Painted Path: I'm in Love!

Monday, March 8, 2010

I'm in Love!

It's only happened to me a few times, where I see art and am immediately moved by it, like it actually touches me inside and expands me in some way. Last week I stumbled upon this (below) gorgeous, fun, inspiring, playful, happy art and fell in love.

Through her paintings, her blog, and a few sweet email exchanges, I feel I have gotten a glimpse into a very special person. I wanted all of my readers to have the same honor.

Below are a few of my favorites--there are dozens more in her online shop. Enjoy!

Artwork by Lori Portka

This is my very favorite--i just love all the color and the beauty of this woman-she looks so peaceful and centered.

Could this cow be any sweeter?

And this one!

7 comments:

BrookeMarch 8, 2010 11:00 PM
Thank you for sharing this beautiful artwork--so fun, sweet and free! Reminds me of someone I know!
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LoriMarch 10, 2010 2:38 PM
Julia, THANK YOU. I am going to print our your words from this post and hang it by my desk. Your kindness is so appreciated.
ReplyDelete
TheresaMarch 10, 2010 3:34 PM
I also just stumbled upon Lori's art a few days ago and it totally charmed me!
ReplyDelete
RebeccaMarch 10, 2010 8:55 PM
It's been love at first sight!

Before this post I had linked to Lori's site and it struck that familiar chord that keeps bringing me back.

Thanks for providing the space to connect to greatness!!
ReplyDelete
Enrouge {karan karla}March 11, 2010 1:21 PM
I agree completely -- Lori paints with such heart, and her personality shows it, too. Lovely post!
ReplyDelete
Kelly BerkeyMarch 11, 2010 2:41 PM
oh julia, you did a wonderful job at spotlighting lori's talent!
hugs,
kelly
ReplyDelete
madisonMarch 16, 2010 10:24 AM
Hi Sweetheart~Your writing is incredible!! There is no doubt that everything you say is from your heart and beyond. Your insight and words are amazing-really puts me at peace. I love, love your new paintings!!!! You are so gifted and I'm so happy you are mine. Can't wait to see you. Love you too much. Mom
ReplyDelete

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What are you thinking/feeling? I'd really love to know...

♥ Julia

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"I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance; to live so that which comes to me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which comes to me as blossom, goes on as fruit." ~Dawna Markov

"Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return." Mary Jean Iron

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" Mary Oliver, poet

"Don't go anywhere. I beg you; the Moon you are looking for is inside you." --Rumi

"None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to the whisper which is heard by him alone." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Today will be joyous, for the beauty slamming against my face is unwilling to be ignored." Susan Mrosek

"Let's toast Every rung we've climbed on Evolution's ladder. Whisper, 'I love you! I love you!' To the whole mad world." Hafiz

"She let go, forging a hole through the air as she screamed past her limitations." Susan Mrosek

"There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now, And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell then there is now." Walt Whitman

"My first reaction will keep me making the same choices. It will keep me at the same level. It will have me say things in defensiveness that I would not say in sanity and I'd never even think in love. Pain is the opportunity to practice. Pain is the portal to another choice, another self, and another life." Tama Kieves

"No bird can fly without opening its wings, and no one can love without exposing their heart." Mark Nepo

"Let go and relax … When you are calm, you feel the whole universe of happiness rocking gently beneath your consciousness." Author Unknown

"Life is short and we have not too much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel the way with us. Oh, be swift to love. Make haste to be kind." Henri Frederic Amiel

"The miracle of life comes to us in the presence of the uninterpreted moment." Byron Katie

"We are disturbed not by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens." Epictetus (Greek philosopher)

"And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." Anais Nin

"When you come to the edge of the light you have known and take the first step into the darkness of uncertainty, you have to believe that one of two things will happen. You will find something solid there to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly." Paul Overton

"My continuing passion is to part a curtain, that invisible shadow that falls between people, the veil of indifference to each other's presence, each other's wonder, each other's human plight." Eudora Welty

"We are here on this earth to fully awaken to life, and we need to start with wherever we are." --Foo Schroeder.

"But if I write what my soul thinks, it will be visible, and the words will be its body." Helen Keller

"There is no end to the beauty for the person who is aware. Even the cracks between the sidewalk contain geometric patterns of amazing beauty." Matthew Fox

"I don't want to write good poems; I want to write inevitable poems-given who I am and what I know, they will come directly from their beginnings." William Stafford

"The Now is the hidden exit out of the ego." Eckhart Tolle

"The divine is not something high above us. It is in heaven, it is in earth, it is inside us..." -- Morihei Ueshiba

"Learn to write about the ordinary. Give homage to old coffee cups, sparrows, city buses, thin ham sandwiches. Make a list of everything ordinary you can think of. Keep adding to it. Promise yourself, before you leave the earth, to mention everything on your list at least once in a poem, short story, newspaper article." Natalie Goldberg

Answers do not come in your deepest thoughts; they come in your deepest silence. me

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out." --Ray Bradbury

"Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that's why we decide we're done. It's getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out." Natalie Goldberg

"Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down." Natalie Goldberg

"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill

"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be." Abraham Maslow

"Eventually I discovered for myself the utterly simple prescription for creativity: be intensely yourself. Don't try to be outstanding; don't try to be a success; don't try to do pictures for others to look at - just please yourself."- Ralph Steiner

"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”~ Albert Schweitzer ...

"Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Life just turns deliciously quirky when you stop resisting yourself and, instead, honor the intuition that tugs at you like a puppy on a leash in the park. Follow the magic and magic starts to follow you." Tama J. Kieves

"Give three hundred seconds to your dream. Take a tiny step with big integrity. It takes a step to break into a run. The result at hand doesn't matter. The resolve does. Show up for your love. Showing up always shines." Tama J. Kieves

"When we learn to move beyond mistaken concepts and see clearly, we no longer solidify reality. We see waves coming and going, arising and passing. We see that life, composed of this mind and body, is in a state of continual, constant transformation and flux. There is always the possibility of radical change. Every moment -not just poetically or figuratively, but literally - every moment we are dying and being reborn, we and all of life." Sharon Salzberg

"Our ideas and intentions can mask and cover up a story; there is a life force that will declare itself if you let it. Get out of the way." Natalie Goldberg

"The most wasted of all days is one without laughter." ~e.e. cummings

“Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish." John Jake

"Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"One can never consent to creep when one feels the impulse to soar." Helen Keller

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become." Buddha

"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." T. S. Eliot

"The human mind is like an umbrella. It functions best when open." Max Gropius

"It only takes one person to change your life – you. Ruth Casey

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." Theodore Roosevelt

"If you want to cut directly through, don't entertain doubts about Buddhas, or doubts about life and death - just always let go and make your heart empty and open."

"When things come up, deal with them according to the occasion. Be like the stillness of water, like the clarity of a mirror. Whether good or bad, beautiful or ugly approach, you don't make the slightest move to avoid them. Then you will truly know that the mindless world of spontaneity is inconceivable." ~Ta Hui (1088-1163)

"Choose gloriously. Seize your wild want, not that freeze-dried, politically correct, mild want. Thinned-down desires douse the fire." Tama J. Kieves

"The relationship we develop with ourselves is more important than anything else. There is nothing else. All work we love comes from the love we give ourselves." Tama J. Kieves

"Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write." Natalie Goldberg

"To live ordinary life artfully is to have this sensibility about the things in daily life, to live more intuitively and to be willing to surrender a measure of our rationality and control in return for gifts of the soul." Thomas Moore

"Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don't fight them. Just find a different way to stand." -- Oprah

"Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round your life, as a dog does his master's chaise. Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still." Thoreau

"If you ask me what I came to do in this world...I am here to live out loud!" -- Emile Zola.

"When you can see no light at the end of the tunnel, light your own candle and let your light illuminate the world, like the radiance from a window at midnight." -- Craig Lock

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous ? Actually, who are you not to be ? Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
Author unknown

"Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position."-Stephen King

"THE POWER OF A COMPELLING CAUSE RESTS IN THE SOUL OF ITS CREATOR, because a cause springs from the soul. It is a spiritual statement from one soul that cannot be the result of many. It comes from a deep place of knowing, some conviction that a richly imagined future could in some way, dramatically and positively, change the world. "-Lance Secretan, author "Inspirational Leadership"

"Write what you really think and mean, not what you think you should write and not what you thought you would think and not what you hope it will mean, but what is really authentic and true. -Susan Orlean

"The true task of spiritual life is not found in faraway places or unusual states of consciousness. It is here in the present. It asks of us a welcoming spirit to greet all that life presents to us with a wise, respectful, and kindly heart. We can bow to both beauty and suffering, to our entanglements and confusion, to our fears and to the injustices of the world. Honoring the truth in this way is the path to freedom."~ Jack Kornfield

"Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging." Joseph Campbell

"There is nothing I can tell you that you do not already know. There is no question that you can ask me that you Yourself cannot answer. You have just forgotten."~ David Littlewood (from 'Start To Live') ~

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." - Anton Chekhov

"Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and is important in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not." -Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides right through the brain and goes straight to the heart." -Maya Angelou

"How do we evolve? By becoming more aware of who we are. By living more and more from our authentic natural self that knows the way. Remember, 'who I am is always enough.' And when we explore our own natures, we can connect consciously, honestly and deeply with the rest of life." --Unknown

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. ...I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing." -- Oriah Mountain Dreamer

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear … as it is, infinite.”-- William Blake

"I want to convey how beautiful it is to close your eyes and dream. And then to open them and make that dream a reality." -Sean Combs (Puff Daddy)

"There is a place in all of us that has remained innocent, uncorrupted and untouched by the world. We have to locate that most delicate place. It is a very sensitive place, it's where we feel love - where tenderness and compassion arise, free from self-interest. This place is the hole we have to fall into - and disappear in forever."
from "Enlightenment is a Secret" By Andrew Cohen

"Whatever a person's mind dwells on intensely and with firm resolve, that is exactly what he becomes."~ Shankaracharya

"When your mind is free, not concerned, or worried, or focused on anything in particular, and your heart is not grasping or clinging to anything, then you are free. The most characteristic quality is that there is no fixation on anything; you're not focused on any issue or experience. Whatever is there, is there. So there is a freedom of mind. The mind is not saying, "I want this," or "I want to look at this," or "It has to be this way." The mind is loose. The expression "hang loose" tells us what it means to be liberated." A.H. Almaas, from the Diamond Heart, Book II

"We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little." Anne Lamott

"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart." ~William Wordsworth

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." ~Albert Einstein

"I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about." ~ Arthur C. Clarke

"Curiosity has its own reason for existence. The important thing is not to stop questioning." ~ Albert Einstein

"Follow your bliss. If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else." Joseph Campbell

"Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray." Rumi

"In reality there are no others, and by helping yourself you help everybody else." ~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

"Don't listen to doubt. It leads no place but to pain and negativity. It is the same with your critic who picks at you while you are trying to write. 'That's stupid. Don't say that. Who do you think you are anyway, trying to be a writer?' Don't pay attention to those voices. There is nothing helpful there. Instead, have a tenderness and determination toward your writing, a sense of humor and a deep patience that you are doing the right thing. Avoid getting caught by that small gnawing mouse of doubt. See beyond it to the vastness of life and the belief in time and practice." Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

"Leap and the net will appear."

"Want to live a life of no regrets, no matter what choices you've made in the past? Make these choices right now. Keep your eyes on your own roses and tend them with every thing you have. Plunge into accepting and blessing your own unique circumstances. Take a small step, a big step, a holy step in the direction that calls you right now. Trust that you are not alone and that you will have what you absolutely need. Diving into this moment with integrity answers everything. There is no past or future. There are no other choices. It doesn't matter what anyone else has. You have this unbelievable moment." Tama J. Kieves, author of This Time I Dance

"You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side. You need to trust yourself, especially on your first draft, where amid the anxiety and self-doubt, there should be a real sense of your imagination and your emotions walking and woolgathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance." Anne Lamott

"Even if we are not aware of it, each one of us longs to create, to manifest what is unique inside of us, to give it form. Freedom is necessary for pure creation to take place. The pressures and demands of an expected result must go. We need to re-enter the present by the simple act of being spontaneous. Intuition guides us. Trusting the flow that comes naturally is the magic of creation. The hidden, the mysterious, the sacred from within are revealed. Old patterns break. The natural movement of creation becomes part of our life. Passion sets in." Michele Cassou

"The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention." Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way

"Dump your pictures of what you're supposed to do. Listen to your heart. Your heart is not attached to what things look like. Your heart measures what they feel like. Your heart will keep you honest and on your true path. You will find healing and wonder in unexpected places. But only if you dare to walk past those glossy one-sided expectations-- and into the bright and shadowed territory of listening to your heart." Tama J. Kieves, author of This Time I Dance

Writing Prompts

I want to let go of...
I remember...
I don't remember...
I want to let go of...
So much depends on...
I will never...
I want...
I don't want...
I am...
I am not...
If I let myself I would...
If I was braver I would...
It's my time...
I cannot...
I won't...
I'm afraid...
What I really want to say...
I hope...
My father...
My mother...
I laugh when...
When I look in the mirror
Dreaming is...
I've never seen...
I've never heard...
I've never trusted...
I've always wanted...
I've never tried...
If I didn't care what others would think...
If no one was looking...
I've never lived...
When I dance...
When I sing...
I'm sorry...
Train rides...
Snowy evenings...
Sitting still...
A child's laughter...
My bed...
A blank page...
Anger is...
I don't know...
I know...
If I didn't...
I will know I've succeeded when...
If I knew it wouldn't kill me...
I used to think...
I'm most comfortable when...
I forgive...
Her eyes tell me...
One time I...
I'll never forgive...
Freedom is...
I push away...
I cry when...
If I didn't...
If I...
What I know for sure...
I'm strongest when...
When I was 5...
When I was 12...
When I was 18...
When I look back on my life, I hope...
When I'm ninety...
Failure is...
Marriage is...
I secretly want...
When I lose control...
As a child...
Money is...
I can't imagine...
I always try...
I don't believe...
I don't feel...
I don't see...
Words are...
My gut tells me...
If I really listened...
When I'm quiet...
My grandfather...
My grandmother...
I have loved...
I won't...
I have lost...
I refuse...
I have forgotten...

*For a bazillion more writing prompts, please visit: http://www.creativewritingprompts.com/

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Monday, March 8, 2010

I'm in Love!

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