When I Have No Steam Left It's Time to Make Art
"The world is literally and figuratively on fire and...you need to make art."
So says creative coach Aimee McNee on her recent TEDtalk.
My client, Kate, sent this video to me (thanks, Kate!), knowing that Aimee's premise, "The creative act is a huge part in how we extinguish and put out these fires"would speak to me.
It does. It speaks to my heart and soul. You?
(Actually, so much in this talk speaks to me. I hope you watch it!)
I've been feeling saturated like a sponge that's holding, holding, holding all the water and can't seem to let it go.
Likely, this is grief. My clients' grief, the world's grief, my own grief. But what to do with that? Keep holding it in?
The Geography of Grief's summer cohort drew to a close a month ago and right after that I went into a kind of hibernation. For the first time in many years I felt like I had no desire, no fire in me. No umph. No light.
To be fair, I'd lost four people in a month, six in one year. People I loved or who people near me loved. (They were all around my mom's age, so there was that, too.) It was a lot. AND it was the death-anniversary of my dear Uncle Harry and my dad.
August. Oof. You took me down.
Here's what I know: When I feel like I have no steam left, it's time to make art. When I feel like a saturated sponge, I need to squeeze it out on the page or the canvas. I need color and my hands in the paint. I need beauty and light and also scratches, scribbles and dark, muddy color. I need all of that.
The first thing I did was get to work on a commission of seven paintings. These are seven abstract mixed media pieces expressing my client's core values. I spent two days immersed in the process and it felt AMAZING to be deep in it. Layers and layers of colors, textures, words, and paint. Clearly a commission is a whole different ballgame from the art journaling I teach (these pieces will end up on someone's wall) but I loved the freedom inherent in the process of creating them. It called to me!
Next, Mary and I headed to Fort Bragg on the Northern California coast for time in nature, cool air, and the ocean. I brought my watercolors and art journal and at the last minute, my metallic watercolors! Good move! Everyone can use a little sparkle! We'd hike and I'd lug along all my supplies. We found an excellent log on the beach. I painted. Mary spread out the blanket and read.
Deep sigh of relief.
We also hit a bunch of vintage, thrift and art supply stores and I stocked up on some supplies (old books, vintage sewing patterns, paint pen). I spent an afternoon reading a secondhand book I'd picked up recently about making altered books. I tagged page after page with little post it notes. I felt inspired! (Altered Books, Collaborative Journals, and Other Adventures in Bookmaking by Holly Harrison
I highly recommend this book and you can only find it used! Try your favorite online used book seller or Ebay.)
I got out my art journal and explored something that's been eating at me...
All good. All necessary. All helping me to release the grief I've been holding.
Even grief-tenders need to let go of the grief.
I came home to find another awesome podcast interview is live. It's another chat I had with Kim Cofield of the Art Supply Posse podcast. (We can't get enough of each other!) This time we're talking about dealing with creative blocks. (Perfect timing, right?)
Here's ⇢ a link to the episode on Spotify: ART SUPPLY POSSE PODCAST #207
You can also listen to it here ⇢ on Apple Podcasts and here ⇢ on Podbean.
Here's the thing: The world is on fire and it needs your art. But more than ANYTHING the world is on fire and YOU need your art ... to breathe, to release, to feel, and to get your spark lit up again.
