 Good afternoon. Welcome to coronavirus in our mental health. Today is October 26, 2022. And I'm Ken Burtness in Haleiva coming to you from the North Shore. We've got a great program for you today. It's called the joy of creating art. But before we get to that, I need to do a coronavirus update as usual. Good and bad news for Hawaii. The bad news is that our new cases are up almost twice what it was two weeks ago. So we're up now in the, in the 200s. And so that's not good news. The good news is that there were no deaths this past week. So zero deaths in the last seven days. So that was quite good. Now this has happened before and part of it is an artifact of it. The fact that we collect data weekly and then we do an average per day. So next week, it may be higher, but for today, it is very good news indeed. Now the rise in new cases we need to worry a little bit about because the holidays are coming up. And also the surface up when the surface up, more tourists, more crowds, more surf meets, things get hectic in Hawaii during the winter as well it should. And it's a wonderful thing to be here living in Hawaii during the winter. But we have to be careful of the coronavirus. The other thing we need to really look at is our boosters. The problem is that what we're seeing over all over the last two and a half years, we're looking at a lot of people got vaccinated. Two thirds of the people in the country got vaccinated, but it fell off to one third got their first booster. And the experts expect there's going to be even less people that are getting this second booster. The trouble is the second booster is very important because it has a special part of it. It's called a bivariate booster. And the by means it also attacks the, the beta four and five variant from Obacron which are very, very infectious. So we have to be careful of those and the booster is a way to do that. The other thing is, you will continue to be inundated with long term data news. For instance, the last couple weeks. We've been looking at how this has affected our kids at school. And what the pandemic has done of course with virtual learning and being out of school and back and forth that has been going in the uncertainty. Our students have done not so well on their tests and on their learning. And that's a big hurdle that we have to go through and deal with but we can do that. We can do that mostly if we stay positive, and we get the idea that we can do this. And one of the wonderful things about today's program is my good friend and special guest, Patrice fadersfield and she's going to talk to us about how we can do something that many of us never thought we could do and that is paint. So I'd like to welcome heartily, my friend, Patrice, welcome to the show. Hello, I can I'm so happy to be here with you. The, I was just going to mention the fact that Patrice does to group emails every month, and one of them is called the art of Aloha and one of them has called making meaning monthly. It's hard for me to pronounce but it's a great. It's a great group email. And in that she imparts a lot of her, not only knowledge but talent and encouragement to people to take a painting which some people have during the, during the many people have thought about it, and not quite made that leap so we're going to talk about that during this thing. And Patrice if it's okay with you I'd like us to start off with your Aloha, your art of Aloha which I love. Sure. Sure. Art of Aloha. Aloha is so much more than just a greeting. It's really a way of life. I think it's more about heart centered living and consideration for others it's got a lot of kindness built into it. So that's where the art of Aloha came from that. And to be completely honest when I first moved here and was starting my business and I needed a website I thought well no one will ever be able to find me if I use my last name. I need something better. So, art of Aloha. When I paint, I do paint from the heart I'm an intuitive painter. I follow my heart I follow the signs that I receive as I go on a walk or when something catches my eye. If there's a spark of enough of a spark of interest that's what I paint I have a really hard time painting with something else once somebody else might want me to paint. I find my avenue in if I can find that little piece that spark, then it's great fun. And I do that when I do my pet portraits. And I know we have one pet portrait on the list. Number 12 I think it is there you go thank you. Whenever somebody gives me their pets to paint a photo of their pets to paint, I, I just clue right into the energy of the love in those pets, and that's what shows up on the paper. And really caught my eye, the other day was the unlikely topic of your painting was the cracks in the sidewalk in in the driveways. I love that and I love the painting that came from that and tell us a little bit about unlikely are hidden things that most people don't see that you can pick up and make something wonderful out of. During the pandemic. And Eric I think number four is a sidewalk moment painting. During the pandemic I did a lot more walking than I have in general lately before or after unfortunately, and I would take the same route every day. I would go up my Kiki Heights drive turn around and come back down. And every day I found myself taking photographs of the flowers true but more float photos of the cracks in the sidewalk, and the cracks in the road, and I realized that they were design but the cracks just were interesting shapes and they caught my attention. And this went on for the entire pandemic and I finally thought well, I'm, I would take photos of flowers and photos of cracks how can I combine the two. And I decided, and PR has their driveway moments why couldn't we have our sidewalk moments. I did a very small series that I called my sidewalk moment paintings and that was the hella conia sidewalk moment. So beautiful. I love the colors in that. You do so well with colors can you talk a little bit about colors are fantastic in your paintings. I'm a colorist and a lot of people are really surprised when I tell them that my paintings are watercolor they think they must be acrylics or oils because the colors are so vibrant, but it really has nothing to do with the medium. So much as it has to do with the way you use the paint and learning how to use the, the color wheel properly and how to play with colors, and how to make them brighter. And I did a lot of that by taking classes and by experimenting. But I think that the clue for me is, I know a painting is done when it feels done when it. The painting is to feel alive, like they could, like you can feel the energy of them. And so it takes enough color and the color with watercolor is done in thin layers, which is why I call myself a slow painter it takes a while to build up the layers. And that's okay I'm okay with that. So everybody paints differently. And that's the beauty of painting you, you want to find your own way to paint. So you talked about, in addition to that you also talked about balancing, which I found interesting in your paintings are always well balanced. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how you achieve that. Well, you know, every job that we have in life I think leads to the next one and the 10 years prior to my move here to become a painter I was working for a catalog company, and working with design elements on a page. And that's not about design, then, and I continue to learn about a lot about design but that's how balance is achieved when you can find design and there is one of my paintings. Number two, the balancing act is one of the first ones I did during the coronavirus shutdown. And to me that the globe or the orb on top of the cone is not touching the cone. To me in the painting. It's kind of hovering above, and sometimes we'll get way out of balance way out of whack, but there is a midpoint for us to come back to and I think that's the part that I like to emphasize that it doesn't really matter how far out of whack you get. You can come home. Back to yourself back to your inner self. You know, one of the things that when we had talked before. I always found interesting in the fact that your paintings are not only balanced, but you attend to not only the main subject that tends to be central, but you also attend to the foreground and background. You find things that's happening all over the canvas. And sometimes that changes that I see in the art of Aloha, where you're sort of zooming in on one area but then as you the painting progresses, it expands and we see different things in it. How do you do that that's wonderful. Well, you know, I think, I think it's part of just the way I look at life. I look for things, or I try to be aware of things that are capturing my interest and see where that thread might take me. I think when you're, when you look at my abstract paintings, in particular, you'll see more of that kind of thing. Which one live lightly love deeply number eight, it might be a really good one for that that is a full sheet painting. So it's 22 by 30 inches, and it started out with me just playing with trying to find out how clear I can keep my colors. So I'm working primarily with oranges and blues in that piece, which are complementary colors. And when they are side by side they make one another bright but when they mix, they will dull down. So this painting, I started really I started out by just throwing wet paint on wet paper, and just to see what would happen and the more I kept looking at it as I was building the color. The more I kept finding in that painting and it's with most of my abstracts the more you look at them the more you will see there's like a giant angel in there there's hearts there's birds there's butterflies there's all kinds of creatures. There's a big turtle head almost right in the middle there's all kinds of things but they weren't intentional. They were discovered. And I love that about painting you get to discover your painting. You know the trouble with that for us who non painters is that it takes courage to do the things that you do. And I think fear plays a big part in sort of us staying away from painting we're afraid we're going to fail we're afraid we're going to reach a point where it just stops and our inspiration leaves us like a bird leaving the, you know the house through the door or something. And how do you deal with that that fear. And how do you help other people that come to your, your email sites and group meetings how do you help them deal with that fear so they actually can go ahead and try things like you're telling us about. Well, first and foremost. I like to remind everybody that it's just a piece of paper. I don't care how much money it costs. I don't care how much the supplies cost it's just a piece of paper, and you're going to get through this. The other thing I, I was thinking about today no matter what I do there's, there is always going to be some sort of resistance if, because I think with painting. You have the opportunity to grow and to learn more about yourself. And sometimes that feels exciting. And sometimes it feels like an adventure, and sometimes it skills feels like a scary Halloween haunted house. So depending on how you feel about it. You can maybe shift that fear to more of excitement. I'm kind of feeling in the body but we give it a different name. So if you can call it adventure or call it excitement. You can have a better chance of, let's go on this adventure today, rather than oh my God I'm looking at a big blank piece of paper. So it's way more fun, depending on how you queue it up in your mind. And another aspect of what I like to do is take it in small bites. So, right now I want to be doing more writing, and it's hard for me to find a big clump of time to write so I'm giving myself 15 minutes segments for writing. And I don't care how much I write what I write, I just have to write for 15 minutes. And if you do that with painting, you'll be amazed at what you can get done in 15 minutes time is so elastic. When you're having fun, you will get so much more done. And if you just relax and breathe into it. Maybe say a little like, this is my intention for these 15 minutes is to just have fun. Go have fun. Have fun with paint and paper and water. Absolutely. And that's exactly what we do when we get together for writers and we write by ourselves. And what I find in writing is I try to do those daily things like you're talking about. But sometimes as I'm doing the daily things, all of a sudden, like with your painting, something new comes up. And I'm just sort of carried away and I get this joyful feeling and it just goes on. And I'd say okay, well whatever's coming up. I'm going to put aside because I'm going to follow this. Yeah, that's your adventure. Exactly. And, you know, if it doesn't come that day that's okay you just stop after that 15 minutes, and the adventure will come eventually. That's, that's so true. And just knowing, you know, you only need to have an adventure happen once I think it's called intermittent with dogs what's it called, I don't know, intermittent praise, I guess, is kind of like once you feel the adventure and know it's possible. It's easier to keep going. Yeah, exactly. You don't have to have that reinforcement every time that you do it. In fact, it's even stronger like you're saying if it's done intermittently because you can say well, didn't happen today but it's might happen tomorrow. So, right. Like a lottery. Absolutely. Well, I hope our chances of an adventure a lot better than the lottery. Oh, I guarantee it. Maybe now's a good time to go to making meaning monthly. Yes. That really attracted me as a psychologist because you're working with abstracts and you're asking the people who are with you to look inside and find their particular take on that abstract and that's a wonderful, not only artistic tool but psychological tool so maybe you could tell us a little bit about how that happened and and what you're finding as you go along with that because I know you've been at it for a while. So the making meaning monthly paintings actually started out as making meaning Monday paintings and for a whole year. I did it on the first, every Monday, I would do a small painting like a little Mandala. And I would send it out to a small group of people it's about 200 people. Anybody can join or drop off my newsletters anytime they want to. But we have about 200 people getting the making meaning monthly paintings they started out because I wanted to feel like I had more meaning in life that there was more meaning to life, and that I was being of more service to life. And it seemed to me a good way to just have a little bit more involvement having other people finding more meaning in their lives to so I've never told people how to look at them. I just send out an image and invite them to look at the meaning or look at the painting in any way just take note of whatever comes up for them. It's been so rewarding to see how some people have moved from just making note of the individual pieces that they see in the email to then figuring out how that fits into their life and what they want to see in life. It's really fun a few people do poetry two or three people now are doing poetry and their people from all over the country and even from the Mariana Islands are taking part in this so it's really a lot of fun. It's that self exploration thing that's so wonderful. And I think I see that clearly in your paintings the exploration and when you can pass that on to other people that's terrific. What is any comments from the people who are doing this about how it affected their lives and where they went with all this. Well, you know, I think the fact that they're continuing to work with me on it. And they're going more and more in depth. We have one fellow who's an architect in the Northwest and his poetry. He didn't start out doing poetry at all. And I know that he's had some rough times the past year or two. And sometimes if if I forget to send one out, people will email me so I know that they're, they're looking forward to them so I'm, I think, I think that's about it. I think it's helpful to a lot of people and we also have there's a couple people who, when they have had trouble, have asked the community to just send them a little bit of love or light or prayers. And I think that that's really neat too because it has become even though I have only met a few of the people on these on the newsletter that we, it feels really like a community, which has been really nice. Can we talk a little bit, can we follow that up and talk a little bit about how art brings people together because I think that's, that's very true and I think it's, you know, I think that you've really helped in that area. And, you know, a couple weeks ago, Tamara was on the thing and she talked about the joy that she had when people gathered together and painted together. That was one part of it I'm sure you see other things happening from your standpoint as well as how to bring people together through art. Well, one of the most important one of the most fun things I do is twice a week I paint in public. And while I'm painting in public I'm also set up to sell my art while I'm there but the number of people who will stop and just talk to me about the painting is so gratifying and they, they really enjoy watching, of course, I think watching anybody paint I don't care who you are is kind of like watching a magician, because you don't know what that person is going to do next so there's a magical quality to it. And I have one painting that I haven't published yet. But I, it's part of the paradigm project and I, I made it look like DNA and I have had like six and seven year olds go, is that DNA. I'm like, yay. That's great. Yeah, it's really exciting. Can we talk about that paradigm paradigm move that you've we've talked about before where you're in one place and all of a sudden it opens up on where we can go from here to the next place. And I just, I see the whole world as being in a big paradigm shift right now. And I think we are shifting from things like competition to creativity to collaboration from duality to unity. And I would use a lot of other words that would be a lot more triggering for people that I'd rather not go into. But the fun thing is, when I first started working on these about a year ago, and I would tell people I'm painting us through the paradigm shift. They would kind of look at me quizzically but now when I tell them, I'm painting us through the paradigm shift and the orange and blue painting behind me as a good example of it. They, they seem to accept it a lot more easily like it's not a big deal it's like oh that's cool what is, how are you doing that or what does it mean or what does this painting mean, and I'm doing it through the complimentary colors of orange and blue, which when they're right next to each other make each other brighter. Again, when they're mixed together they dull one another down. Now that doesn't mean that we need to keep each other separate. But I think, as one person I met last week when I was discussing this painting. He said, oh so maybe we need that dynamic tension, a little bit to make one another better. So it's not making one or the other of us wrong in any way it's finding a way for all of us to fit together and to make the world a better place. And to shine. Yes. Keep alive. Now for Trish you've talked about the one of the two paintings behind you. I think you owe it to us to talk about the other one because especially I love the greens and yellows there tell us about that. Okay, well that one is a banana painting. I think it's called Going Bananas. And the funny story is I, I have several banana paintings that I started at least 10 years ago and they were in my flat files and I took them out one day and I thought, huh, why didn't I finish this. And honestly, they were 95% done. They really didn't need that much work, but I, I wasn't happy with them. However, many years ago and I put them away and then when I took them out again I found this pretty cool. So that's another good thing to know when you are painting anything every painting has an adolescent stage, where you just want to bury it, or put it away. So just, you have to you either paint through it, or live through it like we did adolescents. But don't give up. You, you will outgrow that. And your parents will survive it. Yes. Well, Patrice we're getting toward the end of our show I wanted to ask you if you had a final words stuff to, to leave us with to leave the people who are watching us with and about your feelings about art and how people can enjoy art even in the most difficult of times like the times that we're going through. The thing about art is everybody has their own favorites, the things you like the most, and that's great, because if it touches you, that's what counts. And creating art for any reason, I have, I, you know, it's funny, I've, I've thought about art therapy a lot, I've never gone to an art, oh I did actually, when I was in college my first therapist was an art therapist. And so I guess maybe that's where some of my introspection in the subject comes from, but art is a very, it's healing. I have a lot of people say I have no talent at all. And it, you know, talent is something that is grown. You can have some to start with but even if you don't feel like you do. You probably do we are all creative we are all creating our world our lives in one way or another, whether it be with numbers or colors or whatever. So, give it a try you really, you know, even if you do some bad five minute art. I had one teacher who said, you, I was a drawing class she said you all have 100,000 bad drawings in you it's it's a good idea to just start getting rid of them now get them out on the paper. I'm not going to go get them out. I'll have to use that for my writing groups. And so, which is been wonderful and we're toward the very end. And I just want to thank you for for being with me and with the audience and sharing some of your wonderful creativity and appreciation of art I just I love your paintings and we'll continue looking forward to the monthly meaning. Help me out on that again. Making meaning monthly. Yes. There's two newsletters so yeah. I look forward to those thank you again for being with us today. Thank you it's been my pleasure. And thanks to all the people who support this program. And Haley and Eric and Michael and everybody else who helps make this program fun to do and also a way to reach out to people and try to talk about things that matter and certainly art has mattered today. Aloha.