State of Instar: spiritual development

Ah! The season is about to shift. Summer slipped by as summers always do!

This post is an update on the Instar painting I shared with you last Spring.

Art

I came across the word “Instar” in a Rebecca Solnit book. An instar is a place in the mysterious in-between.

No longer Caterpillar. Not yet Butterfly.

Although I did have some beautiful butterfly moments this past summer. These artworks are not literally about butterflies. In my mind they are reflections of an awareness of the process of transformation. Tapping into something I’m experiencing intensely at midlife.

Art is always a way through. A way of being with an experience that allows it to absorb into the murky soul place we all carry within. There is an honesty to the tenderness and the harshness of the cycles of life-death-life. I’m not sure I could bear it All without Art. I do mean all art…visual to musical to poetry to performance. It’s so very valuable to our lives because it holds that harshness and that tenderness in a material or a moment.

When I imagine an Instar…it’s being both pulled apart and pushed together. Both actions creating something yet unknown. Whatever is happening inside that mysterious cocoon it’s harsh and it’s tender. It’s a paradox.

State of Instar

At the moment, I feel myself to be in my own state of Instar. I imagine an Instar to be all waiting and wondering. I can sense some deep soul shift but the fog hasn’t lifted enough to see past the hand in front of my face. It’s that itchy “what’s next feeling mixed with too many ideas that are all taking too long. It’s a paradox.

Spiritual Development

I’ve been revisiting Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. She writes poetically about woman’s lives. She turns story telling into a guide to reconnecting to the wild soul self. In her deep dive into the story of The Handless Maiden she writes…

This period of time is sometimes characterized by an ennui. Women will often say their mood is such that they cannot quite put their finger on what it is they want, whether it be work, lover, time, creative work. It is hard to concentrate. It is hard to be productive. This nerve-restlessness is typical of this spiritual development stage. Time alone, and not very far down the road, will take us to the edge we need fall, step, or dive over.

I very much like the idea of an Instar being a sort “stage of spiritual development.”

Ah! These ideas go so very deep.

Maybe…I should just say these paintings are about butterflies. Wink!

Grateful you have come along for the idea ride with me.

Wishing you a beautiful start to Autumn!

“This period of time is sometimes characterized by an ennui. Women will often say their mood is such that they cannot quite put their finger on what it is they want, whether it be work, lover, time, creative work. It is hard to concentrate. It is hard to be productive. This nerve-restlessness is typical of this spiritual development stage. Time alone, and not very far down the road, will take us to the edge we need fall, step, or dive over.
”

— Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Secrets in the Waves

Secrets In the Waves, oil painting, Siobhan Bedford

A Look Back.

It’s always a bit surreal to go looking back at older work. I flip-flop on whether it’s a good idea or not. I’m flipping on the good side today…so sharing this piece from the past.

Its title is “Secrets in the Waves” from a series I created years ago called “Aquatic.”

In 2017, I went to California to dip my feet in the Pacific. I feel like something seeped into my soul through my soles:) I took this photo high above a cove. The fog was heavy. The ocean was thunder and mystery. I always thought it would be good inspiration for a painting. Ah…someday!

Waves.

I remember working on the paintings and getting a sense of something being stirred up from the sands at the bottom of the ocean.

Maybe more like a subconscious inner sea. A place where we float or sometimes swim. Occasionally drown. I imagine memories, dreams, and ancient instincts all tumbling about under crashing waves. Waves are such great metaphors for the highs and lows of our days!

Waves of joy and waves of grief. Tides going in. Tides going out. On and on.

I did use some metallic gold paint in the details. Hard to tell in the photo…so you’ll just have to trust me;) I feel like it gives that extra layer that increases depth. Also, I simply love the shine of metallics. So much so that I have some metallic art supplies coming my way. Hope to be adding it to some of the new work happening in the studio.

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“Time takes life away
and gives us memory, gold with flame,
black with embers.”

— Adam Zagajewski

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I took this photo last year in my little backyard garden on a hot August morning. Clearly not an ocean…but it has that underwater light like scattered gold feeling.

Flare: High Summer

I’m sure you know…

That feeling in the center of your chest. Scream it out. Or. Hold it like treasure. Managing that wild mystery of feeling both at once is enough wild work for a lifetime.

That beat in your heart. That flare at your core. It’s how you feel alive.

Flare, 8” x 10”, oil on board with copper edge

I never really know…

What is a painting about? But this little piece is a “Flare” for sure!

It’s holding all that summer wildflower color. Although on second glance it has the riot of reds and golds that is all Autumn.

Anyways….see what ya see! That’s what it’s all about!

I’ve edged it in copper. It’s a slow process. There is something soothing about it. Like meditation. I really love how it catches the light. But not so easy to catch in a photo.

Enjoy!

Letting it dry!

Siobhan Bedford, Phoenixville, PA

“Everything is on fire, but everyone I love is doing beautiful things and trying to make life worth living, and I know I don’t have to believe in everything but I believe in that.”

— Nikita Gill

Summer wildflowers a gift from the ridiculous summer heat!

ps…I raised butterflies!

It was sort of an accident. I picked anise from the garden. Then it mixed with fate in a jar on my kitchen window sill. While washing the dishes…I noticed little green things wiggling. Then I named all 5. Then I got attached. So fascinating to see five charming caterpillars turn into five garden fairies.

It felt like a wink from the universe. & such perfect timing as I continue to work on the Instar series. Blog posts below

Instar: The strange resonant word

In the surreal “mid-pandemic” days I started a series of paintings.

At the time I was reading a Rebecca Solnit book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost. I adore the irony in the title. It was the read I needed as the world was spinning into the unknown. I underlined so many of Solnit’s beautiful phrases. One of my favorites being “when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.”

About half way through the book, in a chapter that began with Spanish explorers in the 1500s getting “lost” for years in what is now known as America. Then ends with a visit to a butterfly garden. Solnit contemplates the decay in metamorphosis and writes of “the strange resonant word instar.”

It’s rare for this to happen but at the time the word “instar” leaped off the page and into my imagination. I thought if and when I ever finish these painting I know they will be called “instar.”

It’s a word used in biology to describe the state between molts in the life of a butterfly. I like that idea very much but it’s this last line of the chapter I was telling you about that really struck me.

“Instar implies something both celestial and ingrown, something heavenly and disastrous, and perhaps change is commonly like that, a buried star, oscillating between near and far.”

— Rebecca Solnit

When I started the paintings each piece seemed to flow out so easily.

I just dove in. Intuitive from beginning to end.  Or so I imagined. Finding “the end” for these artworks is proving to be illusive.

I lose the thread. Untangle it. Follow it for months. Then lost it completely again in the grief of my parents illnesses and deaths. Like “getting lost.” No longer being one thing…

yet…

not yet…

being found.

At the moment it’s pulled me back in.

I’m feeling pretty sure art making and all of life might just be a really long instar

On a good day, I like to imagine it as the “magical middle” where anything is possible. On a crumby day as the “messy middle” where everything needs to be cleaned up.

Like Solnit says… “perhaps change is like that.”

These are wild uncertain days. A heart in grief. A polarized country. A climate shifting. I’ve found the idea of Instar and the thought of “being rich in loss” comforting & hope you do too.

ps…

I’m skipping the Open Studio Tour again this year. The grief of my parents’ deaths is slowly shifting but I’m not ready yet to be in art showing mode. I don’t know who said “grief is not just the echo of love but the aftershock of meaning.” To absorb an aftershock takes so much time and that is what I need. I’m so very thankful for your interest in my art and hope that when the tides shift I’ll see you all again.Wishing all the very best to all the artists sharing their work this year.

Be well.