jenhynds

[jenhynds]

The Milwaukee Bucks  Block Party this past Saturday was great!  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was not disappointed.  There is something brewing in Milwaukee and it’s not the Brewers!

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Larry Sanders' Video Can Save You're Life!

Shed the Old and Grow the New

This painting of Larry Sanders was inspired by the video below.  Go on and watch it.

http://www.theplayerstribune.com/larry-sanders-exclusive-interview/ 

So you may be thinking I exaggerated the title a bit after watching the above video.  However, from my personal experience, I know I haven't.  I know if I watched this ten years ago when I was a majorly depressed collegiate athlete, I may have never ended up in the hospital for months after attempting suicide.  Twenty year old Jen may have seen another way out.  It's inspiring to see a young man in a high profile job seek the proper help he needs.  Not only that, but he also isn't ashamed of telling others the help he sought like I was.  

I had so many overwhelming emotions back in college.  Emotions I believed made me weak.  Some of them coming from the suffocating feeling of being trapped.  After months of mental anguish and quite suffering, I was hospitalized after a suicide attempt.  The thing about surviving a suicide attempt, is that I still wanted to be dead.  I wasn't grateful I lived.  However, I did see the effect it had on my parents, and I realized I needed to exist so they didn't think they failed.  They were great parents and they didn't understand it wasn't about them.  It was about the unbearable pain trapped in my head.  I was institutionalized during a spring semester, so when I came out it was summer.  While in the hospital, I was put on a cocktail of meds and taught coping mechanisms.  after much debate, I decided I would try to go back to school and volleyball in the fall.   

"I can't quit.  I don't quit.  I'm not a quitter," I remember thinking.  In this American society we are taught to never quit.  You fall off that horse, well just get right back on... but wait, what if that horse has temperament issues?  What if that horse is injured?  He won't or can't carry you.  He bucks you off again and again and again and again and again.  Each time you get on, you're not stronger like the slogans say.  You have broken bones, countless bruises and are dangerously exhausted.  Why would you get back on?  It would literally be insane to continue down this path. "But I'm strong," you think, "I must get back on.  I'll just dust myself off again." Pause for a moment... Take a deep breath.  Listen to your breath.  Are you listening?  Are you truly listening to what you want, or are you just pushing through because of external pressures and fear?  You can only ignore your intuition for so long.

When I returned to school, everything triggered my old emotions.  I hysterically broke down.  I was put back into a behavioral health hospital.  I was in there twice as long as before.  I was broken mentally.  I couldn't function.  After playing around with my meds, they finally found the right mix.  My brain begin to heal.  My mind would come later.  My mind still isn't completely healed, but it's much closer.

 I didn't understand what my body was telling me ten years ago.  As an athlete you're taught to ignore pain.  Play through it.  You're weak otherwise.  Just look at the back-lash Derrick Rose has gotten over the last three years.  It's not just athletes who are taught this, but that's the world I know.  Larry Sanders has shown it is not weakness.  It is actually strength.  It's strength to step off the path of security.  It's strength when you decide that horse isn't a good fit, or that horseback riding in general isn't for you.  Especially when everyone is telling you to get right back up and ride that same horse.  As a society, we need to realize force is not the way to pursue our dreams.  It is destructive.  Self- awareness, self-acceptance, gentle and disciplined persistence is the way I have learned to live my life.  I am happy.  I believe Larry is down a path of happiness.  I hope we can all find the path OF happiness.  I say "OF" because like so many wise people before me have said, "life is a journey, not a destination."  It starts with turning inwards and becoming quiet, still and aware.  With all that said, lets shed our old antlers and grow some new ones!

P.S. If you are depressed or suicidal please find help.  One place to try is the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline '1-800-273-TALK (8255)'.  No matter how helpless you feel, you are not.

[jenhynds]

Couldn't Wait

So this painting was keeping me up so I didn't put it away.  I decided I was going to finish it.  However, it wasn't like pulling teeth.  No need to not enjoy what I was making.  For meditation I usually sit down in the shower and focus on the water hitting my skin.  That's not so much meditation but more concentration.  Anyway, then I turn off the water and sit while the cool air sends shivers down my spine.  I do this because I HATE being cold.  However, if I allow myself to be present and actually feel the cold, not hide from it, it doesn't feel cold.  It is just a sensation and my goose bumps go away.  To take that back to my art, that's what I did with this piece.  I hate when i get caught up on certain aspects of an art piece.  To get past that, I had to sit in my discomfort.   See the painting for what it is.  Then, allow the uneasy feelings dissipate.  Here is the result of that.  Not what I originally envisioned, but... eh.

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I Need Fresh Air

I'm putting this one aside for a while.  It's one part of a three painting series.  My brain hurts.  What is going on in this piece, and is hopefully obvious once I finish, is Dwyane Wade is holding onto a basketball rim as a floatation devise.  So his head is mostly underwater and i want the rim to be at the surface.  I can't seem to comprehend where the surface of the water would be.  When I try everything seems off.  I've stared at this thing for way too long and drawing stupid lines all over it.  Time to put it away for a while.  Unfortunately it will be gnawing at the back of my brain until it is finished.  Below is the last painting of the series:

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It's Getting Crowded in Here.

"Here" meaning my brain is getting all junked up with a frenzy of thoughts.  Usually writing down what's in my mind helps the decluttering problem.  I can be a bit of a hoarder.  I usually write down my thoughts on a random piece of paper, napkin, journal; whatever is in arms reach.  I then stuff it in a drawer with other chicken scratch.  It's kind of a cleansing ritual for my mind.  Once I write it down, I can focus on other things.  Sometimes the next day the same ideas come to mind... and then the next day... and next... until my anxiety starts to take over.  The Lexapro works to keep the pond calm as long as nothing external disturbs it.  Like a frog or rock or boat or a kid in a boat trying to hit a frog with a rock.  (The pond is my mind for those of you who don't read those Eastern Philosophy quotes people share on Facebook.  What?)  Anyways, Once disturbed I have to find other methods than just writing things down.  I must begin to act on them.  Otherwise I spiral into an annoying habit of self-deprecating thoughts.  I'm not as fun when that's going on...  Well, now i'm suggesting I'm a fun person.   I'm actually boring and no fun at all.  When socializing I make sure to have my three year old with me because they are good distractions and excuses to leave.

This blog is a little more action than scribbles on a napkin.  It's still just writing, but it's a change of pace.  I started a new paragraph back there, and I'm not sure if that was appropriate paragraphing or whatever the grammar retentives call it.  Now i'm getting side tracked.  My usual methods of rambles aren't as self conscious and there is no grammar involved.  I'm trying to be a little more proactive in acting on my ideas rather than ideaing my ideas.  So why not write to anyone about it.  now lets get some reoccurring thoughts off my chest.

I have so many ideas when it comes to art and creating.  I'm not saying they're good ideas, but they don't stop.  Like I stated earlier, some continue to come back.  One of those ideas is the "Traveling Across the Country and Renovating Old Basketball Hoops... and then taking the worn down ones back with me to create with he he."  In the summer of 2013 my husband and daughter drove from Chicago to Western Montana.  Along the way we took many breaks.  I had my basketball and we would find a place to stop that had a park and a hoop.   I noticed many towns needed upgrades to their courts.  Many didn't have courts.  That's when this idea hit me.  First I was thinking I would do it all gorilla style, and take the old hoops in the middle of the night and replace them with nice ones.  My mother would refer to this type of thinking as grandiose.  Then she would ask, "Are you taking your meds?  Are you sure?  Did you take them this morning?  Are you getting enough sleep?  Do you have your period?"  Once I would reassure her of my part sanity, I would reevaluate what I was thinking.  Then I realized I didn't have an endless supply of hoops or any clue how I would replace them.  Would I rip out the pole all Hulk style?  Could I just unscrew the rim if that's all that needed fixing.  Or would I have to saw it off?  what does a hoop even look like?  That's when I realized  I needed a lot of help from a lot of people.  I needed the community behind me.  I needed to ask for grants blah, blah, blah.  That's when the brainstorming just turned into storming.  I can't do all that.  Just forget it... but I can't forget it.  Now the idea has snowballed into a whole community art project for kids.  They would paint  the backboards and courts.  They would make it theirs.  

After writing this post, the hoop reno project is a little more tangible.  Not much, but a little.

[jenhynds]

We Can't Breathe

The life of a black basketball player is interesting in terms of experiencing racism in the US.  As a white non NBA player female, I am not going to pretend like I know what it's like to be them, but as an outsider looking in it seems to be a curious situation.  I believe it was a good thing for the players who wore the "I Can't Breathe" shirts during warm-ups in response of the Eric Garner case.  They are in a situation where they can reach millions on the stage they perform on night in and night out.  Many of whom are white.  That's the thing, though.  They are entertainers.  They are payed millions of dollars because whitey decided  this entertainment is worth millions.  If Lebron James was not an extremely athletic person, would he be in prison right now like so many other black males his age?  Or even worse, dead.  Basketball has given these men more oxygen, but will we ever stop viewing them as mere entertainers to control?

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Back to the Basics

So last week my wacom tablet broke.  The tablet is what I use to draw on.  Since I haven't been able to do any digital painting I found myself with my good ole' friends pen and paper.  Here are a few differences between sketching digitally and sketching old school:

- Digitally you can hit the undo button whenever you make a mistake; while with ink you just live with it and accept it as part of the artistic process or waste a lot of paper.  

It was kinda funny because every time I made a mistake with ink, my eyes would wonder to the upper right hand corner of the paper ready to click the undo button (that's where the undo button is on the computer screen).  To my dismay it was not on my paper.  I was disappointed every time.

- Digitally you can crop or resize images if the composition isn't working out.  With paper you can't.  Well, that's not entirely true, You can take out a pair of scissors and cut  stuff away, but you can't get it back and you can't resize things.

-Digitally you can save whenever you want so when your cat jumps on your lap and you accidentally hit the close button, everything is already saved.  With pen and paper you can never accidentally hit a button, but cats do jump on your lap and cause you to mess up... if not a cat then a dog...If not a dog then your three year old house wrecker daughter. 

- Digitally you can zoom in and out as much as you like.  When doing fine detail I zoom in and draw.  I have a bit of a hand tremor so that takes the shakiness away.  In order to do fine detail with pen, I would have to work pretty big to hide some of the shaky lines... but shaky lines have character.... so eh, there's that.

So those are some differences I was reminded of when using pen and paper this last week.

[jenhynds]

Zaza in the Tiger Skin

This painting I did was inspired by Zaza Pachulia's Georgian heritage.  Currently he plays for the Milwaukee Bucks.  I did a little research on Georgia, and something that kept coming up was the story, "The Knight in the Panther Skin."  The panther is sometimes translated to leopard or tiger so that's why Zaza is in a tiger skin uniform.  Zaza is portraying the knight, Tariel.  Below is the illustration I based my piece after.

[jenhynds]

This painting was done after Derrick Rose’s first knee injury, which was dubbed by Adidas as “The return”. Well, since then he’s had another season ending knee injury and two rolled ankles and a pulled hamstring… and a hell of a lot of media press. Recently he is under fire for comments...

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competition for free print

Tonight at 6:30 CST I will be giving out a free hand signed print of my latest painting to the first person to answer a trivia question right about the painting below.  The question will be posted on my twitter account.  My handle is @panthabear57

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Thinking no one would want to read my blog, I gravitated away from it.  However, I decided to give it another go.  Here are a few updates from previous post:

Earlier I posted a picture of a mosaic I was working on for a bigger piece.  Here is the finished mosaic and below it is the final piece of art.

Earlier I posted the sketch for a painting i did for stacey King.  Here is the finished product:

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Working on mosaic for air jordan 13 panther painting

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Basement workspace

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Paintbrushes

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Sketch for commissioned painting for Stacey King

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Set up for sneaker summit