October 4, 2016 – Soul on Deck

Listen to this post:

My first art studio was in the back of our garage. No more painting just on the dining room table, it was time for a special place set aside, just for me to paint in. This was eleven years ago – I was working in real estate, after two decades in the corporate world. I swept away cobwebs, I bought a carpet remnant for 40 bucks. Using leftover soft yellow paint, I covered up the bare sheetrock. I wedged a piece of plywood between two storage cabinets – so that I wasn’t sitting with the looming presence of my car right there! I arranged glass votive holders each a color of the rainbow on the window ledge – which was just rough 2×4’s. I got a little space heater and the hand-me-down boom box from my father-in-law, that played only cassette tapes. I listened to three tapes over and over: Elton John – Live from Australia, George Winston – December and Francis Cabrel (a French singer) – Samedi Soir sur la Terre (Saturday Evening on Earth).

We had just turned the clocks back, so I woke early. For those last weeks of 2005, at 5 or 5:30 in the morning, I started painted in my new studio. In my slippers and heavy sweats, I went into the dark, through the backyard and the backdoor to the garage – carrying my cup of hot tea with milk. I lit the votive candles, put on the music – and for a of couple hours before going to work, I painted the one we now know, as Paris Roses. Looking at a 4”x6” photo print (my eyes were younger!), I found my way through each petal, creating the folds and edges. The voice in my head told me how awkward these shapes were – it felt clunky and forced (some things haven’t changed!) I attempted to mix the colors – what exactly is that strange, green/grey/pink and how do I make it? Shape by shape, the roses that were growing on an arbor in a rose allé in the Jardin de Plantes in Paris, revealed themselves. I wouldn’t know this for a long time still, but I was also revealing myself.

When my dad saw the finished painting, he remarked that I had arrived at a new level. He is an artist and has an artist’s soul and eye. He saw that this painting revealed something more substantial, more accomplished, more alive. Something was coming through me, for the first time that winter.

I’m working with an exceptional business coach, Lissa Boles. She’s guiding me in a process to understand what I’m up to, as I paint and as I accompany others in their creative lives. This has me looking closely at my “work” – attempting to articulate what’s here. It’s such a hard process, that it’s a challenge to even put words to the process of finding the right words to describe my work! In a coaching call last week, I said these words about the groups of artists, who have made painting once a week with each other – and with me – a regular part of their life: “I actually have something very, very real already – immense love, immense affinity, immense devotion to their art, to themselves, to me, to each other – and [what we have] is something. It’s very real and that’s my grounding. I wouldn’t be able to do this work with my art without this community.” It felt good to be this clear, about the place that my art groups have in my life. I was claiming something. To this Lissa said, that she cannot wait to hear me talk about the art that I make in the same way – as clearly and powerfully.

Lying in bed this morning, I had an inkling of what she’s talking about. I had the distinct sense of something, that I’ve been talking around for a while – that my relationship with my art, with these paintings and the force that is behind them, is as real as any relationship I can have with a living, breathing creature. This art wants to come through me and I can’t not make it. My eyes still closed, enjoying the warmth of my bed, some of things that I’ve said in posts these past months came up:

• It is why I needed to promise to paint every single day – to take it seriously and devote time to it.
• It is why I had such a strong (negative) reaction to the modern art collection at SF MOMA – art needs to reveal human soul – not just explore “ideas.”
• It is fueled by not having had kids – the instinct to procreate is our most potent – if I’m not raising children, I must do something else as significant.
• It is also why I have had to make making art central to my life – having this be a hobby wouldn’t do it.
• It is the combination of my left brain (skills and abilities) and right brain (seeing holistically) modes, and of my feminine need for beauty and my masculine drive to make it real – actually make real stuff – and take it seriously.
• It is a direct expression of my spiritual nature, my expanding consciousness – I’m compelled to illuminate myself and share it with others, this art is filled with light, yes, but also, with illumination.
• It is God made real, it is love – as expressed through me, in this life – made: real.
• It is also why I must sell it – and ask the prices I do – money is how we set value. If I value this artwork there must be an exchange of something else of value when I let it go.

The fear of being grandiose, of being presumptuous has been holding me back, from speaking about my art like this. But the fear does not keep me from seeing it this way. I do know this art is alive, it is enlivening, it heals, it inspires. Though it is not conscious or intentional as I sit and paint, the end result is that it is so. I have heard others express all of this enough to know that this is real. And to deny it, prevents this art from doing what it is here to do. It’s here to shine.

In the days following 9/11/2001, I received this in an email, written by Clarissa Pinkola Estes:

“I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world right now.

Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is, we were made for these times.

One of the most important steps you can take to help calm the storm, is to not allow yourself to be taken in a flurry of overwrought emotion or despair, thereby accidentally contributing to the swale and the swirl.

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world, is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times.

The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these, to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.

When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.” And neither are we….”

The line I’ve emphasized – soul on deck shines like gold in dark times – burned into my heart and brain, when I read this 15 years ago. And I’m certain it has oriented me, emboldened me, to follow the stirrings to make this art and put it into the world. Just before I created that first studio, my friend Brenda saw me pull out several finished paintings, that were in a plastic bag under my bed. She saw the light in them. She charged me with investing the money in framing them and putting them up on the walls – to release the first tether keeping me moored. Claiming a space – my first studio – came next.

The decade+ since has had me untying, one by one, more ropes that have been holding me safe in the harbor. Yet, millions (or billions?) of people are still shrouded in darkness in our world. Our work is so far from done. The task that has taken me on to see to – the stretching out, to mend the part of the world that is within my reach – is to make this art and see it into the world. Making and showing this art is my soul on deck.

Soul on deck is supported by companionship. Your company has made this voyage possible. I am so grateful.

With my love,

Cara