March 8, 2017 – Who is our art for?

“Not yet done, but getting there. The clusters of water drops are a challenge, but I’m loving working with these colors.”

I’ve become a new fan of the singer-songwriter Sara Barielles, after hearing her gorgeous and soulful version of Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”  An evening last week I was looking for something to listen to while painting and I came upon an hour and a half concert on YouTube of Sara singing songs from a new musical called “Waitress” based on an indie film from 2007 about an unhappy waitress and pie baker.  Sara Barielles has written the words and music for all the songs.  About halfway through this concert she sang a song from “Waitress” that I’ve not been able to stop playing – both in my mind and on my electronic devices.

“She Used to Be Mine” is the main character’s emotional anthem.  I hear in the words and feel in the music something of every feminine-oriented being’s story (female or not).  To me it reveals what it is like to be someone who finds their worth and safety in being an accommodator, a pleaser in a world that isn’t built for them – a world where being vulnerable and uncertain of oneself comes at a cost.  The song mostly speaks a former version of me – when I was in my 30’s and facing that my life wasn’t going to go as I’d dreamed it would, even though I thought I had done everything right.  That it didn’t lead to my growth, transformation and set me on my spiritual path.  So, from the vantage point of today I’m not wishing that it had gone any differently.  But I don’t remember ever feeling so met in the loneliness that part of me felt.  Even today, my experience is that our culture doesn’t have much room for people with my sensibilities.  There is something in this song that recognizes this too.

Me being me – living my life out loud – I’ve been sharing this song and my experience of it with the women in my life – including my three watercolor groups.  The response to the song has ranged from much like mine, feeling like it changed something inside, to a simple appreciation for her strong and beautiful voice.  The two artists in our Thursday evening group were both so moved that they asked that we not play any other music for a while. We ended up listening to the song five times – and nothing else – all evening.  Ok, so it’s not just me.  But my dear friend Vicki – not so much.  She gently asked:  “ok, so what exactly is it about this song that touches you?”  I had to laugh.  There’s hardly anyone I share with more deeply and unguardedly and she’s not one of us who this song was written for!  This has had me thinking about art and how it impacts us – in a couple of ways.

First we must give ourselves permission to create what is in us.  If Sara Barielles were to edit herself and only write songs that were edgy and irreverent – avoiding writing a “sentimental ballad” (as this song was described in Wikipedia) such as this song, then those of us who were so touched by it would not have had the experience of feeling so met and seen.  To us this song is an enormous gift.  I have been given this advice – to edit myself.  It’s been suggested that I paint for the “market”: more abstract, in oil on canvas, more textured, pet portraiture – in order to make a commercial success of my art-making. This is what Steven Pressfield calls being a “hack.”  As true artists, we follow our muses and trust that there will be someone, somewhere who we’ve painted this for.  In my own work, I took an in-progress painting that had been cast aside, hanging out in my studio for a couple of years, and by changing the colors and composition so they really pleased me, it became the painting I named “Firelight.”  When my coach Lissa saw it on her computer screen it triggered her to weep – for 20 straight minutes.  When she lost her beloved husband a year earlier, she also lost her connection to desire.  Something in “Firelight” reconnected her – her tears were tears of relief.  Vicki saw in “Paris Roses” a feminine strength; Carol sees her two children in “Twin Dahlias.”  There is this magic with art in how it connects artist to those who it is created for – and we artists cannot know the impact our work will have.

Still, I can find myself questioning that the art I’m making isn’t “different” enough.  There is a strong message in our culture that we must be inventive, we must do something that has never been done for our art to be of merit.  In this vein there is some really outrageous work made in the name of “art.” Modern art museums are full of it.  There is nothing that can stop innovation – it is evolution – but I’m all for not losing soul in the process.  IIain McGilchrist says this:  “We confuse novelty with newness.  No one ever decided not to fall in love because it’s been done before, or because its expressions are banal. They are both as old as the hills and completely fresh in every case of genuine love.”  Flowers, beauty – the subjects I’ve been drawn to paint have been painted millions of times before, but never by this artist, who is living – who is alive – in this moment.  If we bring ourselves genuinely to our creating, the art we make is just as fresh.

The next thing is that for each of us our audience is particular.  In addition to those who love and are moved by our work, we must expect that there will be those who are lukewarm to what we do and those who will criticize it.  A Wikipedia contributor called “She Used to Be Mine” “sentimental” – which I read as dismissive – while others were stopped in their tracks by it – see some of the comments below the YouTube video.  As I’ve learned from Tara Sophia Mohr, it’s useful to view feedback as 100% about the giver of it.  Though we yearn for and even need to have some kind of acceptance of what we make, there is this peculiar paradox:  our work is a reflection of us and it also has its own life.  Just like a child – who can look like her parents, but she is not an extension of them, she is separate and has her own soul and life force.

I’m discovering the path is to both embrace our sensitivity and develop the courage to risk revealing ourselves – our souls.  It is how I’ve been able to not just take my art from plastic bags under my bed and show it to the whole world, but also to recover from paralyzing stage fright and step up in the face of my fear that I had no idea how to be a teacher or leader.  This song is not uplifting – it doesn’t have a happy ending.  Its singer is still lost.  But it’s my experience that once I’ve let myself really be lost, something else – previously unimaginable – emerges.  I left a destructive marriage freeing me to accept an opportunity to live in Paris.  I felt my childless grief, propelling me to find another way to make a life that mattered.  My way is the way of beauty, my Sister Mary told me last week. If you are here with me, it is likely yours too – whether you make art or not.  We make our art – we do our work – for those who are there to receive it and the rest is really none of our business.  Makes it easy, doesn’t it?

In beauty – and with my love,

Cara