June 2, 2015 – The spirit of Kauai

A lotus from this morning’s walk. A future painting?

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I first came to Kauai about this time of year in 1997 for a friend’s wedding. I stayed at the Hyatt Regency – a beautiful, lavish resort on the south shore. I had United MileagePlus discount coupons for this hotel – it’s funny how accidents of circumstance can end up changing our lives! I had been back a year and a half from Paris and hadn’t yet met Joe, so I was here on my own, amongst lots of shiny wedding bands and families with small children. My friend’s wedding was in a garden along Hanalei Bay on the north shore and we went to a luau on the east side – giving me a taste of a lot of this lovely island.

The next time back was two years later. Joe had just finished chemo and we were looking for a vacation spot to start his healing. He’d been to Maui, but never Kauai. My first trip here introduced me to Kauai’s rhythms – peaceful and soothing. We stayed in an end-unit condo with a sweet, private little garden, walking distance from the Hyatt where I had stayed. We discovered a hike along the coast, starting at Shipwreck Beach in front of the Hyatt. The web of trails head east along a bluff, with amazing views of the ocean and the south coastline of Kauai. We hiked every morning and then came back and talked, really talked. His journey through cancer treatment started six days after our first date and the next six months were a whir of emotions and the realities of cancer treatment – infusions, a hospital stay, injections at home, many restless nights. In that little garden condo we took the time to share with each other at Kauai’s pace.

Journeys through life-threatening illness shift things in us – after cancer, Joe resolved that we’d come to Hawaii often. Since then, it’s been at least once, many times twice a year. Except for one more trip to Maui and another to the Big Island – both in the following two years – every trip back has been to Kauai. In 2004, on a whim, we walked into Island Pacific Properties in Koloa town and met the broker, Stephanie. We left that trip having taken a big risk – we’d made an offer on a house! It’s always been someone else’s home, we’ve never furnished it so that we could stay there, but owning a house on Kauai has anchored us here even more. What seems more important to me is that through Steff, we’ve met so many wonderful people. When we come here now, we see old and new friends. It’s so much more than a vacation spot.

Because we really love sunshine, we’ve always stayed on the south shore. I’ve been here 10 days now and I’ve not ventured any further north than the airport in Lihue! Our time here is spent “trying on” retirement. We’ve always stayed in a place with a kitchen, so we can have meals “at home” if we want. We still do the same walk along the coast, but now we know to look for sea turtles in the water and often go all the way to the next beach – Mahaulepu – and go for a swim in the spot inside the reef break. On calm days it’s almost like a swimming pool. Joe golfs and I paint, we read and do a whole lot of not much else. There are many treasures on this island we’ve yet to experience, but somehow we’ve lost the impetus to be explorers. What we come here for, more than anything else, is to just be.

I take walks along the shore from the Hyatt headed west sometimes too – and take pictures of the tropical flowers in the lush gardens of the resorts and vacation homes. So many of my paintings have come from these walks.

It’s been interesting to watch things change: new condos have been built in some of the empty spots, run-down places re-done and the gardens change too. For some reason, every year for the past five or so, the water lily ponds are going away. One year there are no more plants, the next there isn’t even any water in them. I don’t know if they are too much to keep up, but I’m so glad that I have been able to capture them in paint! None of the ponds I’ve painted below exist anymore.

As I mentioned in my post about “home” a few weeks ago, Kauai is one of ours. It has me wonder what it is about a place, the spirit of a place – that meets us, compelling us to come back again and again, developing a relationship with the place that is as real as any relationship. As I write this, I’m in my friend Robin’s studio – in her house in Kalaheo – a bit up-country from where we stay closer to the ocean. She paints beautiful, color-filled oils of this heavenly place. I love having a real artist-friend here. We inspire and support each other in a way that, somehow, I’ve not found with anyone at home. She’s working on a painting of a succulent, finding her way through the shapes and colors and I’m taking a break from struggling through the lily pond painting I’m working on to write to you. Coming through the open French door are the sounds of the breeze in the palm fronds and the calls of the tropical birds – including the roosters – and even the bleat of a goat! This is absolutely paradise.

We’ve talked about living here full time – even as an adventure for a year. So far, the pull has not been strong enough to up-root us from Northern California, where we were both born and our lives are still centered. Nonetheless, there is something here for us, that lives in us when we are back “home.” When we went to see the George Clooney movie, “The Descendents” at the Fairfax Theater, we felt it. There is a scene where his character flies with his daughters from Oahu to Kauai to see the family property. As they are walking in from the jet-way into the Lihue airport, I felt in me and sensed in Joe a combination of recognition, knowing and longing. We felt Kauai in our bones for a moment. This place fills a need in us that isn’t filled anywhere else – even in the very-special place we live.

Saturday night we went to the salt ponds to watch the sunset. Joe was curious what the people were doing a short distance away. Following his intuition, we went to check it out. His respectful, reverent way of asking about it inspired Emma, a native Hawaiian to take the time tell us all about it. She’s the third generation that has been tending the salt beds – the only ones on Kauai. We saw how they carefully re-make the beds with smooth black mud every year and then carefully bucket the salt water from the wells into them. The sun evaporates the water and in a number of weeks salt crystals form, which are then gathered up and dried. Her son and niece and grandkids were there, participating in the traditional practice, carrying on the knowledge. When I asked if they sell the salt, with pride and honor, she told me they only give it away. Then she gave us some of her pink salt from last year – white salt that had been mixed with Hawaiian red dirt. She told us this salt is medicine.

The clouds were spitting rain as we left, feeling like we had just been blessed. It’s still not coming to me how to articulate what it is about the spirit of this part of this island that we connect to, but it so does. We are renewed and inspired here. The air is soft on my skin. Thank you, Kauai.

Aloha,

Cara

May 19, 2015 – Windows to the soul

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For some reason, I’ve been really resistant to wearing glasses to read, even as my eyes are going through the aging process that affects nearly all of us – I’m becoming far-sighted. I put off wearing drug-store cheaters to read as long as possible – until sometime after I turned fifty. And I still often go without them – squinting to see, which means sometimes I’m lectured that this will wrinkle up my face. Maybe because I’m a visual artist, maybe because what I most want to impart to the artists who come paint with me is that they can expand their capacity to see, but I’m preoccupied with vision!

Sometime last year, my dad was diagnosed with early stage macular degeneration. He was advised that all his children over 50 should be tested too. I went right in to have my eyes checked out. The optometrist found a few very small drusen on my retina, which I was told was normal for someone my age. But then later that day – a Thursday – I got a voicemail from her. She said she upon review of the photos taken, she saw a small hemorrhage on my retina. A small hemorrhage? I tried calling back, but missed her and was told that she was out on Fridays. So I spent the weekend wondering what it might be like to not have my eyes. Not only does eyesight offer us freedom and independence, but it is color and light and allows me to make my paintings! Then, I went to a Speaking Circle and realized the connection between human beings that happens when eyes meet – so much is conveyed across space from one heart to another through our eyes! I’m guessing that vision-impaired people connect hearts in other ways, as the other senses become more acute. But the thought of finding this out first-hand was crushing.

I went back to see what she saw. When the photo of my retina was expanded so it was larger than the 14” monitor, the “hemorrhage” was about the size of the head of a pin. Ok, so I’m not going to get all freaked out about that tiny thing. Whew. But the brush with the possibility of losing my eye-sight has me even more tuned in to seeing.

I was online one evening about a month and a half ago and saw one of those ads, like the-5-foods-you-should-never-eat-again. It was 10-minutes-a-day-for-one-week-to-regain-20/20-vision. It hooked me, I bit. I watched about 25 minutes of the infomercial video before the hype-i-ness of it wore me out. But I got enough information to start an online search. I found out about what’s called the “Bates Method.” Dr. Bates was an ophthalmologist, who, in around the turn of the last century, began developing exercises to help people improve their eyesight without glasses or surgery. An important aspect of this work involves resting the muscles around the eyes, which relieves strain that impairs vision.

I bought a book on it and have started, sporadically, to do some of the exercises. I’ve been almost entirely without my cheaters for over a month now. My near vision is still blurry, but it has improved slightly and I’m amazed at how I can see well enough to read – without squinting – which is itself another form of strain. One of the things they suggest you do is, when walking or driving or moving through space in some way, to look through your peripheral vision to see the trees, bushes, buildings seem as if they are in motion. When I do this, it’s as if I’m staying in one place and the rest of the world is moving by me. It’s the coolest thing! This has given me moments where I experience the three-dimensional nature of our world very acutely. On a walk with Bo in our neighborhood I saw a big tree and the space it occupies, almost as if it’s a holograph.

All of this leads me to the possibility that I can shift how it is that information is received in my brain through my eyes. It’s as if I’ve been seeking out, hunting even, visual input. What has developed is the desire to simply allow it to enter, in a more passive – yes, even feminine – way. It’s quieter, more meditative and it brings up another of the distinctions we learned in the leadership program I wrote about last week – particles and space. We spent an entire retreat attempting to focus instead of on the particles – the “things” all around us – to focus on the spaces between the things. In art it’s the “negative space.” In the big tree it’s seeing the distances between the branches as they go up and out into space. But this can be difficult – “things” captivate us – they really grab our attention with their “being-ness.”

I’m finding this challenging to articulate. It’s a shift in perspective and perception that’s hard to describe, but I’m compelled by it. I am curious as to how it might change the art that comes through me. I do know that my ability to see what’s really there, in a reference image, or in real life, has grown immensely through all these paintings I’ve done. It’s also what I most want to invite in other artists in their learning process.

Our retinas transmit 10 million bits of information every second to our brains – wow, every second? In order to not be completely overwhelmed by this information, our brains have a filter that processes that information based on what we have already seen, what we believe and value. Quite often, I watch us – yes, me too – as we make our paintings – we make decisions in color and shape and brush stroke based upon what we think we see. It takes slowing down, resting our eyes on what we are looking at, to allow what’s actually there to go beyond the filter and register in our brains.

The first time this really crystalized for me was when I was painting “Fauchon Eclairs.” My inclination was to paint the shine on the chocolate glaze a lighter version of the dark chocolate brown. But something stopped me. I made a hole in a piece of paper and put it over the shiny part of my reference image. It was a violet blue! Ok, so I trusted what I saw and painted it a violet blue. No one has ever asked me why I painted it blue, or even noticed for that matter. I can look at this painting and shift my vision from seeing shiny, brightly colored pastries to seeing abstract shapes and colors. Can you?

When I first started really painting, I noticed this shift happen all the time, even when I wasn’t trying to make art, but just going about my day. I’d see the light on a leaf and wonder how I’d paint it – or clouds, or the shine on the hardwood floor. Now, I hear the same thing over and over, from people who are new to painting, too. We really notice what is around us, even without intending to. To me this is a waking up. It’s a paying attention in a more careful and reverential, and even honest way. It makes me wonder how much our capacity to see can keep growing and what that might make possible – not just in our art-making, but in our lives. And it has me profoundly grateful for these incredible organs of perception – our eyes.

Love,

Cara

May 12, 2015 – Failing and recovering

My world-class commute!

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When I came back from my stay in Paris in 1996, I settled back here in a house in San Anselmo (in Marin) and worked in San Francisco.  I either took the ferry across the bay to the Ferry Building or the bus across the Golden Gate Bridge.  Not too shabby either way as far as commutes go!  I remember warm evenings in the summer sitting outside on the boat, watching the city draw away from us, feeling the magic of the uncommon warmth (it’s often windy and chilly in the summer on the Bay).   And in the winter, I liked to get a window seat on the left side of the bus, so I could watch the sun set out over the Pacific Ocean as we headed north over the bridge.  I thought to myself:  people travel thousands of miles to see this – and I get to see it all the time.

By about 2003, after meeting Joe, getting married and going through unsuccessful fertility treatments, the magic had worn off.  I remember saying to Donna – who was officially my “therapist” but is what I’d truly call my God mother – that getting on that bus felt like “slamming my soul against a concrete wall.”  I was searching for something else to do for work that would keep me on this side of the bridge. I suggested one day that I could do bookkeeping. To that she said “you are a teacher.” (It is such a gift to have people in our lives that see who we are before we do.)  She pointed me to CTI – the Coaches Training Institute.  She had another client who was going through their program and thought I might be interested.

CTI is one of the best coach training organizations in the world and they are headquartered right here in San Rafael.  I went home and read the curriculum on their website and knew it was me – working with people as they grew into the lives they were called to live was where I wanted put my energy.  It took a couple of years before I started – April of 2005 – a decade ago!  When I was in the third of five courses, one of the leaders saw something in me and asked me to consider doing CTI’s leadership course.  It’s a 10-month, nearly $10,000 program.  Holy cow!  I was scared, of the time and money commitment, but also of what it would ask of me.  I was still gripped by that stage-fright!  I started Co-Active Leadership on my 44^th birthday in November 2005. The “me” that emerged in the next 10 months can never go back inside the box she was held in.  It expanded my consciousness, my sense of self and my impact.  I learned the value of my voice and my point-of-view and the power of creating in partnership.  It’s an amazing program.

We learned practical distinctions that I still call upon all the time.  I’ve been thinking about one of them a lot lately – recovery.  We learned that the deal is not to avoid making mistakes, having missteps, going off track. The deal is how we recover from them.  Through high-ropes exercises with a partner, we got in our bodies how even dangling helpless from a rope, there is a way to pull back up and get going again.  And, that it almost always takes the help of others.

Recovery is not just what we do, it’s a mind-set.  If we expect that things will go awry at some point and we take responsibility for the situation, we have a whole different set of capacities to handle it.  If we hide, deny or crumble under the challenging circumstances, it doesn’t go so well.  It’s hard to do. Our egos don’t like being responsible for what goes “wrong.”  It’s called failure – in our heads and outside them too.  We are geared toward success, but we need to “fail” to be strong.  Even more than that, it’s how it goes in life. We will fail.  We can learn to see failure as a means to learn and grow.

I’m incredibly inspired by Alison Armstrong’s commitment to recovering well.  When she and her husband or other partners in her life “blow up the laboratory,” as she calls it, it is her commitment to work through what happened between them so fully, gaining all the learning and insight from it she can, so that in the end she’s glad it happened. This is recovery in the spirit that we learned in leadership! And it’s given the world Alison’s work – which has brought freedom, understanding and peace to thousands and thousands of relationships.

Of course, these days I look at almost everything through the lens of creativity and how I can be a better teacher.  I am largely self-taught – besides a few workshops and adult ed classes, I learned to paint by finishing every one of my paintings.  When I hit a spot where I thought I’d ruined it, or when it just looks so awful to me that a voice tells me it isn’t worth continuing (and this happens with every painting – still!), I’ve stuck with it and figured out what it needed.  Sometimes help comes from my reference image.  I say to the painters in my groups “we are not slaves to our reference photos, they are our servants.”  The photo, to the best of the camera’s ability, captured the light, the color, the shapes of our subject – in the moment we were inspired by it.  To that end it can be instructive to us in our painting process.  So, I compare the photo to the painting which tells me what’s needed.

I’ve learned to be bold.  Painting Reach! several summers ago, I left the sky for last. I envisioned a smooth lovely wash of blue, but it was a warm day – it was drying fast and ended up all splotchy.  I panicked that I’d ruined it!   I took it out on the metal patio table, got a 3” house painting brush from the garage, mixed up several blues and a violet and slathered the paint on.  Here’s the before and after.  What I ended up with was a “life in full color” sky, and a much stronger painting than if I’d been “successful” with the pale wash.

With August Bounty, I didn’t have a good drawing of the ivy – the image was dark and I couldn’t see to draw it well. I tried to make it up as I painted.  What I had painted was so bad that, though I had ¾ of the ivy painted, I put the whole piece of paper in the kitchen sink and sponged it off.  I dried it flat, took a new, lighter photo of the ivy, re-drew and re-painted it from the start. That’s recovery!  There are some green stains that can be seen through the tan-colored paint over to the right (see the detail photo) – which I think actually makes it a bit more interesting.  And – that I’ve done this has made me a better artist and a better teacher.

I joke often about offering a workshop called “Can this Painting Be Saved?” Artists would bring the work that is tucked away because they don’t like what they’ve done.  We can’t be sure that every painting is one to be “saved,” but based on my experience, I’d bet many are.  And our creative capacity expands by even attempting it. This is the real gold to be mined.

Whether it’s a tossed aside painting, a relationship that’s hit a bump or – for me – the eternal desire to take better care of myself, I’m banking on the creative capacities that lie in committing to recovering fully.  I invite you to join me.

Love,

Cara

April 28, 2015 – A home for the unwanted

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I just finished another painting and part of me can barely stand to look at it and call it mine. This part of me worries that I got the shadows on the rose murky, the yellow is too intense and brassy.  It tells me parts of the leaves are clumsily painted and the background is unrefined and messy.  After all these paintings, which have received such generous appreciation, you’d think that I’d be more able to take pleasure in the results of all the work I put into them!  There is a pattern which has revealed itself in my relationship with my work.  As I’m painting and when I first finish it, I have to force myself to not just see all the parts that vex me.  They stick out and grab my attention – though there is another part of me that sees my work more holistically. This part knows when I’m on the right track and finally, when the painting is done. At this point, I take it in to be scanned (for giclee prints) and to be framed.  Framing art always does something. It elevates the art and provides me with just a bit of distance from the hyper-intimacy when I’m in the middle of painting it.

Then it takes sometimes a few months to start to forget all the places in the painting I struggled, making a space in my perception to receive the spirit of it – I can begin to appreciate in it what the rest of you do.  I’ve had the experience of opening some of the high resolution scans on my computer, of paintings I’d done some time before – and zooming way in, where I can see it even more closely than when painting it – and I actually fell in love.  I took joy in the colors, the edges and shapes of the washes and passages and its essential abstract nature.  It’s an entirely different state of mind than the one I had when I put brush to paint to paper to make those shapes.  It’s even hard to fully get that I was the one who made these marks.

I’m fascinated by this whole process. We, the art-makers have this, in some way, unenviable position. To make the art, we must operate close in, right at the point of creation.  This place is messy and uncertain, and the voices in our heads chatter about what we are doing.  I hear them all day long on Thursday and Friday in my painting groups. There is judgment and uncertainty in each of us, to varying degrees, that is absolutely unrelenting.

Maggie, a perceptive and thoughtful woman in my coaching group posted this, written by Matt Licata, in our Facebook space last week:

“You want to share your joy, your happiness, your peace, and your love with others. It is so natural to want to uplift those around you. Perhaps the greatest gift you can give to another, however, is your willingness to provide a home for the unwanted within you.

For when you are in direct contact with your own grief, loneliness, rage, and confusion, an attuned field of love emerges in the space between, granting an ancient permission for the ‘other’ to finally meet these unresolved energies in themselves.

Look carefully and see the subtle burden you have placed on those around you to compensate for the longing of your unlived life. To re-own this burden may be the greatest act of kindness you can offer this weary world.

It is by way of this holy re-embodiment that you will be crafted, cell by cell, as a pure, alchemical vessel in which the wildness of love can emerge here.”

When I read this, I found it so beautiful and consoling.  A home for the unwanted within me – I think this is part of what I was talking about in my post about “home” two weeks ago. It also speaks to what I’m exploring here.  I don’t really want the part of me that picks apart my art in process. I’d rather be free of it, thank you very much!  I’d rather the art making process be blissful, peaceful easy – just the pure joy of playing with colors and making shapes.

And this is just one of the “unwanted” parts of me.  There’s the part that lost her temper on Friday, and did the unthinkable – snapped at one of the painters. I’d much rather have a sweet and even temperament all of the time.  I don’t want the part of me that is so eager to cram all that she can into each minute and doesn’t leave enough time to always be on time. I’d rather be actually early, arriving calm and ready for anything.   I don’t want the part that really, really craves sweets in the evening, which can wreak havoc with my mid-life sleep patterns. I’d rather be happy eating only healthy, good-for me foods, 100% of the time.   My grief at not being a mother, my frustration with the things that bug me about Joe, my unwanted list goes on…

Writing this has me see how silly it is to “unwant” any part of me.  To have a whole range of parts and emotions – wanted and unwanted – is to be human.   So then, what does it actually mean to “make a home” for what is unwanted in me?  What comes to me when I ask myself this question is, practicing noticing these parts when they show themselves, realizing that they are “unwanted” and then practicing letting go of the idea that any of it “should be” any different than it is.  All of which will – hopefully – allow me to soften towards all parts of me and not interact with others when these parts are running the show.  Ultimately, what I’m feeling called to is to be able to claim these unwanted parts as mine.  Open-heartedly including them as me.  Of course I will not do this perfectly, which creates a repeating loop, start again with noticing the unwanted parts…

This is just what I’ve learned to do in painting.  If I took direction from my fear and judgment about how it is going in my paintings, I’d never paint!  I’m determined to paint in spite of this chatter – which is just one way to live my life accompanied by what’s “unwanted within.”  My hope is that as this capacity grows in me, and I can name it for artists who paint with me, it ends up having an impact on others – in the studio – and out. And as each of us does this, the world evolves.  My sense is that it’s slow work and progress isn’t easy to observe. It’s only upon reflecting back in time that it’s revealed how the ability to be with what is has grown, and more and more lightness has settled in – for me, this is what Matt Licata calls the “wildness of love” emerging.

Love,

Cara

March 31, 2015 – What has us step up and commit?

A photo I took, over the top of a fence on my tiptoes!

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Today marks six months of writing a post to my online journal every, single Tuesday.  Through the holidays and the busy times and the weeks I thought I had nothing to say, I’ve found something and I’ve written and posted.  Yay to me!

I celebrate this mini-milestone because I’ve spent the vast majority of this life thinking I am not a writer.  (I shared with you my history with writing and why I write in a post late last year.)  I also celebrate this because I’ve been telling myself a story that I’m not a stick-to-it person.  I love to start things, but the discipline of seeing them through has not been something that comes naturally for me.  I have no problem committing to marriage or a job working for someone else, but when the only consequence is that I let myself down, it has been a whole other story.

I would have thought there would be no great fallout if I just petered out on posting every Tuesday.  Well, that is except self-induced shame at having an abandoned blog.  Encountering such blogs – where the last post was years ago – and that story about my lack of discipline – have kept me from even starting.  Until now.

Yesterday I read a recent Seth Godon post – it’s short – here it is:

We spend way too much time teaching people technique. Teaching people to be good at flute, or C++ or soccer. 

It’s a waste because the fact is, most people can learn to be good at something, if they only choose to be, if they choose to make the leap and put in the effort and deal with the failure and the frustration and the grind.

But most people don’t want to commit until after they’ve discovered that they can be good at something. So they say, “teach me, while I stand here on one foot, teach me while I gossip with my friends via text, teach me while I wander off to other things. And, sure, if the teaching sticks, then I’ll commit.”

We’d be a lot more successful if organized schooling was all about creating an atmosphere where we can sell commitment (and where people will buy it). A committed student with access to resources is almost unstoppable.

Great teachers teach commitment.

This idea of “teaching commitment” keeps sifting up to the top of my mind since I read this.  What does it actually mean to teach commitment? And is it related to this idea of “accountability” that I said last week I’d explore today?  Honestly, I still have no compelling way to talk about accountability.  And, if I’m not feeling it, I’m not going there!

Last night I saw a cartoon and link to a post on Facebook about how little freedom and autonomy today’s kids have. It was worth a quick read and seemed related.  But, as much as I absolutely resonate with this idea of “free range kids,” having not faced the challenges and pressures of making these parental decisions myself, I’m staying away from publicly offering any opinion on the subject!

This brings me back to this whole idea of commitment.  I’ve written to you consistently because I made a commitment to do so. In a session with my coach Lissa Boles last September, she challenged me to start writing and posting – regularly.  Something in me knew that doing this would be good for me.   So, with my fear in tow, on October 1^st I wrote about our very old oak tree and its brush with being cut down.

As an art teacher, I am called upon to teach technique – how watercolor works – how to handle the paint, water and paper to get the desired effect.  It’s probably the most obvious and expected reason to seek out a painting teacher.  But reading what Seth Godon wrote has me want to be a great teacher – I want to teach commitment. And I’m not sure I know how.

This morning, poking around looking for what to write about, I found some stream-of-consciousness “freewriting” I did last August.  Here’s an excerpt:

It’s what we want. To be able to make beautiful work, or compelling work, that excites us and lights us up.  It may start as an escape, a break from the other parts of life, especially when these other parts are challenging.  Painting saved my life. Took me from my grief of not being a mother and has given my life focus and commitment and satisfaction. It’s amazing how different I am, how much of myself I have access to and freedom with. How much space I take up, how much more alive I am. 

This is all possible for everyone who wants to.  Desire is huge, it’s the fuel.  It doesn’t have to be big, fiery and visible. It just has to be enough. “I want…”, “I would love to…”, “if only I could…”  Just a small, timid peep is enough. It comes from somewhere deep in each of us.  And what’s needed is an environment where it can be brought out.  I know watercolor. I can teach the skills, I’m good at it.  I’m good at showing how it works. But ultimately the skill has to come in the doing of it.

Desire is the starting place, it’s the seed. But the “doing of it” – painting regularly, the painting-that-changes-our-lives – takes this commitment. Seth used the word “atmosphere” I used the word “environment”.  Environment is key.  There are so many stories I hear of teachers who have damaged the art-maker in people.  I’ve lived a few of these stories too.  These are environments that have us turning away from any commitment.   So what environment fosters that commitment,  what “sells” it?

Sometime in the last year I heard this come out of my mouth:  “I’m made to be a teacher.  It’s my experience that the particular way I’m designed, where I am the most “me,” is in accompanying others in their creative unfolding.  I’m a good watercolorist, and there are lots of  watercolorists who make beautiful and skilled work.  I keep painting because – well, there are paintings in me, *and* because, in order to stay vital and alive as a teacher, I must stay in my own process. I must ride my own edge.”

Though my painting has its ebbs and flows, the work that comes through me is evolving and I’m all in, I’m committed to it.  Does this matter those who come paint with me? I wonder how this impacts the teaching environment I create.  I so wonder.  Relatedly, I’ve recently come to the realization that I am most alive as a teacher when teaching those who are truely committed.  It’s just not the same if painting is a pleasant past-time.  Committment feeds off of committment.

I don’t have a tidy ribbon to tie at the end of this post today.  The questions I’ve asked here are quite alive in me.  If you have thoughts about creative environment and your commitment to painting – or to anything really, I’d love to hear them. Please share.

Love,

Cara