SUZANNE MCDERMOTT
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Welcome the light

12/21/2017

 
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Greetings on the Winter Solstice. I encourage you to welcome the light into every aspect of your life. It is only through light that darkness will be kept in check and balanced properly.

I wish you all love and lightness of heart. i wish you safety in the material world and curiosity and openness in your spirit. Be glad that you are alive at such a rare time of the human experience.
​
More later. Enjoy your company this holiday season or your solitude. Light a candle for your soul and for us all.

This year, I share with you one of my perennial favorites. Paul Gallico's The Snow Goose.
Light a candle or a fire. Alone or with your family or a friend, click here to listen to the incomparable original recording.

Click and listen. I swear that it's worth every second of your (and your family and friends' time.)
Nobody's a natural. You work to get good and then work to get better. It's hard to stay on top.
​
― Paul Gallico
With a special holiday hello from Miss Tallulah, ​and lots of love...
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​Everything a cat is and does physically is to me beautiful, lovely, stimulating, soothing, attractive and an enchantment. --Paul Gallico

Plan for the Future

10/4/2017

 
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Suzanne McDermott 
after Gentileschi, watercolor detail
​"History is for human self-knowledge ... the only clue to what man can do is what man has done."
— R. G. Collingwood
 Last November, the 9th, to be exact, I made a vow to myself.

I'll read deep history and make magic (something out of nothing).

Turns out, I made more of that vow than I could have imagined and have been working away at it ever since. I mean, every, single day.

I've created a three-part series of courses on the history of painting and will be offering it online starting in January. I'll write more about it in the coming months and you can read preliminary info on it here but wanted to mention it now so that, if you think you might be interested, you can add your name to the waiting list and be notified of more details as they arise. Small groups, as usual, and limited space.

I've been (mostly) down with a debilitating infection for the past six days so I'm going back to bed now with my new cozy murder mystery (author's description, not mine), Graham Norton's Holding. It's good company.

Beauty begets beauty

8/15/2017

 
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​

"Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love... Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding."
​
—Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Because my mind was going a mile a minute when I sat down to meditate this morning, I plopped a vase of mums directly in the line of my meditative gaze. I'm not sure that this helped me step out of the thought stream but they sure were beautiful to look at. Before I stood up to move along with my day, I gathered them between my hands, buried my face in them and inhaled deeply. I love the smell of mums!

It is too, too easy to be sucked into the virtual world of (often) horror and mayhem. Make it a practice to focus on the beautiful objects in your space. After all, you put them there, didn't you? If you haven't filled your space with objects of beauty that the light can find, please, do yourself a favor and do so now.

The objects that the light finds and illuminates will illuminate your mind, whether you love them or not. Practice seeing what the light illuminates. Practice loving that.

Short post. I'm looking away now. Looking for the beautiful in my immediate vicinity.

"I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains."

—Anne Frank
​

One thing at a time

7/4/2017

 
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“A weakness of all human beings is trying to do too many things at once.” 
—Henry Ford

There's no such thing as multi-tasking 

The ocean waves do not try to reach shore at the same time. 

The leaves on a tree do not try to change color at once. 

Each wave, each leaf is a unique manifestation of an unfolding process of living experience. Human beings moving through space and time are also unfolding processes of living experiences. 

But the human mind? Especially with gazillions of distractions here in the early 21st century? We are so easily distracted that we miss much of the beautiful unfolding process of life. 

I make this claim with confidence because I am one of the most easily distracted people I know. 

I practice meditation briefly every day but nothing, no meditation I have come across, calms and focuses my attention like drawing or painting. It may not be for everyone but it sure works for me. 

In my experience, multitasking is a myth. Trying to multitask, or even expecting yourself to be able to multitask, can leave you dizzy, drained, overwhelmed, ungrounded. You may think that you are working on several projects simultaneously but, in fact, you can only take action on one thing or think one thought at a time (no matter how brief that time may be).

Expect yourself to do one thing at a time and plan for that. It's a sure way to sanity. ​

"Two things cannot happen at once; it is impossible. It is easy to imagine that two things are happening at once, because our journey back and forth between the two may be very speedy. But even then we are doing only one thing at a time. 

"The idea of mindfulness is to slow down the fickleness of jumping back and forth. We have to realize that we are not extraordinary mental acrobats. We are not all that well trained. And even an extraordinarily well-trained mind could not manage that many things at once--not even two. But because things are very simple and direct, we can focus on, be aware and mindful of, one thing at a time. That one-pointedness, that bare attention, seems to be the basic point." 
​

— Chogyam Trungpa, from "The Four Foundations of Mindfulness Meditation"

I have a long list of reasons why I continue to teach drawing and watercolor after 20 years. One reason is that the process allows people the opportunity to quiet their minds and practice focusing on one task at a time.

Practicing drawing and watercolor is mindfulness training on steroids.

What I'm reading this summer (2017)

6/20/2017

 
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Clouds from my garden.
Summer rolls in on the 21st at 12:24 am. Do something special to mark the longest day of the year.

Any plans for the season? I'm preparing a set of new online drawing and watercolor courses that debut (to alums of my foundation courses) in September. Also, I am taking my first, actual, planned vacation in late August and truly looking forward to that. But on the other hand, I'm enjoying life immensely right now, so I can wait.

I am leaving behind the habits of checking the news more than once daily (if that often), and of streaming movies and tv shows online. I'm sick to death of both and am back to reading.

I've just discovered Andrew Garve (aka Paul Winterton, aka Roger Bax, aka Paul Somers), and finished his Hide And Go Seek this afternoon.  I discovered this book in a free basket (as I have several other fab reads over the years), opened to a random page, read a paragraph aloud, put it under my arm and am committed to three more of his. 

Here's what else I have stacked up for summer:
Alice Carter, The Red Rose Girls
Andrew Garvey, Murder in Moscow, Ashes of Loda, Cuckoo Line Affair
Umberto Eco, History of Beauty
M. J. Rose, The Book of Lost Fragrances
re-read, again, Landscape into Art 
Jacob Wenzel, Landscapes From Brueghel to Kandinsky 
Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve
finish Jeffrey Archer's Be Careful What You Wish For √ and
next installment of The Clifton Chronicles, Mightier Than The Sword
Joyce Cary, Art and Reality
Alice Munro, 
Runaway
re-read Ram Dass, Still Here
and, if there's any time left, would like to re-read
Leonie Swann, Three Bags Full
Conrad Richter, The Light in the Forest and
Hansen & Davis, Boone

How are you celebrating the Solstice? What are your plans for the summer? Any good reading suggestions to share? Tell me everything! Leave a comment below.
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