My blog is still alive. A rambling.

It's almost two in the morning.  I'm not tired.  My brain doesn't want to shut down.  I decided to go poking around my old places online, to see how my art has evolved. 

My blog is mostly unused, but I tend to revisit it when I decide to break up with social media.  When I say "social media", I mean Facebook.  I've had such a hard time using that platform.  It sucks me in, and bloats my belly like a bag of chips. Can't. Stop. Ingesting.  I try to use it for promoting art, but ultimately, I lose my shit with too much screen time.  I'm like an obsessive 8 year old, except my mom doesn't force me to get off..

Every time I remove myself from its clutches, I ditch out on people in general, and find myself babbling with weeds, flowers and trees.  I'm in awe of those people who seem to be with nature, yet social media the fuck out of their nature time.  I can't do that so well. 

Lately I've been craving a good, long session of alone time in the woods.  I need to roll in the dirt like a dog rolling in a spectacular pile of cat shit.  Or maybe that is just what my dog enjoys from time to time?  New shit.  Let's roll in it and be happy.  Stinky and happy. 

I need to eat my weedies, and hunt for rocks and sticks.  I need the river to wash out what is left from the long, cold winter. 

I cried too much these past few months.  I felt an ache in my heart and bones that wouldn't let go.  I'm still in recovery mode, and I'm rooting for a healing, as I've faced this deep sadness alone. 

I'm trying to wrap my head around the reasoning for this lesson, but I think I can just let go, and trust that it's only a small detour off my path.

 I found myself in places and emotions that woke me up.  Made me see where I needed to be.  What I wanted with life.  And then.  Just like I always seem to do, I got scared.  I stopped trusting. Once here, I seemed to lose what made my heart and belly sing and dance.  But I know, I've been here before.  Except for the pure joy I felt when things were good.  I was in love, foolishly so, and never feeling this way in my whole life.  How could that be? 
It made me physically sick to hang on, and to let go.  Some days I'd  dip down, and I could vomit over what is gone. 

Now, I mostly focus on this empty space, where I have room to breathe and manifest my deepest desires.  There is something waiting for me.  Something bigger, that my heart and guts have never experienced before.  And I will not fear it.  I will not lose it.  I am ready for it.  I'm open.  There is a space for it. I'll Be waiting in the trees, my eyes fixated on each new leaf.  I know I'll fall in love here, once again, but on a level I've never known.  While here, this joy will heal every broken part of me.  I will accept it.  I will be DESERVING of it.  I'll be allowed to feel it, and I won't be so foolish to compulsively destroy it.  I'll live how I was meant to live. 

Dancing Down the Path

Dancing Down the Path

Dancing Down the Path By Sarah Torgerson

What inspired this painting?  Nature.  Sustainability.  Dancing the toxins out of my body with my dance hoop.  Eating clean.  Working for sustenance.  A longing for something more, amplified in the deepest parts of myself.  Foreign feelings washing over me.  They are delicious; full of vibrant energy begging to be spread across a canvas, flowing off, into my physical world.

I lack my usual boundaries of black and white, or filling an entire space with all that’s inside of me.   Before I created this, I made space internally by releasing all the unnecessary thought processes firing off constantly.  I turned off my media.  I spent a whole lot of time just being quiet and working; Writing in nature, and observing all the details.  This painting reflects this free space.  

Dancing in the free space, is what is left inside; the present, and what I long for.
 
I utilized blueberry seeds, mint leaves and borage seed in its creation.
blueberry symbolism: protection(internet)
Mint: eternal refreshment, virtue, wisdom (internet)
Borage: courage, following your heart

During this time of creation, I felt so alive, and I was feeling called to plant spirits.   My free space and observation brought on a connection that was, and IS powerful.  More so, with each passing year.  Every time I find myself alone, breathing, being, simplifying, the plant world grows inside of me.  Every time I go here, I find myself deeper in the woods.  I feel nourished.  I learn and absorb this world more than any other.  Most times, my interactions with plants in the wild are more intense than with humans.  My goodness, the things I learn.

Why haven’t I taken this path?  Why do I stray from a clear calling? 
Is it because I don’t think I’m capable?  I mean, I kill plants when I try to grow them.  If I do grow them, sometimes I waste them.  Why would the plant world call me on such a spiritual level when I can’t keep them alive?  It must be a false feeling, right? 

I struggle with these emotions, and boundaries.  I question each angle of a feeling, wondering if it's right or wrong.  I feel things wildly so.  The way my mind connects its observations is greatly different than most of my friends and family, and I have a rough time expressing myself with HOW I connect to these observations. Sometimes you’ll find me deeply obsessed with a plant, a person.  A concept.  An emotion.  A lesson.  Here, there’s no gray area.  I only want in.  I can’t stand to not immerse myself.  It makes me feel insane at times if I must divert my eyes.  Boundaries are crossed in the name of explosive emotion.  I can drive people insane with my buzzing, and barging in, if I make it past my own borders of indecision.

 Sometimes I feel things just the same, yet I am so fucking afraid of the feelings, that I run the opposite direction.  It’s too beautiful.  Too delicious.  I shut down.  I stuff it.  I ache until my bones are just shy of being a pile of dust.  Why?

I am called to a few places lately.  With a woman named Sarah.  My obsession with her?  Her ability to flow with the season’s bounty, and create ongoing nourishment for her family and friends.  The kitchen Goddess.  With her, I can explore her process and the bond she has created with her harvest. 

Then, I am called to a farm up the road, first for a cleaning job.  That is, until I am bombarded by Borage before I reach the front door.  Borage asked me to mingle for a few.  Touch the petals, and spikey stems.  They seemed to burrow themselves deep inside of me as I stroked its petals.  Borage is said to be great for those with a heavy heart, or needing courage to follow their heart. 

More than cleaning, I wanted to explore the land.  To find more borage, and other wild things hiding in the wooded area.  I felt a connection here.  Almost as if I had been here before, and I was right where I needed to be.  Here, is a place of growth.  People that can help me with the growing of plants and keeping them alive, and seeing them through to harvest and usage.  I feel alive thinking about the possibilities, and my paths converging here.  

 Food.  Medicine. Wilderness.  Sustainability.  Harvest and Processing.  Connecting with those that work with Mother Earth in a way that speaks to my heart and soul.

With the full moon rising, I accepted this journey.  I released any misconceptions or doubts about this path.  I broke down barriers to venture into this wildness that keeps calling to me.  I let the colors of this world move over me.  I found some potential places to deepen my knowledge, and I have reached out, despite my fear.

 I’m tired of running from true transformation.  Tired of smashing down butterflies because I deny their existence in my inner world.  I accept the fluttering in my belly, the excitement in my bones;  The flow of what is me and my interactions in this time, on this planet.

Thank you for reading. I will be branching out, and sharing my thought processes with the paint, rather than sharing progress shots of my work.  It helps to keep me present, in full observation,  without outside noise and emotion.

Love,

Sarah
 

Spider enjoying blueberries on my canvas

HoopPath Peace Dojo Workshop

  I want to write about my personal, internal experience at the HoopPath Peace Dojo retreat, taught by Baxter.  It’s almost tough, because I don’t know that I’ve fully processed it all.  Not yet.  I’ll do my best. 

  I feel like I learned quite a bit more about trusting my hoop process. Trusting my process has been an ongoing battle in my life, in regards to who I AM.  I struggle to see myself.  Since the struggle is so daunting at times, I find myself looking at others’ lives.  How did they come into who they are?  Where did their confidence  come from, and how come I lack my own?  Why do they seem so put together, and I fumble over my words in conversation?  Why do I only see myself as flailing?  Doing everything half-assed? Fucking weird as fuck?  I realize the questioning I do only takes away from finding who I am.  All the observing, judging of myself, and fear I ruminate with is eating my time. 

  I found, that when I go inside of a hoop, those repetitive questions go away.  Inside the hoop, I don’t care what I look like.  I don’t care if I drop the hoop a million times.  I don’t care if I can’t grasp something quite yet.  There’s a sense of pure freedom inside the circle. 

  Like drawing and painting, how can I not feel so strongly about something that has essentially healed a huge part of my being?

 

  Most of my life I struggled to retain directions, or any information that didn’t send me into an obsession at the start. Instead of asking for further assistance, I bluffed that I understood. All the time!  I was afraid of most things.  My anxiety over life was paralyzing. 

  The things I was good at were artsy in nature.  Unfortunately, I was surrounded by a few of my peers that cut me down over the types of activities I loved and felt I could be good at.  I believed them, because I already thought I was dumb.  When you believe something, it becomes part of who you are.  These young moments left me full of inadequacy, mistrust in myself, and what people said to me.  Even as a grown adult.  It almost seems ridiculous. 

 

  What the hoop gave to me, is movement, friendship, diminished fear, energy, and trust.
  

  When I found myself not being able to wait too long before I could practice hoopdance again, I questioned this.  Why in the world do I like this so much?  This is weird.  How could I have possibly found something I can love intensely as my art process?  Aren’t I a little old to be loving this pastime?  I judged the activity, and myself, yet the hoop still provided a healing hug to me day in and day out.  This is where it hit me hard.  I questioned this one thing, even after it gave me the ability to drop this activity of self- judgment, and worrying about what other people think!  My hoop still loves and challenges me.

The movement gives me awareness and communication with every cell in my body.  All the parts of me, are like, “Hey, for once, we are all on the same page!”
 

  In HoopPath, we learned a lot about trusting the movement of the hoop, and where it’s going to touch base with you on your body.  We would do an exercise  before each class called sway.  We are blindfolded and we sway, and move our body to just breath at first, and then music with mythical story. 

  By the last class, the importance of sway came into play for me when we learned about 2- point contact.  By using your natural sway, making contact with the hoop is taken to a whole other level!
What this gave to me on a spiritual plane, is that you’ve got to trust your movement.  Your process in life.  In trusting your own dance, your contact with the world is going to be a whole lot better.

  We would also have circle time, where we’d talk about anything in regards to how we’re feeling physically and mentally.  One particular dialog was about persona.  What kind of mask do you put on when you need to be something else for a while; for the sake of making it through a moment?  It’s okay to use a persona to get you through.

  This thought came to me: I essentially live in my masks.  There’s so much of myself that I’ve kept hidden, out of fear of rejection.  Living inside of several personas is exhausting.  My real being needs some air.  Some sunlight shone upon its face.  Contact with the world. Color!  SPIN!

  For the past few years, I’ve been utilizing art as a means of peeling away these masks.  It’s yet, another tool that’s helped to open me up.  It’s a place where I always go when I feel alone.  It’s where I dive into the darkness, and in that darkness, I rearrange all that’s there to make art and light of many thoughts and situations. 

  I have one painting in particular called Authenticity.  During circle time, Baxter kept referring to authenticity, and I kept thinking about the possible connection this piece of art might have, to this moment of circle time.  To the words being spoken. 

  When I was creating Authenticity, I mainly worked on her while I was at the local farmer’s market.  A place, where at first, I was terrified to be.  What if people think my art is disgusting, or amateur? She has no business touting herself as an artist!  The painting gained its name through the market painting process.  I won’t care what people think.  I will sit here and live paint.  I am slow at painting, and that’s okay.  If people like it, great.  If not, this is for ME.  The act of the painting process is for ME.  It’s my activity that allows me to drop the gig and flow with lines and color.  Painting is a place for me to go, to gain wisdom and freedom. The market was a place for me to use both authenticity and a persona to get me through.
 

  HoopPath Peace Dojo, came together by all of us gathering there, because we are passionate about hoopdance practice.  Baxter created a workshop that brought us more in touch with ourselves, all while connecting with individuals in dance, balance, drills, and core.  It was magical in nature, with its myth and metaphor.  It was an experience fully connected with all I am in this moment, and helped to further open me up in my hoopdance artist journey; to use my masks sparingly, and to be authentic in my movement.

  I am grateful for the time spent with this group, and I look forward to the next one. 

  Thank you for reading, and here is Authenticity, the painting.
Below it, Authenticity copied, mirrored, rearranged and changed colors with the use of my computer's photo editing software.

  And to be authentic here, in my writing process?  I totally thought about deleting half of what I wrote.  Perhaps it's too much personal information regarding my feelings.  It's too wordy, and self-centered.  Maybe it's boring, and no one will make it to the end..

Authenticity by Sarah Torgerson

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Find art for sale on Redbubble or contact me if you are interested in purchasing the original Artwork.

Gold Bar Farmer's Market

I've decided to finally utilize my blog.  I go in phases with using different platforms for sharing my art and my thoughts.  I'm currently going on over a month with no social media.  Just real contact with people.  I may be feeling the pull to stand on my soap box and scream, "HEY, I NEED ATTENTION NOW!! COME DOTE ON ME AND MY ART PROCESS!!"
So, blogging it is.  Ha!

There's actually quite a bit I could write about and share.  It's been an incredible year of branching out and trying new things with my art and other areas of life.

In April I decided to try out vending at our new local farmer's market.  This was many things to me.  It was a challenge sticking to it, and being social when I feel like an odd duck in social settings.  I continually tried out new ways of setting up my display to attract more people.  I learned that people love to watch me work, so I started doing live painting.

I learned that it's quite difficult to sell art, and there are many aspects to succeeding at it. I'm still in the research phase of figuring it all out.

  I mostly sold original work to tourists coming through.  Locals enjoyed my work, but they mostly just wanted to look and ask me questions about how and what I use to create my pieces.

 By far, my favorite thing is to be an inspiration, and see a person's old art hobby come back into focus.  They see what I do, and they want to go home and dust off their old supplies and start anew. I love this, because I totally get the exhilarating emotion of rekindling an old fire.

Kids were my favorite fans.  They get so excited and want to try creating something of their own.  With this in mind, I started packing along some art supplies to share with the local kids.  Some even walked around trying to sell their own creations. Ah, I loved that so much!

A few times I was able to get my own kids to share their talents at the market.  My daughter sold some original artwork, and my sons played live music.  Ignoriors ROCK!

During the course of our market I met some wonderful friends.
I met many artists, farmers, crafters, foodies, etc.  It really felt like a Saturday family gathering each week.  Something I looked forward to, whether I sold things or not.  We were there, rain or shine.

I didn't feel like I was able to create as much as usual during the market season, as I found myself mostly socializing all summer.  I'm used to quiet summers, with long streaks of uninterrupted time to create.  Rather than being upset by this, I became grateful for the human connections I was creating.  With experiences, comes inspiration.  My market family was a constant inspiration.  I look forward to next season.

Photo credit goes to Rosalyn Santerre, who managed our beautiful market.  She now has a new art studio for us to gather together and create.  http://www.rosalynsartstudio.com

Purpose

It's been a while, but here is my 10"x 10" drawing that I started LAST YEAR! I was determined to finish a bigger piece, and not let it collect dust like so many other projects I start.  It's been a practice in patience, perseverance, and acceptance.

This drawing holds quite a bit of meaning.  While working on it, so many emotions came out of me, and I learned some things.  Some of the questions I had while working through this piece were, "What is my purpose?"
"How can I fully accept myself for who I am?"
"How do others perceive me?"

My main role is being a mother, who inspires her children to fully accept themselves as they are, and to follow their dreams.  In doing so, I learned to do the same for myself.  It's all about belief.  I believe that my kids are Rock STARS, dancers, singers, artists.  The ones who will change the world for the better!

I'm a wife to an insanely smart, talented, and handsome guy. Sometimes I still have a tough time accepting that he actually likes me.  Every day he shows me unconditional love.  From him, I've learned what love is on a level that I didn't know existed.

I'm an artist.  I love designing things. I love drawing, and playing music.  Out of all the art forms that I've learned, drawing brings me to my happy place.  It's the place where I feel the most freedom.  The most loud, yet quiet all in the same instance.  It's the place where I say there are no mistakes.  No reason for complete perfection.  Here, I am fluid, and exactly me.

Most of my life I've struggled to accept myself for who I am.  I've always felt like I didn't know who I was at times, and doubted my gut instincts. Doubt has been working it's way out of me as I learn to let go of perfection, and to let myself be completely vulnerable, where I once stood with a mask. As doubt leaves, it hurts.  Sometimes it's so much so, that you just want to lie there and move no further.  It's fine to rest for a while, but if you stay too long, doubt likes to be sneaky and creep back in.  Punch doubt in the throat, because doubt lies, and gains when you succumb to it's pain.

Making friends and socializing has been a big thing for me lately.  I know, it seems ridiculous at my age, but so what.  It's fine.  I've had a few relationships where I put so much so much of myself out there, and was just left hanging.  I didn't do so well with that.  It made it hard for me to fully reach out to people, or to trust that everything would be okay when I let my guard down.  Now I know.  It doesn't matter.  Put yourself out there.  Those that love you stand by you.  Those that don't stick around, at least they've taught me a thing or two.  Hopefully I've done the same for them.  I now don't worry so much, have fun, let go of what people think, and just let them in.

Now I am able to see that every interaction, whether it feels good, or bad is all part of a bigger picture.  It's a picture that you can't see all of at the moment, but it still turns out to be perfection in the very end if you can see it for what it truly is.

 My heart is fully open, and accepting of life, love and purpose.

I accept myself and my imperfections.  I present myself to you, as I am.  My mess.  My healing journey through art, and my love.

Three drawings flipped every which way

I haven't blogged in a while. So, here are a few pieces that I just finished up over the weekend.  The top set, and the bottom set of photos were old, unfinished drawings that I completed.  The center one was drawn start to finish on Sunday.  I accidentally dropped some water on it, and smeared the ink.  Since there are no mistakes in my art, I decided to add more water, and smear some more ink.  What the heck, right?

One thing I noticed in my meditation drawings, is that they can be rotated for a completely new perspective.  For your viewing pleasure, the same drawings, flipped every which way.  :-)

Drop me a note, and tell me what YOU see?  At some point I may become brave enough to share my weird, innermost thoughts that come to the surface as I work.

If you are interested in purchasing any of my work, originals or prints, send me a note.  

Thank you for stopping by to view my work.  It means so much to me.

Love Sarah.  xoxo

A drawing I'm proud of

Last night I finished up a piece that I have been working on little by little over the course of 3 weeks, along with several other drawings that are still in the works.  This one though, made me feel good inside.  I was actually really proud of how well it turned out.  It's one thing to have people tell you that they love something you've made, but telling yourself you love what you did, is just different.  It was a new feeling for me.   Yay!!  New experiences!!!  YAY!!!
If you love this drawing as much as I do, don't worry, I will have some prints available.  The original is already spoken for.  

This one I finished up a while ago, but failed to get my camera out and take a decent photo of it.  I see an underlying theme here.  So many hearts, birds and marine life from another planet!  haha  

These are several that I have in progress as well as one more not shown here.  My goal was to doodle all of the watercolor postcards that came in the pad.  There are 15 sheets!!  All of them are 6x4 and drawn with a fine ball point pen.  I'm slowly experimenting with watercolor pencils, and I plan on taking a painting class in the future.  

If you love something you see on this blog, and have to have it.  Please contact me at torgse@gmail.com  

I can make prints from originals, or if you want an original and it's still in my possession, let me know!  

Thank you all so, so, much for the ongoing love and support.  It means the world to me.  

Love,

 Sarah