Teapot no. 558 ~ tea with plum blossoms

© Nicole Raisin Stern

Teapot no. 58 (558) of my 6th Set of 100 Teapots

Watercolor and fountain pen ink on paper.

Living Waters Hamsa

Mayim Chayyim

"Living Waters"

מים חיים

Watercolor and fountain pen ink on paper.

by Neshama נשמה

Nicole Raisin Stern

Teapots 46 & 47 ~ 5th Set of 100 Teapots

Watercolor on hanshi.



Watercolor color and black fountain pen ink on hanshi.

tea in starlight

I painted this one, too, by low lamplight and candle light at night. I like seeing the light in the darkness.



teapot no. 45 (445) of my 5th Set of 100 Teapots
Watercolor and black fountain pen ink on hanshi.

Light emerges

© Nicole Raisin Stern
Watercolor and black fountain pen ink on hanshi.

This is teapot no. 44 (444) in my 5th set of 100 Teapots
View Set 5 here

☆☼☽

Light emerges
as it always does

Just trust
and wait

The Light is always here
even when all seems dark

~ Nicole Raisin Stern

Happy Year of the TIGER

© Nicole Raisin Stern

Watercolor and pen on Arches cold pressed paper. With Ganesha skate boarding.

Woo-Hoo

Tea on Dash

"Tea on Dash" is teapot painting no. 55 in Set 4 of my 100 Teapot series paintings. I like painting my tea as I drink it.

No Coming, No Going

I titled this watercolor I made of Jesse & Yuki, No Coming, No Going, after a song by Sister Annabel Laity:

♫♫♪♫♫♪♫♫

No coming, no going, no after, no before;
I hold you close to me, I release you to be so free.
Because I am in you, and you are in me,
Because I am in you, and you are in me.

Here's the French version by Lily Gozlan:

Sans venir, et sans partir, ni avant, ni après.
Je te tiens près de moi, et te laisse pour être libre
Parce que je suis en toi, et tu es en moi,
Parce que je suis en toi, et tu es en moi.

♫♫♪♫♫♪♫♫

Ganesha comes to the Desert

Listening to Krishna Das chanting the Hanuman Chalisa on this cold (for Tucson) late autumn day. I look up from the keyboard and see chartreuse green leaves of the mesquite and the green trunk of palo verde. The sky is blue with white cloud puffs hanging. Low-hanging clouds are obscuring the top halves of all the mountains around here. I will see soon when i go out to do some errands if there's snow on the mountains. I like snow.

teapot paintings ~ 233-237

See the growing collection here

Teapots 10, 11, & 12

My little cha book is filling up.

Teapot no. 10 (210)

Watercolor and sumi brush pen in my handmade cha book.

Teapot no. 11 (211)

Paper cut outs glued into my handmade cha book.

Teapot no. 10 (210)

Green fountain pen ink (that looks aqua on the pink paper) and watercolored yellow spots.

Teapot 12 & 11 together

teapot nos. 8 & 9

Teapot no. 9 (209)
Sumi brush pen and watercolor in my handmade cha book.


Teapot no. 8 (208)
Fountain pen & colored pencil drawn inside my handmade cha book.


8 & 9 together in my handmade cha book.

View my newly started 100 Teapots Set 3.

third set of 100 teapots

Here's no. 1, no. 2. and no. 3 from inside my handmade "cha book" (茶の本). Three teapots have come out through this body, through my arm-heart-hand, through pen and ink, colored pencil, and brush with color, so it looks like I've embarked on my third set of 100 teapots. These teapots have lives of their own; I just draw them.


teapot no. 3, watercolor and sumi brush pen.


teapot no. 2, made with red ink and colored pencils.


teapot no. 1, made with a red ink fountain pen.

teapot no. 99 - bring your cups!

See the nearly completed set here.

teapot no. 96

Cut paper from a Japanese lunar calendar glued on paper with watercolor, sumi ink and brush.

getting closer!

Here's a legend to the brush characters:

土 earth
月 moon
茶 tea
心 heart/mind
水 water
火 fire
星 star
楽 joy

Click on picture to get a larger view.

Odaiko Sonora

Here are the watercolor sketches I did while listening to taiko group Odaiko Sonora performing at the UA Poetry Center Housewarming Festival.

It's fun and challenging to paint/sketch people in movement. I need more practice at letting the pencil-brush-pen flow as the movements go.

Sometimes you just have to fly

I have not painted, except for my little post-it note art series, in over two months. I've had other projects to work on and have had to push aside what I love to do. Today, I felt that if I didn't paint, I was going to die. Put another way, painting enlivens me. So, just a while ago, I picked up my brush, got out my watercolors, grabbed my watercolor journal and sat down. I had no idea what i was going to paint. I wanted to see what would emerge from my imagination. My paint box looks too clean and neat and my brushes hardly knew me from months of disuse.

What came out was the above painting of a brush & bird flying above the jeweled earth.

I wouldn't have died immediately. It would be a slow drying up kind of death leading to this epitaph on my gravestone (though I wish to be cremated): "She died from not painting; her brushes dried up, too." I'd rather see "She died as she lived~joyfully, artfully" or something lively like that.

Earlier, I was thinking about one of my Japanese English students who told me that his father wanted him to be a business man, but that he really wanted to be an artist. I remember him saying, "If I don't do art, I will die." That was a long time ago. His words left a deep impression on me. I hope he made an enlivening choice.

yurt

"Where the valley narrows to a canyon, there is a tea house and some huts, and here a pack train of shaggy Mongol ponies descends from the mountain in a melody of bells and splashes across the swift green water at the ford" (Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard, p.21).













May I (We, She, He, They, It, You...) be peaceful, happy, and light in body and spirit.

May I (We, She, He, They, It, You...) be safe from injury.

May I (We, She, He, They, It, You...) be free from anger, afflictions, fear, and anxiety.

high mountain house

A luminous mountain morning. Mist and fire smoke, sun shafts and dark ravines: a peak of Annapurna poises on soft clouds. In fresh light, to the peeping of baby chickens, we take breakfast in the village tea house, and are under way well before seven.

[p. 22 in The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen, 1978]

teapots 45 and 46

What I like best is just doing the practice, the practice of painting and drawing the teapots. Shows, sales, framing, collecting, even posting to blog and flickr--that's all extra. Being with the teapot, the paint, the tea, the light streaming in, the changing conditions as I paint--that's the heart of the practice. Being and doing combine. When I do the practice, I am the paint, the teapot, the tea, the paper.

That said, here are teapots no. 45 and 46 of my 2nd set of 100 teapots.























* * * * *

I've been enjoying the following piece on art, healing, and creativity that I watched from a video clip of last year's retreat for women at Upaya Zen Center in New Mexico. I've transcribed the part that speaks to me most, words spoken by Joan Halifax Roshi of Upaya.

Healing is the practice of art
It's painting, it's praying with
It's learning how to touch
It's learning how to write poetry--
to write out your heart

Learning to move beautifully in our lives
Bringing beauty to [your?] story of the world,
Bringing it forward

There's so much ugliness...
Let's love it
Let's love up this life
Let's let the creative come forward...

~ Roshi Joan Halifax

This year's retreat takes place at Upaya from July 11-15: In the Shelter of Each Other Women's Retreat: Women and Altruism--Compassion, Shadow, and Power.

I would love to go and I am fine not going. I know how to create retreat conditions for myself when I cannot actually go on retreat.

Yes, let's bring it forward.