bulls eye

With the Targets on hand, as I felt myself slipping from sorrow and depletion, to anger and madness, I needed a place to channel the energy and I found my bulls eye.  I am not one too become passive, to sit patiently and wait while this too shall pass.  Yes, there are times when that may be appropriate, but not when riding the waves of something lived with for 20 years, knowing it inside and out, realizing it ain't gonna pass - so deal.

Anger is energy, properly channeled anger is positive energy - it motivates change.  (I completely disagree with President Obama when he asked that we not become angry about the oil spill - I think it's the one thing that may save us!)  So I've been channeling my energy and hitting a Target every day, once a day, for no more than an hour.

It's loose, quick, exhausting (in a very good way), and revealing.
I push myself
 I keep moving, I don't stop to think
or really even to feel...

In their intended purpose, Targets hang there, inert victims awaiting their demise, meant to be shot at and destroyed.  Created simply for the practice of destruction - the destruction of fellow human beings.  

I have recorded the process for you on video - my painting doesn't actually take 10 minutes, it's between 45 and 60, not including the gesso drying time.  To fit into the YouTube restrictions of 10 minutes, I've sped myself up which is fun, but I'm actually not this crazed in my process!!  What you can see is that it is a flowing and continuous process - I don't stop to think, take breaks, or worry about technique.  This is about intuition, feeling, letting color, movement and process move through the body and out onto the paper.  I start to sense what needs to come out in the gessoing process - you see me start to scrape lines in and layout some design with it.  I'm using white gesso in the back ground, and clear on the body of the targeted one.  The gesso helps to give the newsprint paper strength and body to work on - though I do still seem to tear it at some point each time!  I masking tape those small tears from the back, and continue on, or take care of them at the end.  Nothing precious here - it's process...  


There's a point in the video where I start to let physical awareness and thought enter - you'll see me bend over to stretch my back.  (No, there's nothing wrong with stretching - I know when I'm using it for avoidance though, and I was starting to stray.)  I began to allow pain play with my thoughts "take a break", "finish later"; and nausea crept in "just stop", "lie down", "who cares"; opportunities for the shots to be taken, the saboteur to strike out. I pushed through, acknowledging the voice by adding green to the abdomen of the figure (below) allowing the nausea to spread into the painting, eventually easing in my own stomach long enough to finish and feel stronger having done so.

While working on them, they beg me to ask - How have I been a Target? Have I allowed myself to be a Target?  As I responded to Mansuetude in the last post's comments, these targets  invite destruction.  So I ask myself, how do I invite my own destruction?  How do you?

Living with chronic illness can summon self destructive/self defeating energy, if we allow it to.  If I let pain flatten me, make me inert, much like the targets here, I will lose all my power and life energy.  So I attack that aspect of the target, with my ammunition of paint and pastels.  Perhaps what emerges are the warriors within, my healing army, my Guardians - the willing ones sacrificing to take the shots for me.  Perhaps I'll purge that which attracts being shot at, the poisonous, the toxic demons within.  Perhaps they are one and the same, Transformers of need.

I've used up all my targets for now, but I may get more.

I found them online - about $40 for a pack of 100.

This may be my next practice.

100 days, 100 shots?