i think i am facing up to one of my fears
that is if i open to the creative side of myself , fully, deeply
i will end up an artist -
a crazy starving artist.
There is an understanding somewhere in me that what an artist is is someone odd
so blown around by the winds of their inspiration that they are distanced from the planet,
their hair and clothes always askance,
their minds constantly whispered to by voices unseen....
as a small child i heard a voices constantly which told me things i knew others didn't hear... it made my life hard as a child, to always be elsewhere in my head...
i remember the day that i asked the voice to leave
i chose normality over those whispers and the imagination that i swam in.
With Connies BIG FEARLESS PAINTING COURSE we have been meeting Fearless women who painted BIG.
most of them scare the shit out of me
they are odd, fearless, cantankerous, difficult
but i am drawn to them like a little peice of iron filing to a magnet
despite myself i think of them over and over, Helen Frankenthaler pouring her paint so lovingly onto the canvas, Susan Rothenburg chortling over herself and the big bold beauty all around her, the haunting realness of the people that Alice Neel forced the canvas to acccept... all of them present in their process,
some of them not enjoying the work, but turning up anyway
just putting down what they see
being bold
taking the chunk out of life that they desire and making it theirs....
i want that fearlessness
but i don't want my children to be wounded (Susan Neel's son broke my heart when he said he was damaged by his mother's bohemianism)
i don't want to run off to the South of France like Joan Mitchell...
or maybe i do
maybe that is what scares me
maybe the pull to be myself (and as i sit here early early in the morning so i can get this out before the families' life demands my presence, i look like a dishevelled weirdo!) to be this creative-driven-follow-the-muse-wherever-the-hell- she-leads-me kind of woman is so strong
and maybe i have to choose....
or maybe if i choose love i can have them both
This week we did memory painting and i began by painting memory that was both painful and creative - there was a lot of visible anger on the page...
and now i have been drawn to create a memory painting which is so much more than just anger and fear.. it is the complex sustaining web of love which my grandparents gave to that odd little girl who lived in fantasy....
the beginnings of it are above ... maybe my answer is if i keep coming back to love i can have it all - the creative life and the family life, the voices in my head and the non dishevelled hair ...
maybe i can be saved by love.
you are love.
ReplyDeleteAND you are an artist.
hmmmm..........
scary at first.......then awesome.
way way awesome.....
You can be anything you want to be, dear faerian. The power of love will enable it.
ReplyDeleteAll you're required to do is to trust. And to continue being the big bold you that you already are. You're too self-aware to become starving or raving. However, your blog radiates Artist.
You have already been saved by love ~~
ReplyDeleteb
the greatest thing about being an artist is that every single Artist is different--no two fill a mold....be the artist formely known as jane or simply be jane the artist---or simply fall so deep into the your art that all this time you realize that you have always been the two together--seamless--as one.
ReplyDeleteI think the struggle for me is to be fully accepting of myself and believe in myself. As much as I may want others to acknowledge and yes praise what I do, in the end if I do not start from a solid foundation, believing in my Wholeness, then the praise will never be enough. And the women we watched lived in a time when it was especially hard for women to trust in their vision; they were raised to believe themselves deficient and so worked extra hard to overcome a perceived lacked. Their muse held out a hope of Wholeness; I think we are recognizing we have to begin Whole and then our art, our life will flow and nourish us rather than pull us away from what we hold so dear.
ReplyDeleteI am so grateful that you wrote this ... I too was fearful hearing Alice's son Richard talk about the impact of her choices upon him. I think, more than anything, it was her turning a blind eye to the abuse that caused him to suffer more than just her lifestyle.
I look forward to unraveling this question further with you in the course ♥
xo Lis
Thank you for sharing these very honest thoughts!
ReplyDeleteI don't think that in becoming an artist (or claiming that title, since you already are an artist) you will love your children any less. I really think those are separate things. Well, I think Lis said it all better than I could.
Keep making art!
Lovely Faerian
ReplyDeleteI hear you & love what you wrote here.
Here is a thought - one I play around with.
You can be BOTH. You can sometimes be normal/average/daily life and sometimes be creative/crazy/free. Sometimes they can overlap, sometimes it won't work. But you don't always have to choose one and abandon the other.
By the way I see us all going to the South of France and having a lovely time, mad as you like, but maybe just for a vacation...?