Paintings can be complete surprises and this one certainly maxed out in that category. It started with a headache. Not an ordinary headache but a completely head-busting blinger of a headache that went on all night.

I got up in the morning and it eased slightly, but not a lot. A great white light was in the center of my head, surrounded by pain. I could see it was a major energy shift happening, but it was going far too slowly to suit me.

I wondered what would happen if I put my awareness in the white light in the center of my head instead of just watching it. When I did so, I saw this image and immediately wanted to paint it. I thought the process of painting it could move me through this latest shift more rapidly. My aching head liked that idea a lot!

I went into the studio and started hunting for a stretched canvas I could use, but none were the right height/width proportion for the image I had seen. I started sorting through a stack of panels leaned against the wall and found one that looked like the right shape. When I pulled it out and turned it around, it had one of my canvas giclees laminated on it. I had not yet gotten around to hand embellishing the print.

That poor print was doomed. I put it on the easel and painted it white with my acrylics. While it dried, I laid out tracing paper on the table and drew the outlines of the image I had seen. By the time I was done, the paint was still wet.

Annoyed, I got out the heat gun and played it across the paint. I am happy to say I did not set it on fire. The paint hastily dried and I took it to the table. A sheet of graphite paper let me trace the outline onto the canvas and I soon was painting.

My head still ached horribly, but somehow I was really enjoying painting. I kept at it like a woman possessed and the headache gradually eased. The last of it finally disappeared by 3 p.m. I finished the painting at 6 p.m. and was just cleaning my brushes when my artist husband came in the door.

I asked him to go down to the studio to see something. He assumed I was going to show him my progress on When A Flower Dreams, a painting I was in the midst of creating. When he saw this unexpected abstract on the easel his immediate response was, “Where in the hell did that come from?”

As he looked at it I explained how the painting came to be. He said I should have headaches more often and that he wished he had painted it. He likes most of my work but I have never heard him say that about any of my other paintings.

I had not told him the title was Metamorphosis. So I was delighted when he said, “If there was anywhere to put it, which there is not, but if there was and if it was me, I would paint a butterfly in it.” Abstract or not, it had clearly communicated to him.

That, along with the fact my headache was completely gone, was quite enough for me.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2010. All Rights Reserved.

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My plein air painter friend was having a frustrating time by the lake. Everything that could go wrong with his painting simply went wrong, repeatedly.

In exasperation, he began to scrape the paint off the board yet again. One of the many geese in the area wandered up beside him but he busily continued scraping paint.

Imagine his surprise when the miffed goose bit him in the butt!

He turned and looked down at the goose. He rather liked the lines and color of the annoying creature.

He turned his full attention to the goose and began to paint it rather than the overworked landscape that had been distressing him. The goose refrained from any more biting.

This particular artist now has a whole series of relaxed and playful goose paintings underway.

I think this is a great example of how a new opportunity sometimes has to bite us in the butt to get our attention.

In my friend’s case, he ended up having fun with painting again. Now when he paints landscapes, they also have that playful spirit to them, which he had gradually lost until that day by the lake.

Maybe it would be good to just notice the geese without having to have one bite us in the butt. What interesting new geese are showing up in your life right now?

This post is included in the Carnival of Creative Growth, Personal Development Articles, and the Carnival of Self Mastery. Each includes other interesting article you may enjoy browsing, so have a look!

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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I looked at the envelope and wondered what I would find inside. The first few months after I was finished with my work on this book about painting flowers, I was so sick of the entire project I did not want to see any part of it.

A huge amount of work had been crammed into a short period of time with some intense deadlines. The process certainly took its toll on me.

As time passed I recovered from the worst of those pressures and my aversion to seeing the work gradually transformed into an apprehension about the finished book. Would the colors be accurate? I had complained about some of the blues in particular in the proofs.

I did not want to cringe every time I looked at the images. So I quietly worried about the color, but the book was going through the printing process so it was clearly out of my hands.

My friends asked if I was excited about the book being published and were surprised when I answered that I just hoped I would be ready to look at all that stuff again when it was done.

So there it lay, hidden from view in the envelope. I took my scissors out of the drawer and cut the end off the envelope. Out came the book.

I immediately liked the cover, which at least was a good start. The final title on the Australian version under the imprint of Simon and Schuster was The Acrylic Painter’s A-Z of Flowers. I think the American version has a slightly different title.

As I looked through the book, relief rose as I saw page after page with excellent color reproduction. The results were better than the proofs, better than I had hoped.

The art department at Quarto also did a wonderful job on the layouts. They had to compress a great deal of instructional information into a small space without losing clarity, all the while showing the finished floral paintings to advantage.

I found myself well pleased with the results. Now, unexpectedly, I really am excited!

RiverStone Gallery will be featuring the book at a book signing event in November, the date to be announced. Or autographed copies can be purchased directly from my new art blog. Contact Lexi Sundell if you want to participate, even if by long distance.

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Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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The journey I have taken has been challenging but always interesting. Like many people I tried out a few dead ends before my own inner creative purposes asserted themselves.

I remember living in Canada as a young mother, leaving my educational pursuits to raise a child. I thought I was doing the right thing at the time.

I still painted for awhile, but gradually quit, not quite noticing how my supposedly loving husband derailed me in that process. I remember going into galleries and admiring the artwork with a deep sadness. I knew I could create high caliber work if I applied myself, but my life was taking me a different direction, so I only watched what others did.

All that ended when my husband went violently insane. Suddenly, it became vital for my child that I pursue my creative interests, instead of those interests being in conflict with raising her. This was an entirely shocking change, but one that brought its own gifts.

Pottery as a Creative Solution

I sold some furniture and bought a kiln, potter’s wheel, and supplies. I began making pots like a woman possessed. I have always loved wheel work and it calms me during times of high stress. To give you a clue about the stress at the time, during one week alone I threw over 800 pots.

I nearly made it back to the states undamaged, but a week before I finally got an Ontario Supreme Court custody order that allowed me to take my Canadian born daughter to the U.S.A. with me, my deranged spouse nearly killed me by breaking into the house and pounding my head on the floor.

Recovery from my concussion was long and difficult. Working clay is a highly manual form of creativity and my damaged neck was slow to adjust to the strains of it.

Stuffed Toy Design Adventures

As a temporary solution I started sewing stuffed toys on a piecework basis in Boulder, Nevada, where I was getting divorced. The women then refused to pay me, which did not greatly surprise me since I had suspected they were not too trustworthy.

I went to a store in town and got an order for some Easter chicks and a little elephant I had designed on my own. All was well. I bought fabric and was sewing busily.

Then the order was cancelled. I checked around and discovered the ladies had gone behind my back to get my order cancelled, even though we no longer had anything to do with each other.

I had a really good temper tantrum at that point. I hopped in my van, drove to Las Vegas and stomped all over town looking at every toy shop. The most upscale one I could find was Nancy’s Playhouse in MGM Grand Hotel.

I sailed up to the owner and announced I was a designer recently arrived from Toronto and how would they like an exclusive luxury line of stuffed toys designed for them? She immediately liked the idea.

When in a jam I can usually make it worse, so before I left I had promised the designs would all be copyrighted, etc. I had no idea how to do that of course. She asked me to bring some samples in two weeks.

Somewhat in shock, I went and found a phone booth. I called my attorney and asked him how you copyright stuffed toys. Bewildered, he replied, “I thought you were getting a divorce?”

After I clarified the matter, he referred me to a copyright specialist and I got the information I needed for a mere $26.

The next problem was actually designing the toys. I had made the one experimental elephant, but no others. Designing clothing is much easier as it has to follow the human form.

Toys have no such restrictions, curves compound each other when sewn together, and myriads of other factors arise. I definitely did not want bland characterless toys, even though those would be easy. I wanted ones with strong personality.

I drank a cup of tea every time I got stuck on a pattern. A tea bag count later revealed I drank over 70 cups of tea in that two weeks. I was really sick of tea.

By the time I had my samples ready my initial temper tantrum was gone and sheer terror had replaced it. With over a dozen toys ready I had to go show them to the staff at Nancy’s Playhouse.

Gathering my nerves as best I could, I took the two huge boxes into the shop. I stood there in shock as the staff eagerly pulled the samples one by one from the boxes. They were gleefully laughing at the toys, hugging them, and generally falling in love with the crazy characters I had created.

My next discovery was that while it might (and might not) be fun to design a toy, it is much less fun to sew 25 of them. That is simply rote work without any creative juice to it.

Nonetheless, I made stuffed toys for Nancy’s Playhouse and another line I designed for the Merrymaker in Scottsdale. I did what I had to do until my body began healing enough to return to the clay.

Pottery as Solution Again

After a few years I was at last getting a full schedule in the clay studio going and had a clientele for my pottery. A car wreck then undid much of the healing and I found myself unable to work in the clay again.

Jewelry as Unexpected Creative Outlet

At that time I unexpectedly was offered a job at a military and class ring manufacturing company for which I had not even applied. I found I had an aptitude for jewelry work and pursued it with a single minded intensity.

Soon I was once again at home, supporting my daughter with jewelry design from a studio there. The inspiration of lost wax processes carried me through another cycle of my life.

Painting and Creative Expansion

I moved from Arizona to the state of Washington and met the wonderful man who is now my husband. We create jewelry together, we both paint, and our creative drives are the foundation of our deepest sharing.

For me, the times of greatest expansion have always come when I honored that indomitable creative spark within me. Denying that core of inspiration has been detrimental any time I have done so.

The great thing about following my inner spark is that it has led to greater and greater creative expression, which then made its own path through the world. The process is as natural, and as surprising, as the unfolding of a flower.

The hisbiscus painting was a special commission, 48″ wide by 36″ high in acrylic on canvas. More of Lexi Sundell’s work can be seen at RiverStone Gallery.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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What on earth is going on?

Well, I am actually nowhere near any sewing machines and all the petals are flying in the form of pixels. I think I have gotten a bit punch drunk from staring at the screen and processing images for hours on end.

I took a notion to do something playful with my flower paintings, so I set about to create a collection of t-shirts with Printfection. This led to a creative explosion of t-shirt designs and colors, all right here in my slightly cranky computer.

Now I have a basic storefront opened at Printfection called Flowers by Sundell. It is a lot of fun to take an artwork and do something completely different with it from time to time. This was one of those moments. Actually, it grew into quite a few of those moments.

The project rapidly doubled, tripled, and leaped out of control, as creativity run amok sometimes does. My husband wanted, no surprise, his fly fishing paintings on tees as well. So he now has a storefront open called Fly Fishing by Sundell.

This is the man who does not use computers, so you know who did all this…

The fish swam through the flowers, fly lines tangling in the stamens, as I slowly lost my mind somewhere in the forest of pixels.

You are welcome to enjoy the results while I go find some ice cream, chocolate, or other such sinful pleasure to recover my senses.

This article appears in the following carnivals:
Arts & Stuff Carnival
Carnival of the Creators

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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So I am working with a looser, more textured look with vivid colors bursting out of the textures. I am finally having some fun with this one. The painting had been going slowly because I was not well for a few days.

At certain times it is not particularly pleasant to have a painting in progress visible to the public. Paintings can go through chaotic and quite ugly phases when you paint in multiple layers. This one has been a bit extreme in that regard. Fortunately it is pulling together now and I no longer cringe when someone walks in the gallery.

I had better get it done and clear those weeds out of the garden, or I will have to continue painting seashells by default. Or perhaps I should just start a weed series?

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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The customer had a size 8 ½ finger, which is fairly small for a man, and wanted a 14k gold ring that weighed a minimum of five ounces. Consider that a thick and substantial gold ring may only weigh half an ounce and you immediately see the problem.

Cramming that much weight into a size 8 ½ ring and still having it wearable was an enormous problem. To aggravate matters further, this particular customer also wanted an eagle head on top of the ring with an assortment of diamonds added. Nothing would be spared in making this mess as gaudy as possible.

Creativity and customer demands can be a challenging combination. Over the years my creativity has been misused by the peculiar requirements of some customers such as this one. His “Omigod Ring” is clearly the worst example that comes to mind.

Frankly, if it had been my shop I would have declined the order, but it was not my shop and the owner wanted the ten thousand dollars under the table. This customer was hiding from the IRS, ex-wives, and who knows what else so he paid cash only for his purchases.

Technical concerns dominated the project, greatly to the detriment of the design. After considering the metal shrinkage percentages I concluded that the ring would severely distort the eagle in the casting process. The solution was to make the eagle as a separate disk that would fasten into the top of the ring.

Soldering the disk into that huge a mass seemed like a poor choice. So the disk had to be cold riveted into place. This would involve drilling a hole for the tube through the main mass of the ring. Unfortunately that would also reduce the weight of the ring.

The customer did not greatly care about how we created the ring, but he was adamant it had to weigh at least five ounces, no matter what. His aesthetic sense must have been stillborn is all I have to say.

I started creating the wax model for the ring. Weighing the wax and then using the correct multiplier gives you an approximate weight for the cast piece. I had to allow extra for the hole to be drilled and for all the finishing processes which remove metal.

Since a ring cannot be too thick between the fingers for wearability, and only so much can be added on the palmside, the only choice was building the top higher and wider to add enough weight. My revulsion at doing a run-and-drip design dissolved into amusement at the ridiculous extremes of the ring.

As the only gram scale was on the main floor, I would descend from my private loft occasionally to weigh the wax. Every time I appeared with this ever growing wax model, the staff would take one look and gasp, “Omigod!”

I, too, was astonished at how much wax it took to achieve the desired weight. The project grew and grew like a giant unseemly fungus.

I thought it was nearly a criminal waste of perfectly good jewelry materials. Actually, it may have been criminal, as the last I knew the IRS and others had finally caught up to this man and plopped him in jail. Until that time he used the ring for his Vegas gambling visits.

I no longer accept work like that. I do enjoy the challenge of creating large jewelry pieces that actually have design integrity and beauty. My creative burnout disappeared when I finally started saying “No” to ill-founded projects like the Omigod Ring. It is far easier to refuse these orders working from my own gallery, RiverStone Gallery.

This post is included in the Carnival of the Creators, and I suggest you go look at the other fine articles in the collection.

This post is also included in the Arts and Stuff Carnival along with other interesting articles.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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I find it disconcerting to be sketching on a large new canvas only to have my pencil snatched by an enthusiastic puppy who madly runs away with it. Furthermore Cosmo is far too fascinated by the handles of my paintbrushes sticking out of the gallon bucket of water I keep beside my easel.

Compounding these ongoing dilemmas is his cheery desire to drink from that same water bucket, because I use cadmium paints in my work. I don’t want to poison the little guy, but it is a tough sell to a puppy that it is ok to drink from the gallon metal bucket but not from the plastic one with the tasty looking brushes in it.

Initially I leashed him to my roller chair so he would not wander away and eat an expensive hand woven basket or something. He loves feet, shoes, and most particularly boots, so he was delighted to plaster himself all over my feet making it impossible for me to move freely while painting.

The next innovation was to bring his crate to the gallery and leave him off the leash. If he wandered out of the safe zone around my easel and refused to come when called, he ended up in the crate for a time out. He quickly learned to hang around the easel.

While he is a mellow little dog, he does have his rambunctious puppy moments. My husband paints with his easel next to mine. I arrived at the gallery to find my patient husband Bern thoroughly exasperated with the frisky pup yesterday morning.

I constantly use CCT, short for Crystalline Consciousness Technique™, but primarily for human beings. I decided to try setting up group fields for the puppy, my husband, and myself with the intention of harmonious interaction.

Setting up fields is a quick but powerful CCT energy process which balances either an individual’s or a group’s energy field with a specified intention, giving much more resilience and stability through the day. I wanted to see how the puppy would respond to the process since my husband and I both needed to focus on our paintings.

Cosmo surprised my husband by promptly settling down to quietly playing with his chew toys or taking naps. He was agreeable and easy to have in the gallery, if one is willing to overlook the shreds of wood on the carpet from his favorite chew stick. I greatly prefer shreds of a harmless stick to shreds of artwork, so that worked well.

This morning I had a couple of unexpected errands, so I again arrived at the gallery after my husband. The pup was in the crate, asleep. He apparently had been a complete pill and Bern had put him in the crate in order to be able to paint.

Cosmo woke soon after I arrived. Bern took him outside to do his business and brought the now fully awake pup back inside the gallery. Cosmo was immediately into everything, biting brush handles, trying to drink from the wrong water bucket, barking, and generally making an absolute nuisance of himself. Bern said that was why he had been put in the crate earlier.

I did a really fast CCT setting up of the group fields again, using the same intention of harmonious interaction. Once again, the pup instantly mellowed and began peacefully amusing himself with his toys.

For the next five hours, he napped and played without having to be put in his crate. My husband was quite boggled by the change. He kept asking me what I had done to the puppy.

Puppies are puppies, and they do need to have lively exercise sooner or later. By four o’clock he obviously was ready for something more vigorous. I had painted as far as I intended to go for the day, so I took him home and let him run to his heart’s content in the yard for awhile.

You can bet I will be setting up group fields including the puppy again tomorrow!

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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What energy goes into the painting when the artist touches brush to canvas? This may not be a common question, but much is revealed in the answers. I learned many times over that what I hold in my personal energy when I paint is what shows in the painting.

As a simple example, long ago in high school I was attempting to paint the portrait of a friend of mine. It was not going too badly until I got to the chin. No matter how carefully and precisely I rendered it, the chin looked wrong. I checked angles, proportions, etc. and nothing helped. Finally, in a fit of temper I grabbed my brush and made one fast swoop thinking nothing but “Judy’s chin.”

At that moment it turned into Judy’s chin on the canvas. Dead measurements made a dead chin that did not work. Getting angry enough to bypass all my mental calculations, however briefly, allowed a different energy to enter, the essential energy of how I saw Judy’s chin.

My great Uncle Mike was an accomplished artist and also well known in our family for the powerful temper we called The Lanshaw Roar. I once went to look at one of his most recent paintings of the Leland fishing shanties.

The painting was done in soft grays typical of weathered wood buildings. The small yellow flower splats in the foreground caught my eye and I started to chuckle. He wanted to know why. I said he must have really been having a fit of temper when he painted those flowers.

He looked surprised, a little embarrassed to be caught, and then started harrumphing about how the foreground had been annoying him. He did not have to tell me, those flowers had already said it.

Paintings by their nature evoke energetic responses in those who see them. The same pile of materials lying there not yet made into a painting does not evoke those same responses. Something happens in the painting process that transcends the materials and the overtly physical nature of those materials.

After mastering the basic techniques of their medium, artists can then turn their attention to harnessing and focusing the energies within them to create work which takes the viewer into a different energetic realm. This is the arena where I personally find creative work most interesting and challenging.

Now I invite you to share with me stories of the energies of paintings you have seen or created. What were those energies like and what was the result for those who viewed the paintings?

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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What we call failure is actually a learning process, a method of gathering information. If recognized in this way, life transforms into an enthusiastic and successful adventure. Such feedback gives us the information we need to proceed further.

Many artists hesitate to start a new canvas because they want to be sure they have it perfected before they begin. They fear they will not execute it correctly and continually delay the actual painting process, sometimes to the point they never paint again.

My artist husband has a great statement for these people. “You just have to put some paint on!” Nothing really happens until the paint goes on the canvas. Maybe that paint is utterly wrong with color that does not work, shapes that lack the right form, etc. It does not matter.

Once the paint is on the canvas, the artist can engage in the process of adjusting colors and shapes until they do work. The artist’s mind is then occupied with solving the myriad challenges the painting presents, instead of stewing in imagined misunderstandings of the creative process. The painting is now underway with the promise of many changes to come.

What happens if the painting itself never works out? What if it simply is a dreadful painting? Frankly, it is perfectly ok to burn a canvas. Sometimes that is the best thing to do with certain canvases.

The truth is that failed paintings often are more helpful than the ones that easily succeed, because easy success does not cultivate an awareness of the elements that actually created the success. Failed paintings, however, when fully understood, are great teachers of the elements necessary for success.

Bad paintings are simply part of a progression to better paintings and can be significant mileposts along the way. Better yet, with a healthy attitude, they can be creative launching pads for unexpected success.

I once knew an artist who took this approach to interesting extremes. Disgusted with a painting, he might bury it in his backyard or throw it in the swimming pool and leave it there for several months.

When he retrieved the work, he had to replace the stretcher frame as it generally was ruined by then. Sometimes great chunks of paint peeled off as well. The painting was greatly changed from when he quit working with it. He would get excited about new possibilities in the wreckage and go on to create a satisfying work from it.

How many of us have had failures in our lives which we handled that well? How many opportunities have we missed because we judged the events to be total failures that had no potential to become anything different?

The artist demonstrated another helpful technique in that he detached himself from the painting by ignoring it for a time. When he returned to it, not only had the painting changed, but he himself had changed and was ready to see it with new eyes.

At any time we choose, we can revisit old events we deem to have been failures and see what new and transformed qualities we can lift from them. This creates a great freedom of expansion and a platform for further success.

This exemplifies a healthy approach to painting, and to life. We just have to give ourselves permission to fail so that we can wholeheartedly engage in the process that genuinely creates success.

This post appears in Bryan C. Fleming’s Personal Growth Carnival, along with a great collection of articles.

This post also appears in the Personal Development Carnival hosted by the Urban Monk, which has an interesting collection of creative articles.

This post is included in the Carnival of Powerful Living, and I recommend you check out the other articles as well.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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