lisateasley

HAPPY NEW MOON, HAPPY DIWALI!

Sending you all my gratitude and love for this new month and this New Moon day, falling in Scorpio, and on the festival of lights, Diwali! I am sharing my new moon table here: I have 2
"medicine tables" I call them, one deep red and the other the turquoise pictured above, and the three cards are three versions of the Magus from a special Thoth deck, my partner happened to have and never used...

Braque's Birds

This is not a good photo of this painting with the glare on the left side, and it was sold in my 2019 solo show and the owner sent me a DM IG photo of it on the wall, and those sometimes disappear after you look at it, so I don't have anything better that I know of. But the reason I thought of this painting today is that the subject is in tribute to a painter/poet friendship I had for years, th...

LINK TO "CLYMENZA" ON THE COVER OF KWELI JOURNAL

As I just mentioned in the immediate preceding post : )

STILL IN PROGRESS, with stars

This afternoon, a lovely gentleman is coming over to model for a painting; meanwhile I am still working on this one above. The stars in particular will take me a while to make come alive.  It perhaps seems slow-going, but since I'm writing too I won't beat myself up about it. I have a reading coming up this Sunday for the Santa Monica Review, the fall issue just arrived with one of my shor...

Poem Reading: SO THAT YOU FEEL

Happy Full Moon! Happy coming Autumnal Equinox! I felt like reading you a short poem.

Much Love!

Back to Eye Chakras in Progress

This painting is slow going and will hopefully have stars around it within the week, like the pen & ink I turned in for the book on Thursday. This coming Monday I have to start work on the edit of another writer's novel on Los Angeles, but I will have this painting on the easel and will continue as much as I can before I take on a commissioned portrait, which I was just asked to do this mor...

OUROBOROS

I ended up sending 16 of the 20 images the night before the Sept 1st deadline and the publisher was so excited by what she saw that she fully understood that I would need more time to darken some of the lines as well as get them professionally scanned to turn in.

Here is Nude with Ouroboros and Aster Flowers, Woman with Octopus on her head, Woman with Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter and Sat...

TREE OF LIFE

Last Tuesday near dawn in a Mountain View Air BnB, I experienced what would best be described as a kundalini awakening. Hours before, maybe 9ish, 10ish at night, I was drawing this Tree of Life for the book-- 22 branches and roots, and a single chromosome representing our 23 chromosomes-- and was in the Silicon Valley area to deliver two paintings to a luminous, brilliant patron here. Going hom...

Finished Book Images, Halfway Mark

Hello Everyone!

I'm just midway on the book images, as of this moment. I'm attaching Nurse Jesus with a Fish (not really its title, ha) and Eye Chakra goddess surrounded by Star Anise (also not title). The images have become more surreal than I thought in the beginning, but that's fine. I also, through a Financial Times piece, found that writer/photographer Teju Cole makes playlists on Sp...

BOOK IMAGE #2 & #3

I added images backwards, but #3's character is given Agrimony across his chest and the Kongo cosmogram at his throat.

#2's character has a bird on her sleeve (the bird's head inside her collar), a necklace of tiny skulls around her (I have a necklace like this that reminds me of Kali) and acorns on her shirt.

Trying to go as fast as I can to meet the Sept. 1st deadline, and so aim ...

BOOK IMAGE #1

This may not be entirely finished, but it's the first one complete enough for me to move on to the next image. I had planned to include the insides of the characters (organs such as the lungs, intenstines, heart, brain etc) but then realized that since the text is doing just that in exploring the abuse so thoroughly, that I should take the opposite approach and protect them. So here this pregna...

CHIMERA

This is the audio of a short story I wrote for 7X7la, professionally recorded. Enjoy!

Sketch for the Book #12

The images in the book will be black and white, with exception of the cover, but while drawing this little boy I realized I will get into creating cosmos in the pen and ink pieces, as well as symbols as simple as the 5-pointed star, with rich history like that of the Sumerians or the Serer religion in Senegal and its symbolizing of Sirius. (That's accidental near-alliteration : ) ) The mixed-ra...

Draftsmanship Mentors

Yesterday I went to the house to bring here to my temp home publications of Frida Kahlo and Egon Schiele sketchbooks/diaries to add to my Da Vinci inspiration (the framed Vitruvian Man, who happened to be here hanging in the bathroom and now hangs above me where I sit in my office/studio space). They are my favorite master artists on the other side of the veil to inspire and "watch over" me as ...

CATHEDRAL OF TREES Reading

This short piece was written less than 2 months ago with the title Cathedral of Trees, changed to Sun in My Heart Blood in My Shadow and back again.

Enjoy!  Happy Sunday! LOVE

PEN DRAWINGS for the Book #s 3 & 4

Continuing with the drawings for the "Benefits" book and will be recording a couple of the stories I've written lately so I can connect with you through video.

Hope you had a beautiful holiday weekend!

Sketches for the Book begin!

Yesterday, July 1st, I realized if I'm going to turn in 20 images for the book (with the working title we can shorten to "Benefits") by September 1st I'd better do at least a sketch a day in July, so that in August, I can throw out what doesn't work, then refine what does, and finalize. I have "cast" models in my head for the lead characters and asked one of them (my niece) today with a few mor...

Transcendental: Ron Athey Portrait plus AUM T-shirt at Opening

The painting above is hanging in the Queer Communion exhibit at ICA LA-- Ron Athey's retrospective show up through September 5th. It is on loan from the curator Amelia Joans and her husband, artist Paul Donald. Since I have taken part in his opera "Gifts of the Spirit," which was performed at the Cathedral Vibiana in 2018, as well as in his multidisciplinarian piece, "Joyce", I am very honored ...

AUM T-SHIRT PROGRESS

Here is some progress on the T-shirt, where I added to the design, in black ink, and cut the seem of the sleeves and sewed one layer of the edges in black, below that layer is blue, and under the arms is yellow, the latter may not have been the best choice since perhaps it will look like a sweat stain, ha!

I will wear the finished product this Saturday (to the soft opening) or Sunday (to ...

AUM T-shirt Process

I realized only until just photographing the beginning process that last night I sewed the shred of my antique Aum silk scarf upside down on the T-shirt, so that it is a rather selfish view. Every time I look down at this shirt, I will see Aum, but everyone else will see an upside down symbol! So first mistake. The tiny indelible ink bullseye I drew in the center will become either a mandala or...

GRATITUDE

I just want to thank you for continuing this journey with me. I appreciate you deeply. The house I have been renting for the past 7 years has mold and seems to be the manifestation of my feelings on the place. Seven years is a cycle and I've never really been happy there. So for the past few days I have been packing and moving some of my stuff into my hiking partner's place, as he has welcomed ...

Decisions

In an IG story a friend posted a photo of me and our mutual friend in memoriam of his death some years ago, but the photo(s) were taken at a past solo show, where you could see me and our mutual friend in front of this painting above, which is of the wonderful writer and journalist, Lynell George, who most recently published the book: "a handful of earth, a handful of sky, on the world of Octav...

HARD CANDY

I was never a hard candy person, but this painting came to mind when thinking of childhood joys as an adult, like this piece, which is now in a private collection. I was watching a bit of some movie with lunch where the main characters were intending to time travel back to a time when they were innocently involved with the little things that make them happy. For the woman who modeled for this p...

GIGI AND LALO, Short Story Reading

Hello Everyone!  Here is the reading of a short story I just turned in to a magazine that is published in Mexico. The story will appear both in Spanish and in the original English version. I wanted to share it with you, as it's the first time I am reading it aloud. I listened to the Read Aloud computer voice on Word read it to me before I turned it in, but I didn't read it aloud myself unt...

THE TRICK OF GLASSES

Here is "Laura on Wilshire Blvd." still in progress due to the adding of a tree and the tireless work on her glasses and eyes. I attached "Spike" (with sunflowers, in a private collection), "Greg & Rod" (a commission, private collection) and "Art Hotel, Berlin," which I finished some time ago and posted here earlier. I wanted to show the trick of glasses so to speak, and the hopeful growth ...

VERISIMILITUDE

Also from a private collection, I thought I would post this piece which illustrates the current dicotomy I feel between ecstatic highs and emotional lows due to my longtime lack of discipline for meditation. I just started a 4-week class of shadow work to hopefully do some constructive clearing of psychological constructs and shame as well as some discovery and reclamation of aspects of myself ...

PANDORA

Today I watched a documentary on the return of a Nazi-era stolen Egon Schiele painting called "Wally"-- and I'm not sure if I watched it before, though the extraordinary story involving MOMA, NPR, New York and Austria was a familiar mess of ethics, but I have always been a fan of Schiele and loved reviewing his work and bits of his short 28 year life. Because the "Wally" painting was returned (...

DIARY OF A YOGI Raw Read #3

Please excuse the mistakes in my reading, as this entry was written at 2am on the Full Pink Moon, and I haven't watched the video yet myself, since I don't want to trip on the mistakes. Also, I should mention that I speak to my Mom here, and she made her transition two years ago, so I just wanted to be clear on that because it could be confusing, otherwise : ))

I hope you enjoy it!

IN THE BALANCE PODCAST with LISA TEASLEY

Since the link to this podcast was recently changed I am reposting the correct link here. 

I really enjoyed this conversation, hope you do too!

I CANCELLED MY TELEVISION Pen & Ink Drawing

My title is a little cheeky because I started this drawing after dinner in front of the television, some show on historic British castles, and then I finished the drawing while on hold to cancel my Spectrum cable TV. I have been promising myself I would do this even before the pandemic, and all through the past year I kept telling myself I would, and this morning, finally I did it, and finished...