Painting my guts out - dare I show you how I really feel?

I'm working on accessing the part of me that has free access to creativity and flow.  It's not an easy place for me to find sometimes.  I just went to see a coach today to help me find that place again.  When I was doing Beyond Barbie, I was in the flow.  When I was doing One Billion Rising and speaking in Paris, I was in the flow.  I felt energized and excited and woke up each day knowing what I had to do and ready, willing, and able to do it.

In between those events, I had periods that felt crappy and depressive.  I haven't been able to find the flow.  I've been stuck and blocked and depressed and I don't know what else.  And I don't know why.  What has helped me break through is having something to work on - as soon as I heard about One Billion Rising, I knew that was the next right thing.  But I can't wait for someone else to come up with the next right thing.  I have to be able to find my own thing that makes me feel like there's a great reason I'm alive - and working as an artist.  I love feeling vital and excited and like I'm doing something that makes a good difference in people's lives.  When I don't have that, UGH! 

A couple of weeks ago, I had an image of painting a huge painting - not of anything in particular - just throwing paint - literally - smearing whatever I wanted to for whatever reason I wanted.  Chris helped me arrange the studio and staple a piece of canvas on the wall, 6'x10'.  It stayed there a couple of days until I decided I simply had to approach it and see what came out.  I woke up knowing I was supposed to paint a lily.  I went to the store and bought a lily.  I've written about that piece in a previous blog:  http://susansingerart.blogspot.com/2013/06/living-large-painting-with-joy.html.

This past weekend, Chris and I re-arranged the living room and stapled the canvas to our wall in there so now I have the joy of seeing it each time I come down the stairs in the morning.  I'm liking it!

When we took that canvas down, Chris and I immediately stapled up a new one.  I timidly tried to paint on it the next day.  I couldn't think of anything to do.  I didn't want to do the same thing and start a series of huge paintings of flowers - what the hell will I do with them if I do that?  And besides, these are supposed to be blow-out pieces which are unpredictable - a place I allow myself to do whatever comes out.

I tried to start like I started the other one - by painting the words "Fat, Juicy, Loose".  I decorated them, made them pretty.  The words trailed off.  I stopped.  I was completely bored.

The canvas languished for several days.  I asked a friend to come over to help.  I talked about the issues, blah, blah, blah, about how I was blocked.  Then, brilliantly, she asked me what the block looked like.  I started to tell her, then I said, "I'll show you."  I went over to the canvas and painted it.  Then I painted through it, painted the energy flowing through me instead of being blocked.  I put on gloves and smeared paint all over the canvas.  I used up several tubes of paint.  I scribbled and smeared and pressed into the wall and grunted and dipped and swirled and talked and laughed and moved with energy flowing through me. 
 
Suddenly the beeper went off.  My friend had to leave.  I told her I'd keep working and thanked her.  When she left, I had no interest in painting more.  I was done.  I sat down and wrote.

Sweating
Exhausted and Elated
Mud squirted from my senses
corralled as art on canvas
Cad red, cad yellow - bold bright
eradicating deep dark purple, blocked, sludge
Red pours through, my energy color
Pours and pours and spurts and spreads
Purple reasserts itself, travels through and back
smeared from the front
It's there.  The dark is there, mixed with the rest
but I want the Light, the power, the fresh, the new, the God.
Come through me, God, and let me be with you.
Let me be you.  Let me express you.
Burst forth from my heart, my mouth, my hands, my loins - explode and spread
Energy released expressed
two hands rolling, drawing, moving
gloved hands smearing, pushing into the wall
pushing against firm form flat and strong
It can take me, all of me
Energy bursting forth exceding its power.
Gasping, I stop, collapse, breathe, wash, sweat, write, finish.
Spent.


That wore me out.  The canvas stayed on the wall several days - I had no thoughts about what else I could do.  Then today I worked with a creativity client and loved the suggestions I was giving her.  I wish someone would give me similar suggestions and make me be accountable to her!  And actually - today I started working with just such a person.  I had that appointment at 2.  When I left there I tried to find something to do - get my oil changed, go grocery shopping - whatever I could to distract myself from going home.  Eventually I got home and came out to the studio.  It is so hard to be out here sometimes.  It's where I have to, if I let myself, face myself and my dark and my fears and my blocks.  Painting is not easy.  Doing real work is not easy.  This is not a weeny career.  It is much harder than anything else I've ever done.

I started by working on an abstract piece I'm interested in, but I don't know why I'm interested in it.  Or didn't.  I figured it out later.  It's a triangle, and what I worked with in the big piece was another sort of triangle - a relationship triangle - fascinating that I did it quiet and pretty and slow and gentle, then did it as I describe below - very differently.  But the same stuff...

After doing that a while, I got tired of myself and tired of the discomfort I was feeling and realized that I could probably relieve it if I would just approach that same canvas and pile more stuff on top.  I wrote the words I needed to write.  Painting them huge, scrawled across the canvas released the emotion with the paint.  More words came.  I'd already painted one image on the canvas a few days ago.  I painted a complementary one.  They're private.  I'm not ready to share what they were. I painted another image, on top of the writing, the flow, the scrawl, the red.  Each stroke was a release, a vindication, a prayer, a promise, a tear, a fear, a choice, a bit of healing. 

I can see the canvas from where I'm sitting.  I don't know if I'll ever be able to share it.  It would offend some people.  Others would judge the images, judge the words, be put off by the harshness of it.  Some would understand, I think.  Most would feel the emotion behind it.

But what would they do with it?  Could I really let others see what is so real, so completely authentic, so full of some of my deepest feelings?  We all have pain and hardship in our lives.  We make different choices about what to do with it.  Some of us can share it with dear ones in a safe place.  I am blessed to be able to do that with Chris, with excellent therapists, with dear and trusted friends.  Some of us pass on the pain and suffering to others, unskillfully, because we don't have the skills/courage/ability to be aware of it and process it and heal and move on.

In our society, we tend to be afraid of emotions, especially strong, "bad" ones like anger and resentment - ones that cause people to act out in violent ways, primarily.

I don't know what people would think it they saw this work.  Would they be triggered?  Would they feel compassion?  disgust?  empathy?  rage that I had the gall to paint it?  I simply don't know.  And right now I don't feel safe enough to share it except with Chris and perhaps a few trusted friends - but the wrong words said, even lovingly, could be hurtful.  Clearly I'm not detached enough from it to share it. 

Art is so potentially powerful.  I can understand the Abstract Expressionists - they were able to get their feelings right out there on the canvas, but no one had to know what they were saying, because the images were abstract - think of Jackson Pollock.  Very clever.

So...  No resolution at this point!  No deep clarity.  Just process.  No product here!  I'm happy to be working.  I'm curious about where this will lead, if anywhere.  I'm thankful for the chance to feel and to express.  And excited to get back in the studio tomorrow.  A gift.

A Place of Not Knowing

It's been a very long time since I last wrote a blog post.  Thank you to those of you who've written to ask me what's up.

I've been busy - but not really.  I've been traveling, but that's not really a good excuse.  I've been teaching, but I've always found time to write this blog no matter what else has been going on.  The truth is that I've been in a low spot.  A fallow part of my journey.  And it's difficult to be with and difficult to share.

After the excitement and rush of Not Barbie and Beyond Barbie then the show in Williamsburg then our recent reincarnation of Beyond Barbie, I think I have finally crashed.  I've taken a couple of weeks off the last few months - at the beach and at my high school reunion, thinking those would be times to regenerate, but there is more to regenerate than those two weeks could accomplish.

I am in a state of not knowing.

It's very uncomfortable for a person who prefers to have huge goals she's working towards with an almost manic energy.

Right now I can conger up no goals which matter to me.

I know that women's body image issues still matter to me.  I hate what is happening in our government as it is taking steps towards becoming more repressive to women.  I'm noticing.  And I'm having trouble reacting or even responding.

A couple of months back, I created a powerful response to the Vaginal Probe Ultrasound bill passed here in Virginia.  It was accepted into a show here in town.  Then sent back home with little explanation without being displayed.  What has happened to me is that because I'm not single-minded in my vision of where I'm supposed to be going, that rejection is affecting my self-perception.  When I'm feeling clear and strong, other people can say or do whatever they need do, and it doesn't affect me very much, but right now I feel less empowered and I'm letting this get to me.

A tree by Van Gogh, brimming with effervescent swarms of life and energy

Chris asked me last night where I see myself in 10 years.  I no longer know.  He asked what I want to be doing these days (good question and one I've been mulling over a lot lately too).  I had had a bit of wine (highly unusual for me) so my brain was slipping around enough to find access to a response which felt very true - I want to be fully self-expressed, but I don't need my paintings to be an expression of MY self - rather, I want them to be an expression of my experience of God.  I want to be able to translate my understanding and experience of God onto canvas in such a way that the viewer can have access to that information visually.  I feel that connection in Van Gogh's excellent paintings.  Standing in front of some of his canvases, I can feel an instantaneous connection to the Source of energy and love and divine power.  It blows me away. 

Mark Rothko's painting

In front of Rothko's paintings, I feel sublime peace - something which confuses me because I am aware his life was fraught with distress and addiction, etc.  It feels to me, though, that he must have experienced sublime peace at some level, in order to be able to create the paintings he did.

So I want to be able to access that Source and to put it on canvas.  And I am afraid to.  I'm afraid to be so vulnerable.  I'm afraid to try to do something so important to me because I might fail.  Or others might thing it looks like shit.  Or I might think it looks like shit.  Or it might not work. 

When I paint the images of female nudes, I work from photographs I've taken.  The photographs speak to me with some of the essence I'm referencing or else I wouldn't chose them.  As I'm painting the images, I think about the woman and about what I know of her life and her story.  I try to focus on love and compassion and her divine essence.  Of course, mundane life also intrudes, but my intention is there.  I think that comes through in some of my canvases.

Right now that isn't feeling like an adequate way to explore the essence of divine Source. 

I want to take out raw canvas and pour paint around.  I want to throw paint.  I want to dance all over canvas on the floor.  I want to take off my clothes and roll around on the canvas and wrap myself in it.  I want to become ecstatic and let that jump into and onto the canvas.  I want to be a pure, ecstatic channel for divine joy.  Like Rumi or Hafiz.

Instead I'm writing about it when I have time to actually do it.  Because I'm terrified of what I might find out.  I have high expectations of how I want it to look, and it might not even begin to start to think about thinking about getting there.

It's hard for me to allow myself permission to learn, to have Beginner's Mind, to explore, to screw up, to play.  My inner demons (and some outer very vocal ones in my physical world too) tell me I need to be earning money.  I have to create beauty.  What's inside of me which is craving expression will be too ugly for the world to accept.  If I actually let out my real self, it'll be too much/too intense for others.  No one will be able to take me if I let them really see who I am.  This post is too much.  Too much information.  Who really wants to see the inside of someone else's head?  It's not a pretty place.

OR...

It could be that this post is a true comfort for others who've had similar experiences but have never heard it named so thought they were all alone.  I know I would feel that way if I were to stumble upon someone else's existential Angst to which I could relate. 

I know there is divinity and pure unadulterated love at my core.  I trust that unequivocally.  I trust that each person has the same at his/her core.  So why the fear of accessing it and expressing it?

People have been martyred for trying to express this divinity, this love, this passion, this understanding that at our core we are all good. 

In a moment I am going to get up out of this chair and head out into the studio where I will clear off a bit of space so I can have room to explore and play and experiment.  I will ask God to be present and to let me be a channel for Divine goodness and joy.  And I plan to have fun too.  I will let go of my fear, or feel it and go for it anyway.

I'll end this blog with a quote a friend sent me today.  It resonates strongly for me with what I'm going through now:

The woman who needs to create works of art is born with a kind of psychic tension in her which drives her unmercifully to find a way to balance, to make herself whole. Every human being has this need... -May Sarton

If you have experienced any of what I've written about today, I'd love it if you would share your experiences too.  What have you done from this place of Not Knowing and discomfort?

Grief

It was difficult for me to get to work today.  Or yesterday.  I spent a lot of time "getting organized".  And on Facebook.  And writing "important and necessary" emails about business issues.  Admittedly, the emails were important, but I knew them for what they were - diversions from the work I really WANT to be doing.

There are times when it's difficult to paint because I am afraid to be with the feelings that painting brings up.  Painting is like meditation - an opportunity for previously veiled/denied/hidden feelings to arise because nothing else is there to distract me.  Sure, I'm thinking about hue and value and shape and line and form, but there's plenty of room between those thoughts for feelings to arise.

And my feelings lately have been challenging.  My father died about a month ago.  He'd had Alzheimer's disease for a long time - 7 or 8 years perhaps - so he hadn't been "himself" for a very long time - hadn't even known me for a couple of years.  His wife told me he'd go around the house calling me and my sister at times, but he couldn't name who I was for anything.  So I'd been dealing with the loss of him for a long time.  It is surprising to me to have strong feelings about it now that he's actually died.  Perhaps it's because it put a lid on it.  The finality.  The end.  There's no way some miracle drug can bring him back anymore - not that it ever could, but hope springs eternal.

I can hardly imagine a disease worse than Alzheimer's except perhaps for ALS which relentlessly takes the body while the mind is still intact.  Alzheimer's attacks the mind relentlessly, offering a glimpse into the sufferer's mind every so often, but mostly advancing without pause through memories and abilities and words, then it marches directly into the body and shuts it down, finally, thank God, after taking all there is to take of the brain.  I found it horrifying to watch his demise.  Each time I would see him, he had lost more words, more abilities.  Oddly, though, his gestures and tone of voice remained.  So, though he was speaking nonsense words, his tone of voice remained so I could often tell what he was saying anyway.

Exceedingly articulate throughout his life, Dad suffered particularly cruelly with this disease which first took his ability to find just the right word.  For several years he knew it was coming and the anxiety attending its approach was great.  I was grateful for him when he got to the point where he no longer realized what was happening.  He still knew he couldn't say what he wanted to and would get frustrated, but at least he didn't know he was becoming disabled more and more each day.  Instead he'd shrug his shoulders and say, "Oh well, I don't know that word now.  Blah, la-la-la-blah!"

Eventually the disease began taking away his automatic processes like walking and even swallowing.  That was when the end was very near.  He could no longer control his movement and began pounding his hands into his stomach.  His face contorted into a grimace.  Beautifully, though, right before that final step, he saw his wife and knew her one last time.  He was able to get out his last words to her, "I love you."

Who knows where his mind was or his soul?  Yet even with all that he was present enough to let her know he loved her.  What a gift.

My last visit with him I held his hand and sang to him, songs he'd song to me as a child.  His eyes were closed when I got there but eventually he opened them and looked into my eyes intensely, locked into mine completely.  It was clear to me that he knew me.  It was a gift to be able to see him at that point and to say goodbye.  It was painful to see his body so decimated, but oddly, through all that, his soul was still present, and we were able to meet at that level and say what we needed to say.


I miss the man I knew in my childhood, the man who played endlessly with me and my siblings, who sang and danced in plays, who told stories in my classrooms, who made me feel as adorable and loved as a person can feel.  I'm thankful his body is free of its constraints now.  I wish him well on his journey.

I am thankful for painting which allows me to express everything I just did but wordlessly.  It allows me to be with the feelings, to weep as I paint when I need to, to hover in and out of the grief then sway into hue and form and line then back into tears and sadness.