A friend recently gifted me with eight or nine ceramic bowls that her husband had made. She has too many and he keeps making them.

I hesitated. They were all SO beautiful!

“No!” my friend exclaimed, “These are his “seconds”. If you look closely, each one is flawed.”

Slowly I put one aside, and then another, and another, being careful to not take too many.

Truth be told I would have taken them all — although I certainly don’t need them all, they were just So Beautiful!

As I was walking out the door, she said, “Don’t you want this one? I just love the colors on the inside.”

Of course I wanted that one! I just didn’t want to be greedy. I took that one too — it’s Stunning!

Heck, I even had the nerve to ask if it would be okay for me to share one or two with a friend (assuming I could bring myself to part with one or two).

“How rude”, I thought to myself, “but we’re friends”, I reasoned.

Except we’re sort of “new friends” if you know what I mean, so I really hope I wasn’t too rude!

As I left, I said, “I feel like a thief!”

My friend assured me, “no, these are all seconds — they’re flawed.”

I placed the bowls on the studio counter so Rebecca and I could “Ooh and aah” over them before I took some back to the house.

The bowls make us to want to have a party. We want to clean the studio and use all of the bowls for finger food.

That’s how festive they feel.

These beautiful bowls are one person’s idea of “seconds”, of flawed pieces of pottery, of an art form that didn’t quite meet the standards that they’d set out to achieve.

So what? They are still beautiful!

Most of us fall short of the standards we want to achieve.

We “fall short” because we’re moving forward, we are growing and expanding our universe. And we keep moving the standards further and further from where we began!

Creation and expansion are imperfect processes.

I appreciate the generosity of my new friend and I love the way I feel when I see and use my beautiful new bowls (“flaws” and all).

There is joy in feeling the heart-or-head-to-hand-to-creation connection coming through the bowls. These bowls are perfect to me, although they might be imperfect to the creator.

Handmade art has loads of qualities and character, and is always made by “imperfect humans”.

The more we’re able to put ourselves into our art, the better and better our art becomes, even when it’s “flawed”!

We love the perfect imperfections seen and felt in art that speaks to us.

“Death is one of many ways to lose your life.”  ~Alvah Simon

Losing yourself in the life of another is a way to “lose your life”.

Complacency is another, much more insidious way to “lose your life”!

It’s no coincidence that the quote above by Alvah Simon popped into my head during Thanksgiving Dinner. I hadn’t thought of it for 16 years and suddenly, there it was, clear as the day I first heard it in an NPR interview with Simon.

Simon wrote the book, “North to the Night” about his sailing trip to the Arctic Circle!

In 2000, his quote was my clarion call to move to Hawai`i to begin my life as a full-time professional artist.

Today it’s my call to keep moving and to take my career to the "next level".

My adventure begins anew!

I’ve always been independent. Mom says my independence began at the tender age of two.

Independence is often a good thing. Interdependence might just be better. It’s time for me to find out.

It’s time for me to create a team and to delegate some of the tasks I’ve been tackling on my own these last 16 years.

This is scary territory for me.

As a one-woman show, I’ve been responsible to and for ME. Soon I will be responsible to and for MORE.

I will be working with an outside team of experts in the fields of art and business to help me craft my new “Art of Aloha TEAM”. (Details to follow at a later date.)

I’m excited, nervous, thrilled, curious, hopeful, and scared — just the perfect place to be to move forward in bold brush strokes.

I hope you’ll join me on this new exciting journey, and invite your friends along too!

Together we can take new steps, test new creative waters, stretch a few boundaries, and bring a bit more life force energy into our lives.

If not now, when?

Let’s make 2017 the year we all shatter
our self-imposed “glass ceilings”!

We are not being called to DO More.

We are being called to BE MORE of Ourselves and to DO DIFFERENTLY.

The world is shifting in a myriad of ways.

This is the time of darkness in the Northern Hemisphere (and increasing Lightness in the Southern).

Those of us in the tropics experience the shift as well; it’s just more subtle. If you were to visit me today you might not notice the seasonal change, but those of us living here definitely do!

This time of year is traditionally used to let our lands lie fallow, giving them a chance to rest.

It’s also a time to let our minds mull over the past year; it’s a time of introspection.

At the beginning of 2016, I declared it the “second-coming” of Sweet Sixteen.
It was a chance for us to revisit our younger selves and to make any course correction we wanted to make.

What will 2017 bring? What do we want to see, to feel, to experience in 2017?

It’s up to us — it’s always up to each one of us!

Resist the distractions of the world around you.

Focus on what YOU WANT!

We have the opportunity to shine our lights brightly, to bring our desires into focus.

We must keep our eyes trained on the “prize” that we seek.

Don’t worry; we can’t get this “wrong”.

Opportunities abound each day.

“Do-Overs” are a natural part of the creative process.

Most paintings have a story to tell. Sometimes we know those stores at the outset. Other times we learn the stories as the paintings progress.

My inspiration for Anuenue Ali`i Wahine came to me in a dream which I recorded in my journal.

Learning the stories behind the painting requires the art of listening.

Listening to what?

Listening to that still small voice within us all — the one that we don’t always hear, but that is always there.

Listen to your paintings.

Yes, it’s perfectly okay to ask your painting for direction. And when you do, be sure to listen for the answers — and then follow the directions given.

This is the "under painting" of Anuenue (rainbow) Ali`i (royalty or goddes) Wahine (woman) —right after the texture has been removed.

Yes, it's okay to NOT follow the directions too.

Think of painting as a co-creative act. You are not alone at your easel or table. You are working with the forces of creation that surround us at all times.

Getting closer, but not yet complete.

Painting is an interactive sport. Smile while you paint and when asking your questions. Be playful about your painting. Make it a game.

If you’ve ever watched someone start a painting, you have an inkling of what it means to really want to paint something.

Did you know that you are the most important tool in your toolbox?

Your painting comes through you: through your eyes, through your hands, through the filter that is YOU.

You cannot get it wrong.

Each brush stroke informs the next. You learn and relearn as you paint.

When one stroke or subject becomes easy (and it will), challenge yourself to do something different. Change your strokes or your subject matter.

I added more layers of "rainbow",  more dark hair, and gave her skin more highlights & depth before considering her complete. Anuenue Ali`i Wahine (Royal Rainbow Woman in Hawaiian)

When you're out in nature, look more closely at the world around you. What colors do you see?

If you squint your eyes, does your vision change?

Can you see red-violets in the shadows of the leaves, or orange in the dying parts of the red plants?

While the colors fade as the leaves and flowers whither and die, we can still see the beauty they once held for us. We just need look more slowly.

Beauty surrounds us when we look through our eyes with LOVE.