Why bridges are a classical attraction?

You know the Sistine Chapel and those iconic hands of God reaching towards man? I arrived at the melting stage of this piece full of overwhelm of these last few weeks, indecision, doubt, a desire to take two steps back as opposed to one step forward. And then the lamp in my hands changed me. 

I looked at my main element - the bridge, and that bridge wanted to curve, so I intuitively took the canvas off the easel and directed the drips in a more rounded fashion. And my mind wandered to that world-famous painting and it wanted to repeat this tentative touch of Michelangelo, this desire to support the other side, so I flipped the piece again and created another hand of drips.

It struck me that this is why I'm so fascinated with these medieval towns - it's because they create a bridge between man-made and organic. They strive to have this ability to co-exist, to fit in with one another, to belong together. The buildings reaching for the trees, the busyness seeking the void, the light searching out the darks, and a bridge where they greet each other with a meek touching of drips. What does that tell me about my life, my doubts and indecision? 

It nudges me to not be afraid of me, of the different warring sides of me, of my need to steer clear off the beaten path, and strive for a bridge of my own, if only I dare to act...

How to stop being exhausted from new routines

No matter how hard I try to convince myself that I'm flexible, in actuality change scares me, irritates the crap out of me, makes me uncomfortable. This time of year is especially difficult with the setting of new routines, let a lone a new space, a new set of priorities. 

I walk over to boil water for my tea and realize I can't locate an outlet immediate vicinity. I try to use my melting lamp and the extension cord won't reach, my easel breaks, I don't have enough enrollment to feel comfortable enough to pay my higher rent.

It all seemed so effortless last year and once again I beat myself up for dropping the ball with marketing, for daring to dream big, for reaching higher and higher. Rejections again from every corner - art fairs, online courses, live students. I keep telling myself that it' all for the best, that in the end all works out beautifully, but my ego is not convinced. How can I believe in myself if everything requires two steps forward and four steps back?

On days like today it's especially comforting to revel in the little familiar actions, like the mixing of a harmonious palette, the balancing of a composition with the drips, the rewarding discovery of new color combinations. It's soothing to sit in solitude and allow myself to be sad, scared and apprehensive.

"Only know you've been high when you're feeling low" are the lyrics in one of my favorite songs.
The good days will come, but only when I give in to the blues and let myself experience them, be kind to myself when I'm in this phase, as opposed to reverting to my customary self deprecating, self-criticizing self.

How do you appease stress levels?

There're days when you sit in front of a computer, trying to get things done quickly, before the kids are back, and all you get is a compounding headache.

You get so overwhelmed with the noise of it all, with the distractions of the outside world. In these moments I get an almost animal longing to head into the studio. My body knows that it needs to step away, to let my mind rest, to let that other part of the brain take over.

I feel like I'm fleeing this daily routine on wings, propelling me to pour all my frustrations onto canvas. On these days I know my time in the studio will be very special. It's when my inner voice will rejoice, take control, lead me places. I know that if I don't go this almost physical pain of withdrawal will make me even crazier. It will make me stir-crazy, irritable, impatient with everyone around me.

Even my dear husband knows at those moments that I am dying on the inside from that feeling of overwhelm, and he knows that he needs to let me be, to let me go.

Do you have too many loud conversations?

I watched a podcast by an artist not too long ago, Nicholas Wilton, where he spoke about the importance of value in each painting. There was one phrase in that talk that really struck a chord with me. It went something like this: "You can have multiple conversations within each painting. They just can't all be loud." This rang true to me on so many levels.

There should always be something in one's life that is of utmost importance, a main theme. You can have sub-themes, lots of them: your job, your daily routines, what have you. But there's always one thing that is overarching and no, it's not your family. It's you: your sanity, your balance. If I don't take care of me, then I'm no good to my family. I'm slowly realizing how important and difficult this feat is - to think of me first...kind of like when they tell you to put an oxygen mask on yourself first in an event of an emergency.

I wanted contrast in this work but I also thought that light was truly key - that was the main idea. It's about gates into the bright void, a hopeful future after the passing of winter. It wants to be bright and airy, abstract, full of possibility. Did it succeed?

I would love this clarity of value to translate to my book as well. Currently it's full of parent/child traumas, romance struggles, work issues. But it needs to be about art, about how it weaves through this life and helps solve all these dilemmas, large and small. All of these other conversations can be subdued, toned down. I'm almost done dumping all my ideas and am about to move into the first edit stage. I can't wait to start sharing it with the world!

If you'd like to be part of my inner circle and start getting more glimpses into the book, as well as 20% off your first piece, I invite you to join my insider's list at http://www.dianastelin.com/jointhemeltingcrew.php 

The real secret behind my most popular series

 Want me to tell you a little secret? That first series of oils that everyone loves so much - there's a lot more to it than meets the eye. I've already told you that it was all created within one summer, after my return from studying abroad in Paris.

I was in an awful withdrawal state and Andrey Tamarchenko, my teacher, saved me by giving me this magic space, in which I could create. It was a tiny room on the last floor of an abandoned factory building, overlooking the Garden State parkway. A series of gated doors, freight elevators, and somewhat frightening corridors brought me to this little paradise where I could just play.

But that wasn't all. Over that summer I reacquainted myself with my very first crush. Apparently, he came over from Russia every summer and lived in South Jersey with his father's new family. A crazy romance sparked up between us and he would visit me in this little studio and watch me paint. We would slip onto the roof of this abandoned factory, which was just a hop over my window sill, and make love on the roof, with the highway sprawling underneath.

I think you can feel this euthoria in the paintings from this series. There's a hint of danger, secrecy, yet a dare to enter this innocent paradise. To this day, every time I paint, I think back on those days with a certain nostalgia that my whole body can feel. I'm taken back to my daring self, a soul completely open to the world and its possibilities.

My painting practice gives me hope there're a lot more opportunities in this world. It allows me to re-enter my childhood, my adolescence, my college years, and connect them to me today.

This groundbreaking series that was featured in Ithaca's Johnson Museum is housed right here: Archive

Take a look. Perhaps something in it will bring back nostalgic memories for you as well, and would be a nice treat for yourself for the New Year!

If you're in Massachusetts, I'm happy to come over and test out a few things on your walls, tying in my expertise as a long time art consultant. We can see what would work best with the rest of your decor and other art you have in your home. Happy Holidays!!

Love,

D

Why your inner voice matters most - article on inspiremetoday.com

Long ago I was given the privilege of access to my inner voice through painting. I managed to survive high school and college by practicing this precious gift. Yet, when real life hit, I became afraid of losing myself in my dream world and let it go. I took a more practical route. I needed to make money and start a family, and be an overall reasonable person.

However, it hit me with time that a huge part of me was dying little by little. It felt like I was blindfolded while walking through the dilemmas of this world, and instead of developing my best self, I was selling my soul to the devil. That child within me had no way out. It was imprisoned, dying of thirst for a connection.

When things got really bad and I was crying nightly about a miscarriage, about lost opportunities in my career, about my life that was going nowhere, I took a three-day painting workshop and realized that I almost killed this little beautiful child inside me, my real me, my true self. I began devoting more and more time to painting and to re-connecting with this fragile voice.

I had noticed with time, as my practice got more and more constant, that this voice does not push. It guides gently. It assures me in my abilities. It builds out the inner strength that I never knew I had.

If I die today, I would be forever grateful to this voice of intuition that I was able to utilize. I so hope that more and more people find their true voice by doing something for their soul, be it meditation or yoga, dance or painting, making music or playing with yarn.

I inevitably come out of my painting sessions with an ‘aha’ moment, a solution to a real-life problem that has been nagging me for a long time. Somehow, whatever issues I resolve on canvas have their roots in the psychology of life. It’s quite remarkable that the little inner voice only comes out during painting but I’m so grateful that it does. I really wish for more of us to connect to their true selves, to find our humanity.

Is Social Media Killing Our Self Worth?

My time in the studio is the time when I get away from the world, relax into my inner self and discover things within my psyche. Yet, here I am, working away and hoping the door will open any second and someone will come in to ask what I'm working on, and perhaps praise it, or even offer some critique or a word of advice. I know I'm here for me, to pacify my worries, to take a break from the hassles of my world. Yet, I crave acceptance. I crave recognition. I really want someone to finally see that I have talent, someone from the art world to pick me up and take me places. Maybe that's just a natural human state, the one Dale Carnegie talked so much about? Our need for acceptance...

It's stifling though. It also got a hundred times worse with the need for instant gratification via social media. I skipped a week of painting. Yet, instead of yearning for that time alone with myself, all I kept thinking throughout this week was: "When I finally get to the studio, I need something truly powerful to show my Instagram followers and Facebook fans". Then, when the long-awaited time in the studio had arrived, I spent most of my time shooting videos of my process instead of really dissolving into it. I couldn't stop myself either even though I knew this was utterly wrong. It was almost like I was afraid to truly listen to my inner voice. Instead, I was drowning it with the desire to be seen and praised.

And then, when the likes and comments didn't come as fast as I wanted, I started to really doubt myself and my abilities. I took down the stage I most enjoyed because this lack of attention shamed me into hating my process. I almost wanted to bring the painting back to the stage when it was most liked by the viewers, but then I caught myself and decided that this is enough.

I need to cut out this destruction of my self-worth by avoiding my phone during my working time. I need a vacation from social media. At the end of the day, I'm doing this for my journey and I won't go anywhere unless I'm fully on board. If I continue down this road of adjusting my actions because of social media, my inner voice willalways be unheard by me, or worse it'll be shamed into silence because I'll only be focused on the approval by others. The only way to get away from this is to have a clean break. This is how I truly start doing things for me, for my growth: I stop caring...

Do you find yourself drowned by social media? Do you schedule time-outs? Are they week-long vacations? Or do you have periods during each day when you stay away?

How to not screw up your second marriage

]

The most difficult stage in any relationship is adjusting what's already working, trying to make it more pronounced. You feel like you're walking on egg shells. At any moment this beautiful harmony of visions and relationships can snap. It's so crucial to refrain from passing any judgement during this arduous task. You want to turn your mind off and to just listen to that inner voice that can really guide you if you let it.

Only when a new pattern becomes clear, will your mind pacify, learn a new routine, begin its new training. The path should always stem from your heart, from finding your true priorities. You want to learn your weak sides where compromises won't work, and figure out where a shortcut is possible, where the other can lead.

This does not mean I'm done for good. One always tends to step into the same traps and it's a constant mindful decision to steer into a different direction. We will inevitably make mistakes. We will ruin a good thing time and again. I might add too much drama where there really isn't any place for it. You will need to learn to play with opposites, and learn to have empty space so we can just breathe.

However, the most important aspect of it all is to not judge any outcomes until we're finished working through the problem. Just go through the motions of the task without giving it much thought. Do not overthink anything! Trust that it will all come together in the end.

Yes, these are all tips on building a harmonious relationship. But guess what this manual of sorts actually pertains to?

This was me talking to myself while working on a third layer of a large scale painting. I was trying hard to pacify my alter-ego. If  I don't calm myself down during the painting process, I will give up and not get anything out of it. I want to get something out of this practice. If I keep up, I know that every single time I will come out of a painting session with an 'aha' moment. I will find an answer to an important question in my life.

During this go around I guess the universe wanted me to rethink the strengths and weaknesses of my relationship with my husband. We're going through a difficult phase: three kids under ten, my running a business. Plus all of a sudden I decided to actually start promoting my own art. There certainly are a lot of shifting priorities and my head feels like it's about to explode. My painting practice is my way to hold on, to think through the issues, to stay balanced...My writing about the process puts all kinds of things in perspective.

If you'd like to keep up with my analysis of life dilemmas through artmaking, I invite you to join me on this quest. While you're at it, feel free to check out my art and leave any feedback.
http://www.dianastelin.com/jointhemeltingcrew.php

Confessions of a Failed Gallery Director

 I studied to be an artist. I tell everyone this story of how I wanted to be a fashion designer but my mother met a 'starving artist', Andrey Tamarchenko, who convinced her that I needed to learn how to paint everything in order to become one. She had me enroll to take classes while in high school, prepping my portfolio. I was then accepted into all the art schools where I applied, and of course without even knowing how to sew, I surely wasn’t getting into fashion schools. So I just kept going with the life of an artist. But truly it’s a more complex story.

Just like every art student I graduated with a thought that I’ll never make a living as an artist. After a number of different stints I landed a gallery director job and that surely was the dream of every art student and every parent. All that prestige: the gallery openings, art fairs, auctions, fancy clients, celebrities, worldwide travel, crazy money. It’s a perfect life, isn’t it? What more could you possibly wish for? But you know what? It’s a brutal backstabbing world. It’s a life where I didn’t sleep at nights because I knew I wasn’t honest with clients. I suffered from ridiculous bouts of depression – never knowing who my friends at work are, not trusting any information I was given. I sold my soul to the devil and I felt it every single day.

Then one day I was sent to Italy to check out the Venice Biennale and I stayed another week for an art retreat with that same art teacher I met back in high school, my one and only guide through life, Andrey Tamarchenko. Painting every day with him in the hills of Alessandria, I saw just how deep my abyss was. I was balling my eyes out again, every single night of that week. But this time it was different. I cried due to the realization that I cannot live like this anymore. I saw that no amount of money can fix the horrible damage I was inflicting on myself every single day. This art retreat was a deciding factor that finally made me leave the gallery and reevaluate my life.

Yes, it has been tough not getting a six figure salary, and building a business of my own from scratch. But at the end of the day, it’s my painting practice that still keeps me honest with myself. Every week it gives me strength to tackle all kinds of dilemmas that come my way. It’s the only way to stay balanced.

-And here's a little piece I did with Andrey while in Italy. Feel free to email with questions if you're interested. -

Hugs,

Diana