The world of Isabelle Raffard's sculpture

Isabelle Raffard, born in Normandie in 1954, artist and sculptor fascinated by the world of animals, and likes to interpret them in her sculptures in each and  every aspects of their character, movements and shapes.
 Inspired by Eugène Bouddin, Isabelle was brought up in a family who loved art and attend regularly exhibitions.

When she moved to Boulogne-billancourt, Isabelle attended a sculpture class, this is where she became passionate about this art and very quickly animals became her favourite subject.
Winner of many prises, a  Bronze medal at  the "salon des artistes français à paris " in 2004
 the First prize in " Boulogne Billancourt  "for the best sculpture of the city in 2010

Isabelle talks passionnatly about her sculptures. When sculpting an animal she goes beyond its anatomy, she becomes very invested in her subject, she reads a lot  to understand its  caractere, its strenght, its mouvements and shape .
Isabelle has special relationship with her animals, sculpting for her goes far more then representing only the form of her animals but its also a description  its behaviour, its habits and its different postures.
Her style is sensitive yet powerful they depict the life force of an animal in all of its visual splendor.
Enjoy the photos from Isabelle Raffard sculptures and stay tune for more info about her exhibitions .

The Healing Power of Crochet

Well here is a post about the art and it's relation with psychology, when I started this blog my intentions were to talk about the healing power of art, with its different ways and forms.
 But my articles developed too many different configurations while studying art therapy. During all this period I had the chance to explore with different materials and forms and to discover the different healing ways of each practiced art.

Here is an unconventional material that I’ve been exploring these couple months as a healing and relaxing material I don’t know if they use it in other art therapy discipline but in my college we don’t use it.

 

The Yarn, I don’t know what pushed me to choose this material, in art therapy we always start by choosing and selecting out the materials, then exploring it, and placing it into different forms .
 The yarn can give you a tactile and visual experience, when you see a yarn for the first time, especially the people who never work with it, they will touch it and feel it with their hand and eyes, because the colours that you can find in yarns can give you the impression of a painter’s palette which is amazing feeling.
And this is exactly from where my curiosity for yarn and crocheting started

Why crochet? Because crocheting can very quickly give you a form and it is quite easy to start with.
Especially when you are doing squares, you don’t need much concentration, they grow quickly and it can put you in a meditative state at least from my point of view.
So here is a photo of one of my projects, I hope it will inspire you, as for me it has been so gratifying  and healing to complete crochet projects

  Smiley face in crochet

“Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life.” ~ Pablo Picasso

What is your kind of art that washes the dust of your everyday's life ?

Glass Jewelry by Dana Kranz

Meeting, Dana Kranz
An art  boutique cached my attention during my visit to Malta, even though I was in a hurry  that day, couldn't stop myself from taking a sneak peak at what this beautiful boutique had inside, colorful beads, jewelry, and " vitrail "art  then at the end of the shop there was Dana, behind her small atelier, I asked her if this is  her work, with a big smile on her face she said yes, then she started explaining to me how she manually creates this beautiful glass beads, I liked her work but what i liked the most is Dana's personality so open and passionate about her art, usually not all artists want to talk about their techniques in details, she even proposed to show me how she creates her beads if i come back in the after noon, time was running out and I had to rush to my next destination, with the determination to come back again.

Dana studied 3 years porcelain and glass painting for 3 years in Germany , then moved to Gozo to set up her business, she has a shop Glass line in Savina square , and also another workshop in Qala , where she creates her stained glass, handmade jewelry, glass painting and other souvenir items
For more information on Dana's work you can visit her website : www.danakranz.com

Soyez à vous-même une source ! Une invitation à redécouvrir son être par l'expression créatrice.

 Astrig Alyanakian médiateur artistique, organise un stage Arts Plastiques et Relaxation. Intitulé "Voyage Intérieur", il est composé de plusieurs ateliers à thème.
Il est possibilité de s’inscrire à 1 ou plusieurs ateliers, l’ensemble formant un cheminement.
Par la relaxation et la visualisation, il s'agit de se recentrer dans l’instant présent, sentir dans son corps ce qui nous constitue, nous motive profondément,
contacter nos ressources intérieures. Par la création plastique, donner forme aux ressentis et images ainsi convoqués, créer un nouvel espace support de notre être et de nos potentiels.
Lieu : Paris et sa banlieue.
Public : Adultes - En petit groupe.
Médiums : collage, dessin, peinture, volume. Aucun pré-requis artistique nécessaire.

Prochaines dates à Paris 10ème arr., Au ciel est Bleu, petite salle de relaxation proche des stations de métro Belleville, Goncourt :
- samedi 22 octobre
- samedi 26 novembre
- samedi 17 décembre 2011.
Un autre stage est prévu à peu près aux mêmes dates, sans doute les vendredi.
Il se tiendra dans un magnifique ateliers d'artiste à Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, RER St-Maur/Créteil..
 INFOS et INSCRIPTION : contactez Astrig par mail : astrig.alyanakian@gmail.com

No one lives free from suffering and loss.

Here is a passage from the book: The Art of Happiness - HH DILAI LAMA & HOWARD C CUTTLER.
One of the motivational books that really marked me

“A woman named Kisagotami suffered the death of her only child .Unable to accept it, she ran from person to person, seeking a medicine to restore her child to life. The Buddha was said to have such a medicine..... .' I know of such a medicine,’ the Buddha replied. But in order to make it, I must have certain ingredients.....Bring me a handful of mustard seed said the Buddha. The woman promised to procure it for him, but as she was leaving, he added, I require that the mustard seed be taken from a household where no child, spouse, parent, or servant has died '.
The woman agreed and began going from house to house in search of the mustard seed. At each house the people agreed to give her the seed, but when she asked them if anyone had died in the household, she could find no home where death had not visited -in one house a daughter, in another a servant, in others a husband or parent had died. Kisagotami was not able to find a home free from suffering or death. Seeing she was not alone in her grief, the mother let go of her child's lifeless body and returned to the Buddha, who said with a great compassion, you thought that you alone had lost a son; the law of death is that among all living creatures there is no permanence.

No one lives free from suffering and loss.

 I wanted to share this with you because ever since I read book, it changed my point of  views in life, of course when I was studying psychology at the university I remember one of my teachers mentioning something similar that during a tough situation we think it happened only to us but in fact no, there are lots of people out there who have similar or even worse situations.
In my opinion  we don't have any excuse to complain when we find ourselves in a tough situation, instead we have to be strong and ask ourselves what can we do with it? How can we turn a bad situation or tough one into our advantage?
I know we are humans and it's not easy to think straight just right away when facing hard times, it’s OK, set a  time limit for yourself to grief, to be angry, to depress, anything you want, but when the time is up, say to yourself it is time to pick up my pieces. And start doing so

Now that I am studying Art Therapy, a very important thing we concentrate while attending a patient is to let him create and when he is unhappy with his work of art, to help him develop this work, help him to face it and not to try hiding the unwanted parts of his creation, instead we tell him, what happened, happened, don't try to change it, instead how can you use this art that you create in a positive way, and the patient will continue working on it until he is happy.
And it is amazing to see how patients slowly, slowly can find solutions around this unwanted work of art that will lead them later into finding solutions into their own life problems.


We don't have to be necessarily patients to use this way of thinking in our lives, life is full of experiences it can be bad or good, and it is us who decide the way we want to perceive it.

Jean-Louis Raina :Great Artist -Sculptor,Exhibition at Landowski, 3 mai - 26 June

   So impressed by his work, I have already visited the exhibition 4 times, and the last time couldn't help it, I took my camera and decided that i will share it, because the Work of Jean-Louis Raina cannot only be described by words we have to see it, we have to feel it.

    Born in 1929, In the Alpes de Haute-provence , Sculptor who lives and works in Boulogne-Billancourt France for more than 50 years now.

The Dream of Fahim Fehmeh

Thousand and one Wedding in a million and one Shot

"Andalousie " My Group Exhibition- France

Le Cirque Du Soleil -Saltimbanco

Joyeux Noel a tout le monde

Musee National D'art Moderne -Centre Pompidou

    Far from the 19th and 20th century's architecture , a locations  not far from the Notre Dame cathedral there is a very original  Building, ,yet very choking with  its architectural design .

Takashi Murakami At Chateau De Versailles

Louvre part 1

The Musée du Louvre 

In Love with Paris through the eyes of Monet

Close your eyes for a while and imagine that you cannot open them anymore.

How does it feel?

When I was 8 years old my Uncle experimented this with me, by closing my eyes and asking me the same question.

 This is when I learned how precious my eyes are, and how much I am blessed to be able to see.

Now in this busy life have we ever took a moment to count our blessings and see how lucky we are instead of complaining about everything …..

Well hold on a minute, look around you and observe 

You are so lucky

It is all about the way we SEE

2 days ago I saw the work of Claude Monet in real for the first time.

 I saw the beauty of the nature through his eyes, it was amazing.

 I kept thanking God to bless me with my sight so that I can see that beautiful work of art.

  Seeing it live is totally different feeling then seeing it in books.

From time to time I looked around to see that I was not the only one amazed by his work but a lot s people who came from around the world and waited in lines for hours to be able to go inside to museum just to see.

My first visited was in the Museum of Le Grand Palais in Paris, where they have gathered over 200 of his work from French and foreign museums.

I can tell you I was speechless and very happy

Claude Monet ,also known as Claude Oscar Monet ,was the original founder and practitioner of the French Impressionist movement in painting. Some of his best known works includes Impression ,Sunrise, Water Lilies , and Haystacks 

People couldn’t understand his art at that time , and he was rejected many times by the committee of the exhibitions gallery, his art was different 

and everything different is intimidating

It is funny because if we look at the price of his paintings now we will be amazed ,just last February 2009 his painting “Dans La Prairie “ was sold in London during the Christie’s Auction for  12 .4 million Euro ,the irony of life.

Monet loved nature and studied the light you can see his painted the same landscape in different times of the day amazing work of art 

Monet gave me a light in my soul, and a great happiness

It is great to feel and see the Art through the eyes of other 

when i went to the museum of the Orangerie ,there it was a different world ,i just sat and gazed into the amazing Nympheas painting 

Now if you happened to be in France or heading to come here soon

Here are the places you can go and visit Claude Monet‘s work

Le Grand Palais–Paris France 

The Grand Palais in Paris will host a major exhibition of Claude Monet’s art from September 22, 2010 to January 24, 2011.

Orangerie Museum, Tuileries gardens, Paris

The museum chosen and arranged by Claude Monet to

Showcase his “testamentary” masterpieces as “Unique in its genre”. The Nymphéas, amazing to see

  

Musee Marmottan–Monet

Musee D'Orsay 

MIXED MEDIA ART TECHNIQUE

Mixed Media Art 

     Isn't Art Amazing ,and i am not talking here from a point of view of great artists who went to school for 5 years to do it ,art is meant for each and every person.

Art is an expression

Art is a different way of communication between your inner self and your outer self ,

between you and the world 

Art Makes us happy

I will talk about mixed media that made this self expression possible for every body ,and that is  notably  also used in Art therapy ,that i have spoke about it in my previous article 

mixed media ,is  Art using any kind of medium that you need mixed with many other medium into one painting.

Mediums can be ,Acrylic painting ,to spray ,to papers ,news papers,foil paper ,oil painting ,anything that you can imagine putting on your painting u can use

how to do it ?
very simple ,choose your base according to the medium that you have chosen ,it can canvas ,or wood
then start gluing your different media into the base ,use acrylic colors ,or spray to color it

here is a video demonstrating one techniques of Mixed media Art ,don't hesitate to try it out ,and it doesn't have to be exactly the same ,let your hands and imagination leads you ,don't worry about the mistakes sometimes fixing the mistake in a painting makes it more beautiful.
Good luck 

Beyond Words: Art Therapy with Older Adults

 Art

exist not only to inspire us 

but also to express our emotions 

& to restore well being when words are not enough

ART THERAPY