From the moon to the galaxy

In recent days, my painting has been somehow attracted directly to the night sky. I was thrilled with the challenge, but worried about the result. So I needed more attempts.

In addition, I am not a landscape lover and I promised in summer that I wasn’t going to paint any. Half year later, I wished to combine the night sky with the silhouette of wooded landscape!

We have a proverb, which I cannot translate well, but which exactly corresponds to that situation. It’s something like “You always get the biggest slice of the rejected bread”.

It’s exactly me, and such situation is repeated again and again. Whenever in my life I said with full conviction “No, thanks, this is not my way”, sooner or later I just wanted to do it. Does it happen to you too? If yes, how often?

I think about the source of it, while the last layer of my watercolor galaxy is drying. Looking at the painting, I see the endless possibilities that are stupid to limit by frightened beliefs. And that leads me to realize that the problem is not that I don’t know myself enough and still don’t know what is and isn’t my path.

The whole galaxy says that we create boundaries in our lives and usually make them much tighter than they are given to us. Not only me, but many.

I wish for all of us that the catcher from the first painting would capture our fears and nightmares, and we could open the door to a wide galaxy of possibilities.

Feel free, stay safe and happy holidays!

Ivana

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Drawing Tarot cards

Opening an account on the deviant art platform makes me to take even old drawings from hidden cabinets and show them without shame. I never claimed to be a professional artist. I draw by heart and cannot do it better.

Long ago, I started to draw my own tarot cards with related Aura-Soma bottles on them. At that time I was sitting several hours a day surrounded by this colorful miracle and absorbed the energy and story inside. I was fascinated, so it’s no wonder I put them into the system.

I made about half of the major arcana when I realized how cowardly I was trying to avoid drawing people because it was a nightmare for me. At the same time I clearly saw that cards without people didn’t have enough energy, they were somehow flat. But the others looked strange because the people didn’t fit anatomically. I began to feel more frustration then pleasure, so I interrupted the whole project.

I took the cards from the bottom of scrap last week with the same result as many years ago. The cards without people are nice but flat, the cards with people are strange but strong enough. The only difference happened in the mind. It seems that I began to like my strange people and even the strange perspective. And I proudly show you some of them today.

I’ve been always saying that my drawing replaces therapy. It took several years, but hopefully I did accept my imperfection finally.

With love and respect to imperfections,

Ivana

In the case you’d like to look at more of my tarot drawings, here is link to the gallery.

Playing with the Elements, Part 3 – Water

Water is lazy, quiet and cold. Therefore it represents sleep, silence, darkness and even death. Water cannot move on its own. Its movement is always caused by external forces such as gravity or Moon in the case of high and low tides.

So, why we do say that healthy water must flow? And that standing water is an opportunity to grow molds and diseases? Because the external forces of nature and the Universe never stop. And if the water stands, then something acts against those natural or universal forces.

We humans love to act like this. Here are some examples of how we block the natural flow of water in our civilized lives.

On a macro scale, I would mention a boom of concreted riverbed which didn’t respect the original streams and which, a few decades later, cause disastrous floods.

Inside of human body, we often block natural sweating, which is the most effective way to get rid of toxic substances through the largest body organ – the skin. Instead we massively use inappropriate deodorants that block the sweat glands and forbid them natural working, which is the exact parallel to the amount of concrete used in the artificial riverbeds.

I understand that the sweat can smell badly and we live close to each other, especially in cities. On the other hand, the amount and smell of sweat depends on what we drink and eat, how our metabolism works, and how much stress we live in. If we focus more on these improvements, we don’t have to use devastating deodorants, but only light natural versions.

Emotions like sadness or regret require natural flow of tears to overcome difficult situation. But the common social habits often demand to hold tears back. Again, it is close to the parallel with concrete riverbeds. If you block the flow of tears for a long time, there is born a retention tank of emotions that will rupture in future for sure. And then all the pain pours at once.

Sleep is another good example inside the water element. Naturally we are set up to sleep at night, silence and darkness. In such conditions, the body really rests and gains enough strength for the next day. How many of us respect biological clocks and go to sleep with the sun? First I admit that I am a night creature and I don’t want to get up early in the morning. Even though I know it is bad, and it spoils my metabolism and water levels in my body. This is definitely my weakness.

But that’s not all yet. Night sleep should be in silence and in dark. But where to look for them, especially if we live in cities? Unfortunately we live in constant light and sound smog, so darkness and silence become unachievable ideals. And so the water element is spoiled a bit more every day, and thus our physical and emotional health. In the long-term it is definitely worth to invest in the light and soundproofed bedroom.

I prefer to stop with negative examples now and present a few positive tricks how to improve the quality of the water in our lives.

Dreaming is a nice quality inside of water element. And it could be a lucid dreaming even though it seems very useless. Fantasy is an eternal ally of water, so use it as much as possible. You can start with drawing or painting, let be inspired by fantasy rather than reality. No matter of the outcome, the process is beneficial.

Being alone and in silence is always a tool for harmonizing the water element in your life. Therefore, prayer, meditation and relaxation techniques are so effective.

And how about influence of the previous elements?

Fire and water are of course opposites. But the life needs both of them. Water is quiet environment, which needs to get a fiery spark to create a fetus. Water represents woman, waiting for male (fiery) sperm. And do you remember that Air represents socializing? If a man and a woman socialize well, then they create a new life.

Frequent topic is the relation between emotions and mind, i.e. water and air. Take real elements for help. If you don’t saturate water with oxygen enough, your water environment would be dead, even it has appropriate temperature (fire). So using only emotions without oxygen of our minds doesn’t keep us alive. Then we could tend to stay alone, dreaming, without connection to other people. So much water takes the life spark out and we become more dead than alive.

In the case of too much oxygen in water you can see big bubbles, so the water looks more like soda water full of wild whirlwinds, where isn’t even one quiet thing. This is a parallel of overestimated mind and underestimated emotions, which means a stressful life without rest.

And both examples above worked with appropriate temperature. Imagine there is not enough fire, so the water becomes ice. And this represents situation, when emotional person doesn’t put fire into the water. From warm feelings, hardness or even cruelty become.

And that’s why we should maintain balance among the elements. Sometimes is useful to implement small tricks and so to change the sequence of other events.

Next, I will speak about the Earth and the mutual influence with previous elements.

With love,

Ivana

In case you missed Playing with the Elements, Part 2 – Air, Playing with the Elements, Part 1 – Fire

 

Seasonal clock

Even if the life seems to be ruined into pieces and difficult to fix, there are rules we can rely on. The all known universe works on the principle of regular repeating events. If you like to profit from it, observe. Be aware of what surrounds you.

Soon you find that everything has a rhythm. And depends on your inner tuning, through which rhythm you see the world. My tuning works with four beats, but there are systems built on three or five beats as well. All of them have a logic and even tradition, so follow your self.

My “seasonal clock” could represent anything what is repeated regularly and makes a cycle. It could be a year, a day, a month, a life, etc. For the picture above I have chosen the year, divided to zodiac signs in the inner circuit and illustrated by typical nature/people event on the outer circuit.

I have applied the 4 beats rhythm, so the circle is divided into 4 main parts (elements) – fire (red), air (yellow and green), water (blue) and earth (brown). Most people would probably orientate the picture upside down, because it is more common to see the fire and air above the water and earth. Both are OK.

Relating seasons with elements was quite easy. The hot summer belongs to the fire, while the cold and wet winter is represented by water. Autumn is the harvest time, so it fits to the earth, while the major sign of the spring is a fast move and change, so it fits to the air. Then the vertical line indicates solstice and the horizontal line indicates the equinox.

We can do the same with the lunar cycle and you see it on the picture too. The full moon is the place on the circle, where is the most light, so it corresponds to the summer solstice of the solar cycle. The new moon is the place full of darkness, so you find it on the same place as the winter solstice, while the quarters are placed like equinoxes. Do you see the trick?

If we talk about the day, so morning is spring, noon is summer solstice, afternoon is summer, evening is autumn, midnight is winter solstice and the night is winter. The same could be applied to the life: spring is childhood, summer is youth, autumn is maturity and winter is old age and also prenatal age (spent in water).

Once you comprehend the rhythm of the life and typical characteristics of each phase, you will be more stabilized, better choose the right timing and succeed more easily.

I have even started to read my body through the same clock. Still in a process, but there are some results! Hopefully I will share them soon.

With love, Ivana