Untitled

"What's in a name?" Juliet asked.
What's in a title? is my question today.

I conceived your form and shape and color
And there you are,
Looking at me with your one eye,
how?
Wondering? Exploring?
Existing? Wishing
for a name to describe what you mean,
what you say,
"who" you are?

No defining voice whispers inside.
No sound at all
except for the birds
playing their chirps outside.

What's in a title? What's in a name?
Let others who see you decide.

Today,
I will simply enjoy the creation
you are.

--Vicky Lynn :o)

Untitled Mandala
Ink on paper
Copyright © 2010 by Vicky Lynn Macchione

Coloring with My Imagination

Hidden in Winter's plainness,
dressed down in shades of brown and age:
Fertility with possibility waits,
waits for Time's slow hands
to turn the page
That colors imagination,
Warms the frigid air,
Caresses the world to life,
Evokes the barren to bare.

Each year
this holy miracle
overtakes us by surprise,
this brash and lavish explosion
of hues and newness,
song and scent,
as Spring,
dressed up in finery unsurpassed,
arrives!

Original photo below:

--Vicky Lynn :o)

Fern Collage Mandala
created and color manipulated in Photoshop
Copyright © 2010 by Vicky Lynn Macchione

Black or White Revelations

Despite the many shades that fill my life,
is black or white still my guide?

Perceiving of each experience,

situation, person

as either/or:

"good" or "bad"

"worthy" or "lacking"

"enough" or "not so much."

Too many black-or-white moments

blur the image of the One

who stares back at me,

reflected in the Mirror of Life.

Black or white reveals:

judgment sticking to my thinking.

--Vicky Lynn :o)

"Black and White Revealed"

Mandala created with ink pens on paper

Copyright © 2010 by Vicky Lynn Macchione

Black & White or Color: Obeying or Breaking Rules

The mandala egroup I belong to has been talking about breaking rules that we, or others, set for ourselves--in art or in Life.

For me, obeying the rules is like seeing in black and white. And I have always been a very strict "rule-follower"! Taking the risk and challenging or breaking a longstanding rule is like seeing in color. All of a sudden the scenery changes. There are nuances that you didn't notice before. There are possibilities that emerge, hidden behind the rules that you obeyed blindly because you were supposed to, because that's what good girls do.

The two mandalas posted here illustrate for me what happens when I can find the inner strength to challenge a rule that some authority figure in the past (sometimes the long-distant past!) decided was good and proper and you better do it or else! I start in the black and white world of shoulds and should nots and open up to the living color world of wonder, magic, mystery, and possibility.

What rules do you long to challenge and break? Maybe today's the day!

--Vicky :o)

"Seeing in Black & White" Mandala

Ink on paper

"Seeing in Color" Mandala

Ink on paper, felt pens
Copyright © 2009 by Vicky Lynn Macchione

In "Living" Color -- Sort of ;o)

So I decided to add color to the Butterfly Breath Angel and here she is. What a fun project!

--Vicky :o)

Playing with Postcards

In the last few days, I have been thinking a lot about postcards so I decided to create some. Here is my first one. The title is "Playing with Color Postcard." Yes, for some reason I included the word postcard in the title. ;o)

Much of the time, a postcard depicts a place or point of interest or some souvenir of a person's travels. My postcard seems to depict a spiral of colors both in appearance and in the way I created it. This collage began its life from the middle. Starting with the figure, the snowflake house and the peacock swirls, I just kept adding different blocks of color and melanges of blocks of color as layers. The final touch was the postage stamp.

I find it interesting that while most postcards are rectangles, mine is almost perfectly square. I'll have to figure out why that is. (Does it reflect my need for perfection? Is there anything more perfect than a square? Well, maybe a circle!)

There is also one very illegible word--"fairytale." I didn't discover it, though, until the collage was done and I used my trusty magnifying glass to see what those black scratches actually said. :o)

Postcards provide a rather intriguing way to communicate since they force a person to write either the most important messages or the most mundane. Perhaps postcards were one of the earliest versions of Twitter, lacking only in the instantaneity (yes, that really is a word!) of this present-day communication gadget. Surely most postcards do answer Twitter's question: What are you doing? Or at the very least, they answer: What were you doing when you decided to write?

Now, what was I doing before I decided to write this post?

--Vicky :o)

"Playing with Color Postcard"
Paper Collage
Copyright © 2009 by Vicky Lynn Macchione