Hello to you all! Well after Kuthumi Fest things really flew and here we are three months later. Let's just say this newsletter is worth the wait.
This month's featured author is Anita Boom-Van Doorn. Her book is both elegant and simple, not only in the words but its design. It is a joy to hold and read. Jodie Fisher joins as the featured artists to speak of her amazing drawings. Jodie's drawings recreate photographs but they are so much more than just copies. I have found another amazing video for you. I so love having some movement and sound included! Jule Webster launches her New Energy Life calender and shares how it came about. Then at the end of the newsletter, Kuthumi and I announce our next bit of fun for you all to take part in!
I generally write the newsletter introduction once I have put together the interviews and feel into what has been bought together. This month I was struck by how the featured author's work is so simple, while the artist's work is rich in detail. Yet each one of these creators still works from that similar space and can invoke as much emotion as the other. The animation and calender also featured really show how new energy artistry goes beyond the mediums we choose to work in.
Featured Author; Anita Boom-Van Doorn
How long have you been writing for and how did you start? Do you play with any other arts or creativity? As you probably have noticed the book doesn’t consist of many pages and much text. The intensity of the words meant more to me than the quantity of the text. I spent about four days in total writing this book. It just flew out of me like any creation can.
Arts or creativity? Creativity is mostly seen as something indeed like arts, music, writing, dancing, theatre, but I like to see creativity as the total of my life. Acknowledging that I have created my life, makes my whole life creative. As for arts….I like photography and see how my intensity of perceiving the world can be reflected in the energies and the visual aspects of a pictures. I have started a new part of my website where I publish my pictures and share them with a larger audience. And so there is another part of my creativity: creating websites. Another part of my creativity is the publishing of audio CD’s of my own channels and teaching. I closely work together with some artists who create the pictures for my CD’s. Working on the lay out is lovely to do. Another large part of my creativity is the work I do with the horses. I love breathing, playing and working with them. I found that breathing and playing with them is making such a huge change in their health and character.
How did you come to write your book “Love. The Becoming of Me” Well I had done the Crimson Circle Sexual Energies School and it brought back so much of the love of self. It was the first time in my life that I truly felt the warmth in my body and the love for myself. In the months after this I quickly built a relationship with myself and the book is the result of this loving relationship with me.
In your book you acknowledge the New Energy and you say “I allowed the book to come into manifestation through creating rather than through hard work and struggle.” Could you speak more about this? By choosing to create the book I acknowledged the creator in myself. The writing itself was no struggle and I was in an absolute creator's high while writing it. Of course the book had already been written through the experience of me building a relationship with me. The only thing needed was the ink hitting the paper. Then I easily found others who could explain to me about publishing, printing and the lay out. The whole process of printing and publishing was created and chosen. I allowed the ones to come to me who could truly add to my creation with their ideas and creativity. The lay out was done by another publisher who truly caught the words in the lay out and made them even more come alive. The printer was willing to think along the way and started to give life to the book and his suggestions added to the quality and the presentation of my words.
What did you learn about yourself while you were writing this book? So much! It was a truly great process to experience publishing my own book. No dependency on a publisher. I wrote the book, had it put into a grand lay out and had it printed. I also created a way to distribute it. I could not get it distributed through the old energy ways or in depending on others until I allowed all energy to serve me. The whole book was also my way of solidifying my love for me, declaring that Love is who I am and that it’s what I am becoming more and more and more. Well stating that and choosing that sets up a whole new way of living, loving and creating in itself. I guess everything happening after having written the book was a direct result from this declaration of love towards myself.
You are also a prominent New Energy teacher in Europe. Have you applied anything from your book and your writing to your teaching? YES! Love. The becoming of ME….That’s the one who is teaching! See? Like the book is a constant invitation to fall deeper and deeper in love with Self. And what is the result of that? It’s trusting oneself more. It’s loving oneself more. It’s making life and integration sooo much more easier. It’s surrendering to that incredible love that one is! Well that’s what I teach as well. I teach the invitation and to do so I have to be the standard of my teaching. One day I taught a Dreamwalker Death school in Finland. I had decided to give my book as a present to the ones attending. Me and my co-teacher had travelled a long way and were so kindly taken in into the hearts of the students. They were an awesome bunch! So I gave the book to them as a present from me to them, to thank them for this incredible warm welcome and to celebrate the first DWD school in Finland. The first lady I gave the book to opened her eyes widely when she touched it. Her eyes started to shine and without even having read anything she exclaimed….OH, I can feel it! So I guess me and my book do some teaching apart from each other.
How do you see your writing evolving? My biggest challenge is finishing a book! There are so many ideas and so many potentials for so many books, that my passion is still galloping and I have to pay some attention to self discipline and keeping my attention to one creation at a time. I still write many articles, mainly in Dutch. Some of them are being published in magazines in Holland and I write for my own newsletter in Holland. At the moment I am closely working together with another artist and teacher on a series of channels called: The Treasures of Life. We combine her paintings with the gathering and I add my channeling to it. Both of us together also teach with our own words then. This whole series will be created into a book, that will contain the channels, our own words and the paintings made by Suzanne Dijkstra. I am also working on a book called: Human Consciousness. It’s a novel and the character of the book will be followed through his first steps as a first human on earth, through all of his lifetimes. It’s fun writing, for I don’t know what the next words will be and it kind of evolves in front of my eyes like a movie. I have no clue where the book is heading to. Another endeavor is me working together with Freud on writing a book on human spiritual psychology. That’s pretty tough at the moment and I guess it needs some evolving. It is incredibly interesting though finding out about the way he has worked in his lifetime and now listening to him seeing things from a different perspective.
Amazing Animation I have a real love for the Glasgow art scene that began with the music of Teenage Fanclub and then grew when I was given some Charles Rennie Mackintosh prints. The town itself lives and breathes art with an abundance of art galleries, music venues and amazing architecture. I recently came across this animation created by Joseph Mann, a student of the iconic Glasgow School of Arts. I just loved all its aspects and how beautifully they interweave. You can see more of Joseph's art HERE
You play with music as well as drawing. When did you get started in these? I began music when I was 12 years old. The rest of my classmates started however, when they were 11. I really wanted to start then too, but my mother was not able to invest the money in purchasing me an instrument. So during that first year, I used to skip class so that I could sneak down to the band room and listen to the other kids while they learned to make magic with their chosen instruments. I was particularly drawn to the flute. Oh how I wanted to play! Towards the end of the year, the band director “caught” me hiding and admitted he knew I had been watching all year long. He asked why I didn’t join the band and I told him. He then said he would call my mother to discuss. They worked out an arrangement for the next year for me to borrow a school loaned flute and he would give me private lessons for the 1st half of the year so I could catch up to the other kids. During the summer, my mother was helping her mother clean out her house and lo and behold, they found the flute my mother used to play in the band! She didn’t even know it was still around! So that fall, I began taking lessons and by the middle of the year, was able to join the band. It was hard as I struggled a lot to keep up. Towards the end of the year, I was playing one day when the flute I held just simply fell apart in my lap! The whole key mechanism fell off and the flute was no longer able to be played. So for my birthday in May, my parents purchased me a new student flute. From then on, music became the primary passion in my life and remains a very integral part of my life today.
With art, things went a bit differently.I didn’t so much as pick up a pencil my entire childhood.In college, I did take a beginning art class but became very disillusioned with the whole thing when the teacher insisted that good art must follow certain rules.I’m not much for following rules when it comes to creativity. So I dropped out.It wasn’t until I was 27 years old that I picked up a pencil again.It happened quite spontaneously one evening when I was working.I was bored and so decided to take a picture of my co workers daughter off of her desk and with a number 2 pencil and a sheet of printer paper, I drew the image. (see left)
My other co workers where quite pleased with it and soon they began to bring in pictures of their own children for me to draw.I gave away a lot of free portraits during that time!I decided to pursue it more seriously so enrolled in a community art class but once again was frustrated with the instructor’s emphasis that good art had rules so I dropped the class and purchased my own set of art books to study.The one that was really a breakthrough for me was How to Draw Lifelike Portraits from Photographs by Lee Hammond.Here is an example of a “before and after” drawing using the suggestions in her book. (see drawings below)From then on I spent much time practicing and refining my OWN style and in 2001 I began my own business accepting commissions for portraits.
Your drawings have an immense sense of detail which to me seems to reflect an incredible focus and dedication to what you are capturing. Can you describe what your creative state is like while you are drawing? I’m not sure why my art took the direction it did towards “super realism” but it seemed to be what really motivated me at the time. I really do not know any “techniques” for drawing and have no interest in understanding the mechanics of what I do. When I begin a piece, it is first about laying down the foundation/framework of the piece. Then I go in and fill in the details. There is a point that I call “the zone” where something happens that I can only describe as this: As I am looking at the paper, I already SEE it finished. Not literally with my eyes, per se, but I can see it… and I just use my pencil (or whatever other tools I have) to fill in what is already there. My progress has come about by playing with the different tools to figure out which ones best create what it is I see. This makes creating the piece effortless and at times feels a bit like “cheating” haha! But when I am in that zone… nothing else exists but that potential that I already see and the desire to manifest it so that others can see it too.
On your website you have the quote "A photograph captures an image, but a drawing reveals the soul..." Could you share more about what this means to you? As I stated above, when I draw, I become very intimately connected with the subject I am working on. When working on a person’s eyes, I really FEEL the person and get to know them. What I feel happens is, when I draw the eyes, I tap into the essence of the person themselves and allow it to be revealed through my drawing of their eyes. It’s like my pencil becomes a conduit/portal to manifesting that essence on paper. Incidentally, this also occurs with animals and even inanimate objects. In particular, I am thinking of the piece I did of a hand with rocks that I completed last winter. (see drawing below) I call the piece “Integration” and little did I know at the time, but I was weaving my OWN integration in the process of creating it. In effect, I revealed to myself the essence of my OWN soul in its completion. While drawing it, each rock spoke to me, and told me how it wanted to look. Sometimes one would say “skip by me, I’m not ready yet” so I’d move on. A few of them were VERY stubborn in revealing themselves to me and presented the greatest challenge. But the part that is the most special to me is the piece of glass. A piece of glass amongst a pile of rocks that seemed to not belong there. It was the very last thing I drew. And when I did, I realized I had taken out of the shadows those parts of myself that I felt didn’t belong and gave them a proper place amongst all of the other parts of me. In its completion, I became complete.
Have you ever had times when you are drawing that you just don’t feel you are capturing the essence of the subject and how did/do you deal with this? At times, I will be working on a drawing that I feel I am just not connecting with. At those times, I will put the drawing aside, still visible to me, but will not work on it. So every day, I will study it as I am doing other things and finally “it” hits… the zone kicks in and I eagerly pick it up and begin again. This “it” seems to be that space where I tap into the ENERGY of the image I am drawing as I described above and I am able to “see” it finished on the page and can then go about manifesting it with my pencil. I have never begun a drawing that I did not finish and always feel satisfied with the results.
How do you know when a drawing is “finished”? Once I complete a drawing (ie all of the subject matter is filled in) I will once again put it aside, still visible to me, and study it from time to time. This is the “tweaking” phase that generally takes about a week. Since I work in black and white, this generally comes into play with the contrasts of light and dark in the piece. I may feel a section needs to be darkened more or another part lightened up more. When I feel the contrasts of light and dark are balanced then I call the piece finished. I generally find myself vocalizing “yes!” when I know I’ve done this. That is when I sign my name to it and when I withdraw my creative energy from the piece.
It is my pleasure to introduce this gorgeous calender to you and have Jule Webster talk about her creation;
"I admit it! I’m a “serial sketcher”! When you’re talking to me, I’m seeing little pictures of what you’re saying. It gets even worse when Geoffrey Hoppe is channeling. You might sit down and listen to the channels with a cuppa’ and a big block of chocolate. I need my pencils and sketch pad.
That’s how the pictures for “A New Energy Life” calendar came about. Geoff was channeling the Ten Commitments, I was wishing I could remember them and thinking I could stick little drawings up around the place to remind me…and suddenly the calendar idea just popped into my head.
I drew the watercolour and ink pictures- the images came in really quickly and then I added the captions. The computer stuff slowed me down and frustrated me! Then I let the project sit for a while. A friend said the other day to put the calendar up on the self publishing site Lulu.com and so here it is!
This is my first worldwide publication and inspired a little story called “The Calendar Ghost.” Those nighttime fears are the worst! Fear of failure, fear of success, worrying about putting yourself “out there” (I feel like a turtle with its head permanently stuck out), getting lost in intense change resistant energies…you see why I need the calendar up on the wall! It reminds me that I’m so much more than human and to look after myself and have fun! I hope it will do the same for you."
Jule's website is www.seadreaming.net which has a link to buy the calender on the homepage.
Coming Soon!
The first annual "Good Blowing Job!" Awards
It is my pleasure to announce that Kuthumi and I will soon be hosting our first award ceremony honouring those creating in the new energy.
The awards shall be known as "Blowies" and winners will receive an actual trophy.
So start thinking of who you would nominate, or prepare your own nomination and acceptance speech!
