November 24, 2015 – The blessing of painting together

Listen to this post:

The week before last, in our Thursday group, Susie was asking me about the painting she was working on. It’s this one here, of a bowl of candies. She was wondering whether she’d gotten the nooks and crannies, between the candies in the silver bowl dark enough. She, like just about all of us, works from reference photos, so I said let’s see what the image has to tell us. Her printed photo was very small and somewhat dark, so I picked up her lap top and her painting, and leaned against the wall with both held outwards for her – and everyone else, who spontaneously gathered around – to see. I couldn’t see either her painting or her image, I was just inviting the process of having the reference image, provide the information to answer her question.

As I watched and listened, as they were looking and pointing and noticing and suggesting, I was filled with the most amazing sense of satisfaction, appreciation – and joy. I told them I was having a moment of ecstasy and they immediately got why. It dawned on me that they don’t really need me all that much anymore. This has been happening more frequently – without my being there to hold up their paintings, either. I hear the artists in my groups chiming in with kind, respectful and helpful feedback about how another artist might solve a problem, or where she might take her work.

Learning how to paint, means gaining skills through instruction and lots of practice. Becoming artists takes giving ourselves over to the process – to our own process – as we are practicing these skills. There’s no place to arrive to; we are all consistently in progress along with our paintings. Mastery is a relative term. I’ve recently picked back up a painting that I started on three years ago. It’s really interesting to look at the parts I painted then, and gauge how I have grown. I’ve expanded and refined my ability to see – what’s going on in the image – because of all the time I’ve spent doing just that, on all the paintings since I set it aside. We are never finished! I’m witnessing how this process is being lived, in the artists in our groups on an unconscious level. And as we paint, the voices in our heads are just as noisy and intrusive about what’s happening on our paper, but we take these voices in stride – and just get back to work, to our work – at the level we are each on at the moment.

The community that has been created in each group – and to a certain extent amongst all of the artists who paint with me regularly – self-generates a force field of support and love. When we gather, what happens is special. Or rather, what is made possible is special. It’s safe. No one echoes our damning voices. And there is momentum to help us move on to from one painting to the next – despite all the temptations to not paint – which are relentless, especially this time of year.

I read a blog post by Jennifer Louden, about a month ago. The title of the post really grabbed me. What she had to say in the actual post met me less than I was hungering for, though. But the title was a big contribution to me: “How Making Art Changes Your Life and Why You Can’t Make it for that Reason.” I SO get this! Making art has completely changed my life. And I didn’t learn to paint because I wanted to change my life. I learned to paint because there were paintings in me! But exactly how does it change our lives? This is what I was hoping Jen’s post would illuminate for me. But it didn’t – at least not in the way that meets my very personal sense of this question, so I am having to sort it out for myself.

What we do is hard, it takes shifting the way we normally perceive. It uses other parts of our brains that we don’t commonly use. And for most of us, this isn’t easy! It takes focusing intensely on what’s happening, with color, with the amount of water, with the way the brush works, pressure and angle. And then there’s the whole inner process that I talked about before. Overcoming all of this challenge, to produce a tangible result, does something to us. I hear my mom say all the time that she looks at a painting she’s finished, especially one done some time in the past, and she marvels that it was she who painted it. And then she has a voice that tells her she could never do that again. My mom is one of the most rational and logical people I know, so it’s not surprising to me that she has this experience. Painting requires suspending this way of being – it means looking at shape and shade and color and taking action based on what we’re seeing, not in thinking about the leaf, stem or petal – the “thing” that we’re painting.

When we spend time painting – making the required shift in how we perceive and how we are using our brains – it is like a trip to another dimension. Our paintings “happen” – they come to be – out of being in an altered state. So, of course, when we return to our “normal” state, it can be hard to believe that it was actually us who painted them. In a way it wasn’t. The part of us that is in disbelief, is not the part of us that actually painted our paintings.

It is spending time in this altered state that changes us. Our groups provide a structure to spend time in this state, on a regular basis. And there seems to be another level of impact, because we are in each other’s company. I’m not sure exactly why – something to explore in another post. But, I hear over and over and over, how time in our painting groups is “better than therapy.” Though what happens is not therapy, as it is commonly understood, what happens is therapy. Please know that I’m a big believer of the other kind of therapy. I’ve healed enormously in the presence of my Donna. And I wasn’t able to paint like I do, until I did heal some of the deep hurts that were in the way. Just needed that said too!

It’s Thanksgiving week here in the US, and we are all about what we are grateful for. Just typing these words plopped me right into my heart, feeling the warmth of what that is for me. I don’t know where to begin – what I’m grateful for feels boundless. And having the privilege of making art central to my life and getting to spend time every week – and month – with these artists is a big hunk of it. You, who have made coming to paint with me part of your life – and what we’ve created together – are the beating-heart of my work-life. How grateful I am for you – your commitment to your art and yourselves and each other – is so profound it’s hard to put into words.

Wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving.

Love,

Cara