As usual, I’ll be honest with you.
The title of this post is an irresistable play on words, this is really just a chance to give you a small tour of my world so I’m less of a faceless and nameless person and more of a real one.
Hope you like it.
Archive for the 'alena' Category
Having long subscribed to the idea that life experience is crucial to creativity, and that sometimes I’ve needed to fall apart in order to put myself back together in another way, this quote here unsurprisingly really floats my boat.
“I have woven a parachute out of everything broken” William Stafford
And this is how poetry can reach inside of us and pull something out in a different way.
Much of the time I have thought about my past as somewhat shameful and derisive. And surely, to some, it has been that way.
Amidst the shame and guilt around things I could have done better, there is also an awareness of my own responsibility for the way things have been. My history, though at times shady, has given me a unique and shiny attitude to how things are now.
I vividly recall making a deal with the devil and inviting difficult and dark experiences into my life with full awareness of the risk because (somewhat naively) I was ambitious, wanted to be an artist or a writer, and felt that my middle class upbringing was not interesting enough to fuel this ambition.
Growing up I read biographies and followed life stories. Those of the people I really admired universally involved some kind of deep and soulful suffering or tragedy: think Virginia Woolf (depressed and suicidal), Nelson Mandela (imprisoned for most of his life), William Burroughs (shot his own wife, addicted), River Phoenix (addicted, died on the street outside the Viper Room).
Ok so River was just gorgeous actually, but you get my point.
From this haphazard research I concluded that unless you can make yourself a ‘parachute out of everything broken’ as William Stafford so eloquently suggested, you will surely fall to your death with or without leaving something inspirational and beautiful behind you.
So I’m weaving my little heart out – I’m threading my bad behaviour to my guilt, and I’m sewing a patch of selfishness onto my scrap of fear. It’s really coming along nicely.
And it’s going to be one hell of a parachute.
Hoodie Girl #2
Here she is, the product of my last few weeks’ brushstrokes – she came out of a friend’s desire for her, cups of coffee with semi-strange men late at night, sleepless midnights and the unstoppable desire to create. She was meant for another, but I love her so much I don’t think I can let her go.
She’s my new Hoodie Girl, and I’m running out of wall…
For now, she’s a stand alone, I’ll not write more until inspired to. For now, she’s just here, looking at the ground, unassumingly existing.
There’s a strange principle at work in all life, sometimes it’s called love. The more love we involve in the things we do (the real green, heartfelt kind of love that is) the more life, the way we live it, and the things we make, sing and shine and uplift. Strong memories of sitting in my room as a teen, drawing, writing and listening to music are great reminders of this. When I was about 15 years old, one of the by-products of this “love-time” was the picture shown here.
The picture is oddly prophetic. Today I spent the morning making a patch of soil for my local cafe ready for planting. I did what this picture here above is talking about and made a patch of land fertile around a tree so it can grow food for the local community – and I loved it.
Just like Michael Jackson, a lot of us peak early, then perhaps look around the world for a time only to find we had it all in us to begin with. Some of us get lost along the way – whether it be by the ‘paths’ we take through danger or addiction or destructive behaviour. Mr Jackson was an incredibly beautiful and talented child, his voice and lyrics sang the world into meaning for many people, including me. He was incredibly generous with his inherant gifts. It seems he was perhaps too sensitive and hearty and lost his way amongst money, fame, isolation and painkillers. Maybe something in him gave up on love.
People are sharing their memories on his site put up by Sony Music so we can all grieve his passing together. When I think of all the wedding dancefloors, daggy nightclub DJs and house party mixes that have included a moment of “Don’t Blame ii on the Sunshine” or all the times I’ve felt overjoyed when I find “Rock With You” playing on an AM radio station in the country whilst on a roadtrip, I feel humbled and grateful. As a teen we would sing “PYT Pretty Young Thing” at the top of our voices on the back of the school bus. I was lucky to have been a teen when Thriller topped the charts for record time. It was truly thrilling back then.
So my hope for everyone reading this is that we remember our innermost passions and stay with them, and never, ever give up on them no matter what. If we find ourselves in an innoportune place to live our loves, know that whatever got us to where we are today can get us out of it.
Today, green means love to me. I love Michael Jackson and his music, and I love the fact that despite his addictions and his madness much of the world is celebrating his life and his gifts. Rest in PEACE Mr Jackson, let’s hope you find your love and your meaning somewhere, somehow. Your mission, reader, should you choose to accept it, is to make a decision to be the love, and do it now.
If you’ve been following this blog for a little while you will know a few things about iheartgreen. You’ll know that some of the artworks on this page are for sale and you can buy either the original or a print for a very reasonable price (just leave a comment and we’ll get in touch if you want to know more). You may not know that some have already been sold (like the one shown here and the I Heart Green artwork below). One thing they all have in common is that they arise from an organic process – ideas gathered from experience and inspiration that randomly cross paths of artists transcribed into visual form.
This picture below is a semi-self-portrait, whipped up in response to a lingering image of a faceless man in a hooded jumper, and probably inspired by street artists around the globe who use this image, including but not limited to one of our favourites - Banksy. Apart from his amazing street art, he generously flew street artists from around the world to the Cans Festival in May last year (he was the sole sponsor). For more on this you can go to the official site or have a look at a wonderful Aussie blog called Images to Live By written by Melbourne-based academic Alison Young that I found today on the subject. The Australian street artists that were flown to London for the festival were Vexta, Tom Civil and DLux (have a look at a great collection of the work of theirs and others here on Flickr).
All those great things led bit by by to the formation of this image here.
hoodiegirl detail - pen, acrylic & crayon on canvas
hoddie girl self portrait
Please comment and let us know what you’re thinking, and a big shout out to my little bro who is the proud owner of this picture as of tomorrow. Happy Birthday little brother, you’re my hero.
‘Nuff said.
Oh, and hey bro’… did I tell you, you’re my hero?
Saturday night at home and at the bottom of the shelves are some coloured crayons, a canvas, some black pens. Here’s what they made. OH yeah, and we really really really do heart green… thanks for stopping by.
i heart green various media on canvas by alena
My heart is green with gratitude instead of envy for so many reasons. We don’t live in Darfur, we live in Sydney. We can breathe today. Things are growing in the garden. We have choices. We are healthy, sheltered and fed.
Just to be alive would be enough.
Pencil and acrylic on canvas by Alena
We asked Linette and Paddy ‘what does green mean to you?’
Linette & Paddy from alena russell on Vimeo.
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- gratitude
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- green means family
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- green dreams
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- green means love
Art, all acrylics on canvas, various sizes, painted by Alena Russell
To the facebook community who caught the change of status as it was posted green means
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