May 31, 2016 – Love what you love

The soft animal of MY body is in plumeria heaven on Kauai.

[Note: I’ll resume recording when I’m back home from vacation.]

When I was four years old, my older brother Joe (who was 5 at the time) and I were on the Bay Area Romper Room TV show.  We rode in the car over to KTVU studios in Oakland to be with Miss Nancy and the other girls and boys for our turn on the show.  I don’t remember much about it, except for one somewhat traumatic experience of being re-directed – on camera – when I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to.  At one point in the show we were each assigned solo activities; I was given some kind of a matching-card game. I’ve always been such a girl, and I wanted to play with the dolls that had been assigned to another little girl.  She got to put on their pretty clothes and arrange them, have them talk to each other. I wanted to do that.  So, being just 4 and not realizing that I really had to stay where I was, I went over to join her and play with the dolls.  A camera-man then pulled me by the back of my dress back over to the cards.  Oh, I was mortified!  And so disappointed! I didn’t want to play with the stupid cards when there were dolls to play with!

This memory came back to me in a recent conversation pointing to me something that has always been in me.  Since I was very young I have clearly known what I like – what I love – and what I don’t – and that this matters.  Another bit from my past aligns with this realization. When I was planning to get married in my mid-twenties one of the things that brides did (do they still?) is register for fine china, silver flatware and crystal wine glass patterns.  I went to all the department stores, including Gumps in San Francisco, searching for exactly what I wanted.  If a store didn’t have anything that I wanted to set my table with for the rest of my life, I moved on.  I didn’t accept their selection of patterns as all my options.  I liked what I liked and wasn’t willing to settle!

As I looked at this, I remarked at the line from Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese” (hear her read her poem here) that is on the front page of my website and in my artist statement:  You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.  Yes.  This.  It is what I believe, deeply, fully, completely.  And I’m realizing this is what I’m here to teach and even – dare I say? – preach.   Mary Oliver’s inspired words – the soft animal of your body – make it visceral and intimate.  Coming to know what the soft animal of our bodies love isn’t an intellectual exercise – it’s not something we figure out.  Either we experience it in the moment or when we don’t, it’s something to discover, or rather uncover.

What allures us, what we love, is intertwined with who we are at the deepest levels.  And the increasing permission, the expanding freedom to live accordingly is aligned with evolution – both in each of our lives and in our culture.  I have far more permission to love what I love in my middle age than I did, say when I was a teenager and was so concerned about being accepted and included.  The recent expansion of the law to include same-sex marriage – granting the freedom to openly love and build a life with the person who we love, regardless of their gender and ours – shows how our culture is evolving in this direction too.

We don’t consciously choose who and what we love.  Who and what we love is a given. I believe it is given to us.  I’d go so far as to say that what we love chooses us.  And when we live with loving what we love at the center of our lives, making it visible, loving what we love becomes who we are to others.   Quite often I get messages or Facebook posts from people with pictures of beautiful flowers along with messages telling me that when they saw that flower they thought of me.  Me!  By loving what I love (painting flowers illuminated in sunlight that I’m so drawn to) I’ve become a “beautiful flower” person to them.  The same goes for Paris.  I am a “Paris person” to those around me.   My hubby is a pilot, so he’s an “aviation person.”  My brother Joe is a “tropical fish” person – he has an eight foot long salt-water tropical reef tank in his living room that he tends to.  There are several people in my life who are “dog people.”  When we love what we love, whatever is our “thing” becomes who we are.

I don’t mean to imply that we should love everything.  If we were drawn to everything equally, we’d not have the contrast we need to see what we do love.  And – there are things we are ambivalent about too – I sure don’t have strong preferences for every aspect of my existence.  But knowing what we love and letting ourselves love it where it matters most to us makes the difference between a life worth living – and not.

I’m painting these eggplants for our “shiny things” Special Saturday this weekend. But somehow, it’s not doing it for me in Kauai.

I’ve been here on Kauai for two weeks.  The paintings I brought along with me on this trip have just not grabbed me.  I so love to paint here in the soft, moist air and several of the days here I’ve had to make myself sit down to paint – to keep my commitment to paint every day.  The experience of painting something that does “do it” for me, is altogether different.  I can’t wait to get back to it, I have energy for it.  I’ll get there with the painting I have underway, but in the moment it’s hard to be excited about it.  The good thing about this experience is that I’m living right now the not-loving what I’m doing – the contrast is striking.

All of this shows me why I was reluctant to teach at first – my fear and reluctance served me.  I didn’t know how to teach in a way that would honor my desire to have people love what they love. The only workshop and class formats that I knew of were those where the teacher assigned something to paint – either everyone painted the same image or a subject chosen by the teacher – including a dead fish sitting in the middle of the table.   I think this is why I’m largely self-taught – life didn’t put a teacher in front of me that provided exactly the kind of instruction and environment that supported me to paint what I loved.  I needed to figure it out for myself, so I could offer it to others.

I’m glad to have this little painting with me – at least I have flowers to paint here.

Because of this I am not the teacher for everyone.  When a new artist/student comes to paint in one of my groups, if they don’t know what they want to paint, I ask questions, I offer a computer to look through photos, but I don’t give any assignments. That doesn’t work for everyone, so it’s really good there are teachers who offer more structure.  For me, it’s worth waiting for a flicker of inspiration to emerge.  In doing so, it invites the soft animal of your body to share what it loves.  The art that then comes of you is personal, it’s yours. My hope is that the flicker will become a flame of inspiration, a hunger even, to share with the world what you love.

There is a genius in you – something you that said “I want to learn to paint” that is connected to something deeper than acquiring paint-handling skills.  I’ve never been more clear or more certain that I’m here to create the environment and provide the support and encouragement for you to paint what you love, live what you love, love what you love.  I love the book “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield.  The last section of this book is laced with this very message.  These are the last lines from the book:  “Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”

It’s worth repeating:  let yourself love what you love – and then, give us what you’ve got.

Love,

Cara