Mask

Last night's painting exercise at Art & Soul was on the subject of Emotions. We talked about emotions, what they're for, the ability to identify and name how you're feeling, your EQ versus your IQ.

I find it hard identifying emotions. I learned very young how to repress them, to categorize them into "good" and "bad", "right" and "wrong". In my adult life I've hidden them, denied them, reigned them in to keep the peace, hidden how I really feel.

To the point where I have lost the ability to know what I'm feeling and feel what I'm feeling.

But with this exercise I found myself going inside myself. I painted in silence. I painted deliberately, carefully...and the paint seemed to just flow to express the two extremes.

But I feel as though I live somewhere in the in-between - where I know that this rage rages and this deep depression weeps but the SSRI's from the Lexapro just keeps me in this balanced state; feeling a sense of calm relief. The in-between's really not so bad when I think of the alternative...and I'm still in touch with what's underneath to be able to produce good art.

But since producing the mask I have kept looking at it...and I look at it in silence, almost reverently. It disturbs me somewhat - not in a bad way, but where I know that these two extremes do have a voice that deserve to be heard.

And I think with my art, I am learning how to give expression to those voices.

Seeds of ideas

This weekend was faster than a speeding bullet. Honestly. Maybe this was because I worked for half a day on Friday and by the time I got home it was after 3:30. My weekend usually starts on Thursdays these days. At the moment I love the fact that I usually work three days and am off for four. It makes things so much more easy to cope with.


Well, I think I have the final word on Bessie. With all the repairs and rebulding that needs to be done she's going to cost me a good $5,500. I don't want to spend that on an old car that's done about 850,000k's. I want to put that money towards a little car that's going to get me around. Jimmy at the garage handed me a list as long as my arm of things that need doing to the car and then said he'd keep it there over the weekend while I decided. It wasn't driveable anyway. So, after trudging all the way there in the rain (I went there straight from the train station) I trudged all the way home again. In the rain. I was freezing by the time I got home. This walking everywhere really sucks in the winter. Especially in Melbourne.


So now I have a month to find myself a new vehicle. J and I have agreed to a cut off date as to when he will stop coming to my place early in the morning to take G to school. It is a reasonable request and I have agreed to it. He comes out of his way to do it and has been most helpful whilst I've been carless, but he can't do it forever. I understand that. I'm going to have a look at a few local car yards this week and see what's on offer, see what they'll give me as a trade-in and what I can afford. I've never bought a car on my own before so this is a whole new world to me...and I'm kind of a little excited about it.


On Saturday I went with a group of my Kaleidoscope friends to paint a nine-panel group painting for a women's conference that my friend Michelle was speaking at. We (the artists) didn't know what the end piece was going to look like, but we were given a canvas already marked out, as well as the paints we were to use so the chances of success were really high. I was as nervous as heck to start off with. I'd never done this kind of thing before and I'm a relatively new artist so I was scared of stuffing it up. (It’s got to be RIGHT and it's got to be PERFECT!) We had to paint our panel within the space of a song.


As soon as the music started I began to relax. I think the title of the song did it for me - What Have You Got to Lose - by Third Day. What did I have to lose? Nothing. Why was I so afraid? There was no reason. So I painted. And in the end we put our pieces together...

My piece is the top left hand corner. As you can see, I envisaged the light coming from the right. *shrugs*
I love it with all its imperfection.

This is one of the best things that has happened to me so far this year - finding Kaleidoscope. I'm starting to take risks there. I'm extending the hand of friendship and accepting offers of friendship. I'm being challenged...in a good way. I am starting to have seeds of ideas growing...seeing where this art can lead, wanting to be involved in Kaleidoscope's social justice programs - things that have nothing to do with "religion" and everything to do with community involvement. There's talk about taking an abridged version of Art & Soul to the girls working the streets in one of our local suburbs...and I find my heart wanting to jump at the opportunity and get involved. For some reason I find myself wanting to work with them...to find out more about them...to see where their hearts are and what led them into the life they have...

Maybe that's a part of my healing too......I can't explain my reasoning really......it doesn't make sense on one hand, but perfect sense on the other....


Art & Soul excites me like nothing else has for a long time. I don't want it to end...and because of that I want to offer to come to the next program and help out in any way possible...mixing paints, helping facilitate the groups afterwards, get involved in Art for Justice. It makes me want to give back to something that has given so much to me.


Friendships are forming. Kel comes and picks me up every Thursday night for A&S and we spend the next 30 mins talking on our way to Pakenham. We are both going solo to a Dinner & Dance fundraiser for Operation Hope on September 8, so Kel has offered to pick me up and we'll both spend the evening busting a move on the dance floor. My new friend Kerrie picked me up for the group painting thing and we too spend the trip talking and finding more out about each other. It's been great. I'm starting to feel less isolated...but then again I am taking more risks and LETTING people in, as opposed to me hiding away in my cave and not wanting to be a bother to anyone.


Because people want to help. It's not a bother. I'm not a bother....and I'm slowly learning that. It's ok to say, "I'd love to come but I need a lift," or "I don't know what to do about getting a car so can you please give me some advice." The guy who comes around to do my lawns every few weeks no longer wants to be paid. He knows I'm on my own, he knows finances are strained, so he just comes past, checks the lawn and if it needs mowing he does it and just leaves. He stopped me in the street one day and told me that it's ok and not to worry about it.


I am surrounded by more lovely people than not......and when nasty incidents like last week happen I need to remind myself of that. Sometimes the quiet beauty of the majority of people gets lost amongst the noise and cacophony of the not so nice few.

Softly, softly

Image credit

Quietly, quietly.

It's a fragile day today. I don't do confrontation well. Actually I don't do it at all.....but I was confronted big time over Facebook last night. I'm not going into it....but how did 45 year old me handle it? Me, the person who is old enough to be that person's mother lay down and just let that person run rough shod all over me. I backed right down, apologised profusely and apportioned all the blame to me. Just to make the person stop. Just to make the person calm down. Just so that that person could be the good one and me the bad and they'd calm down and leave me alone.

So much for being a grey-dweller. I still want there to be black and white, right and wrong, good and evil.
All this played out as I was taking the train home. I was teary on the train but when I got home I just sobbed and sobbed. Couldn't do anything. Couldn't make dinner, couldn't get off the couch. Fell asleep watching Super 8, on the couch. Again. This morning I got up, had a shower and left for work. No breakfast. I've eaten a banana and an apple today...and had a latte. I didn't go out for my lunch time walk. Being glued to this seat in my office is...safe.

I can't believe the impact this has had on me. It shouldn't, I know...but it has...and I feel like half a person today. Wrong just seems to ooze out of my pores...all from a non-rational decision I made last week. I don't know why I did what I did....and it really wasn't a huge thing...but in the age of social media and the importance we all place on it, it apparently IS a big thing...and now the price is being paid.

I think I actually hate communicating over the internet...It makes people way too bold, takes away their inhibitions, makes them forget the importance of being gracious and polite. People just say things they may not say if they were face to face - because they're not face-to-face and they don't see first hand the impact their words are having. They can just type them and then click SEND and close their browser....not knowing or caring that when those words hit they may just put a fragile someone over the edge...

And despite all my positivity lately, despite the inroads I'm making into my own healing, despite the progress I'm making, I'm still incredibly fragile........and it wasn't until the events of yesterday evening that I discovered that.

In which she completes her first abstract



We got to use COLOUR this week!

Art & Soul is the highlight of my week. Four weeks into it and I already don't want it to end. Last night was the first time I felt totally relaxed whilst painting - although it possibly didn't look like it because I was the last person to finish the base colours and had to be told to hurry several times.

This piece doesn't have a name....and I've just realised I didn't initial it. I should have. We were encouraged to draw the profile of a face in charcoal on the left hand side of the canvas, saying the words. "forehead, nose, lips, chin, neck" as we did so. Then we were instructed to draw the same profile on the right hand side of the page without saying the words. It was to help in switching from our left brain to our right. I was ok until I got to the chin and then it was like I had a mental blank and my hand didn't know how to draw the curve of the chin. Interesting. We were then instructed to bisect the drawings with several lines with our eyes open and then with them closed. We then painted each shape with different dark and light shades of the one colour (mine was orange). After all the shapes were filled with colour and the paint was dry we taped five pieces of masking tape over the canvas and painted swirls and lines in a contrast colour. The tape was taken off, the paint dried and then we repeated this process in a different contrast. The results are seen above. I'm pleased with it, although sad I seem to have obliterated the left hand face. Still, I'm going to give this one another try at home. I enjoyed this process so much.

After the painting class we have some supper and then head into group for discussion on the week's theme. I am getting a lot from these discussions - namely the realisation of how far I have travelled over this past year since separating from my husband. I think it's a combination of things - time, medication - but the biggest factors that have helped me move forward is acceptance and being kind to myself.

Is this what I planned for my life? No, but this is my life. I have stopped fighting against it. I have stopped ranting and railing at the universe, saying how unfair life is and how things SHOULD be better. I've accepted things the way they are, doing my best to just take care of my little corner of the world. I can't change anything external, but I can change what is internal. I am responsible for my own responses, choices, behaviours and thoughts. I may not understand other people, but I can just accept that they are responding to life from their own perspective...and that may be totally foreign to me....and that's ok.

I've opened my mind to different ways of thinking, different schools of thought, different philosophies. It's been kind of freeing. Actually, not just kind of.....it HAS been freeing. I've embraced being a grey dweller. I used to want the world to be in black and white, right and wrong, good and evil, "This is what the rules are". It's not....and I'm finally ok with that. I accept that there are no answers sometimes and that sometimes things just don't make sense. I've always looked for someone or some place to have all the answers; especially in the area of faith. I used to think that there was only one place that had it right - the gospel in all it's fullness. I don't think that anymore...mainly because I realise that God in all His fullness is MUCH bigger than that and THAT place only had a miniscule idea of what He's really like. I think God accepts more stuff than they give him credit for.......

(sidetracked!)

So......this abstract was good for me....because the process of actually DOING this painting was a real reflection of what's happening in my life at the moment. A letting go of......stuff that I thought was "me" but wasn't really. For the first time in 40-something years I feel like I'm working out who I am.

The Tuesday Ten

Ladies and gentlemen.

We interrupt Leisa's current musings with a list of TEN random facts you may or may not know (or even want to know!) about this strange creature.



1. She loves disaster movies. As a child she had a love/hate relationship with them. Watching such films as Towering Inferno, Crack in the Earth ,and Airport 77, made her both excited and terrified. Now she just loves them. Poseidon, 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, The Core? …bring them on!

2. She cannot, for the life of her, understand why shows such as Yo Gabba Gabba, Boobahs, In the Night Garden and Teletubbies exist. She has looked at them and the little 3 year old Leisa that still exists in there somewhere, cringes and feels kind of frightened and disturbed. The surreal quality of Boobahs is downright scary to her! What ever happened to intelligent children’s programming like Play School? It’s run with a tried & tested formula in this country for as long as she's been alive. It’s intelligent, real, interesting & gently introduces children to real concepts. Why all these wigged-out trips that make you think the writers have been on acid?

3. Giant waves and very windy days scared the living daylights out of her as a child. She still feels that tremble when she sees them now but she's also fascinated by them and is drawn to them. She’d love to go with a team of storm chasers across Oklahoma one day.

4. One of her dreams is to journey through Israel and visit as many Biblical sites as possible
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5. She'd love to do singing lessons and do backing vocals for a well known band or someone. Just once. It would be awesome.

6. When she sings along to a song by Kiss she normally likes singing Gene Simmons’ parts. She seems to be able to sing them better.

7. Don’t dare her to do anything. She’ll possibly try. Don’t tell her she can’t do something because she’ll prove to you that she can, one way or another.

8. She often looks at one of her sisters and think that if she wasn’t born with achondroplasia she would most likely look like her. It’s a strange feeling to her.

9. She’d rather clean toilets than do the ironing.

10. She sometimes finds it difficult watching films that have short statured people in them. She finds it confronting.

MuchAfraid Transforming

One of my favorite books is called "Hinds Feet On High Places" written by Hannah Hurnard in 1955. It's a work of fiction depicting the spiritual journey of a girl called Much Afraid and her two companions Sorrow and Suffering as they transform to become Grace & Glory, Joy and Peace. I read it several times as a young adult and drew a lot of comfort from it, despite it's quaint language and older style of writing. It reminds me of my Nanna. I don't know why. It just does.

Good things are happening. I feel peace within for the first time in the longest time. I'm just going with it, you know. I'm not scared of if and when that little bubble there in the corner will burst. Maybe one day it will, but I feel I'm getting stronger every day to be able to cope with it. I am realising every day that I am beginning to reach out and become part of a community that is warm and welcoming and encouraging, and as I do that I am becoming more confident and daring to believe that I am liked, maybe even loved, respected and valued. I posted my August goals in my Notes section on Facebook and last night one of my new friends at Art & Soul approached me and said, "Leisa, I want to help you fulfil one of your goals. I'd love to catch up with you for coffee. I can't for the next fortnight, but after that, I'd love to catch up." 

So cool.

Painting last night was a joy. All of a sudden, the terror of getting it just right vanished and I simply painted for the sheer pleasure of it, pouring love into what I was doing. My painting represents the one relationship I feel I have succeeded at - the one with my kids - so I just let myself go with it and relaxed. As I did so I saw that painting transform into something I was truly proud of. I learned so much about shading and contour with that painting, but more importantly I learned some things about myself. This is what Art & Soul is about. It's amazing. Two weeks in and I already don't want it to end. I'm pouring everything I've got into Art & Soul. I'm a firm believer in the notion that you only get out of something what you put into it. I want to learn how to paint at Art & Soul, but I also want to learn more about me and from that move into a better future, rather than be stuck in the place I've been for so long. I feel it happening. I'm daring to believe.