Growth, oil on canvas, 60x48"

Growth is an expression of personal evolution, this painting reflects a period in my life when an old, self-negating paradigm burst into a new more loving and affirming one. In this instance it marks a moment in time when I sacrificed a neurotic need for perfection (to prove that yes, indeed, I am love-able) for an acceptance of loving despite imperfection, both myself and someone in my life. (continue reading below or Contact for Purchase Info)

Jill Joy, Growth, oil on canvas, 48x60"

Early on, I developed a strong need to be perfect as a way of compensating for a difficult childhood — as a means of proving that yes, despite the evidence around me, I was indeed worthy of love. It was effective in someways but ultimately spiritually and creatively debilitating. It was a means of existence based in a lie. During this period in my life I made a major leap forward into a healthier more accepting way of being.

This painting is part of the Consciousness Series but also part of a sub-set of this series I call Evolution.

In my experience, when we grow as people (often by recognizing a truth we have up to that point avoided or been unaware of) there is a burst of energy that occurs inside of us like the creation of a new universe and a new self. We explode outward and inward at the same time and we are no longer the same person. Our consciousness evolves. It’s a subtle process but very real.

Jill Joy with Growth

Painted in oil on primed canvas over 2.5" deep, hand-built stretchers, signed lower right side.

I Thought The World of You

In the continuing quest of evolving consciousness through art this is one of my latest creations:

Jill Joy - I Thought The World of You - oil on canvas - 48x60" - 2015

Below is a photo from my art studio on my easle. This work has a lighter palette than I have been working in lately. It's part of the process of working through the end of a relationship that meant a lot to me. I ended it, I have come to understand, because it no longer served my soul and my growth as a person and an artist. I ended it despite a very strong feeling of love for this person. Art is for me a way of processing my life. I express my thought and emotions through my abstract painting as thoughts and emotions are abstract.

That is the beauty of contemporary art in my opinion: It give us a visible, tangible access to those processes within ourselves, our lives and our emotions that we can't see.

Jill Joy, I Thought The World of You, oil on canvas, 48x60x2.5", 2015

So I've been going back and forth, back and forth on it in my mind. Niggling it, worrying it, wondering about it. But when I think about returning to the same situation, I just can't fathom it. Lately I've been realizing it's important that I acknowledge that I can love some one even if it's not sustainable. People are in our lives for a reason if our stated purpose is spiritual growth. None the less, I can still love even if my soul no longer grows from the connection and thus I can't have them close to me. It's sad in someways but freeing as well. The freedom to grow is the most powerful freedom of all.

Devotion

             Jill Joy - Devotion - oil on canvas - 60x48" - 2014

This painting, Devotion, is about spiritual devotion and also plain old human love…loving someone intensely and how our devotion to that person can transform us regardless of the circumstances. It’s part of my current series, Consciousness, but also a subset of work I call Evolution – 4 or 5 paintings that represent the leap from one level of consciousness to the next. The Evolution works are dynamic and give a sense of bursting into growth and new awareness. They are loosely tied to the chakras (energy centers in our body), indigo is the color of the 6th chakra and violet is the color of the crown or 7th chakra. This painting is somewhere in between those two…a deep violet or purple indigo representing the transition from one level of consciousness to the next. Some info below on the symbolism of the colors and the Chakras (citation).

Indigo – 6th Chakra (third eye)

Indigo opens the door to the Divine and it is the color that we associate with night. It is at night, when our senses become finer and a different part of us awakens. Indigo brings clarity to the sense organs - your seeing, hearing and feeling. Indigo It is also connected to your sixth sense - your third eye.

Indigo is a bridge between heaven and earth, between the left and right hemispheres and also between life and death and helps to make a transition towards life or towards death. Indigo color energy is an energy of deep change. It allows you to transform the energies of lower chakras into higher spiritual vibrations. You must be cautious though, because you can become ungrounded and disconnected with the life on earth and with your family and friends. As you unfold the petals of your third eye chakra, you begin to recognize patterns. You can see where you have been, where you are stuck, and where you are going.

You begin to experience those "Aha" moments. Moments of insight and clarity. You are recognizing your patterns and are able to relate everything to a larger picture and what it means. Illusions are shattered and dreams are integrated. You begin to experience wholeness and sense of tranquility and inner knowing - wisdom. You begin to see that you can consciously create your life. And that your vision for the future is a creative act of will.

Violet – 7th Chakra (crown (top) of the head)

Violet connects with sadness of letting go and also with joy of transformation. There is peace and tranquility in the new found knowledge of profound change. Violet color is cleansing and purifying. It is the color of magic, ritual, cleansing, purifying, connecting, mystery, and mysticism. It is a color that allows us to glimpse other realities, beyond our physical and material reality of this earthly existence. It is pure cosmic energy.

Violet is a color of reconciliation. Of bringing together polarities - male and female, day and night, hot and cold, heaven and earth, right brain and left brain. In this state of balance, you feel the connection with other beings, with heaven, with earth, with all of Universe. There is no separation, no duality.

http://www.chakra-anatomy.com

http://www.jilljoy.com

http://www.artandhealing.org/

http://www.artashealing.org

Letter to Gallery X

Here's a little window into my worldview...daily operation of working towards greater representation....

Dear Curators,

Enclosed please find a CD containing images of recent paintings from my Consciousness Series. I am seeking representation at your gallery and appreciate your taking the time to view my work.

Jill Joy, Wave, oil on canvas, 57x69x2.5”, 2014

This series of paintings, Consciousness, represents the culmination of 20+ years of spiritual and artistic exploration. Deceptively simple and subtly complex, like consciousness itself, they represent awareness of thought, emotion and human experience in a greater field of love. This work ties individual, inner experience to the external, physical world and as such communicate a mystical reality. Executed in a meditative trance, they become meditative objects, contemporary mandalas. In addition to the paintings there are a series of poems that accompany the work. If you are interested please let me know and I will provide them. I have included one example in this package.

A wave.
has crashed through my life
Separated me
from what has tormented me
and sustained me

I sit here in the silence
in the receding tide
Wondering.
what will become of me

© Jill Joy 2014

I’m happy to answer any questions or provide you with any additional images or information. I would be extremely pleased and honored to be represented by your gallery. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Jill Joy

Not Just A Pretty Face #art #contemporaryart

In addition to being an artist, I am a budding art collector. My fourth purchase of original art just arrived by UPS. I was so excited when I saw the package was from the Lois Lambert Gallery in Los Angeles. Some of you may know I've switched to being a full-time artist from corporate marketeer, so I could ill afford, really, to buy a piece of art. But I was cold calling galleries in November and I saw this photograph, it immediately spoke to me and I had to have it.

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Tamar Levine - What A Life #5 - Digital Photograph - 1/15 - 2014

The fall had been a tough time to say the least. My on again off again relationship was off again at the end of the summer, this time permanently I believe. There were other things going on in my life that were difficult, hard choices to move my creative life forward at the expense of material security among other things. Those close to me were experiencing hardship and uncertainty. All of which had me feeling adrift.

When I opened the box I was moved to tears. Because emotionally this photograph is right where I am at. I thought to myself, this is the pure purpose of art, to make us feel. Because when we allow ourselves to feel, we become whole. We heal. It also helped me accept life. This is life after all. We sometimes feel adrift. We are constantly challenged. It never ends. We reach one pinnacle, only to find another calls our name. This photograph and the photographer also made me feel as though I was not alone. It pointed me to our shared humanity. Which is such a gift these days in an isolated world of sole proprietorship, telecommuting and social networking rather than face time.

One of the good things that happened this fall was finding an art gallerist in Florida who really seems to understand my work and what it is about, the drive for conscious evolution and spiritual healing toward enlightenment. The first step to transcending where we are is to acknowledge where we are and to feel.

"I want to encourage people to experience feelings and memories that they have lost touch within the course of their lives. If for one moment in an individual’s day they can step away from the confines of the structure of their life and indulge their eyes and minds in a work of art, perhaps they can reconnect with a part of themselves or of the world that might otherwise be forgotten." - Jessica Salameh, Wall Street Fine Art, Ponte Vedra Beach, FL.

That's what Tamar Levine's photograph does for me. Like the model, it brings me right beneath the surface of the ocean of my mind and plunges me into feeling. So yes, when buying art we sometimes want it to make us feel good and we sometimes want it to match the wall color or the couch and harmonize our surroundings. But that is not the most powerful purpose and application of art. Helping us drop into the ocean of our subconscious experience is. Thank you Tamar Levine for allowing me to know myself.

http://www.jilljoy.com/

http://www.loislambertgallery.com/

http://www.tamarlevine.com/

http://wallstreetfa.com/

Elevator Speech on Enlightenment #art #painting

I was at a party over the holidays and found myself queried about my art. It's often very difficult for an abstract artist to describe his or her art because the concepts are often abstract ideas that the artist is attempting to represent visually. When I got home I decided I needed to summarize exactly what it is my work is about. Not just for my fellow humans, but for also me. So here’s what I came up with that seemed to encompass 20+ years of painting and the evolution across a multitude of styles:

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Jill Joy – Purple Sky – oil on canvas – 36×36

“My work is essentially about enlightenment: Transcending individual thoughts, emotions and experiences towards identification with something beyond the self that is universal and all encompassing. My art seeks to understand our place in the universe, the transience of life and the existence of a broader vibrational field of love that encompasses us all.”

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Jill Joy - Thought Forms compassion - oil on canvas - 20x60 - 2014