Category Archives: Inspiration

Secret Messages – Geheime Botschaften

Sometimes books are just plain boring or badly written, but you can trust me in trying (and usually succeeding) to find a different and more positive way to look at stuff or spend time with a boring book.

Last year, during a rainy day we were confined to our holiday bungalow. A perfect day to read, and fortunately the bungalow had a shelve with some books. Unfortunately, you had the choice between really bad writing, really boring stories or really gruesome and tasteless horror novels. So I decided on a book which was both badly written, boring and a cheap paperback.

As I said: you can trust me to uncover the secret messages which it contained…

As usual I had my tippex marker handy, which helped me to reveal these messages by getting rid of all unnecessary and boring words.

That kept us happily busy and today I am excited to share them with you.

It is a German book, so I will try to give the best possible English translation of the poems.

Das gute Omen – A Good Omen

Das Aufleuchten
war ein gutes Omen…
In der Nacht
schaufelte er aus dem Loch
Eine Sonne
Irgendein
Tag
Erinnerte auch heute an eine
Letzte Nacht.

English:
The lighting-up was a good omen… In the night he dug from a hole a sun. Any day reminds us even today of a past night.

Das Kichern in den Fingerspitzen – The Giggle in the Fingertips

Aber ihre Seele drohte zu zerspringen. Eine Seele wusste, wenn ein Kichern noch sehr lebending in einem Körper hause – am liebsten in den Fingerspitzen.

English:
But her soul threatened to burst. A soul knew when a very alive giggle was still dwelling in a body –preferably in the fingertips.

Magische Zeichen – Magical Signs

Auch das Gefühl, erneut emporzuschießen – so hoch wie gleißend magische Zeichen, war eine Projektion! Und für einige Augenblicke, rasten rätselhafte Worte wie veränderte Strahlen durch sein Herz.

English:
Also the feeling to again ascend – as high as glistening magical signs, was a projection! And for some moments mysterious words raced like changed rays through his heart.

Eine graue Wolke – A Grey Cloud

Eine graue
Wolke formte
Ein heiseres Lachen.
Er musste niessen… Und dann war alles
vorbei!
Die Partikel sanken wie in Zeitlupe zu
Tode.

English:
A grey cloud formed a hoarse laugh.
He had to sneeze… and then everything was over.
The particles sank in slow-motion to death.

I hope you enjoyed these little stories or poems!

Love, Imke

How to bring more love into your life

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We all long to love and to be loved, but so often we forget that there is more to love, than the romantic love between two people. So I would like to share with you my ways of bringing more love into my life:

Be Love (Photograph & Text by Imke Rust)

#one: self-love.

If we cannot love ourselves, how can we possibly know how to love somebody else? So the best is to start a love affair with yourself right away. Just treat yourself the way you would like to be treated. Take yourself out to dinner. Give yourself a hug. Forgive yourself. And start laughing with yourself about your latest mishap, just like you would if it happened to your best friend, and you would like to make him or her feel better.

#two: love for another. any other. every other.

When you can feel and express love for the sunshine that tickles your face in the morning, or the beautiful shape of the tree on your way to work or for the stranger that moves slightly to let you pass, then you will soon realise that love is all around you.

#three: love to create.

We are always busy creating something. We are creating our look, when we get dressed in the morning. We create when we prepare a meal or arrange the stuff on our work desks. Celebrate these creations and create with love. And while you are waiting for the bus, you could quickly stack a few rocks onto each other, arrange some twigs into a beautiful shape or create love in any other way that gives you joy.

…but the easiest way is to be love.

Be love in every moment, every action and every thought! Just ask yourself: what would love do right now?

Just be love and the universe will love you straight back! I promise!

NOTE:

For those of you, who wonder what this post has to do with my art: Everything.
Creation is love (see #three) and I have started to allow myself some more self-love (#one) to let go more and more the restrictions and limitations which are prescribed by society and to rather listen to my heart. I want to be an artist on my terms. One that shares not only the ‘masterworks-in-oil-that-are-acceptable-to-be-shown-in-the-gallery, but who shares who I am as a full being. A multifaceted being, with my humour, spirituality, other interests, worldviews depression, fears and silliness.

I have freed myself of the restrictive and limiting terms ‘visual artist’ or ‘environmental artist’, ‘painter’ etc and dared to call myself what I truly believe I am: Multi-Passionate Creative Being.

I have also made a new little side note to explain to new-comers to the blog what it is about and what to expect. Have a look at the top right corner of the blog page.

Creating is one thing, but I would love to share the whole palette of being creative and being me with you. That way I hope to spread more of my love and me-being-love with you (#two).

Thank you for being there and reading my blog. Thank you for your support, comments, likes and appreciation of my art! 🙂

I love you!

PS. I do not consider myself a photographer, but I am also quite chuffed with the photograph I took of the flowers, so I just had to show you!

Shoot me!

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Shoot Me – If You Can

Shoot me!

That is what she whispered to me.
Loud and clear. Looking into my eyes.
Yes, you heard right:
“Shoot me.”

I continued to paint.

Trying to ignore the voice.
Falling more and more in love with her image.
Her gentle presence.
And her calm and confident being.

Silently she kept insisting: “Shoot me.”
Probably noticing my hesitation
she added softly
“If you can…”

I kept wondering what she meant.
“I know it is a lot to ask, but
it is important.”

The request is clear.
She is not begging or whining.
Proudly demanding.
Kindly and wisely guiding me.
She has a plan.

Since finishing the painting part
and waiting for the stretcher frame
I have been asking myself:

Can I?

Could you?

This is a photograph of the kudu cow that has asked me to paint her portrait – read more about it HERE.

You can read about how the painting started in one of my previous blogs: There is a kudu in my studio

To be continued…

Weird Sense of Humor

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I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook…

… and especially with the inspirational or funny picture-texts that so many people love to share like hot-cake. If they are good, I am equally guilty. Although sometimes they are just getting too much, I usually enjoy the beautifully packaged bite-size pieces of wisdom.

You do not need to read the book, or hear a long story to get the message. And it is usually short and sweet to easily stick in your mind. Makes you smile, makes you nod, share and move on. And the good ones stick in your mind like those neo-coloured post-it notes. I guess the power lies in the combination of image and word, and being short and sweet.

So, that’s a longish intro to letting you know, (drumroll, please 🙂 ) that I have decided to occasionally follow suit by creating my own. Sharing some fun, spiritual, art or other Imke-wisdom…

I know, it is probably not considered to be professional to do such things and even less to publically share them on my artist blog, but – you know what? – I do not really care anymore. I’d rather have fun and be true to my inner soul, than to fit in with social conventions. (I have tried that – it was boring and too often I failed miserably at it…)

Besides finally being able to share bite-sized bits of my mind, I also get to make use of the tons of photographs I take, which too often just end up unseen in some dark corners of dusty folders somewhere in the digital space of my computer.

So here it goes:

I have a weird sense of humor. It keeps my mind wonderfully entertained without you even noticing. (Imke Rust)

Enjoy! And if you enjoy my sense of humour, feel free to like, comment or share this!

Imke

The Hands of a Serial Killer

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Confession time

Here you see the hands of a serial killer.

WEB Serial Killer Hands 2 Kopie

They are my hands.

Yes, I have killed several living beings in one go. Some would be proud of me. Some might smile. But I, I am in conflict.

Killing is wrong. We all know that. Yet, we go on killing in so many ways. Often not even thinking about it. Alternatively we differentiate between who and what may be killed for what reason. There are big issues like the illegal slaughtering of rhinos or trophy hunting that gets many people (including me) upset and protesting, but most of those protesting happily sit down and eat a steak. There is a difference most people seem to agree.

That is fine by me. They can do as they like. But what about me?

I realise that even if I am not a trophy hunter or rhino poacher, I am still senselessly killing many beings. And I wish I would not. So I am trying to at least minimize the damage, by becoming more and more conscious about when and where I am directly or indirectly killing.

Ever since I read the beautiful German poem ‘Die Mücke’ as a child, I had difficulties with killing mosquitos, but I still did. (I copied the poem below and updated the post with an English translation.) Some years ago I tried the approach of ‘making peace’ with them, and asking them to not bite me and I will not kill them. With limited success… on both sides.

But I did kill less and became better at ignoring them. This year there are so many, that ignoring them did not really work anymore.

Recently several of them made it into the mosquito net during the night and had a feast. In the morning they were all bulging red with our blood.

I was upset and swat them all, one after the other. It was easy, they were caught in the net, fat and slow. What a thrill to get back at them! I knew I should not. I felt pretty guilty looking at my blood-stained hands and their squashed bodies afterwards.

To appease them, I took photos of the crime scene, ie my hands. Making art about the conflicts ranging in my soul and mind is usually the best medicine, and often leads to surprising insights.

And to be fair to myself, I also took a photograph of my leg with, what seems like, hundreds of mossie bites. This made me think of star constellations. Maybe the mosquitos are from a different planet? Or their bite patterns form secret messages for us or for them? Something like: this persons blood is really yummy, you should try it too! Who knows? (I just love considering all different possibilities once my mind is set loose on a new mission. 😉 ) So I decided to work on this idea too.

While I was making the ‘Mosquito Constellation’ (below) I searched the internet for a picture of a mosquito to trace and found one on Conversations with Don Machinga and Other Beings – Musings from the Peruvian Amazon, in a post titled: Three Visits to the Mosquito Spirit King. What an interesting read!!! If you have a moment and are curious, pop over there to see what the Mosquito Spirit King is saying.

I will ponder on this for a while and try to refrain from killing those little buggers.

Mosquito Constellation (Digitally manipulated photograph) Mosquito Constellation by Imke Rust (Digitally manipulated photograph)

Wishing you all a beautiful week!

Imke

Die Mücke

Albrecht Haushofer (1903-1945)

Ein leises Gesurr. Auf meine Hand
sinkt flügelschwirrend eine Mücke nieder,
ein Hauch von einem Leib, sechs zarte Glieder –
Wo kam sie her aus winterlichem Land?

Ein Rüssel … schlag ich zu? Mißgönn ich ihr
den Tropfen Blut, der solches Wesen nährt?
Den leichten Schmerz, den mir der Stich gewährt?
Sie handelt, wie sie muß. Bin ich ein Tier?

So stich nur zu, du kleine Flügelseele,
solang mein Blutgefäß dich nähren mag,
solang du sorgst um deinen kurzen Tag!

Stich zu, daß es dir nicht an Kräften fehle!
Wir sind ja beide, Mensch und Mücke, nichts
als kleine Schatten eines großen Lichts.

Translation Update:

I have tried to translate the poem as best as I can. It might not be very elegant, but I hope you get the idea
Here it goes:

The Mosquito

A soft buzz. On my hand
decents with whirring wings a mosquito,
a hint of a body, six delicate limbs –
Where did she come out of this wintry country?

A trunk … Will I hit? Do I begrudge her
the drop of blood that nourishes such a being?
The slight pain that the sting gives me?
She acts, as she must. Am I an animal?

So just sting, little winged soul,
as long as my blood vessel may nourish you,
as long as you care for your short days!

Sting, to that you have no lack of strength!
We’re both, human and mosquito, nothing
than a small shadow of a great light.

(Just as an explanation: In German the mosquito has a female article, so it could refer to a mosquito in general or a female mosquito. I decided to translate it in the form of a female mosquito, because that was easier and to me she is female. But I think he meant just ‘a’ mosquito.)

How to deal with shit in 2014

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2013 has been a transformative, beautiful and challenging year and I hope that you too can look back with gratitude for its blessings.

Here is to wishing you a
spectacular, happy, loving, healthy and abundant 2014.

Even with the best wishes, each year we will have some challenges to deal with. We have prepared a fun video message for you on
how to best handle life when it gets rough.

(duration: 1:45min – watch it till the end!).

We hope you enjoy it!

Please feel free to share it with your friends and family, too. We would also love to hear your comments 🙂

Sending you lots of love and happiness, Imke

There is a kudu in my studio…

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Painting…

I have been quiet. I withdrew from the online world for a while, due to computer fatigue – I just needed to take a break. A break from reading, posting, searching, reacting and mostly from starring at a computer screen.

The decision to take a break was supported by the fact that I am back in Namibia, and realised how much I have missed just being out in nature. For the past few weeks I got so much joy and peace from just tending to my garden, watching all the different wild birds and small animals in it, consciously breathing the fresh air, soaking up the sun, slow down and basically just being.

During this time I also tied the knot with the most special and wonderful friend and partner. We had a beautiful celebration with a handful of selected family and friends in Swakopmund. A special time of love, family and friendship that deserved my undivided attention.

Happiness: Getting married to my love at the Atlantic coast.

But now I am happy to be back online and resume sharing my art and thoughts with you again…

My lovely husband and I have been at the Waterberg Wilderness Lodge for a few days, as he is producing an image video for them. During that time we saw a small herd of young kudus. They did not seem to mind us walking up really close to them.

While my man was filming, I just watched, taking some photographs and being grateful for this special experience. After a while I had the feeling that the one kudu cow wanted me to draw her portrait.

Excuse me… what?! I was confused. It can’t be… but I suddenly got a very specific impression about some parts of the painting, like the size and the composition and her insistence in the matter.

I was reluctant. I have often said I do not see the point in painting wildlife just for the sake of it. Isn’t it just too banal to paint a picture of a kudu? But she insisted, letting me know that there is a purpose. ‘Just trust me, I will guide you through it, once you get started…’ she seemed to say. And she did. (Or who or whatever placed those thoughts into my heart.)

What you see here is the almost finished work in my studio. I got some further specific directions while I was painting. Or was it just my creative mind? Anyway, hopefully I can soon follow up on them and let you know about the final work.

For now there is a kudu in my studio, watching me, with her kind and gentle eyes.

A kudu in my studio – to be continued…

Domestic Sculpture in Blue (or how to avoid doing the washing)

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Do you also regard domestic work as a nuissance and a waste-of-time, but realise that it unforunately is a necessary evil? I do. 😦

Sometimes I try to cheer myself up, by pretending it is all a creative and fun adventure. And this is the result of that happening the other day when I was supposed to do the washing:

Domestic Sculpture in Blue (or how to avoid doing the washing)

Wishing you a wonderful and creative week ahead!

Film production almost completed

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An Inifinte Scream – The Documentary: Trailer

How did you make this? Where do you get all your ideas? Why are you working with salt? And what is a Tokoloshe Trap?

Did you ever wonder about these things when you see my art? Well, this time you are lucky and soon you will get some answers.

Documenting SubRosa IRust (c)

We have made a documentary film about my latest land art project ‘…and I sensed and infinite scream passing through the Namib’. It gives you a great behind-the-scene glimpse into the project and an insight how I work and think.

You can join me in the exciting journey from the making of the artworks, the thoughts behind them, the challenges along the way and finally the exhibition. It is a personal portrait as much as a film about the art and its role in society.

Until we can finally publicly release the film, you can already view the trailer and check out the film’s webpage. It will give you a taste of what to expect in the full documentary once it is released. Do not forget to sign up for the blog to find out when and where it will be screened. (I will also keep you updated here.)

A great thank you, to filmmaker and my partner Steffen Holzkamp for the excellent work and the super-cool film. I am really looking forward to sharing the full film with everybody soon.