Hello <<First Name>>,
I’m delighted to share this April 2016 edition of Arts Awareness E-Newsletter with you. I sincerely hope you find it helpful as you play an active role in all your creative efforts. Please feel free to share it with others who might be interested, and if you know someone who may want to receive this newsletter monthly, please let them know how to sign up through www.artsawareness.com.
Awakening Senses of Spring
It’s spring! Have you noticed the feeling of anticipation and movement in the air? This is the time of year when you might get the urge to declutter your living and work spaces. For many, it’s a time of hope for new beginnings. Spring gives you an opportunity to observe and delve into the creative process. It’s a time of great creative expression. For centuries, artists of all kinds have explored the energy of the spring season in their works. While it’s not always accessed, everyone has a basic instinct for the balance, harmony, and rhythm of artistic processes that can be found in spring. When you’re open to the gifts of the spring season, you have a unique opportunity to find beauty, to access your own creative energies, and to initiate new things in your life.
We all have the ability. The difference is how we use it.
~ Stevie Wonder
 As a lover of nature, French impressionist painter Claude Monet created many spring-themed works throughout his lifetime.
Van Gogh, who was inspired by the light and vibrant colors of the Provence region of France in spring, created a series of paintings of orchards. It is said that he appreciated the symbolism of rebirth in the flowering fruit trees and saw them as awakening and hope.
Many composers have written music as a response to the coming of spring. For example, Robert Schumann based his Symphony No. 1 in B flat major on the qualities of spring; the entire symphony is performed here by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.
 And Ottorino Respighi included a representation of spring in his Trittico Botticelliano (1927). All three movements were inspired by Botticelli paintings. The painting Primavera (Allegory of Spring) was the inspiration for the first movement of the work. The painting can be seen here with a performance of the movement performed by the Camerata Transsylvanica, Pieralberto Cattaneo, conductor.
Two well-known ballets—the more severe and pagan vision of springtime in Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and the choreography of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring based on a phrase from a poem by Hart Crane—are also spring inspired.
Among the perhaps more well-known works is an orchestral waltz written in 1882 by Johann Strauss II, his Opus 410. Listen to it performed here by soprano Kathleen Battle in a 1987 Vienna New Year’s Concert conducted by Herbert von Karajan. And here is the orchestral version performed by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in the 1989 New Year’s Concert conducted by Carlos Kleiber. While both the New Year and Springtime speak of new beginnings, the beauty and creative energy of the spring season is one in which it appears that everything is doing something—singing or displaying or flowering or mating or hatching. It’s a special time of the year that you can use to express yourself using your unique creative potential.
Despite the forecast, live like it's spring.
~ Lilly Pulitzer
Living things are in their most dynamic cycle this time of year. They’re colorful and growing and moving. Make a commitment this spring to access and value your creative talents. Become an artist—living life as art—and take time to attune to the special quality of the season. When you take advantage of what it has to offer and experience your own creative potential, you will find new energy to create your life.
- Savor the wonders of spring.
- Reflect on the transformation of everything around you.
- Consider the wide array of colors.
- Clean your home and wash your windows.
- Explore balance, harmony, and rhythm in your everyday experience.
- Write a haiku.
Spring is the time of plans and projects.
~ Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Search for springtime events in your community and attend the concerts, art fairs, and gardening shows in your area. Use these experiences along with the observation and celebration of the beauty of your natural surroundings as you imagine, re-imagine, plan, and create this spring. Follow your interests like an artist. You can use this time to discover your own path and plant seeds for the future. Let the spring season rejuvenate your world and allow you to experience a renewed sense of joy and inspiration.
Spring won't let me stay in this house any longer!
I must get out and breathe the air deeply again.
~ Gustav Mahler
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