"JUNGLE MAGIC SERIES"  "JUNGLE DIVAS SHARE RAVEN SECRETS"

June 26, 2011,

Well, this chat is long overdue.  The season was so busy and chocked full of wonderful experiences.  I am more in love with Puerto Vallarta than I was when we arrived.  Paintings have been produced daily with sparks flying.  I am so inspired.  My newest series is "JUNGLE MAGIC"  and the series has morphed into JUNGLE DIVAS.  The whispers of the jungle are constantly whispering in the wind and lull me to sleep.  It is overwhelmingly magical.  Dazzling layers of green leaves and  jungle music wafts through the canyon.  We rise to a cacophony of chirping birds.  I have learned to make a bird call that rivals the birds.  We talk back and forth for awhile before I rise.  The rainy season is just beginning and it is like the Mists of Avalon across from the house.  The mist moves like a mystery through the canyon and then magically disappears as the sun rises over the top of the Mountain.   I wait daily for new Ideas inspired by this enchanted environment.  Most recently I have done Jungle divas that are accompanied with ravens whispering in her ear and divas talking to koi fish in the ponds.  They will be layered with words and designs representing the layers of the jungle, which symbolizes the layers that we live our lives in.  

We have recently begun the construction on our downstairs rooms and have turned them into efficiency apartments.  They are not your ordinary efficiency apartments.  They have wonderful outdoor kitchens and palapa parlors to lounge in overlooking the jungle and the river.  As alway color is of the utmost importance.  Bright and cheerful colors abound.  I look forward to sharing the photos of the new spaces and the new paintings.  

November 2010

What a wonderful month we are having.  The weather is absolutely perfect and the jungle is alive with sounds and smells and the river at a calm and peaceful pace.  It will lull you to sleep from your suites.  I have begun working on a new series that has incorportated collage and is work on paper.  They are small images, (unlike) all that I stand for, but I feel that it is perfect for what they have to say.  They are intimate images with inspirational sayings on them and each one is an original.  As I begin to work on them I start with a word and the piece develops from there. It is important that the artist of these kinds of pieces understands the importance of composition, the golden mean!!  I have been doing an exercise with my retreats that incorporates the universal symbols and it has come to my attention, in the process of teaching these workshops, that the concept of perfect balance is an intrical part of this process, not only in the art but in their lives.  This teaching experience has inspired the new series.  I am continually surpirsed how much I learn from my students process. 

On another note....We have started and almost completed our spiritual sweat lodge.  It is sooo wonderful.  It has no connection to any particular custom, only our vision of what is sacred.  We have embedded, with beautiful stones from the river, the sign of OM... the universal sound of spirit!  We will have our first sacred ceremony on the Winter Solstice.  If you are interested in joining us email us and we will try to accomodate you.  We are getting ready for the Holiday season.  For the first time in 16 years Andy and I did not have a Thanksgiving dinner at our home.  Instead we took a journey to the Botanical Gardens just north of Puerto Vallarta for a wonderful dinner and the most beautiful surroundings imagenable.  It is a must see when you visit.  I will be taking all of my retreat guests for this excursion from now on.  Our gallery walks have really picked up.  We had over 115 visitors to the gallery on Wednesday night.  Our gallery walks are every Wednesday from 6-10.  It keeps us quite busy.  We are very happy with our process and our progress in our new life.  Come join us!  You will be happy you did! 

October 2010,  

Well, we are back in the swing of the Puerto Vallarta Season and the weather is absolutely perfect for retreats.  The Sierra's are still amazingly beautiful with a blanket of velvety green and the river has calmed to a wonderful level for sleeping.  I have completed my first two retreats for the season and they were a wonderful success.  A group from Oklahoma was here and did wonderful paintings.  Three of the guests were complete novice painters and left with a wonderful painting to take home.  One of the students was a past student of mine and made some major breakthroughs in a non traditional approach.  She began collaging and painting with abandon and added all of her experiences together and came up with some paintings fit to be hung on anyone's wall.  My second retreat was a smashing success.  We only had two guests and they were amazing sports.  We did zip lines and horseback riding and made major, major breakthroughs for each of them through the creative process.  One is a physician from North Dakota and through her journaling and painting has discovered a new way to integrate her art experiences into her practice as a physician.  My other guest has had a dream to have her own tshirt line and will have it up and running in the following year because of her process of self discovery.  I am so proud of my artist guests.  They are all Goddesses to say the least!!!  It has reactivated my interest in sharing the powerful energy of the Goddess into my future workshops.  If you go to the tab on the site regarding the Goddess workshops you will see that they are going to be available for the Equinox and the Solstice.  These workshops will incorporate art and nature experiences and will be life transforming.  Look forward to your coming and joining in these magical experiences.  

 August 1, 2010

Well, we are in the middle of summer in the tropical Sierra Madres and it is such a lush emerald green I can hardly contain myself when I look out my bedroom doors at the mountainside.  It is magic.  the Gucamaya's fly through the canyon, right over the house in the mornings while we are having our coffee.  I was really dreading the summer, as I figured I would be heavily burdened with the humidity.  But low and behold, here by the River it is so lovely and breezy I can hardly hold back my joy.  Every evening I crawl into bed and realize I need a blanket to sleep.  Who would have imagined that this would be the case.  Another reason to go ahead and book retreats in the summer.  It is actually the most beautiful time of year.  The rains are mostly at night and make quite a spectical of themselves.  Every day the river becomes more playful, well actually quite dramatic.  The sounds get louder each week as the river gets fuller and fuller.  The next astounding thing I have to share are the unbelievable banana blossoms on OUR trees at the bottom of our property.  I have never seen anything like it.  It is a miracle of nature.  I am going to do a series of them.  It is an enormous sized blossom about 12 inches long and 8 inches wide.  It is layers and layers of burgundy pedals that unfold one at a time and uncover these small green stalks that have delicate little white flowers at the ends of them.  as the largy pedal curls away and drops off the layer of small white flowers and stalks begin to develop into the bananas.  Layer after layer exposes this amazing bunch of bananas that take about a month to grow to there full potential.  I would say a stalk has approximately 100 bananas on it.  We are anxious to share our crop with our neighbors, as we certainly can't eat them all!  Look for my addition of summer session retreats for the next season in the months to come.  LIVING THE LIFE I IMAGINED!!!  Come and join us for a week of pampering, soul searching and artistic expansion!  We would love for you to be here and experience what we are experiencing.  

 July 2, 2010

Season for the retreat is finally over as of June 15th and we have been preparing for the summer months. I will be working in the studio much more now, as we will have fewer guests during the summer.   It has begun to rain lightly and the Sierra's have turned emerald green.  It is so interesting how intimate you become with nature when you are surrounded by it.  You notice every change in the trees and bushes and how the river changes its color when the rains begin.  I am creating a series of works entitled "Growing A New Life" that is all about my connection to our surroundings.  A painting begins with no preconceived idea about what will end up on the canvas.  I play with the surfaces and collage images and colored papers, words and other things with joy and abandon.  I am usually working in the studio, which has a view of the river and the natural surroundings and something will catch my eye in this mystical surroundings and it will inspire something in me to add to the canvas.  The last painting I was working on was during the first rain  and I watched the river change colors while I was working.  I smeared a brushstroke of paint the color the river had become and then wrote in the wet paint "first rain" over and over in the river.  The texture of the writings in the river will be the under texture for the finished canvas.  This process approach is such a powerful way to work.  It is so personal and comes from the heart.  You never know what will happen to a canvas.  It is always a surprise.  I am offering a class a couple of times this next season.  Check the retreat schedule to see the dates.  It is my birthday tomorrow and I am going to take a little road trip to the mountains.  I hope to get some inspirations for paintng or other things.  Happy inspirations to you!

Well,,,, where shall I begin? It is with an open heart that I begin this blog for all to share in.  I am a city girl at heart and have found myself in a simple country Colonia on the backroads of Puerto Vallarta Mexico.  After a nine month gestation period we have birthed an amazing Artist Retreat Center.  This is certainly an ongoing project with gardens, and mosaics, and painting, and hand made railings, and pond creations, and swings constructed, and studio creations; well you get the picture.  A project such as this never comes to completion.  We are working very diligently to create a nurturing space that inspires visitors to explore their personal stories through the creative process.  Our first season went quite well I think.  We are searching for other artists to come and bring groups to do workshops as well as creating our own workshops in Painting, Printmaking, Sculptural Assemblage, Journaling, Mosaic constructions and more.  It is with great joy that we are living the life we have imagined.  Shaking up one's life every once in a while is quite exhilirating.  I would have never discovered the fact that in my heart I am truly a country girl.  I so enjoy getting up in the morning and walking miss Isabella,(my adorable little yorkshire terrior) down along the river's edge.  We sometimes sit on the rocks and watch the chickens and birds and dogs and donkeys, well, once again, you get the picture.  The constant sound of the flow of the river is mesmerizing and soooo soothing.  As we walk home I am finding that bits and pieces of nature jump into my hands as precious pieces to be, someday added to a sculpture here or there.  I have come up with so many new ways of seeing the world through my art process and have come up with new and wonderful ways to share my knowledge with people who decide to visit the House of Wind and Water.  I hope, so much that people begin to find us, so that they can also discover themselves in this magical environment.