This is not live painting.
It’s not erotic dance.
It’s a story about life itself. And that story is inherently erotic.
Not erotic in the limited way we’ve been taught to understand the word, but erotic as lifeforce. As creative power. As the pulse that moves through us and expands us through cycles of death and rebirth, darkness and light, frailty and fullness.
As Audre Lorde writes: “The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the personification of love in all its aspects — born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce…”
This is the story @thehealingcello and I have been exploring through EMERGENCE for the past year. These clips are from our latest rendition performed at @seattle_erotic last weekend.
Every time we perform this piece, it changes. It grows and morphs into something new, and I continue to recognize that this exploration is at the center of everything I create — what I teach in my workshops, what my book is about, and what my art exploration is about.
If we can expand our understanding of eroticism into a deeper sense of aliveness — something that moves us to create, transform, and fully inhabit ourselves — then we can begin to notice the seasons moving through our lives instead of resisting them.
I’m deeply grateful to keep performing this work in different spaces and forms, and to allow it to truly have a life of its own.
You can watch the full performance here: https://youtu.be/yWMZ27JmN20
The sound is a bit rough because of the performance space, but thank you for watching and witnessing.
How Synchronicity Can Guide Your Life & Your Art
I'm sitting on my porch on this particularly lovely spring morning, marveling at all the seeming synchronicities that have brought me to this moment in my life and in my art.
This past weekend, my collaborator @thehealingcello and I performed our signature piece EMERGENCE at the largest venue yet.
How this piece was birthed and has developed is a fantastic example of how synchronicity works in our lives and in the creative process when we live in the flow state.
By creating the conditions for flow, we allow life to support us, instead of chasing or controlling outcomes through hustle.
This is what I teach and how I try to live each day.
To hear the entire story, or for more tips about how to live in flow, sign up for my newsletter- this one will be dropping this week.
/newsletter-signup
Clickable link is in the bio
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#synchronicities #theflowstate #somaticart #seattleartist #performanceart
Next Saturday @thehealingcello and I will be performing our signature piece (but even sexier) @seattle_erotic .
I’ve been working on some exciting new additions to this performance and I can’t wait to share it with you.
@seattle_erotic for tickets.
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#seattleeroticartfestival #seattledancers #seattleartscene #seattleartist #cello
Nature • is a PATHWAY
to our body
to wisdom
to regulation
to connection
it is an extension of our nervous system and vitality.
Nature shows us how to grow, how to create, how to allow and how to communicate.
Listen to what it says without words.
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#natureinspiration #natureinspiredart #pnw #pnwexplorations
Who doesn’t love a good behind the scenes montage? Esther @estherloopstrastudio and I listened to a lot of great late 90s to early aughts rock during this session.
When I was young I watched a movie called The Fantastic Voyage, about a group of scientists shrunk down and implanted into a human body.
I was struck at the possibility of seeing an ordinarily imperceptible network from the vantage point of a landscape you could navigate and engage with.
I became fascinated with biology, psychology, and systems in general.
Looking back now, I think that I was trying to make sense of this sensitive body that I was in, and who I was when all I could feel was everyone else around me.
Since then, I’ve been driven to explore how we relate to these networks that sustain us on both a biological and energetic level.
My work dives into the deep interconnectedness of our bodies, nature, and each other.
How do we regulate? How do we express? How do we contain ourselves? How can we learn from nature the things that have become so foreign to us?
This piece is a linoprint from 2020 called The information I Contain. It was around this time when I really began to understand what my work was about.
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. #AbstractNature #EcoArt #OrganicArt #BiophilicArt #ArtInspiredByNature
Collaboration with artist and writer Esther Loopstra @estherloopstrastudio . I wanted to capture the raw energy of her live art performances. So much fun to play around
“No being is purely individual; nothing comprises only itself. Everything is composed of foreign cells, foreign symbionts, foreign thoughts. This makes each life-form less like an individual warrior and more like a tiny universe, tumbling extravagantly through life like the fireflies orbiting one in night. Being alive means participating in permanent community and continually reinventing oneself as part of an immeasurable network of relationships.”
― Andreas Weber, Matter and Desire: An Erotic Ecology
A Raging Sea
24”x18”
Mixed media on paper, mounted to wood panel
DM for inquiry
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#AbstractNature #EcoArt #OrganicArt #BiophilicArt #ArtInspiredByNature
Yesterday I shared my expressive writing process with my workshop @siderailcollective .
This is the first time I put words to this practice that has naturally flowed from my free writing.
I’ve been using stream of consciousness writing for years, but when I really began getting to core emotions, my brain was moving too fast to write them.
This kind of scribbling was a way to feel them more deeply, get them out, and also ensure that no one could ever read them 😝.
When I was done scribbling, the line had a kind of energy that is hard to reproduce without connecting to something deep within.
It felt like a code, a secret.
Longing, desire, embedded in a mark.
It reminded me of Cy Twombly’s quote in response to critics who said his work was childish.
Getting back to our essence is not easy.
This is the work. This is the work.
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#expression #expressionist #expressionistart #cytwombly #intuitiveart
What an amazing Equinox evening @queenjanemusic with @thehealingcello !
We performed EMERGENCE but also a bit of improvisational poetry, sound and drawing.
Thanks everyone for a memorable evening. ♥️❤️♥️
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#portland #performanceart #intuitivedrawing #cello #musicandart
Some of us feel things more deeply. We absorb the energy around us and hold it in our bodies.
My entire life has been a learning of how to process these emotions, feelings, energies so that I don’t get overwhelmed by them. I also have had to learn to work with chronic pain, anxiety and depression.
Not only did these stuck emotions and pain make living in a body uncomfortable, they also hindered my creative expression.
I’ve studied so many modalities along my journey. I got a degree in counseling, began practicing yoga, meditating and learned about somatic movement, EMDR, tapping, hypnotherapy.
Exploring all of these, along with my art and writing practice, I’ve come to know what works for me and how to release what my body is holding.
It’s still a daily devotion. Listening, asking my body what is needed and giving it the attention it deserves.
In one week I’ll be hosting a special workshop: Healing Expressions @siderailcollective
In this 3-hour workshop, you’ll use guided free-writing exercises and somatic movement, to give voice to feelings that may be held beneath the surface, allowing them to move through you with clarity and compassion.
I will be sharing many of these things that I’ve learned over the years and give you resources that you can explore in your everyday day life to release stuck emotions and express yourself more fully.
There are still a few more spots - I hope you’ll join us!
flowintoauthenticity.com/courses
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#SeattleWorkshops
#SeattleEvents
#SeattleClasses
#SeattleCommunity
#SupportLocalSeattle
after an amount
of time
in this dirt
those strings
that attached you
to earth
begin to
release
one
by
one
don’t hold on
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#poetry #poetrycommunity #poetsofinstagram #streamofconsciousness #streamofconsciousnesswriting
