Tag Archives: Mysterious Night Vision Field Journal

Art Journaling, Heroine’s Journey Mandala

The Heroine’s Mandala Journey Begins

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On Friday, April 19, 2019, two lines of possibility crossed over out of the nowhere into the Now Here: my friend Merrill offered me the chance to join an emerging group which would be a women writers support group.

I was tempted, but then within a couple hours, I got a text from another friend, Sandy O’Brien, inviting me to join an on-going Heroine’s Journey Mandala Class.

This is a completed mandala by my workshop leader, Sandi O’Brien. Every detail has a story, a dream, a memory or reflection behind it. I particularly love the central iris image.

I’ve had a long standing love affair with all things Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey progenitor, and Maureen Murdoch, who wrote The Heroine’s Journey. 

I have done mandala and shield work before, but nothing as in-depth as this promises to be. I said yes to this opportunity because it can include writing but focuses on, as Jung says, “memories, dreams, reflections.”

I arranged to meet Sandi, and on the way, I saw I was following a car with the license “OBrien” on it. 

Robert Moss, author of The Three Only Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination, says that “the world is a forest of symbols” (113) and like Jung, encourages us to trust the unexpected coincidence and to allow “those patterns to reveal themselves” (114). 

The license plate that only flashed before my eyes for a few seconds, appearing then disappearing out of the chaos of traffic, seemed to me an exclamation point that I had chosen the correct path of the two that had appeared to me.

Gouache. Personal Mandala made in a Heroine’s Journey Class by Sue Teutschell Davis.The process begins with the outer circle, which is called “The Fire Ring.” If you compare the Fire Ring on all of the mandalas, you can see the wide variety of possibility with just this one element.

On Saturday, I met with Sandi O’Brien in her beautiful, art-filled home in Creswell. Oregon, and got to know her and the class materials better. 

The physical object to be created is a mandala like the ones by Sandi O’Brien shown here. The process is long–she says up to eighteen months or two years. 

Each ring and sub-section of rings is a separate meditation or inward reflection or dream recorded, considered, discussed,  distilled to its essence and added to the piece.

Each mandala is a journey by the artist through a period in her life where she is looking back, looking into the Dreamtime, looking forward and drawing all the threads of her life together.

At our first meeting, she and I split a large sheet of Arches watercolor paper. If you mingle blood and take an oath, two people become “blood brothers.” The two Sandies have split a piece of paper to make our mandalas on; we are “mandala sisters.” The two halves of the paper will continue to speak to each other over time.

The very last element to be added to the mandala is the centering image, which is called forth in meditation or dream by the artist at the end of the long process of bringing the piece into being.
Gouache mandala by Sandi O’Brien.
Healing

Receiving Love From All Over The World and Beyond

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Colored Pencil Sketch: “Receiving Love From All Over The World and Beyond”

Post by Cheryl Renee Long

 
I float in a starry sky.
On my left is the sun.
On my right is the Milky Way.
I open my body, my mind and my heart to the healing love and blessings I receive from people all over the world.
I sense the colors of their:

prayers,

attunements,

reiki,

shamanic healing and

enfolding good thoughts

I consciously switch my energy to Receive.

 
 I am very good at transmitting, but the current cannot be complete without receiving, a less familiar skill.
I bask in the healing love of my friends, my family and possibly entities unknown to me.
I accept their kindness and allow my body to become whole and well. 
Poetry

Will She Come To Me Now?

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–Sandy Brown Jensen

(This poem is about my unusual muse, who is a ten foot tall hominid who survived the Ice Age and still roams the Pacific Northwest. She is not to be confused with Sasquatch of urban legend fame or Dzonoquah of the sacred Kwakwakawak tribal pantheon except that in Dreamtime, she is both of those. I am working on a book of poems called Giantess.)

 

Will she come to me now when

the little creek of grief is nothing

but dark water in an old ditch

inching upward with the swell

of winter rain?

She is a creature

of the far North. All winter

She sleeps as the bears sleep.

She lets her dream body loose

to roam, held to her sleeping

bulk by the thinnest of silks.

When the winter nights

are tin cold and the stars

so far away that I may as well

have my head in a bucket

punched with holes, I look

for her between fir trees. I listen

for her in the gunshot snap

of a frozen limb. I try

to find her thread

and lead her to me here.

Now the March thaw

is breaking up the rivers

the way, long after a death,

the heart begins to rise again.

I know she is traveling

toward me now, the long

southward beaches still roaring

with open mouths their storm

surge songs.

She is finding

cockles among the seaweed,

and her eyes, if you could see them,

have twin catchlights

like inverted crescent moons.

Healing

Healing Has Its Own Schedule

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Post by Cheryl Renee Long:

Today is February 26, 2017. Thirteen days ago I had a mastectomy of the right breast. I am healing but it seems like a very long process. Some days I hurt enough to take pain medication, some days I think I can clean the entire house. Well I cannot, it doesn’t matter who is coming over to see me. The house has to wait.

Healing Spirits
Sadness darts in and out of my consciousness. The clouds outside are wet and dark. Then I look closely at my blue glazed China pots, and spring is in full swing. All of the bulbs I planted last November are banging out of the ground. The early crocus are blooming yellow and purple. The incorrigible fruit trees are blooming. Pussy willows.
I go outdoors no matter what. My golden dog approves. My paints beckon me. Who cares if my body is shaky – I might get an interesting effect. Who knows?
It is just about spring and slowly day by day my creative life sort of reels me in. My cancer free future comes into focus, fades a bit, focuses again.
There is no way to hurry this natural healing process. “Healing has its own schedule,” says my mother.

Healing has its own schedule.

Art Journaling, Daily Create, Memory, Poetry

Canvas of the Soul

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This little drawing was done first in the Paper 53 app then moved to Bazaart to add the image in the upper left and the text.

In today’s Daily Create, we were asked to draw our childhood home. I have done this drawing many times over the years, and I notice it has gotten less and less specific as time wears away at the bright stones of memory, polishing them down to their glowing centers.

Now it is mountains, trees, tracks, river, house.

I grew up on the Wenatchee River in the foothills of the Enchantments. The image of me upper left is from an underwater shoot a couple of days ago and seems to me a face full of memory.

Even a rudimentary sketch like this seems beautiful to me, and I stare at it falling into a reverie of a time both long ago and yet still a room I can walk into that is as close as breathing.

The Mysterious Night Journal for me used to be gel pens or Prismacolor on black paper, but as I work in my art journal and so often disappear into the many rooms of memory, I see it is the canvas of the soul.

Your Art Journal is the canvas of your soul.

 

 

Mysterious Journal Class

New Night Vision Class Begins April 4

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The inaugural Mysterious Night Vision Field Journal Course went extremely well! A new section has opened and is available for enrollment now for $75.00:

Welcome to Your Mysterious Night Vision Field Journal Online Class

Mysterious Night Vision Field Journal began one day in Eastern Oregon when sister Cheryl gave sister Sandy a black paper artist’s journal and a handful of gel pens and Prismacolor pencils. Both of us started first to do scribble art.

Out of the darkness of the page emerged the figures of dream and imagination. I was as if we were cave painters putting our hands to the dark cave walls and blowing paint to mark our passing there. Spirit figures emerged from the dark pages of the cave and began to move in living color.

In 2008, we began posting our Mysterious Night Vision Field Journals on our blog. Memories, dreams, and reflections arose spontaneously from the Well of Soul.

In our Mysterious Night Vision Field Journals, we see the outer world in reverse, as if in a mirror. Slightly disoriented, in love with vivid color, we pursue the soul’s uncensored purpose.

We are so glad you are joining us!

In this class, you will be given a short lesson and a drawing assignment or challenge every other day.  Videos and examples are provided for direction and inspiration. There are also bonus assignments for those who have time to explore more deeply.

Some of the assignments are:

  • Draw a Dream Animal
  • Draw a Volcano, Tsunami or Other Dramatic Natural Disaster
  • Draw a Jungle
  • Draw a Soul Portrait
  • Draw a Dream

You will write about your images, then take a photo (with your cell phone, for example) and add to the class. There you will be able to give and receive imaginative, supportive feedback.

Cheryl Renee Long is the instructor for this course. She’s the blonde in the photo.

Her sister, Sandy Brown Jensen, will be taking the course alongside you. Sandy is also the resident techie, so feel free to consult with her with any tech related questions at sandybrownjensen@gmail.com

We love our Mysterious Night Vision Journals, and we are excited to be sharing this passion with you.

Mysterious Journal Class

Successful Seattle Art Event

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On March 5, 2016, Daniel Smith Artist Supplies in Seattle, WA, sponsored a Mysterious Night Vision Field Journal workshop by Cheryl Renee Long and Sandy Brown Jensen. This video captures that event and the spontaneous art produced by the 13 participants. The pool is still open–jump on in! The registration button is on the home page of this blog post.

Mysterious Journal Class

Woman with Baby

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Woman with Baby

By Cheryl Renee Long

Sometimes I feel that I am nurturing a baby. I hold her close to my heart and I go about my life.
Sometimes I dream that I have forgotten my baby or I left her behind somewhere. I frantically search for her and usually find I left her behind at the home of a relative.
In my dream I berate myself,  “How could I forget a child?”
A few weeks ago I reviewed all of my old sketchbooks going back to the 1970’s. I saw so many great sketches that remained an embryonic idea. It made me sad to see how many possibilities never came to fruition.
But ideas are everywhere. We mere humans cannot actualize the abundance of creativity that is available to us.
So I draw the woman with a baby, a floral skirt and colorful shawl.  She nurtures her art the very best she can, and she also dances and she rejoices in life.
I hope you will join us for the March 7, 2016 Mysterious Night Vision Field Journal class, or tell someone you love about it.