Not only have I not written during the past three months--I also have not painted. I am, of course, tremendously thankful to have survived Covid. Thankful that I was not sicker than I was. But I just have not been able to shake the lingering fatigue that it left behind. I had a burst of energy a couple of days ago and decided to move all the furniture in our apartment and clean everything. This laid me low. I usually get up early, about 4:30 or 5:00, but it is now 10:00 am and I am just getting vertical.
All of this time not painting or writing has, however, given me lots of time to think about painting and writing. And a terrible, powerful transition has been taking place in me. While I have had the best year of my art career financially, I have struggled to find my way creatively. Consider this from Michael Meade in The Genius Myth: "When human efforts are reduced to blind production and consumption, life becomes reduced to consuming the world and being consumed with the obvious." Much to ponder here...
I have decided that today is as good a day as any to shake things up, to engage in a little lateral thinking. So this morning as I ate breakfast, I thought about toast. A simple thing, toast. But not really. You see, I never eat sliced bread that is not toasted. I haven't done so since I was a child when I would tear the crusts from my white bread and and roll the center up into a smooth, one inch ball. Even then I seldom ate the resulting performance art. As I considered my toast today, which was actually a perfectly golden brown half of a bagel, I compared my art to bread. A lot goes into making bread. The same is true of art. But just because you spend a lot of time on something doesn't mean you have succeeded in making a fine product. Sometimes you have to go to the next level, turn up the heat so to speak, and transform that perfect piece of white bread into an even more perfect piece of toast.
A few months ago I hung forty paintings in a solo show. At the time I thought it some of my best work ever. And I still do. But working so hard to accomplish one of my lifetime goals, to have a show of my own in fabulous gallery, left me burnt out. And then I sold almost all of the work! Strangely enough this added to my feeling of unrest. My initial reaction to having so many pieces leave my studio was that I was now free to make new art. But immediately following that thought was the realization that I didn't want to go back to that particular way of making art. Instead I made several abstract paintings. And I learned so much about technique as I experimented with various products and and tools. But then suddenly I didn't want to do that anymore either!
I suffer from no small degree of imposter syndrome with regard to art making, and have for most of my adult life considered myself more of a writer than an artist. So I have found myself turning more and more to writing to dig my way out of this creative hole I am in. And I have spent more time with my granddaughter, Arabelle. She is such a wonder to me. She is three. And she is one of the most creative problem solvers I have ever known. For example, a few weeks ago we had been downstairs at the coffee shop, and as we made our way to the elevator to return home, she wanted to carry my phone. I told her no because I was afraid she might drop it into the crack of the elevator door. Without pause she asked if she could carry my purse. I gave her my purse and she slung it over her little shoulder. Then she said, "Now you can put your phone in your purse and we can zip it up so it can't fall into the crack." So she got to carry my phone after all...
Such a simple and immediate solution to her problem. Sometimes I think I should make myself a bracelet with the initials WWAD, "What would Arabelle do?" on it to remind me to take the simplest and most direct approach to problem solving. And isn't that what art really is? Problem solving? As one who suffers with anxiety, I have discovered over time that the way anxiety presents itself to me most predictably is through an inability to make decisions. Thus making art helps me overcome that affliction. Of course the problems are of my own creation. That's the whole purpose of making art for me, to control my environment creatively. And I have discovered that there is a wondrous transfer of knowledge that results from making art that helps me be able to successfully make decisions in other areas of my life.
Arabelle loves to make art. One day when she was visiting, I had a 4' x 5' canvas leaned up against the wall. Having stretched the canvas I couldn't seem to make myself apply any paint to it. Arabelle suffered no such hesitation. She started, of course, with purple paint--her go to favorite, and she applied it with a brush, a roller, and a rubber scraper. She added white and blended it slowly and deliberately. She did this while dressed only in her panties, a necklace and a crown. Admittedly most of her paint ended up near the middle and lower sections of the canvas, but when I offered to flip it over, she informed me that she could not paint upside down. I explained to her that a lot of artists like to draw things upside down because it helps them focus on what they really see instead of what they expect to see. And I reminded her that she likes to watch TV upside down sometimes. She thought about it for a few seconds and said, "Are there other things we should try to do upside down?" We then spent a few minutes hilariously brainstorming a list of things you could do upside down, and the result was an even funnier list of things you should NEVER try to do upside down. Then we watched Peppa Pig upside down.
Another day when Arabelle was hanging out with me, I mentioned to her that I only like my bread toasted. She often finds my preferences to be strange. For example, she simply can't understand why I don't like hummus and is always attempting to get me to try it just one more time. When she comes to visit next Thursday, I plan to show her some artwork that is made by toasting bread. I can't wait to see her reaction to some of these:
So perhaps we should start with something simpler, like this toast stamp:
There is an old Chinese proverb that says, "Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still." I will consider today's blog a step toward getting back to writing, and to making art!