What if... Love is a chemical reaction that occurs when I discard my likes and surrender to love?
Author: Marika
Goodbye Adrian: A Story of Miscarriage (Jan 2015)
Through the echoes of death, love, blood, fear and sad slow tears we rode this goodbye learning that being lost in the unknowable, uncontrollable, unimaginable only brings wordless awe for the mystery of life.
All things happen for incomprehensible reasons. Souls were meant to meet. This soul needed a fleeting chance to feel our love and a name to be complete.
watercolor 16″ x 12″
about My Miscarriage
In 2008, I miscarried. I sensed something was wrong and an early 7 week ultrasound proved the pregnancy was not viable. Adrian had not developed past 5 weeks. We grieved; our already-named baby, our hopes, our plans for our kids and our imaginary family.
I waited for the miscarriage to happen naturally.
Week by week went by and nothing happened. I still felt pregnant, I was nauseous and irritable. My confused body still wanted to tend to the Adrian’s lifeless form. I felt weak, tired and sad in my waiting. It was a time of intense numbness and many tears.
After 4 weeks, I began to miscarry and it went terribly wrong. The bleeding was too heavy. At the ER waiting room it went from somewhat concerning to intense and scary. I passed out. A black, cold, viscous faint that sucked my life force and took away my capacity to think. I lost far too much blood.
I was revived and received an emergency D & C. When I woke from the operation, I was enveloped in a deep sadness. Adrian almost took me with him. I felt stuck and empty from the violent parting. My capacity to create life had almost taken my own life.
It is not a coincidence that I became pregnant with my son the same month that Adrian would have been born. It was our last goodbye and parting blessing.
Miscarriage is a silent and common grief many women bare. At least 10% – 35% pregnancies are estimated to end preemptively.
FEATURED
This painting was featured on the cover of the German magazine raum&zeit May 2016 issue.
http://www.raum-und-zeit.com/shop/lieferbare-raum-zeit/raum-zeit-nr.-201.html
BUY HERE
Original Available: $500
Prints Available: $75
Email me for details.
CONTACT ME
E-MAIL LIST
Join my E-mail List Here to get current news of events and special deals. I respect your privacy and will not share this information with others.
Release of Reflections: January 2015 Newsletter
I’m molting.
I’m shedding my academic skin. That grainy, rough, sand paper gruffness that made me twitchy and ill, is peeling off.
The faculty identity; the”academic way”, the theory, the anti-theory, the critiques, the teaching vs research, the political injustice, the impress my peers, the sexism, the organizational chaos, the anointed tenure, the intellectual snobbery and the angst. The Past.
Ten years is a long time to grow a thick skin. A skin with clinging callouses, stinging scars and itchy rashes. I’m tearing that skin away.
I’m remembering what is underneath.
My favorite part of my January 2015 Reflections Newsletter – Marika Reinke is the Map of Healing (pages 1-3). Due to my constant state of change, expect other newsletters to adjust accordingly. I’m only about 95% away from finding that person underneath.
Click here for the Newsletter: January 2015 Reflections Newsletter – Marika Reinke
Those of you on my mailing list will receive a printed version along with some other goodies. See below if you would like to join my mailing list.
CONTACT ME
E-MAIL LIST
Join my E-mail List Here to get current news of events and special deals. I respect your privacy and will not share this information with others.
Tied in Knots
- Tied in Knots (c) Marika Reinke 2015
habits are an impenetrable bind
Watercolor 8″ x 5″
Buy Here
Original Painting: $55 with frameCONTACT ME
E-MAIL LIST
Join my E-mail List Here to get current news of events and special deals. I respect your privacy and will not share this information with others.
I offer special deals and offers to my Facebook fans. Come join me at Marika’s Art Studio
Scream. Cry. Love. Hate. Repeat
Prologue
I’ve been sporadically working on my son’s Dragon and have some in-progress pictures here. I was inspired by a picture he drew with passionate energy. The post has been a lovely vignette of an enchanting kids painting in-progress (written with a touch of sarcasm).
But now
I could scream
Maybe I did. I can’t remember clearly. There was a rush of something – maybe adrenaline – that clouded my vision, my heart beat accelerated and a trembling wave of shock radiated from my chest. Thinking rationally – gone. Control of my hands – gone.
The watercolor has a mind of its own! I can’t control it! Oh My God! Its running all the way into the green! The yellow! Oh no the yellow! All the hours in this painting lost. Where are the Q-Tips! They aren’t working! F*ck Watercolors!
I dropped the Q-Tips and brushes.
I. Must. Walk. Away.
Breathe.
I hate this painting
It is so trite and cliche. I’ve seen it before, not original, definitely done somewhere else by someone else more skilled. A kids vision. Not sophisticated. I’m stealing his vision because I have no vision. I’m an idiot in over my head. The rainbow is too much, I can’t handle it. This is taking me too long.
I love this Painting
I love the story. I love my son. I love the way this painting has pushed me. I love the crazy colors. I love that Daire made the lower jaw bigger because when the dragon closes his mouth you can’t see how big his teeth are. I love that he breathes fire and water and stars. The dragon has no arms. Poor little arm-less dragon, I love you.
Sigh.
And Repeat.
CONTACT ME
E-MAIL LIST
Join my E-mail List Here to get current news of events and special deals. I respect your privacy and will not share this information with others.
Seashell Collection
Jewels tempting tiny hands.
A code mosaic.
Secret art lockets conveying underwater messages.
watercolor 8″ x 5″
Contact me
E-MAIL LIST
Join my E-mail List Here to get current news of events and special deals. I respect your privacy and will not share this information with others.
Break Through
Growth emerges in surprising places. A bloom can crack concrete or fire. The rigid is lost as life flexes and expands; an articulate chaos, inscrutable design, unstoppable change.
Watercolor 8″ x 5″
Contact me
The best way to contact me directly is at [email protected]
E-MAIL LIST
Join my E-mail List Here to get current news of events and special deals. I respect your privacy and will not share this information with others.
Me and My *High* Chroma
Confession: I am a color addict. I experience an artistic high when colors “make my eyes glow”. A shiver runs down my back, I get light headed, I feel tingly all over, I feel holy, (yes, spiritual) and inspired. My own paintings illustrate my addiction. Every. Single. Time. Color expresses me, I express color, my world is high definition color.
Of course, I was drawn to the professional QoR High Chroma set (good job marketing QoR). I’ve been using the QoR watercolors in silver and gold to offer hand embellishments for my limited edition prints. I’ve been impressed with the effect, they are true silver and gold and painting with them is like laying molten metal down. Additionally, QoR claims high quality, modern and superior color vividness. I’ve been using the widely regarded professional grade Winsor and Newton and Sennelier honey-based watercolors for years and years. They are top notch. The first time I laid down a professional watercolor, I felt like I the world cracked open as the color exploded on the paper. Oh the highest most radical color high! And my work exponentially improved.
Would it be possible to feel this way again?
Tip: If you want to pursue any kind of art, do not skimp on the quality of your paint or paper, simply don't do it. You will fail before you start.
The set has 6 colors:
- Cobalt Teal
- Green Gold – what an awesome name for a color
- Quinacridone Gold
- Transparent Pyrrole Orange
- Quinacridone Magenta
- Diaxazine Purple
In short, a vivid, funky and perhaps “modern” rainbow. I love them so much that I might just marry them. Perhaps it was the unique-to-me color palette but they completely distracted me.
Here are some qualities I noticed about them that made them unique.
1. The color is a little more sticky than my other colors, meaning in more medium wet application it will stain the paper more quickly making it a little more difficult to remove and lift. But this also makes it easier to create quick layered effects.
2. Cobalt Teal is an interesting opaque watercolor, and when it is applied over warm hues it creates an unique texture. You can see this in the painting on the right and left. It also mixes really well with green gold.
3. Look at that Green Gold on the right! It easily applied in those glowing layers. I love it!
4. I don’t work with a lot of purple watercolors, preferring to mix them. I find bottled purple dull. Diaxazine Purple is thick and can be applied very darkly, almost serving as a black but watered down it is bright and a true smooth purple (not grainy like some purples). Add a little of the magenta to it and wow.
This is only the beginning, I’ve got a couple more projects to wrap up and then I’m coming back to this. I see potential. Plus, I’m a color addict, always hunting for my next high :).
If Frida Kahlo Defined a Woman: Six Lessons
She did not create to please you
Look at her.
She is un-impressed with you, the viewer. You must prove that you are “good” enough for her. You must come to her and on her terms. Can you even begin to understand her?
She is fierce, defiant, unabashedly sorrowful and reserved. Her reserve is ever-present like a question mark in her work. A sign of pain, distrust and distance despite the intimacy of her work. Her work is authentically hers and it is your privilege to be viewing her.
She did not care if you thought her beautiful
Equally, she accentuates the flaws that most modern woman would Photoshop; the mono-brow and mustache. They highlight the realness of her, a person, not a beauty to behold. They highlight the masculine and feminine; the not-one-or-the-other and certainly not afraid of the un-attractive.
These “flaws” invite you to look inside her through the symbols of her work; entrapped in a thorn necklace or held up by a broken column. Her goal is to be real, so that you might understand and become more authentic with her. In order to do this, she painted what you would not call beautiful and with un-seeable symbols whose only life was on canvas and in her mind.
She was not squeamish
Blood is a life force, it sustains and connects. It binded her many selves and kept her alive at times she didn’t want to live. She had much blood in her life; in her accident that left her immobilized and subject to intermittent bouts of pain and in the miscarriages she suffered. She was not afraid to paint the painful truth even if it contained blood or made you uncomfortable. Discomfort makes you think differently, it teaches compassion and it transforms. It is a fact of life and you can not hide from it. But you can learn from it, feel from it, think about it, connect with it and experience life more deeply because of it.
she unleashed her passion
She felt all her emotions fully, and held them with equal weight in all her relationships. She did not brush them aside to please her lover’s passion. This was true in her passionate, unfaithful and complicated love of her off and on husband Diego Rivera (and famous Mexican painter) and other lovers both male and female. And equally apparent in her fierce loyalty to Mexico, her home and birthright which bruised her with its macho and sexist culture both unfaithful and unjust. She loved deeply and fully with equal pain, complexity and intensity, enveloping the connection as close as atom to atom and as large as the universe.
she could not be silenced
Ultimately, through her persistence, her voice was heard (and even more loudly in death). Despite criticism, troublesome health, consistent and debilitating pain and deceit, she remained stubbornly steadfast that her voice mattered and painted on.
Life = Art
It is impossible to talk about Frida Kahlo‘s art without referencing her life. Art = life and few artists are as intimately and personally raw as Frida Kahlo. And she was right. In work, family, friends, leisure, in love and grief, in joy, tragedy and triumph – it is life, un-separated and without compartments, where art begins. This space that holds the hours, events, the world and people paradoxically together, is a brave and lonely space and yet strangely connects and unites us.
If you would like to learn more about Frida Kahlo I recommend reading this book. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo – October 1, 2002 by
It is the book that inspired me to begin my journey as painter which I’ve referred to in the following posts.
Where Does *Talent* Come From?
I’ve been thinking about this lately.
My report card from middle school. A regular “A” student and good kid, but something is wrong in Art class. I remember being unsatisfied and I don’t remember why. I can’t recall the teacher’s face. She was mediocre and made it clear that I was a mediocre art student (B’s were mediocre in my family and the highlighting is mine). And by the way, I was good at Math but I didn’t like Math. That “A” had very little to do with “Like”. I liked art, my friends, writing, playing sports and reading.
And this
My old work from 2002 when I was inspired to pick up a paint brush and paint. I painted from photographs, read books and pushed through countless so-so paintings (I only kept the best of them). I was heartened knowing that Frida Khalo didn’t start painting until she was 19 when she was suddenly bedridden and immobile after a horrible accident. I always thought creative talent was a birthright and to be an artist you needed to express it in youth like the genius Mozart. (I can’t comprehend that statement now, especially after having kids.) The realization that this wasn’t true inspired me to work, knowing the more I worked the better I would get.
And now, 2015.
SOLD: Casting Prayers in Puerto Vallarta (c) Marika Reinke Read the Full Story: https://marikareinke.com/2015/01/06/casting-prayers-in-puerto-vallarta-january-2015/
SOLD: Road to Recover (Fall 2014) copyright Marika Reinke Read the Full Story: https://marikareinke.com/2014/11/12/roads-to-recovery-fall-2014/
A healed body is a fit body copyright Marika Reinke.
Conception by Marika Reinke Watercolor
SOLD: 2011: Dragon in the Tree copyright Marika Reinke Full Story Here: https://marikareinke.com/2014/10/31/2011-dragon-in-the-tree/
Metamorphosis copyright Marika Reinke Read the Full Story: https://marikareinke.com/2014/12/17/metamorphosis-dec-2014/
I paint well enough that it touches people (not everyone), sometimes to tears, sometimes to buy my originals and prints, hire me and even to consider tattooing my work on their bodies.
Painting is important to me because painting is an act of love, and one that I’ve committed to making the center of my life. Love at the center of life – that is powerful.
It is easy to blame that teacher for stifling my creative expression. It is easy to blame a culture that creates the fantasy that talent, (especially creative talent), is born, not worked for. Or I can blame my “Type A” family that let that “B” slide because it was Art class and therefor not important.
But faults are in the past. Blame is useless. Blaming takes no responsibility for the future. I tell my kids, there is no use telling me whose fault it is, the question really is “How will you move forward learning from the experience?”
It is never too late to start answering that question. How would you?
If you would like to learn more about Frida Kahlo I recommend reading this book. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo – October 1, 2002 by
You must be logged in to post a comment.