January 20, 2015 – Creative habitat, safety, and freedom

Mickey, in our Friday group, working on her painting of waterbirds at a special day last fall at Pam’s house.

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Over the weekend I had a conversation with a watercolor student who had emailed me. She wanted to participate in a weekend workshop and was concerned that she was skilled enough to benefit from it.  She shared with me that she had an art teacher when she was young and in school who questioned what she was doing in such a way that she felt criticized – which shut down her art making for decades.

I shared with her a similar experience with a summer school class I took early in high school.  I’ve blocked out the specifics of what happened, but what I know I is that I was left with the sense that making art was not safe, that I was not an artist and would avoid any attempt at all costs.  There was a Fine Art requirement at my high school and I took Photography, which seemed to me the least art-like of any class I could take.  I now know, of course, I always have been an artist.  When I was a pre-teen, I loved colored felt pens – I made these elaborate, colorful flower montages with them.  But after that summer school experience, it wasn’t until I was in my early 30’s before I ventured back into making any kind of visual art.  Whatever that art teacher said to me, or whatever creative environment he created, I had the clear sense that I was not safe.

When I started leading groups of people in watercolor, I had the intuitive sense that my first priority was to have the environment be as safe as possible.  The part of us that wants to make art can be a very tender sprout when it first emerges – and continues to be if we keep growing in our work.  Every attempt we make seems like it is us and when it is judged, we are judged.

And, in order to learn something new, we have to open ourselves to allow it in.  In order to explore new terrain, we have to leave our familiar one.  Both of these things are inherently risky.  If we don’t have some sense of safety, we often stop ourselves.  I’m really talking about more than just making art.  It’s expressing ourselves, our truth, especially in any way that makes us vulnerable. Thinking back on to what I shared two weeks ago, about my evolution to live more in the feminine, and the image of resting in a hammock, this is not possible unless the environment is safe.  Being feminine requires safety as well.

I’ve not seen the movie “Selma” yet, but reading Mick Lasalle’s review in the San Francisco Chronicle of the movie has me thinking also about how Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement related to freedom and safety too.  In the review he wrote:  “It’s a testament to Martin Luther King’s vision and to the courage it took to pursue that vision. But it does something else, too. It shows the awfulness of being in possession of that vision, the terrible responsibility of it.”  Great figures in human history and evolution have had the courage to act, risking everything in the name of freedom.  Maybe such people have a kind of spiritual safety they act out of?

I believe that to be alive is to have the impetus to create – not just art, but anything.  And having the capacity to express it, to me, is freedom.  The Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris show another clear connection between freedom of expression and safety.   In some ways safety and freedom are in a direct relationship and in others, they are at odds.  Huh.

Much of what matters – maybe everything that really matters – that we create  and do in our lives requires us to risk in some way.  We can seek out safety and supportive environments, but in actuality, living our life is a solo journey.  Last week I was talking to an artist who was struggling with much larger scale painting than she’d ever done before.  I told her that I could offer guidance and encouragement, but it us each of us who must pick up the brush and paint our paintings.  If I were to paint it for her, it wouldn’t be her work, growing her capacities and giving her the satisfaction of having done it.

It is each of us who has to get behind the wheel of the car for the first time, ask that lovely lady to coffee, raise our hand to answer the question.  There are ways we can set life up to reduce the risk, but not eliminate it.  There still remains the possibility we will fail – which in a way is a kind of death.  In my life as a spiritual seeker, I’ve read many times, that to really live we must let ourselves die. I’m getting that this is what all the teachers I’ve read are talking about.  Hellen Keller comes to mind.  She famously said: “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature… Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” Yet, what would her life have been if it were not for Anne Sullivan?  She’d probably have lived her life locked up,  shut away.  We do need each other in order to foster the environment where we can flourish.   Yes, ultimately we must choose to act, but we don’t have to do it alone.

To the adventure that is your life!

Love,

Cara