Ask and you shall Receive


Possibly the greatest truth revealed to me this year, is this. Ask and you shall receive. Every single opportunity that has crossed my life has been driven by some desire to Create something. 
A few weeks ago, when I was in Bali: I watched a shadow puppet performance and thought it was completely beautiful. I decided that I wanted to work with shadow puppeteers this year, somehow.
And magically, when I got back to Bangalore, someone I'd known for quite a bit said he's working with puppeteers in Kerala! Going there in September. *excited*

Other lessons too have been learnt. As my life gets more filled with abundance: talks, interviews, press, conferences. I find myself also understanding and appreciating the 
Abundance in simplicity more than ever. 

here's a picture from a my little meditation cove in my room:
Tonight's gathering of gods: incense, sandal, kumkum, fire, frida, flowers, 
small temple bell and only rain outside.  

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:" Matthew 7:7


I am You


A few months ago for woman's day I was asked to guest blog an article for Tanishq titled "I am NOT You",
It was a portrait of a few successful women who had done things differently, and yet I felt like the title didn't fit. 
 it was pretty exciting actually, because I realized how much I missed writing. I'm definitely going to start writing more regularly after this. 
Here's what I wrote :


"I am not you"
This much is true. This article, I’m told is about me. And all the success and love I have found by being me. But what’s ironic is that perhaps the realization that brought all of it to me was ‘I am You’.
I am You. I see myself in everything that shimmers, every whispered love song, every flower that gently finds its way to the ground. I travel in gardens and bedrooms,around corners, through doorways, up stairs, in the sky, with friends, lovers, children and heroes; perceived, remembered, imagined.
For all my growing up years, my angsty teens, I tried to separate myself from you. I said I was a rebel, robed in black, scribbling poetry into my skin while watching raindrops from a distance.
I said I was not you. Cut you off. Broke you down until ‘I’ broke down and then something changed.
The poet Kabir said
The Redness of my Beloved is such,I went out in search of Red, and became Red myselfand this is how it happened.



I was brought up primarily by my mother, also an artist. And so our relationship was set in pigment and pixel. Perhaps the greatest realization for both of us has been that Art and Illustration and the creation of beautiful things wasn’t a process that cuts people off, but brings people in. ‘I am you’.
I am not the ‘You’ that chose a road well traversed, I am not the ‘You’ that didn’t stand up for beliefs, I am not the ‘You’ that chose corporate jobs and black suits. I am the ‘You’ that fell in love, the ‘You’ that remembers and lives the innocence of childhood, the ‘You’ that dreams and believes that these dreams can be transformed into a reality. The child, the dreamer, the mother, the goddess, the lover and in all these manifestations we are one. Cyclic and Moon-drawn.
I started travelling when I was 16, perhaps more fearless then than I am now, and on those countless train journeys sitting by the door of the train I learnt (and keep learning) that perhaps the most important thing is to trust. Trust that you are protected, trust in your own strength, trust that this strength will guide you, that your feet (adorned with anklets and colour) are strong and will not slip, and trust enough to “Let the Beauty of What you Love be what you Do”.
Trust those doodles, those songs hummed in the shower, that poetry scribbled onto your skin, all the drama, because it’s in those that one’s love sometimes lies, in those doodles an artists, that humming a singer, a poet and an actor.
Love 
Shilo


Imagine



The Sufi's say that between this Realm of Matter and the Realm of Spirit is the Imagination. And through one's imagination we transform the mundane to the divine :)


When I was a little girl, me and my friends would spend hours creating beautiful imaginary kingdoms that somehow we could both see. Towers and creatures and ships that we both inhabited. Both shared without doubt.


I sometimes feel like I chose to illustrate so I didn't have to stop creating and sharing worlds. :) Sometimes when I'm drawing, I feel almost like I'm whipped away into towers where lovers are united, or forests where crows speak and spat out a few hours later by these watercolours wonderlands.


This image was done for Rangashankara's Summer express. 


Speaking of Children: Here are some Images from a Workshop I've been  doing with Kids all through the summer.
It's been super fun working with kids again! The last time I did full on workshops was when I was 16.



These are examples of the journals some of the kids made. More pictures of that  coming soon. 
Love
Shilo