Angela's Art Blog

Thoughts on Art and Spirituality

May 14, 2012
by Angela
0 comments

Clear seeing…


As you may have noticed, I’ve been in the midst of a bit of a struggle with my art the past several months – feeling a general sense of being lost and struggling for glimmers of inspiration. It’s not an unusual struggle for an artist to go through, and I’ve gone through it several times. I know it is simply part of the creative cycle. Doesn’t really make it any easier to live within though, so I’m happy to report that I’m beginning to see the light at the end of that dark tunnel.

Now, the irony is that I’m finally feeling inspired and I’m seeing images I want to create and it’s so powerful that I’m also starting to feel fear. Fear of getting swept up in it, and fear of not getting swept up in it enough to fully express it. Fear of the light after so much darkness.

The other day my dear friend Diane shared this quote from Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art: there is, he says, “this need to move ever upwards and forwards, by sweat of the brow, through sufferings and fears. When one stage has been accomplished, and many evil stones cleared from the road, some unseen and wicked hand scatters new obstacles in the way, so that the path often seems blocked and totally obliterated.” It perfectly sums up my current position, and I’m beginning to sense that in order to clear the way I’ll need to release some of the familiar and embrace more of the unknown.

And now that I’m beginning to see a hint of a path, I must make my mantra this sentence which I found in this morning in Meditations From the Mat by Rolf Gates: “Clear seeing must be more important to us than the comfort of certainty…”

I’ll share more when these ideas feel less fragile, but for now, I must find a way to exist, and to create, between these two quotes, to use my clear vision to keep to this new path in spite of the discomfort of uncertainty.

May 7, 2012
by Angela
8 Comments

Dealing with Disappointment

Actually, the title should be Not Dealing with Disappointment, because that’s just what I’ve been doing. And for some reason this morning it all came together for me and I realized what I’ve been not doing, and what that not doing is doing to me.

I’ve had a series of disappointments, big and small, over the past several months – well, okay, years, but it’s only in the past few months that I’ve really noticed that  it’s been causing problems. And now I know that it’s been causing problems because it’s trying to get my attention. Well, it finally did.

What is the “it” that’s causing problems? My ego. You may call it the lizard mind, or the monkey mind, or maybe even your inner child. Ego just seems to sum it up for me today.

What I realized this morning is that I’ve been pretending I don’t have an ego. If I don’t have an ego, then my ego can’t be offended. If I don’t have an ego, then disappointments don’t matter and I can simply pretend all is well. If I don’t have an ego, I won’t feel hurt. And it won’t have the power to stop me.

Well, I’m here to say that I do indeed have an ego, and it is indeed hurting. And not just from the slings and arrows fired from the world around me, but also because I’ve been ignoring it and trying to pretend that I’m above the hurt, I’m too spiritual for the hurt, I’m too mature for the hurt, I’m too something for the hurt because I want the hurt to go away! It really is just like a hurt child – that hurt, abandoned child that makes up such a large part of how I see myself. And, as I know all too well, ignoring that hurt child doesn’t make the hurt, or the child go away. In fact, by ignoring her, she has simply gotten stronger and louder.

And what is it doing to me? It’s slowly but steadily shutting me down. By not acknowledging and accepting that part of me, I’m not really accepting any part of me, and I can finally see that this is why my art has all but come to a stand still. Why I have trouble some days figuring out why I should get out of bed. Why life has lost a lot of  color and flavor and, let’s face it, meaning.

It’s time to do some acknowledging, and give some long overdue care, to the wounded child who is simply trying to get my attention. Maybe I’ll bake her some cookies today, and we can eat them as we acknowledge our disappointments, and also acknowledge our strength to keep going anyway. Together.

April 9, 2012
by Angela
4 Comments

Looking vs. Seeing

(I don’t want to cause any extra stress in your life, so rest assured, this story has a happy ending.)

Time: Friday afternoon
Scene: I’m sitting at my computer checking my email.

I see an email from the director of the gallery where my work is currently on view, and it simply says, “Call me.”

So I call him.

When he gets on the line, he says, “Can you come down to the library (which the gallery is a part of) because it seems that some of your paintings have been vandalized.”

My heart stopped. I shut down my computer, called my husband, gathered my keys and drove downtown, reminding myself to breathe as visions of all my canvases destroyed by dripping black spray paint filled my mind.

When I arrived, I practically ran to the exhibit and quickly started looking closely at each painting. The first wall of work seemed to be fine, so I breathed a little easier. The next wall of work also seemed fine, so I breathed easier still. I paused and prepared myself for the destruction that was surely around the corner, the wall furthest from view of the security guard.

The paintings were all fine.

marks on Surfacing II

Practically giddy with relief I walked back to where the security guards and the director were waiting for me very tensely. I told them I didn’t see anything amiss, but asked them to show me what they saw. So the director started with the very first painting and pointed to some scratch marks. I said that I had made them, that they were part of the piece. As a little of the rage left his face, he pointed to another painting and some pencil marks, and I told him the same thing. We repeated this little dance at about ten more paintings, by which time he was practically wobbly with relief. Then the security guards took me through much the same routine, insisting that for the past month they had looked at the work daily and really loved it, but hadn’t seen those marks.

marks on Sheltering Stones

I was touched by their real concern, and by the fact that they loved my work enough to keep looking at it. And I realized there was a lesson in all of this about the difference between looking versus seeing. Those guards and the director had been looking at my work for nearly a month, but just that day had finally seen it. They had found something new in supposedly inanimate objects. What could have been a tragedy full of guilt and blame and harm had been transformed into wonder.

Isn’t that part of the power of art? And isn’t that worth a second (and third and fourth) look?

March 19, 2012
by Angela
4 Comments

Winter into Spring

Harlequin in her self made nest

Winter into spring, back into life… That’s kind of how this past couple of weeks feels to me. Not the actual weather outside, mind you, that is still in winter mode around here. Cold, gray and wet. (This photo is how one of my cats decided to keep warm one day.)

But since I last wrote I am feeling so much better. I want to write about how I pulled myself out of the mire because I know I’m not alone in experiencing this downside of the creative cycle, and I know it won’t be the last time that I experience it myself, so maybe by writing about it I can help others, and myself in the future. I’m having a little trouble breaking it down though. It seems to be a mixture of allowing myself both wallowing and self-care, hours of couch potato mode leading to a subtle desire to take some sort of small action and then doing it. I guess I treated myself as though I was recovering from an illness.

And as I began to emerge from that depressing fog, I allowed myself to be gentle with myself as I started back to my studio. The first day back was just awful and I spent that entire day feeling tense and sad, and I took that next day off again and enjoyed a Yoga class instead. But the second day back was very good. I don’t know if I created anything wonderful, but I could feel the joy of the process again and I’m really looking forward to going back.

(That’s about all I have for now. Maybe I’ll be able to break it down further later.)

March 12, 2012
by Angela
8 Comments

Some days…

I debated for a while whether to even write this post. I’m really not very good at sharing my feelings, especially when they’re not positive, especially in public forums like this. Heck, sometimes not even with myself. Somewhere along the way I picked up an inner voice that says, “never let ‘em see you cry,” when I think about sharing my disappointments and discouragements. Well, it’s been a tough weekend, and I feel the need to share and my husband’s out of town on business so…

As I mentioned in my last post, I set up for another art exhibit last Thursday. Sunday was the reception. To say it was disappointing is an understatement. Very few people came, and the majority of them were my co-exhibitor’s family and friends. I am profoundly grateful to the few who did show up for me. And I did get some very, very nice comments about my work and the show, so overall I guess it was good. But it’s the latest in a series of recent disappointments in my art career that I’ve had to put a positive spin on when inside it just hurts. And all these little disappointments are building up to a huge wall of discouragement that’s threatening to squelch all motivation. And then today I find out that my work that’s been up in Everett the past couple of months is all being returned to me this week (that’s always hard), and the latest is just a few minutes ago I got an email from an art award I applied for thanking me for my interest and wishing me all the best in my future endeavors. Ouch. Talk about kicking you when you’re down.

So, I’m a bit blue. Can you blame me? Sometimes it all just seems like soooooo much work with so little acknowledgement or reward. Most of the time that all has to come from within, and right now I’m having trouble pulling that off.

That’s about it. Thanks for listening. I’m going to go wallow for a bit. Then I guess, I hope, I’ll be getting back up on that contrary horse and riding again. *sigh*

March 9, 2012
by Angela
2 Comments

New exhibit:Views From Within

I spent yesterday hanging about 20 of my paintings for Views From Within, a 2-woman exhibit with my studio mate Karen Utter at The Handforth Gallery here in Tacoma. The space is great and I think the show looks awesome. It’s always so great when my work is lit properly – it really brings out the details. I’m looking forward to our reception on Sunday afternoon. If you’re in the area, please stop by between 2 and 4 for some light refreshments, conversation, and, of course, art.

Here are a couple of photos I took once I was done setting up:

postcard announcement

February 27, 2012
by Angela
5 Comments

Confessions: Part 3

Fair goes the dancing when the Sitar is tuned.
Tune us the Sitar neither high nor low,
And we will dance away the hearts of men.
But the string too tight breaks,
and the music dies.
The string too slack has no sound, and the music dies.
There is a middle way.
Tune us the Sitar neither low nor high.
And we will dance away the hearts of men.
–The Buddha

 My Yoga instructor started yesterday’s class with the above quote, and it struck a primally deep chord within me.

The key to tuning the Sitar to the middle way, to tuning your practice to your truth, is self-awareness. In practicing Yoga poses, it’s vital to be self-aware in order to avoid injury and to find the deeper truths within the practice. It’s not about “winning” yoga. It’s not about keeping up with those around you, it’s about listening to your body and responding to its truth. Not pushing too hard just because Miss Really Flexible is next to you, or just because you think you should be able to do more. And not avoiding poses because you don’t like them or you find them difficult. It’s about listening to your body and your thoughts, paying attention, and responding without judgement, to what is, not to what you think should be. To allow and accept your truth in that moment.

This has really come home to me in my art practice too. I’ve been talking about it, thinking about it, and thinking I understood it for a very long time now. But when I met that stone wall and finally let myself take a retreat, I realized that I only knew the words, not the meaning behind them. I was only saying it, not living it. I still let myself get caught up in the trap of expectations, of culturally- and self-imposed “shoulds”. I compare my progress and successes and habits to those of other artists, and to what I have somehow incorporated into my own inflated expectations and find myself lacking because I somehow think their truth should be my truth too. I should be able to paint for a solid 8 hours a day, every day, no matter what. I should be able to market constantly and sell constantly. I should be able to keep on slogging with out getting in the least bit defeated by disappointments and setbacks. I should be able to… I think you get the idea. Is it any wonder I come up short?! These are not my truths.

I had tuned the Sitar string too tightly and the music died. I forgot that living into my truth is the success I truly need.

When I allowed myself to take a retreat from being an “Artist” with a capital A, when I allowed myself to stop listening to all those “shoulds”, I finally allowed myself to start truly listening to and accepting my truth – perhaps for the first time ever. The challenge of course is to not tune the string too slack, so I play in my sketchbooks, and I gently and mindfully ease back into my studio practice, and I endeavor to let my truth continue to guide me. Being in the studio is so much more easeful now, more playful, and more open to inspiration. It’s still hard work, but it’s enjoyable work again.

So I will do my utmost to stay on the middle way, knowing that I will most certainly falter and get sidetracked. But I will try to be aware and nonjudgmental when this happens, and I will try to remember these words from the Buddha and let them bring this Sitar back into tune.

 

February 24, 2012
by Angela
5 Comments

Confessions: Part 2

In yesterday’s post I said that I’d return today and write about some of the activities I turned to and the realizations I had on my retreat. Okay, so where to begin?

Expectation

Being an artist had become all about making serious paintings on serious canvas during serious studio time. It was all getting just a bit too serious and limiting. Somewhere along the way I had let myself forget that “Art is neither a profession nor a hobby. Art is a way of BEING” –Frederick Franck. Instead I had imprisoned my artist inside four walls, letting myself only feel like an artist when I was actually painting. And, worse, only when I was selling. That put a lot of pressure on painting to always be good, to always be serious and successful. How can anything meet with that immense and constant expectation and not give under the pressure?

Releasing the pressure

During my “retreat” I found myself turning to my sketchbooks/journals with an enthusiasm I haven’t felt in years. Here was a place where I could be an artist without expectations, where I could sketch and doodle and explore on a small scale anywhere, even outside the confines of my studio walls. A place where I could let the art be about the process again, not just the result. I also spent a lot of time pouring over books about artists’ sketchbooks, and it felt like a breath of pure oxygen to see the freedom contained therein, and the beauty of the imperfect. My sketchbooks are now a haven for me. They’ve moved beyond the realm of mere sketches, and are now a place for me to breathe. It’s pretty exciting. I feel like I’ve discovered a whole new art medium.

More later. For now, here are a few great books that let you take a peak inside others’ journals/sketchbooks: Drawn From Life: The Journal as Art by Jennifer New, The Illustrated Life by Danny Gregory, and Drawn In by Julia Rothman.

 

February 23, 2012
by Angela
5 Comments

Confessions: Part 1

Well, so much for posting every day in February. It’s been nearly a week since I last posted. I’ve been trying to put into words what’s been going on in my artistic life lately and it’s been hard to write about in a clear way since I’m still trying to sort it all out. But today I decided to just write. Apologies if it’s a bit of a ramble, and quite possibly incomplete.

piece of a painting/sketch I made my first day back to my studio, mixed media on paper

The past few weeks, and if I’m honest, quite a while longer than that, I had been just feeling all out of sorts with my art. Painting had become a huge effort, like I was trying to swim through honey, or trying to push a huge boulder up a steep hill. Thanks to my basic structure of getting to the studio even when I didn’t feel particularly inspired helped me to continue creating, but it was exhausting. It finally got to be too much for me and a couple of weeks ago I simply stopped going to my studio for nearly 2 weeks. I’ve never done that under my own volition before, and then when it does happen I tend to get very cranky. But this time was different, and I knew from day one that I was doing exactly what needed to be done. I needed to get out of the routine of my structure, and out of my studio, in order to get clear on what the problem was. I needed a retreat.

So, I did just that. I didn’t even tell anybody, I just stopped going to my studio. Instead I allowed myself the time to putter and rest and have no expectations of myself (or at least as few as I could). It was a bit of a roller coaster. Some days, some moments, were filled with relief and calm and clarity, and some were filled with anxiety and shame and confusion.

I started going back to the studio a couple of days ago, and I can report that my retreat has helped immensely. I’m taking it slow and easing back into my structure, and it’s feeling better than it has in months! And in keeping with taking it easy, I’ll stop writing here for now and return tomorrow with some of the activities I turned to and the realizations I had on my retreat.