Telescopic painting is a painting technique I caught myself doing the other day. To paint telescopically means that instead of watching the paint brush, your eye is watching the part of the painting where you wanted your brush to go.

I was painting the horizon line on my Star Struck Mermaid and instead of watching myself paint the line; I was watching the line an inch or so ahead of my brush.

As often happens while painting, I realized that this technique could also come in handy when living life in general.

Painting telescopically is not a natural way to paint though it can be easily learned. I imagine the same can be said for “living telescopically”.

A telescope is a device through which things far away are brought closer to us so we can see them better.

To live telescopically is to live with your desired future outcome in mind. Almost as if it were already true today.

Many people have wishes, dreams, and/or goals in mind for their “future self”. Having a dream or a goal is a great first step.

The next step, the telescoping step, is to live as if your dream or goal has already arrived.

Our goals and dreams become reality not because the future is changing, but because WE are changing. We are growing into the person who lives the dream or goal. Another way of saying this is that we become a “perfect fit” for our goal.

Depending upon your current mindset, this is either a giant leap or simply a slight shift in your perspective.

Regardless, play around with this thought to see how it feels.

What if it were possible to live your life telescopically with your mind’s eye trained on your desired outcome instead of on the way things are right now?

What if it is possible that by changing your perspective you can change your world?

Living Telescopically is not something that you “should” do. It is merely an optional way to look at life, one that my Star Struck Mermaid has been teaching me while I paint.

Two professional oil painters recently told me that they are afraid of painting with watercolor. They said that it is too unpredictable and unforgiving. I have heard this before.

In fact, I used to believe that too. I had NO intention of even trying watercolor before moving into a very small apartment in Honolulu made it advisable (fumes from oil paints can be deadly).

Now I know watercolor can be magical & free as well as domesticated, and occasionally quiet.

Watercolor has many facets and can be used differently to suit your moods.

My favorite method is to embrace the mystery of painting as a form of meditation and insight.

I enjoy the challenge of starting fast with a loose idea. Then applying texture and paint to create an underpainting (my Hide-N-Seek method).

Later, when all the texture has been removed, I paint slowly, taking my time to find my original idea (the Seeking part of Hide-N-Seek).

It is a good idea to have several paintings going so that when you get “stuck” on one, you can work on another.

Each painting has the potential to teach us something new about art and about life.

When we quietly tiptoe into our paintings, we have the opportunity to watch magic happen as the world expands through our creation.

When painting slowly, stop periodically to really look at the painting in progress. In this way you can see what is needed and the painting process becomes a meditation.

Sometimes paintings happen quickly. Stunning paintings, filled with charged color and fluid movement can happen in one sitting.

There truly are as many ways to paint, as there are people.

If you want to find your own way with watercolor, please email me. Teaching and helping others to expand their artistic vision is one of my favorite things to do.

Not yet complete, here you see that I am finding more and more trees in this Aspen Grove in Autumn. This painting was started in the Hide-N-Seek Class I taught in Denver earlier in October, 2014. Ask me how you can arrange to have me teach a class in your neck of the woods!

I recently participated in a grueling 3-day tradeshow. It was an experience I am not likely to replicate, but there were a few bright spots.

On the third day, Keanu (hubby) surprised me by purchasing a 10-minute Ho’opono Healing Massage for me. I don’t think of myself as a “massage person”. I don’t have many aches/pains, and honestly feel a bit guilty about receiving massage because I don’t like giving them.

I had been standing on concrete for three days and when asked where my pain was I said my feet and maybe my lower back (I really didn’t have much pain, but they asked).

When I lay down on the table, my right foot cramped, so I asked the masseuse to pull on my toes to make it stop. He proceeded to really DIG into the soles of my feet.

OMG it hurt — a lot. He could tell by all the twitching and ouch sounds I was making, but he didn’t stop. He spent eight of the ten minutes on my feet before doing a tiny bit of massage on my back.

When I sat up I was dizzy. He explained that he had released some energy blockages and that I should drink plenty of water the rest of the day.

An hour later I met with one of my new students, Emma Kupu Mitchell. Emma is a Sound Energy Healer who works with crystal bowls and was sharing a booth at the show. She gave me a sample of her work (pure bliss).

The tradeshow wasn’t a great sales venue for me, but I believe I was there for other reasons. I met some wonderful people, both vendors and attendees.

I also realized that with all of the energetic work that goes into my paintings and teaching, it is important that I balance it with some energetic and healing work for myself.

Life is a balancing act. We are all busy juggling our day-to-day life chores on one side of the “teeter-totter”, with the fun things that make our life worth living on the other.

Before I quit my corporate job to become a full-time painter and teacher, I got up early to create art before going to work.

Now that I am a full-time painter/teacher, I seek ways to carve out time to write and illustrate a children’s book.

This is a good thing! Continuing to stretch and grow gives meaning to our lives. It gives us a reason to bring more life force energy into the world. It inspires us to maintain a sense of balance in our lives.

How about you? Does your life feel balanced? Are you feeling mired in your job or life, or are you actively seeking ways to enrich your life?

Teaching Watercolor is one of my “callings”. I think of painting is a metaphor for living life more fully.

Take one of my classes and you will know what I mean.

I’m a bit of a bookworm; reading is one of my passions. I read journals, memoirs, novels, how-to books, self-help books, children’s’ books, cookbooks, etc. You get the picture.

Recently a friend of mine recommended “The Painter” by Peter Heller, so I got it out of the library (love libraries!). It is a wonderfully well-written story about a painter; and I feel compelled to share a few of my favorite passages with you.

“Nobody, not even artists, understood art. What speed has to do with it. How much work it takes, year after year, building the skills, the trust in the process, more work probably than any Olympic athlete ever puts in because it is 24 hours a day, even in dreams, and then when the skills and the trust are in place, the best work usually takes less effort. Usually it comes fast, it comes without thought, it comes like a horse running over you at night. But. Even if people understood this, they don’t understand that sometimes it is not like that at all. Because process has always been: craft, years and years; then faith; then letting go. But now, sometimes the best work is agony. Pieces put together, torn apart, rebuilt. Doubt in everything that has been learned, terrible crisis of faith, the faith that allowed it all to work. Oh God. And even then, through this, if you survive the halting pace and the fever, sometimes you make the best work you have ever made. That is the part none of us understand.”

“The reason people are so moved by art and why artists tend to take it all so seriously is that if they are real and true they come to the painting with everything they know and feel and love, and all the things they don’t know, and some of the things they hope, and they are honest about them all and put them on the canvas. What can be more serious? What more really can be at stake except life itself, which is why maybe artists are always equating the two and driving everybody crazy by insisting that art is life. Well. Cut us some slack. It’s harder work than one might imagine, and riskier, and takes a very special and dear kind of mad person.”

And finally:

“Not everybody can paint”, she said into my ear like a megaphone. “Some people just get to love it. Buy it, treasure it. The way it should be.”

The entire storyline revolves around much more than the painter and his paintings. I wanted to share these passages because the sentiments reflect my thoughts and feelings so much better than I could have written them. Just a little something for you to think about until you can get your copy of "The Painter" from the library.

On a much lighter note, I recently purchased one of my all-time favorite books, "The Little Prince," as a pop-up book.
I Love it!