February 17, 2015 – Make art, change your life

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In November 2009, my mom and I flew to New York to see an exhibition of Joseph Raffael’s paintings at the Nancy Hoffman Gallery in Chelsea.  Joseph and his family used to live in the San Geronimo Valley where I grew up and where my mom and dad still live.  When we were all kids, my older brother, Joe was friends with his son Matthew. They used to ride bikes and go fishing in the creeks together.  Joseph had a studio separate from their house up in the trees in San Geronimo.  I remember being inside it when he had one of his huge oil paintings of the rounded rocks from the bottom of a stream bed up on the wall.  His later watercolors of flowers were, more than anything else, what inspired my mom and I to learn to paint.

The Nancy Hoffman Gallery is in a modern, metal, concrete and glass building.  When we walked up to it, there was a sliver of a view inside where I saw the bright color of this painting. The bright yellow of the dahlia made my heart leap!  Walking in and being surrounded by this artwork was incredible.  His paintings are enormous – about 5 feet by 7 feet – and filled with color and aliveness. Astonishing to experience in person.    After about 45 minutes with them, though, I had this almost sick feeling. I had to leave.  It was so odd.  What I make of this feeling is that I knew that there was some version of these large paintings in me, my huge paintings. And the thought of that completely freaked me out.  I was terrified.

When I was first learning, I painted on a quarter sheet of watercolor paper (11”x15”).  It’s a good size to start with.  But more than fearing I’d be possibly “wasting” a large piece of paper, I was afraid of the larger impact I’d make with bigger paintings. What’s remarkable is that alongside that fear is – and has been – something in me that is called to do just that. I have this strong desire to make beautiful paintings – some of them very big.

In 2008 I went to see the glass artist, Dale Chihuly’s exhibition at the De Young in San Francisco. At the end there was a video about him and his work.  The video showed a whole team of people in silver heat suits handling huge pieces of molten glass.  I was struck by the incredible resources it takes for his work to become manifest – work from just one human being’s vision.  I had the thought that if he can allow himself to be a channel for such inspiration, that it takes so much more than just him to bring it into being, then that capacity is potentially in any of us – including me!  This insight lived in me when I experienced Joseph Raffael’s work in New York.

A few months after the trip to New York, I was in Perry’s Art Supplies and saw heavy sheets of Arches watercolor paper that were 60” by 40.”  I had no idea sheet paper even came that big! (Joseph paints on rolls of lighter-weight paper.)  My heart literally started pounding!  I bought all 5 sheets they had in stock.  It took until the year after that for my biggest painting (to-date!) to come through – Hallelujah.  Here I am standing next to it, so you can get an idea of its scale.

These experiences are part of my unfolding, not just in my creative life, but as a being alive on this planet. Learning the skills of working with our materials – learning our craft – is an integral part of what we do. Painting watercolor is our particular means to an end beyond the artwork it allows us to make.  What resides in our hearts, what we respond to in the world and the messages we receive as we witness creativity in others helps us discover our voice.  There is no one else who is ever going to make the art that is in each of us – not the way we paint when we first start out, not when we’ve been painting for many years.  Every time we put our brush into a pool of paint and touch it to our paper, it’s us.  It carries our mark, like the tone of our voice and the way we sign our name.  Learning to paint gives us a way to show the world who we are.  And the more we do it, the more refined our expression becomes, the more vivid is the illumination of our essence onto watercolor paper.  The consciousness and the spirit of each of us lives in the work we make.

(For the record, watercolor is just one of the uncountable forms this can take. It’s just the one that has chosen me!  Our voice can come through not just other ways of making art, but any act of creation.)

Since I’ve begun to paint and have heeded the call to evolve as a painter, a teacher/guide and as a person – I see and hold myself altogether differently. I experience a level of freedom that I couldn’t imagine was possible for me.  I am more myself than ever.  I have grown through my paintings.  The desire in me to paint carries a wisdom for my life.  Early on it led me out of the grief and disappointment at not having children. Now it is the “why” of my life.  There is an instrument in the center of my chest that registers inspiring beauty – it’s a particular kind of energy.  That energy must be translated into paintings representing how I see it and feel it.  It’s what I’m here for.  It’s why I’m alive.  And it’s made who I am today.

I believe it is the same for all of us.  While we are painting, learning, exploring, operating in the face of our own fears and resistance, we are being transformed. There’s nothing we need to say or do for this to be, it just happens!  Eventually the desire in us to make art that astonishes us, fuels us to do just that. We are changed by revealing ourselves in this way.  And by doing this, we bless others with this view into us.

I invite you to join in.

Love,

Cara