Downshifting, uplifting, and subconscious tectonic plates ushering in ME, VISUAL ARTIST

FIRST PAINTING AT THIRTY. Dream driven, Mose T. inspired, and a call to be ME. (Art by Hallelujah Truth 1988)

Hallelujah for community! Hallelujah for my Facebook group, The Daily Creative Practice (DCP), and the emergence of the Funday Monday blog prompt shared by our members. Join us if you like! Here is DCP member Lee Russell's prompt for April 14th, 2014:

Funday Monday blog prompt—SHOW and TELL. Every consciously creative person I know has a stash of images, quotes, books, spices, garden ideas, etc. that they have been drawn to, and use as inspiration.
 
SHOW: Show something that inspired you and what it inspired you to create.
TELL: What do you keep as inspiration? How and where do you store it? And, when do you pull it out? Why? Whose work do you collect? Is there one person who inspired you to take your creative path? Maybe include links for others of us to learn from and be inspired as well.

BEFORE THE VISUAL IMAGE, IN THE BEGINNING

First, there were the poems and their metaphor that longed for freedom beyond letters and a reader's imagination. Then came the dreams, and they yearned for color expressed in shape on a touchable surface. A well studied fan of Carl Gustav Jung's archetypes, and self-proclaimed dream interpreter (Ann Faraday's Dream Power was my manual), I was thirty, unmarried, uncertain, had just quit my second graduate program spiriting myself away from successful jobs in academic institutions. NOooooooo!!! 

My body had turned away from kudos of my academic peers, who had proclaimed me "one of them"! I was a talented writer. A real budding intellectual...on the way to becoming a hardworking, earnest SMARTIE PANTS!

NOooooooo!!!  I shut down, words fled from me, and I ran away from independence to live at home with my parents in Auburn, Alabama. Although childless, I was pregnant with the ME demanding to be expressed VISUALLY and PHYSICALLY!

Mose T.

FINGER PAINTING, EXPLORING DREAMS!
Cascading my subconscious onto found boards in leftover latex paints and store bought acrylic paints, I swirled dream snakes, spiders, squirrels, and other night-time visitors into parades of imagery for me to observe. The tactile sensation of finger painting thrilled me and connected my entire body with the deep recesses of my BEING, which in turn connected ME with the universe of YOU, THE OTHER!

If there hadn't been an abundance of Mose T. paintings in the Auburn, Alabama, area, I don't know if my image making would have driven itself into BEING as it did. I consider this Montgomery, Alabama artist's work to be one of the strongest influences in my visual making life.

My Life, Marc Chagall's autobiography written when he was only 35 also liberated the ME. Succored by his words, deep, chaotic, and confident, I became unleashed from expectations of what words should render. Yes! Yes, I said to image making and yes to the unique travel of words expressing the ME, proclaiming the ME, celebrating the ME.

MORE TO THE JOURNEY.
Yes, this blog entry brings you a point in time, the inception of ME, the visual artist Hallelujah Truth. In the past 25 years, much much much more has gone into the boiling pot, churning in the volcanic mix, expanding into the profound way of BEING ME. It took many years of downshifting and uplifting--a shouting ripping rush of subconscious tectonic plates moving where they needed to go and finding communion with YOU.

MORE SHALL BE REVEALED!

For now, that's Coffee With Hallelujah. SOUL BLOG with me. Am I communing with you? How?