December 9, 2014 – Stepping back

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One of my most treasured friendships is with an extraordinary woman named Randi. We met at the start of her first, my second year of college. We were suite-mates in the dorm El Conquistador in San Diego. She was not quite 17, I was not quite 19.  Though over the decades (!) we have woven in and out of being in regular communication, this is one of those friendships that picks right up where it left off, the closeness and ease never abating. Life took Randi east, to business school at Wharton and a brilliantly successful career in the health-related business world.  She is married to one of the most unique and special guys I know and together they have a remarkable daughter, now in college.  I love that though our life circumstances and even the filters through which we take life in are so incredibly different, we have such a deep appreciation for each other.  She said yesterday in a message to me that she grounds me and I inspire her. What a blessing.

We had a chat on New Year’s Day not quite a year ago that resulted in her coming out in March to learn to paint.  I love sharing painting with her. And she mentors me in how I run my art and teaching business. She’s just unflappable, always looking for the strategy or solution for my current “problem.”

Last week, on the way to the Thursday group, my tall latte cup full of roobois tea and milk went flying all over the front of my car, my pant leg and my new white jacket!  I had slammed on the breaks after looking down for one second and the cars in front of me had stopped for a bus pulling out.  I had gotten myself all frazzled with all that was on my plate: I had six cases of new mugs to put in individual boxes, art to bring in to hang for the open house on the weekend, prints to prepare, the announcement email to craft and send. The calendar orders were coming in along with the questions and problems with the online system. Instead of walking Bo (and myself) I’d spent all morning responding to these emails.  I now have a whole new appreciation for customer service departments!  So, I didn’t think straight about putting my tea in one of my new steel travel mugs with a lid before getting on the road!

My thoughts were all over the place, like flies buzzing around the kitchen, suddenly switching directions!  I knew I had to shift my energy, so I called Randi.

With humor and wisdom, she met me where I was and reinforced something I’ve known – that ultimately, what I need to be doing is primarily painting and teaching –the two things that no one else can do.  Yes.  I need help. Ten minutes into the conversation, I felt like a different person. Even though there wasn’t any help on the way, I had another perspective on the situation. I was no longer down in it, where all I could see were the thick trees. She helped me rise up and see the forest.

It occurred to me that this is parallel to what I see happen in the artists in my groups – and in me – when we paint.  It’s so easy to pick apart what we are doing when we are close in, intimate with the detail.  The critical voice in my head is telling me that the shapes are awkward, the colors are off, that it looks contrived and not natural like the thing I’m attempting to represent. I said all these things to myself about the in-progress painting of persimmons I’m slowly working on above. What it takes is stepping back.  I put the painting across the room and it can be astonishing how different it looks.  It allows me to see the painting that is emerging, in its entirety.  From here I can also see what’s needed – where I want it to be darker or softer or more vibrant.

I love my Thursdays and Fridays. I walk around our space while everyone is working on their paintings, exclaiming how incredible their work is.  They often look at me in faint disbelief.   So, I ask if I can hold up their paintings for them.  Without fail, the rest of the group responds with great appreciation and often specific feedback about what they like.  And then I see on the painter’s face a dawning of the vision that the rest of us have for their work.

It’s a bummer that this is how it goes!  We cannot appreciate our work in the way that others can.  It’s like all the cooks I know (me included) who can’t enjoy the food we’ve prepared like the rest of the diners do.  For me it takes not just physical distance, stepping back, but also time.  Generally it’s a few months after finishing a painting, when it’s up and framed, that the parts of it that still bug me start to fade and I begin to see what everyone else does.

Being down in the details of our paintings, our work is necessary.  It’s being engaged – getting stuff done – the rubber and the road.  But a life-diet of nothing but engagement brings on monotony, tedium, boredom, hyper-criticism and overwhelm. In talking about how we view our artwork, when we are working intently on it, I find myself using the analogy that it’s like looking at our chin with a 10x mirror (yikes), instead of looking back and taking in our whole face, including our shining eyes.  We need perspective to take in the broad view, to see it in context. From here we can see whole other possibilities and respond in a much more useful way.

It’s powerful for me to me to think about my life as a creation, just like a painting.  My moment last week was a 10x mirror moment, and I’m grateful for Randi helping me to step back.  We need each other for this.  As a connection-oriented being, I love that it’s set up this way – that our best life doesn’t come out of operating completely independently (as if that’s really possible, anyway).  We are channels for creation. When we are in the process, as whatever we are creating is actively coming through us, it takes others to reflect to us the beauty of our hard work – or at least to remind us to step back and take a breath.  As we wind up the year it’s a good time to do just this. Yes, I am listening to myself as I write this!

Wishing you moments of reflection in the midst of what can be a busy season.

Love,

Cara

November 4, 2014 – I started the day really crabby…

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I woke up yesterday morning in the worst, dark funk.  I’ve not been sleeping well, but that’s been the case on and off for over two years now.  This felt like something else.  I spent a lot of the weekend doing things that needed doing – stocking the larder (Costco, Trader Joe’s…), laundry, cooking for a family dinner – all things we  have to do – and that I do all the time, quite happily. I’m a very domestic lady and I really like keeping house.  But the studio has been still and dark a whole lot in the last weeks. With preparing for, leading and then recovering my energies from my first retreat and what seems like more teaching/leading than ever, I’ve found the impetus to go make my own art languishing. For the second weekend in a row, I told myself at the start I’d spend a lot of time painting, drawing, playing with color.  And I didn’t.  I just found myself pulled away by other things, with a remote sense that I wasn’t in my studio…

Sunday morning, just after awaking, I found myself tossing about in my head how I might set up a color mixing panel to play with the colors that can be made with three paints/pigments. It’s something I started in the color class that I led in October and has been a puzzle ever since. So hopped out of bed, made my warm lemon water and cozied up in my chair at my painting table.  I sat there in my fuzzy pink bathrobe and furry slippers playing with color arrangements.  I hadn’t even brushed my teeth! It’s something my logic brain loves – a puzzle! I spent an hour sorting out what to do and then mixing colors. Heaven.

I ended up figuring out a way to fill the 12×6 squares in a logical way to explore the range of color.  Who knew that we could make all these gorgeous and varied colors with just three pigments?  There is a part of me that loves just looking at the colors and another loves creating structure out of a jumble.  I’m an organizer-artist!  I had so much fun!  But then the rest of the day, I never circled back.

What all this showed me is that I must, must, must have some kind of play in my art-life, as well as simply giving myself the time to immerse in what I want to paint. I’ve been so focused on my desire to help others free their creativity that I’ve been starving mine in a way. I did finish “Rest” recently, and have been working in bits here and there on a sweet doggy portrait.  I’ve got four paintings that have been started over the past year or so and are nagging me to finish them. This is not what I’m craving. Maybe it’s what is keeping me from painting – and making me crabby – my telling myself I ought to finish them – like finishing my homework, rather than sink my brushes into the rain-dropped Fuyu persimmons that I took while up in Healdsburg, the day after the retreat.  This is the *photo* below (the painting will come):

Tomorrow I am teaching a Photoshop Elements for Artists class for the first time, and I’m not yet all ready (I’m one who gives merit to the saying “if it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would ever get done” – it’s just how I roll!).  So, today will hold more time on the computer – so that I can help others do the fun and satisfying composition work with software, before starting to draw and paint.  I did a bunch of work on the persimmon image above. It’s a key part of my process.  I love using technology to compose.  These tools are here at our disposal, so why not?

But – AND, I know that unless I carve out time to play with my brushes, or at least draw the persimmons, I will not be who I need to be tomorrow for them.

Sometime last year, I had this insight:  after having been a teacher and guide for other watercolorists for a few years now, my experience is that this is what I’m made for. There are lots of skilled and inspiring artists in the world.  If I think about how I was put together and the life that has lead me to where I am, being with people in their creative journeys (which are really their life journeys) is what I’m “meant” to do.  What followed was that I knew I must continue to paint my own paintings, because I need to stay in my own art-making process in order to best serve them in theirs, otherwise I’d be out of touch and could not have integrity in what I said to them, especially when it gets hard, which is often!

Today, this insight expands. Yes, I’m meant to teach, but there are paintings in me and they want out!  And when they are not let out, I am a very unhappy human.  There is a quote from a chapter heading in Dawna Markova’s “I Will Not Die an Unlived Life,” attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of St. Thomas.  I recently wrote it out, all colorful and playful.

It’s a bit intense, but Jesus was intense!  I have loved this idea, been emboldened by it, but yesterday and today, I feel it.  I started yesterday by making a huge, long to-do list, and ended up getting hardly any of it got done.  The art-maker had blockaded my “productivity” in protest!  I think it’s worse once we have given our lives, ourselves to our creative expression, once the flow gets really going, it’s much more painful when it’s stopped.  Take heed of that art-maker! She/He is quite a force!

To your creative expression –

Cara