But I have been continuing - and here are some pictures of the progress:

I hope to see you here tomorrow for the beginning of "Robin's Playground"!

Love!