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An Unapologetic Rebel

6/8/2014

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They and Them exist. They are the ones who try to follow rules, the harmless ones, never pushing or exceeding outside of the boundaries established. They don't think for themselves or create themselves in the most authentic ways and resent others who do... perhaps they wish secretly that they could? That they had the nerve? When they take out on us, how do we deal with them?

I have no idea. What I may not necessarily like about myself, I've learned to accept and use to my advantage in art. I am insubordinate and rebellious as hell and tried for years to get rid of it. The first words I used had to do with rebelling. Also, I've been painting, drawing or creating since I was in diapers, my first complete sentence had to do with something about art. The two are as much a part of me as my eye color.

I've been a professional artist for 20 years and know well the "rules" applicable to art-- and CHOOSE to break them and break them often. This doesn't go with their vision of what art should be (a random sampling of safe "Corporate Art" that looks great in libraries, public facilities, hard to decorate hallways or over couches.)

Here's a hint: real art isn't copied from a photo, unless the pic is mixed with other elements to convey something. Real artists who are making the real art also communicate (a concept, mood, social issue, secret wish) with their art, too, or push a limit that has been too-long-enmeshed in our culture. Sad truth is that real artists will have to stifle themselves to be found in outwardly criticizing/inwardly complacent galleries, and will usually be shunned.

We stand out like sore thumbs, which is a good thing. Whats happened to us is that we got so good early in our lives that we got bored and moved on into challenging realms.

If you're not being shunned for something, you're doing it wrong. Whether its your subject matter, how your shadows fall across a wall or how its framed or isn't, get some kind of criticism and then be ballsy enough to either ignore it and/or make art out of the criticism. Its like a ladder: make one thing, take inspiration from their reactions and make another piece. Paint the cool stuff that happens in between, too: there is no such thing as a dry spell or artists' block when you do this.  

Respect. I can't listen to someone I don't respect about a subject that is close to me if they aren't more experienced in the direction in which I want to grow. Talent, I've got. Talent and being good at what you do is the easy part. Being professional is also easy as hell.

Courage. Where this inclination comes from is that I don't believe in authority figures (usually toe-the-line-traditionalists) and the world is full of those who think they are exactly that just because they can follow rules to a T. You've met them, the bossy ones who think they know it all, when in reality they're just talented hobbyists... playing around after retirement with no real blood, sweat, or tears translated into gutsy emotional investment for the world to see. They feel proud to have sold a piece or two without risking a damn thing and have stayed comfortable their whole lives.

I'm interested in the hard stuff that makes me grow; I don't stay safe and would consider myself generally weak minded or insecure if I did. What helps this along from both a very personal and universal concept, this subject hits my rebellious streak where I get much of my best and highest selling pieces of inspiration. A message to "them": Bring it. I've been talented as long as I've had breath, so I'll paint my expressions of the situations you create (that everyone relates to at some point) and then make money off situations your criticism created.

The reality of me not staying safe scares the shit out of traditionalists. I love it. This is how I play. Playing is risk, you have to show vulnerability to play and have fun at what you do. Remember? Lets see what this does, lets see what that does. Just watch a toddler with his mashed potatoes, you'll see. These other people had been harshly criticized for playing and lost the wonder and thrill of sating curiosity in the name of fun, so if their pictures aren't planned from beginning to end, they can't handle it.

Here's both support and permission: Play. Be spontaneous a little. Then a little more. Say something inadequate. Have the hard conversations. Be vulnerable, then suck it up and put it on canvas, sculpture, music, or poetry. Take the consequences afterwards, too. You can handle it and you'll relate to someone who didn't know they wanted to say the exact same thing and they'll probably buy it, too. You just gave the voiceless a megaphone. Now, how good does that feel??

I know this, my toughest pieces to show were the ones sold first time off the chain and the ones who bought them usually cried in relief and happiness.

Personal Investment. Unless someone has the cajones to invest their internal landscape into the one they've portrayed from their self-taken photograph, I won't listen because I know I've got the guts to be real and they don't. Some people are strictly business people who have some talent, but they aren't risking anything. Any monkey can learn to paint a picture, but can they put their personal perspective into it?

Pretty. Sure I do pretty, but I can't respect pretty unless its genuine, and when they paint pretty to hang in the city hall or for your money, its not genuine. Sure, the world is full of pretty, but what are you conveying with it? I'm not saying all pretty art is inauthentic because I also paint beauty when I feel beauty-- but how many of us feel beauty all the time? Not any of us. Art is supposed to reflect life!

Lets get real here, including art, by showing the totality of who we are. Nostalgic, romantic, dark, moody, conceptual, sweet composition pushing design... know thyself, bogus art making money chasers, and then paint the reality of that. Better yet, I'll paint you, at least I've got the guts.

Well, its safe to assume that if told to do something, the answer is generally no. I don't bow to anyone, but will bend when I want to. And right now, I don't :)

Rebels:

Jesus, Ghandi, Monet, Renoir. Everyone that mattered in history had the balls to buck the established system. Think about that. 


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Stages of Grief: Anger is one of them

9/24/2013

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Grief is a complicated thing and people vascillate between deep despair, denial, anger, making "deals" <--I never did that one, back to one of the ones just mentioned and over and over. About anger... they never really tell you why you're angry or what its going to be directed at, do they? I guess it could be anything.  

Day before yesterday, I saw Oil of Olay bodywash Mom had gotten me for Christmas and I just bawled. For 2 hours. The thought that I didn't do enough for her, make her feel loved enough, just kills me. Since I had Devyn, I didn't have the patience I used to and the thought I'd hurt her feelings, kills me. Not being able to call her to tell her this weird mix of haircolor I concocted looks good, kills me. Not being able to hear her blather away about dumb things breaks my heart. 

Last night, we go there and she's not waking up at all. They'd done a CT scan and there is nothing wrong with her head that she can't wake up... she's just sick. Its not pain meds, its not a high fever, she's just checked out. Hell, I've been sick as a dog, had 105 fever and saw things, yet I could still say hi. WTF?

Then I got angry. I'm actually relieved, anger feels better than that despair. 

A long time ago, a couple built a house. They didn't have everything that they really needed to make it as sturdy as they should, but they wanted one anyway and they built it where they wanted to. It turned out to be a really good house. In the early years of its "life", a hurricane came along, Camille. The house still stood, most folks were surprised given that the hurricane had 200 mph winds. Sure, it lost its shingles, shutters and porch, but somehow the little house made it.  

Other things happened throughout time, additions had been built onto the house, new rooms, renovations, celebrations, births and birthdays. More hurricanes came and went and the house creaked and moaned and the superfluous parts blew off, but the main structure still stood. The couple was proud of themselves and their construction and maintained life as usual, thinking that all is fine. They tended to the outside, the gardens, the furniture, but never thought to check the bones of the house.

Later on, a small but compact storm, category 1, hit the house and this time, it started to shake more than usual, making crumbling sounds. No one understood: its withstood the biggest and strongest of winds, why would it now begin to crumble? The winds are coming from a different direction, its a small storm comparatively, so why is this happening? 

No one heard the support beams splinter in initial storm's torrential rains because they were so busy mopping up the superficial water on the floor. So now, people are shocked that this small category 1 is about to take out the small, seemingly sturdy house. 

The ones living there even get mad at the house: this is a completely different situation! Why are you crumbling??

How stupid is that?? Well for someone seeing the situation for what it is, there are a few choices... strengthen the support beams, move the house away from the hurricane-habitat or watch it blow over. 

Such is the life of someone who is an ACOA when they live long enough to revisit situations that remind them of initial childhood insults. Even long after sobriety and the choice to live a better life, the structural damage remains. In my situation, I've saved my Mom's life over and over and over-- whether it was through hiding her booze so she wouldn't drink into oblivion and drown in the bathtub, begging her to leave a man who would eventually kill her, all the warnings I gave her to behave differently when Dad (if he knew what she was doing) would beat her for what she was doing, hiding her in my closet when she came back after "running off", to actually sitting on her lap as a human shield when he was going to shoot her. 

Today, I am tired of having to make life and death choices for someone who isn't present. 

No matter how many times Stephen tells me that the situation is different, I can't help but feel tired and resentful. Yes its different, but the effect is still the same. I don't get a life, I get sadness and fear and loss. Whether its by choice (alcohol, a husband) or by nature (Nocardia), I am fucking tired of this and angry. I want her to suck it up, wake up and make a choice between life and death and not leave me to do it for her, like most of my life.     

But as unfair as it is, thats not going to happen. And I'm still left here to look at limbo with the thought that something else could be done to snap her out of this. My heart still breaks and yearns for the person she was before the illness. I still see some fucking olay bodywash somewhere, all day every day. God, I miss her and I'm mad and I don't want to make this decision. But here I am. 

My beams may be wobbly, but my foundation is strong. So fuck you, storm, bring it. Blow the house down. I'll rebuild.  
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#Logos and Branding Packages Free4All Promotion #Twittergoons :)

5/27/2013

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Picture
The inspiration: I am making some logos for Etsy listings and as I'm makin these up off the top of my head, it hits me: Since I'm doin this anyway, why not just find some people who really needs them? Who could actually USE them? I get the experience of working with real issues, real design and get something to show in the end.
Not only that, its doing something good for those who need it :) that is the best thing in the world to me. The working Mom who doesn't have the time to invest in the simple luxury to think about it... the artist at home who is so busy listing that they can't spend the time to make their own. The person starting their business for the first time and is stuck as to what aspects they want to continue.

So, its $300 worth of Business Branding design at your disposal, all free.

You get a choice of 3 of the following:
  • A logo
  • Business Cards
  • Facebook Cover

  • Linked In Cover for your company

Do something free for people. You won't regret it.

Check it out: All you have to do like our facebook page here- or ask a friend to :) https://www.facebook.com/HillArtistry

If you don't have a facebook account, you can also like our Linked In Hill Artistry Company page.
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Eavesdropping on Angels' Conversations: Nope, its no secret that artists are weird

5/21/2013

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I really think I dreamed about the Oklahoma City tornado last night before it happened. Proof, I even posted about it here on facebook before it happened. Yes, call me a kook, but I do believe in paranormal perception, 6th senses, esp, whatever you want to call it.  I think its one of God's gifts that we all have to some degree. Read about brain wave activity and what is linked to psychic things here.

I watch Theresa Caputo on Long Island Medium and she's helped me so much to realize and guide whats going on sometimes, much more than when this stuff was hush-hush. She's incredibly gifted and I wish I knew how to "let it go". I translate too much. I need to just describe and shut up about it.

Anyway, I had a terrible dream last night/this morning or so. It was so vivid and here is what was in it:

There was some huge cataclysmic event in which people were grabbing other people's kids and "hiding them" because they knew "it" was coming. It seemed important that I know that they knew "it" was going to happen.

The thing that was happening was so bad that sheltering really didn't matter. What was coming, I didn't know. (I do lucid dreaming in which I can actually "think" in my dream and I thought it was a world war, a volcano or an asteroid because people were running to bunker-type bomb shelters.) I've never lived in tornado prone areas, so basements and bomb shelters are foreign to me.

The devastation was going to be so huge that most wouldn't survive, and the ones who did survive were walking around in disbelief that they did. All these people were just walking around, looking at familiar objects like.. zombies or something.

I kept hearing, or being infused with the knowledge that "There were two storms before this one".

Anyway people were trying to hide children so they would be safe.
We, this couple,  weren't "supposed" to be able to survive, but the children were because they were in this other area (we were separated and I didn't know why).

I then turned into one of the children at a school (I somehow turn into all characters in my dreams and see their perspectives) and I was a child, one among many, in a room with cinder-block walls. Water was coming in and I got hit from behind by what I thought was a wave, but all I knew was I was catapulted toward the wall and remember thinking, "Please God, let me go through that one window to the high left because I don't want to go straight through that cinder block wall.

These children were there in that space (it felt like "on purpose") so they would go quickly. I didn't know why they should go quickly... my brain made up some excuse why in that they didn't want them to suffer. I don't even know who they are. 

I turned into another adult who couldn't figure out why people had their hands in the air and dry dirt was puffing and flying around in the air (again, I thought this meant an eruption of some sort, after all, ash is dirt and we live on the west coast.) I saw a black wedge shaped thing that I thought was smoke or an ash cloud.

Anyway, I switched back into the child in the cinder block building area. Water came into where we were and I was trying to hold the hand of another child. That "chapter" of the dream ended abruptly and I was another character. I didn't get anything else out of that, no last moments, no nothing.

Onward, I turned into a parent (myself?) and saw fire, something on the ground was hot and coming "up"(gas lines?) and cars crumpled and mangled and abandoned. My vehicle was gone, nothing worked and I couldn't figure out how to get my child. Everything was obliterated. I saw a car that was in shape to perhaps drive, noticed that the seatbelt had been ripped and there was blood on it.

I felt the seatbelt and then started screaming with the realization that someone had been strapped in it when it was torn apart and knew that it had to be an immense force that could rip that kind of material. I thought that the person wasn't in one piece because the chances were good that he or she ripped before the belt material. It was obvious that the person wasn't alive anymore.

I turned into another child who managed to hide in a cage-like area with other children at another school. He was warning other children to not go "out there". I don't think this one had a shelter or they managed to get out of the group. They weren't supposed to survive, but they did. They were in a small, enclosed space, forgotten storage behind the school.

I saw wood panels, something that looked like boxes or wooden crates and chicken wire. It was perhaps part of the school, perhaps not but so close it could be an outbuilding. Dogs came... they were afraid of the dogs and didn't want to say anything. Some dogs didn't seem tame. One had black inside his mouth as he was barking at me.

We were afraid of how we would survive AFTER having survived the initial onslaught. They thought their parents were dead and that the dogs would bite them, so they remained hidden and quiet. (I hope there are no children who are hiding, afraid of the rescue dogs out there. I never thought of them being big and scary to kids before.)

I then turned into that other person who had seen the seatbelt. I started screaming to find my child, that I had to get "where" he was because I knew the people who had him would keep him safe, but I just couldn't get there. 

Somehow, then Moss Point popped in the dream??? And then something about the importance of the survival of the children under the age of five. (I guess that would mean preschool kids, who WEREN'T in school would be ok.) Then I was running through New Orleans and people, survivors, were sleeping outside because it was hot and they had no electricity.

I heard Devyn running upstairs and I woke up.

Two storms before this one. Two storms before this one. What keeps getting me is that there really WERE two storms that took this path, almost exactly, before this one. One in 1999 and the other in 2003.
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Learning and Applying

5/5/2013

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Here's the dry part of art that does exist, even for me, the lofty, hippy goob.

After uploading the latest paintings, I've decided to paint the stories that make up my life, one. Lil' Dood was so wonderful to paint and remember, he was such a character.

Two, I need to do more big shapes with color to bring the viewer to the painting and then spend the time doing detail that sucks in the viewer further. This latest landscape is big, yet will really work well in a small space-- because its mainly made up of nothing but detail. Its gorgeous, but the contrast and shapes in the second tree from the left is the real star of the show-- and that teaches a lot.

Three, I LOVE contrast and trumped up color, and that fits with all the happenings in this life and in this body. Seems that is what this path is about, no matter how I want to steer it down a quiet road, someone comes with a bullhorn and shocks me back to... reality?? Is there any such thing. Reminds me of Tesla's
Heaven's Trail (No Way Out) lyrics.


Rude awakenings, ha ha. Remember this post?? All I want is two or three months (ok, I'm pushing it now) of *nothing* happening but forward movement (you know, people getting sick, houses falling apart, computers smoking... but then there comes a kick in the balls. (Well, powers that be, now I'm expecting it, so I got a sports cup and I'm gonna paint about it. Its fodder now.)

I'll take a lesson from Frida Kahlo, and those others wiser and greater than me, sure. Muse. A-muse. There ya go. God, I'm not taunting You--- just what that thing in fate is that keeps kicking me as soon as I try to get back up. Fine, I'll make money from it.   

I'll also do the great stories, too, the ones that are quiet and sweet. The last several days HAVE been quiet, thank God. If you don't count Devyn's trip to the ER and then doctor for impaction and the issues after that... or the possible cold he's getting now. Phew. I'm just grateful thats over! Best advice I've read this past week is: Life is not an emergency. My hair has been set on fire so often recently that I'm waking up automatically, patting myself on the head. If you get some serenity, thank God and keep it as long as you can. Nothing lasts forever, joy nor suffering.

But its been so beautiful. Sunshine. Oh, breathing in the sunshine. Getting outside to do something as mundane as washing the truck was a joy--- and seeing Stephen run after Devyn who was bookin it down our street. No one was on the verge of dying again, no one was needing an ER :) and being aware of it. Meeting Abbey and Justin across the street and Holly, Michelle's friend from New Orleans- about kudzu, voodoo, hummingbirds, labels, conservatism, liberalism, beer, clemato-beer (lol, it is good), listening to music that brought back memories of Tbone stealing cassette tapes for Susie Harrison and I :)

Bun and I going to the Women's Conference to meet a therapist who supported me in starting up art groups again. I would so love that, had given up on it due to not having  any credentials. Its so important and integral for me to do this. 

For the first time in forever, I was aware of walking into a place without self consciousness, without feeling intimidated by the business people there. Without feeling out of place. Thank you, God. Fourty is kinda cool.
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    Linda Hill

    I am a life long artist, divorced from a 20 year marriage and a Mommy to a gorgeous little boy  for  3 years.

    I love God Consciousness, love to give and love the human spirit in all its forms. Nothing separates us, separation is an illusion.

    Its taken me a long time to feel comfortable in my own skin, scars and all. A past of neglect and sometimes abuse gave me issues I have to work through, sometimes here.

    What helped me most is to truly love and help others. You can't give what you don't have, but by giving, you will find that you already have all that you could ever wish for.

    My art, blog and life has been about "owning" myself along with all the mixed blessings that come with this thing we call life.

    Like the Velveteen Rabbit, I have become REAL.




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