I really squashed my momentum when I wrote last Wednesday, felt alive and ready, but didn't write Thursday, Friday, Saturday…you get the idea. I kept thinking, what am I going to write about? Oh though, I've got things to say. Things to explore. The ocean awaits.
Here's some things: My iPhone is my camera, and that is fair warning that most pictures will be highly filtered, but I will take them. And my academic writing? It may bleed into this page, but it has its place. And my dog? He's just grandly cute. Grandly? And also, if I'm going to be an art and music teacher, I've got some work to do. Got some exploring to explore, learning to learn.
Last night between football games and dinner cooking, the below happened. For all of the paintings completed in my artistic life, most of them have been attempts at plagiarized copies. Case in point: a Goog search for 'aspens in forest, oil painting' produces a variety of the same scene. Crimson reds resting in the foreground give way to warm, alizerine greens and tips of yellow ochre leaves. In front, noodle-y aspens stand in proud, white contrast. And that is, in fact, the scene that hangs above my dining room table as we speak. As I speak, I guess.
To get into that space where creativity hovers and my eyes blur and I'm lost in artistic wonder is difficult. But I believe it's only difficult because my ego is there with a devil's pitchfork, poking me in the side of my neck prone to spasms, saying, "Youuuuuuu shouldn't dooooo that. You're not good enough." And that voice controls me when I let it.
Amongst many other insights about creativity written by Julie Cameron in The Artist's Way (online version here), she mentions speaking to a higher power -- whether that be God, Ginesha, the universe, your dog, my dog, Yourself -- saying "God (or, see last sentence), I'll take care of the quantity, you (You) take care of the quality." Quantity I'm working on, quality I await.
These are not the acrylic colors I would normally put in my shopping basket, but they were a wonderful gift from a lovely sister, and they were used on a blank canvas gifted from another friend, and they were used to paint on an easel given to me by two of my best girlfriends. I've got gifts to use.
Heart don't fail me now.
