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Blog, Work in Progress

Painting Creation Video: The Groundswell of Spring

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The process of watching a painting being created live can be so fascinating! It begins with a brush making its first mark onto a bare white canvas, and gradually with each new stroke, you watch it magically take form bit by bit, before your very eyes.

This is a time lapse video of me creating my original abstract oil painting “Groundswell of Spring.” Many hours on the canvas are condensed down into 1 short film for you to enjoy this organic live painting process of mine.

I started painting this without a plan or sketch, and as I painted I was constantly listening to a lot of Enya’s music, which inspires thoughts of angelic love and fairies in nature. As the painting emerged into flowing feminine forms, I felt it illustrated the magic of nature as it renews the birth of springtime in nature, hence the name “Groundswell of Spring.”

Abstract paintings are less about thinking and more about FEELING, which connects us to our humanity. My hope for this abstract expressionist painting of mine is that it bring joyful feelings of peace and love into one’s living space, and inspire one to gracefully flow into the new beginnings of each day.

To purchase the original painting or prints, visit my Etsy shop.

Blog, My Inspirations, Uncategorized

An Intuitive Painting Mother-Daughter Collaboration

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This video features a fascinating painting collaboration of mother and daughter,  featuring Ruth Oosterman and her 3-year-old daughter, Eve Oosterman.

Eve draws her intuitive lines quickly, and then mother Ruth fills it in and expands upon it with watercolor, imaginatively creates forms where only mere suggestions once were. It’s touching to see how this very abstracted expression turns into tangible forms that you can recognize, and still the free spirited attitude of the child is still integrated.

Seeing this free-flowing process invokes an echo of expression with me and some of the intuitive techniques I use to make art. Creating art in a spontaneous free-flowing way is one of my favorite methods, and I’d like to also teach others how to do it as well.

When you feel how mentally freeing it can be to make art spontaneously, it removes one of the biggest obstacles to creation, which is the pressure to perform perfectly and make a masterpiece. Instead of asking oneself, “Did I draw that apple as realistic as possible,” I like to see how the emotional expression of feelings I’m going through on the inside comes out in painted form.

Abstraction is the easiest and fastest way to explore creation in general. While realism is more about a left-brained recreation of reality, non-representational art is right-brained and innately more spiritual, expressing the intangible that must be interpreted through the emotions.

I’ll be showing more about my intuitive painting process and offering classes and private lessons in my upcoming posts.

Blog, Featured Articles, Paintings

Flowing and Growing in the Arms of Love

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Flowing and Growing in the Arms of Love. Original oil painting on canvas, 18” x 24”, © 2015 Tiffany Davis-Rustam.
Flowing and Growing in the Arms of Love. Original oil painting on canvas, 18” x 24”, © 2015 Tiffany Davis-Rustam.

This painting is about how the power of love can help strengthen your will and evolve your life, so you can shine your light!

We’ve all had our our kinds of painful experiences that have tested us more than we thought we could take at the time. In those challenging times, few things can bring you more comfort than the steady arms of a soulmate friend or lover, holding you through the suffering, telling you they love you, and making you feel better, if only for having them with you. With that kind of nurturing love, a weary soul feels less alone, and thereby has more hope for change.

In my own experience, my supportive husband has helped me to grow and flourish ever since I met him, and together we’ve swam through the murky waters of pain and uncertainty to reclaim our power, through our combined love. His loving arms have helped me through my darkest hours, and it was then that I drew the first sketches for this painting.

Shortly after I created this painting, over a year later, I also happened to miraculously break through some long-term health issues and feel good again, which does feel like stepping into the light of my inner power!

Here in the painting you can see the healing metaphor of two twin flames that have grown and risen through a sacred lotus on a fish pond. Life can feel like swimming in a dark pond, until you you meet your life partner, or someone who sees and supports you on your ultimate path of evolution.

With their combined strength of love and care, this couple rises from the shadowy depths towards the stars, flowing and growing together, becoming their own heroes and unfolding their dreams like a lotus flower.

Painting original and prints available on my Etsy shop.

Blog, Paintings

Keeping the E.T. Dream Alive

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Pleiadian Borealis Glow. Original oil painting on flat canvas, 9” x 12”, © 2013 Tiffany Davis-Rustam.
Pleiadian Borealis Glow. Original oil painting on flat canvas, 9” x 12”, © 2013 Tiffany Davis-Rustam.

There are so many stars in the sky that life on other planets seems inevitable to me. On super starry nights I look up at the sky and look for signs of spaceships, for something extra-ordinary.

Our first night in Sedona my husband and I looked straight up and BOTH saw some extraordinary activity in the sky: It looked like a star, but did several very fast and erratic movements to different directions, before quickly disappearing!

Such fast changes of direction simply can’t be achieved with any man-made planes made yet today. It was a short-lived experience, and from a distance, but I’m certain what we saw was a UFO. I haven’t seen anything exactly like this aerodynamic “Pleidian” saucer craft yet, but just making this painting might increase the odds!

Aurora Borealis is a natural phenomenon of neon lights, seen only in the arctic skies of the Northern hemisphere of Earth. It’s documented as a scientific process, but the colors are so surreally different from the colors we usually see in the sky, that I think everyone would agree it looks more super-naturally derived than normal!

Here in my painted imagination I like to think the auroras could actually be visual signs of electro-magnetic waves of communication with extra-terrestial beings from other galaxies…

For those who keep the E.T. dream alive, I give you: Pleidian Borealis Glow.

Framed original painting and prints available in my Etsy shop.

Blog, Paintings

Trifecta Confections

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Trifecta Confections. Original oil painting on canvas, 9” x12”, © 2013 Tiffany Davis-Rustam.
Trifecta Confections. Original oil painting on canvas, 9” x12”, © 2013 Tiffany Davis-Rustam.

Dare you believe it is what you think it is?

Yes! This painting is the ultimate expression of the divine feminine sensuality, to the magical power of 3! Three is a sacred number in many cultures, and it certainly shows strength in numbers here.

The female anatomy is celebrated here with a sacred reverence, expressed like a blooming flower, or a perfect candy-coated confection. I feel we should be honest about our sexuality, because in truth we are all sexual beings, and conscious use of this intimate union brings us closer to our own soul power.

A woman’s vagina is the entrance through which all beings enter through, and a source of love and pleasure for a woman and those who love her.

As a woman myself, I believe we should embrace the divinity of our sexual natures, and treat our body as a temple… only those who respect and nurture our ENTIRE beings deserve to be “let inside the gates” of our special place, and partake of the candy!

This small little painting was done on flat canvas, and is framed nicely in a white wooden frame.

Original and prints available on my Etsy shop.

Blog, Featured Articles, Out & About

Where In the World Have I Been? — Part 3

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TDR_010615-Blog-Row3-scarves
Tiffinity Art Silk Scarves, Left to right: Groundswell of Spring, Spring Symphonia, and Hendrix Voodoo Vibes; Tiffany brings color to the cacti in Arizona, T at her Affair of the Arts booth in Culver City.

Part 3 of 3: ART SCARVES LAUNCH

Since I’ve been touring on the road with my musical husband this past year, it was important to me to have some of my own painterly wares to bring on our travels. I’ve finally kicked off something I’ve wanted to get into for a long time, and that is creating Tiffinity Art Scarves from my original paintings! So far there are 3 scarf patterns, selected by polling my fans and digitally printed from my original abstract paintings.

Fashionable ladies love to look beautiful and creative, and these colorful silk scarves really accent basic outfits with a ‘notice me’ punch! I proudly wear my signature scarves everywhere I go, and get LOTS of compliments. I sold out of my first two shipments very quickly, and I still haven’t even created a blog post for them yet, but I intend to soon, after I order my next shipment soon.

This is just the first of several art products that I intend to launch. Coming up this year are also:
Tiffinity Tote Bags, Cushion Cases, Dresses, Caftans and even Bikinis! I’ve come to realize that for a lot of us wall art might be a bit of a luxury, but there are all sorts of practical applications can beautify your outfits, carry your belongs, or even spruce up your living room. Please share your feedback, which one of these items would YOU be most interested in personally?

In summary, 2014 was a whirlwind of activities, and though I’ve been extremely active on Facebook and Instagram, I hadn’t blogged for quite a while. As the tides turn for this new year of 2015, I’ve decided to re-embrace doing this blog more often, and also to create more art videos and YouTube vlogs as well, talking more about the ideas behind the art. I feel like it’s time to make my voice heard, and share more of my perspective on art’s importance to our modern world.

MUCH more to come in this year, and I hope you’ll join me virtually on my artistic journey.

Blog, Featured Articles, Out & About

Where In the World Have I Been? — Part 2

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TDR_010615-Blog-Row2-paintings
Left to right: ‘Share Love, Make Peace,’ ‘The Quiet One,’ ‘Mystic Trinity of Smoke Valley’ on salvaged plywood, and a freshly cut tree branch face in Caspar, CA that I was asked to paint.

Part 2: PAINTING ON THE ROAD

Now that I’m traveling so much with my husband’s music tour, I don’t get quite as much opportunity to paint as I did before. Yet my soul yearns to paint, and I have completed 3 paintings that I love, and started 2 other intriguing ones recently, plus I’ve been sketching a whole lot more than I ever did before. I plan to post more photos of my drawing process in the next year, as well time lapse painting videos, so you can see how the concept starts out & changes.

Featured here are a few snapshots of my completed paintings since the tour began in June 2014, starting with Share Love, Make Peace, The Quiet One, which is anything but quiet. Mystic Trinity of Smoke Valley was done on repurposed plywood that I found at a construction site, which inspired a similar cloaked figure on a freshly-cut tree branch face that I was asked to paint, on some quiet ocean-view land in Caspar, CA that we stayed on. I really enjoyed this new experience of painting on the wood, picking up on it’s naturally-occurring patterns and then turning it into what I see it the grain; to me it feels like the painting almost paints itself.

Share Love, Make Peace was the first painting I did on the road, created for The Whole 9 Gallery’s Peace Project contest, and I sold the original the very next day after finishing it — and for much more than I expected— from a dear new friend we’d met our on NorCal travels! If you’d like to purchase a lovely 12 x 12″ wood panel print of this piece, it’s for sale at The Whole 9 Gallery, and 100% of the profits go to changing lives around the world.

My husband Darius and I have been so impressed by the global relief efforts of The Peace Project, and founder/gallery owner Lisa Schultz, that we’ve also started to donate 10% of our music tour income to their wonderful actions, which has most recently gone towards rebuilding homes for the victims of Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines. It feels so great to give, knowing that the money is going immediately to help change lives in such big ways.

I welcome hearing your favorites or comments on these new paintings of mine! Which is your favorite?

Tomorrow, Part 3 of 3: Tiffinity Art Scarves & Other Products

Blog, Featured Articles, Out & About

Where in the World Have I Been? — Part 1

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From left to right: Tiffany with the new/used motorhome; Tiffany playing flute with Darius Lux on tour, pictured here playing for The Peace Project at The Affair of the Arts in Culver City; T & D by the famous Seattle skyline.
From left to right: Tiffany with the new/used motorhome; Tiffany playing flute with Darius Lux on tour, pictured here playing for The Peace Project at The Affair of the Arts in Culver City; T & D by the famous Seattle skyline.

Since I’ve been suspiciously absent from my blog for a little while, I just wanted to take a moment and fill you in on all the news from 2014, which has been a big year. A lot has been happening, so I’m going to talk about this in 3 parts, over the next 3 days.

Part 1 of 3: HAVE MUSIC, WILL TRAVEL

In June last year I packed up my entire 3-story house and studio in LA, rented it out and joined my husband Darius Lux onto a regional tour. He is a really wonderful musician with inspiring original music, and the time had come to grow his career by taking it on the road, up to Northern California, Oregon, Washington and over to Arizona as well. Two months into the tour our little Prius and new motels every night were exhausting us, so we went all in and got an RV motorhome, which we’ve been happily living in ever since!

It’d be an understatement to say Life touring on the road has been a huge transition, but the RV has made it easier on us, and it’s very exciting to meet new people and share our music and art, and also get in a whole lot of quiet time in nature, when we aren’t gigging.

For this acoustic’ tour, my husband Darius sings and plays guitar, and I’ve pulled out the flute I haven’t played since high school to join the act as well! A well-hidden talent of mine: I used to play the silver flute in band, flute choir, and classical youth symphony, but never did I imagine in the future I’d be playing pop songs with my husband!

Accompanying Darius has given me a great opportunity to develop another facet of my artistry, a musical one. It’s been a surprisingly natural combination, and I think we play together quite well; but make no mistake, Darius is the seasoned musician of the two of us! Here’s a YouTube video of the 2 of us, playing Kiss From a Rose at Axe and Fiddle in Oregon last fall. Subscribe to the Darius Lux YouTube channel for more TBA videos, or join the email list to be notified about gigs near you.

To hear more about our musical and artistic travels and adventures, you can follow along on Instagram for the most frequent posts: @TiffinityArt and @DariusLuxMusic

Part 2 of 3 Tomorrow: More about my newest paintings!

Blog, Paintings

New Painting: The Quiet One

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The Quiet One. Original oil painting on canvas, 16” x 20”, © 2014 Tiffany Davis-Rustam.
The Quiet One. Original oil painting on canvas, 16” x 20”, © 2014 Tiffany Davis-Rustam.

Often people assume that just because another person is quiet it means they don’t have anything to say. In my experience, sometimes that is true and sometimes it is not. There are a lot of reasons people don’t share as much compared to others, or around certain other people.

More often than not I find myself to be that quiet one at talka

tive table, and I’m here to tell you that there is often a lot more going on inside my mind than I usually feel I can say out loud… hence this painting pays tribute to the adage “still waters run deep.”

The lone person here stands on a quiet hilltop with a peaceful blue sky that looks like nothing out of the ordinary. Yet we can see his thoughts take shape in a luminous cloud of explosive color and dynamic shapes:

Starting from a few red dots at the bottom, a rainbow of myriad thoughts branch off into a raucous symphony of patterns, beginning with more sharp and rigid conflicts, being softened and healed by more organic shapes. A river of white light flows through everything, as the metaphoric thoughts merge and climb up a ladder, following a heart towards lofty temple doors, as if perhaps escalating upwards to heaven and the origin of creative thought.

Yet still, all the others may see is the quiet one standing alone. Perhaps one day someone will ask what he’s thinking about…

Painting & prints available for purchase here on my Etsy shop.

 

Blog, Featured Articles, My Inspirations, Paintings

We The Living: Darius Lux Album Art

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We The Living. 52" x 52", © 2013 Tiffany Davis-Rustam, created for the Darius Lux music album, We The Living, released July 2013.
We The Living. 52″ x 52″, © 2013 Tiffany Davis-Rustam, created for the Darius Lux music album, We The Living, released July 2013.

I’m so excited about this painting! This We The Living concept originated as a cover for my husband’s newly-released music album release, Darius Lux: We The Living, 2013.

Darius intends the songs in this album to empower people as individuals, and furthermore to encourage them to embody the changes they are looking to see in our world. To follow their passions, and help others while doing it!

Here in my painting these energetic beings are suspended in spheric orbs of brilliant white light, harnessing the light of the sun and swooping down over the hills to bringing abundance and knowledge to all people of the earth down below, represented by transparent spheres of light, bubbling within the arch of a giant red arena.

The dynamic cubist divisions greatly enhance the light beaming from the left corner, and spreads a rainbow of rippling color across the mountaintops, from left to right. A blend of abstract expressionism and cubist surrealism celebrates joyful outer expansion through inner experience.

Fine art print of oil painting on archival paper, 11″ x 11″, available on Etsy.
Different size printing options available upon request, or at Fine Art America.
Original 52″ x 52″ painting available on Etsy, upon request.

Art & Music Combo Package available on the Darius Lux website.

My painting for the Darius Lux album cover: "We The Living"
My painting for the Darius Lux album cover: “We The Living”