Ojalá, Selah, Lateda

And now for something completely different…

So, I have been trying to do this Artists’ Way thing to make myself into a “real” visual artist. I’m on the 8th week and last night I completely surprised myself. When asked to finish the sentence, “In a perfect world, I would secretly love to be..” I did not write painter, artist, illustrator, or anything relating to the visual artist. I wrote that I wanted to be an author. This really got my own attention. When the next question was to the effect of “what are you going to do about it?” I had nothing. I’ve been thinking about it all day. So then this evening I was doing a little surfing and I came across National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. I’m not a writer. I write my morning pages and occasionally blog but I don’t think I’ve even attempted a short story since I was in college. But I’m going to do this anyway. I am going to completely let myself off the hook when it comes to my visual art. I won’t worry about Illustration Friday and I may even put away my easel and unfinished masks and such. I’ll keep on with my morning pages and trying to do artist’s dates and I can use the tasks as my way of procrastinating just as I do now for my visual art. Even if I fail to reach the word count I will be be done with wondering if I have it in me to be a writer. And since it’s all about quantity and speed I don’t actually have to even worry about it being any good. It will be all about the discipline I’ve been lacking with my visual art. I’m so excited. Wish me luck.

Artist Date Refusenick

So there was this comment from M in Scotland after my comment about being a week behind the rest of the group in the Artists Way. It is haunting me. I can’t seem to think of much of anything else. She said… “There is no need to catch up with the Artists Way just read the chapter and do one or two of the exercises. The thing to not skimp on is the Artist Dates. I’ve faciliated the Artists’ Way for over 10 years now and I’ve found the students who don’t make any progress are the ones who are artist date refusenick. Do nothing else but do an artist date and you are still on the Artists Way !”   Oh no! I thought I was doing so well with my devotion to writing my morning pages and forcing myself to do as many tasks that didn’t sound as I did ones that did seem like they would be fun. But I must admit my Artist’s Dates have not been what they should have been. The first one at the bookstore was good, and the next one would have been great if I hadn’t brought my kids along, but then the next week all I did was go to the outlet mall by myself for an hour, and then I tried to count the Women of Faith conference as one even though I wasn’t alone for a second of it. I have compromised a lot and tried to justify why I haven’t been as true to them as I say I want to be. The biggest justifier I have used is that there just aren’t many places that are interesting to go in this tiny little town and that if I’m going to go somewhere neat and interesting then I should allow my children to be exposed to it as well. Plus there is the issue of my husband and I working almost opposite schedules and the price of gas and babysitters and my excuses can go on and on, and they are good excuses.  But I want to make progress. I want to start seeing some synchronicity. I want everything this book talks about. I really truly want to be on the Artists Way. Thinking Woman commented on my last post that there should be a version of this book for people with kids. I agree. Does anyone have any advice for me on how to actually get out there alone and take my artist self on a date?

Artists’ Way: Week 4

Oh my. Week 4 of the Artists’ Way dragged out over 2 weeks. I think I was pretty close to not making it through. But here I am. I answered my check-in questions and read Week 5’s chapter today. I’m now over a week behind the rest of the online group and haven’t read anyone else’s posts about it for 2 weeks, but at least I’m still in. I’ve discovered I am very good at self-sabotage and can come up with a million “good things” to do rather than feed my artist. Week 5 is going to be sooo good for me, wish me luck with keeping it up.

Ok, so I just posted this and walked away from the computer to continue on with my evening. But then I came right back. I don’t think the above does justice to my two weeks of Week 4. They really were very full weeks, physically, emotionally and spiritually. They deserve a bit more reflection. So if my lovely children will permit it I will try to elaborate. (3 more people were fired at my office today so my reading and writing of blogs and such things will be done solely from home from now on. Which should have been the case all along, I know. )

Week 4 included my birthday weekend and my husband gave me the fabulous present of a weekend in Atlanta with my favorite church friend for the Women of Faith conference. I had never been to a Christian stadium event before and being surrounded by 16,000 or so women of faith was quite the experience. More than once during the worship music I just stood and stared around at the mass of ladies filling up the arena. My concerns that right-wing politics were going to mar my experience were unfounded. I am cynical by nature and was a little put off by how much was for sale and how often we were told to buy it, but I had no “out-of-context” or “Hallmark card theology” alarm bells go off during the speakers. I was completely won over by Patsy Clairmont. She is an amazing woman. That she was able to go from being an agoraphobic shut-in to speaking to 1000’s of people is staggering. And she is able to effectively mix humor, a Biblical perspective and inspiration. In fact, all the speakers were amazing women (well, except Max Lucado, he’s still a man.) I think my biggest take-away from the conference was the idea that all these speakers and singers having such an amazing impact on stadiums full of women, are in fact very ordinary women. The main thing that sets them apart is that they went through intense trials and trusted God through them. Each seemed to have really surrendered their life to God and His will and he has decided to do amazing things through them. I was inspired to more fully surrender myself to God’s plan for my life. But along with that an old fear was brought up.

Oh my, the timer just went off. I asked my kids for 20 minutes of quiet time to write this without any interruptions and that time is up. Oh well. Perhaps leaving this entry unfinished will bring me back sooner. Hope so anyway, I think this process is good for me.

Artist’s Way: End of Week 3 - Beginning of Week 4

I wrote the title of this post in a textedit window at about 6:15 this window. I made the window small in the upper left corner of my screen and started my work. I figured that throughout the day I would slowly build up a post. But its now just an hour from time to go and this is all I have. I think the problem may be that I don’t have much to say about week 3 of doing the Artist’s Way, but I didn’t want to go onto Week 4 without giving week 3 so much as a mention. Sooooo, let’s just get ‘er done.

Week 3 was difficult for me. I was in a bad mood most of the week. I thought it had to do with politics and the state of the world in general. I didn’t figure it actually had anything to do with the Artist’s Way process until I started reading other people’s comments on the hub. It made me feel much better to know that I wasn’t alone.I felt especially convicted by the statement, “Many artists begin a piece of work, get well along in it, and then find, as they near completion, that the work seems mysteriously drained of merit.” I have unfinished art work all over the place. I have a painting on my easel that I haven’t worked on in months, a pile of just started paper maché masks from January under the server in the dining room, and a at one time oh so promising relief in the garage, just to name a few. Apparently this is a “routine coping device employed to deny pain and ward off vulnerability.” Wow. So I’m going to be working on finishing some art. I am really really going to try and let go of worrying about whether something is going to turn out good or bad and just finish it and move on. I am going to try and focus on the quantity and “let God take care of the quality.” Illustration Friday has been great for me as far as actually finishing pieces. I’ve finished more in the past few months of doing IF than in the past 4 years combined. And I think this week of not reading is going to really help as well.

Today is my second day going without reading or listening to my podcasts. When I open my internet browser my feed reader comes up first so it has been really hard not to start clicking and reading. But I have been enjoying listening to my music and this morning I was in a great mood when I woke up. And I’m still feeling pretty good. I’m sure it must be related to the absence of political/financial news and opinion in my head. Ignorance is bliss? Back several years ago I wrote a couple of paragraphs about how reading a good book was just like recreational drugs. I’ve been trying to find it but I think it might have been in an email or a comment on someone else’s blog. I may have to try and rewrite it in honor of this week being on the wagon, literarily speaking.

Artist’s Way: Week 2

This has been a very intense week for me. My emotions have been all over the place. Politics, weather, global issues, office issues, and family schedules all seemed to be boring down on me to keep me from focusing on the week’s reading and tasks. Friday I didn’t manage to do more than write the date in the notebook where I keep my morning pages. I was wondering if I needed to just call the whole thing off and go find a hole to stick my head in ostrich style. But then yesterday morning, Saturday, I woke up enough ahead of my family to spend half an hour in meditation on the Prayer of Saint Francis and then start on my morning pages. I thought I would write 6 pages instead of 3 to make up for the day before. Instead I wrote 14. The time spent meditating on the prayer right before the writing really helped me zero in on my strongest block in letting myself be an active artist. The prayer is a well known one but always worth reading again:

Lord make me an instrument of Thy peace;
That where there is hatred I might sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I might seek
not to be consoled, but to console,
not to be understood but to understand,
not to be loved, but to love.
For it is by giving that we receive,
by pardoning that we are pardoned,
and by dying to self that we are born into eternal life.

It was as I was repeating that last part that I realized that a big part of me still thought that making art was too much about myself, about my being understood, my being loved, about creating little images for the sake of my own pleasure in them. I couldn’t see how making visual art was going to do anything at all the further the kingdom of God. I realized that I could see how words or music could be an outreach but I was completely devaluing the power of images. But as I scribbled through page after page I came to feel the Holy Spirit’s assurance that I am being led down a path. That though I can’t see it from here that there is a way that God can use my images for something and that I was not being selfish or egocentric or un-Christian by trying to make art. I am not doing justice to the moment, I am uncomfortable when I read myself starting to sound too mystical, so let me just say I had a great spiritual/artistic breakthrough. I left my waking family and took a leisurely walk through my neighborhood to enjoy the feeling for a while before beginning our day.

And what a day we had. We had breakfast as a family before my husband went off to work and the kids and I headed to soccer practice. My daughter made a new friend and they played without incident as I sat sketched out ideas for my Illustration Friday submission. We came home and showered and dressed and then since I had taken my solitary walk in the morning we went on a 3 person artist date. My kids and I drove up to Dahlonega and had a great lunch at a neat little Italian place, listened to live bluegrass music in the square and then drove through the mountains to the Funky Chicken Art Project which I have been meaning to visit for several years now. We really enjoyed ourselves. When we came home we rested for a while and then the kids worked on painting their birdhouses while I started turning my sketches into a painting. We ate our leftovers from lunch for dinner and kept painting till bedtime. It was a lovely day.

The painting is not lovely. It is very awkward, but I posted it for Illustration Friday’s “Island” prompt anyway. The image is an honest one and painting it helped me in dealing with the political/spiritual angst I’ve been feeling. Besides I am really embracing this “it’s ok to make bad art” concept. Now I can’t wait to get started on week 3.

First Artist’s Date

I can’t believe it is Tuesday and I am just now writing about the end of my first week working through “The Artist’s Way.” -sigh- I have a lot of good excuses but I’ll skip them for now. I am happy to report that I wrote morning pages, or early afternoon pages if necessary, every day this week. I wrote a lot of affirmations and worked through several of the tasks. I didn’t get to go on my artist’s date until Sunday and I didn’t go where I originally wanted to go, but at least I made it.My family and I live in a very small town (we just got a Wal-mart in the last 2 years) north of Atlanta and we don’t get out all that much. My husband is a huge American football fan but all we have hooked up to our tv is a vcr and a dvd (read: no cable) so he asked if we could go down towards the city to a sports bar where he knew that supporters of his non-southern team congregate to watch the game Sunday after church. We went and had lunch and a beer and then I left my sweet family to watch the game with the fanatics and I went to spend an hour at the new Barnes and Noble. It was lovely. First I just wandered around, not sure what to do with myself in a store without whining children asking to either be bought something or to be taken home. I browsed the bargain books, the art books, the Christian books, the general spirituality books and spent quite a bit of time comparing prices and designs of blank books, journals and moleskines. I debated on just how much a good cup of coffee was worth to me and then found the magazine section. I had forgotten just how many magazines are out there. I secured a rather comfortable (though not padded) seat near a window and pile of magazines. I leisurely looked through 3 art magazines and a design magazine. No one distracted me in any way what so ever. Weird. Very weird. I was not very moved by the art I found in the magazines but as I was putting them away and getting ready to leave I walked by the craft magazine section. There a magazine called the “Artful Blog” jumped off the shelf and into my hands. It was a full color magazine printed on high quality coated stock featuring photographs and text from web logs! I was flabbergasted but fascinated. I sat back down and studied it for a while. I was familiar with one of the blogs featured, but all of them were beautifully presented. I jotted down a lot of urls to add to my reader for future inspiration. I can’t even pretend to understand the state of media these days. What a confusing yet exciting time to be an artist, everything seems to be in such flux.  I could go on and on, but, again, I won’t. I bought myself a small hard bound blank book that I can carry around in my purse and a Spanish translation of a Magic Treehouse book for my son and headed back to the sports bar to pick up my children. Overall I am very satisfied with my first artist’s date. I hope the next 11 will be as good. I have some other issues from week 1 that I consider significant and would like to discuss, and week 2 already has my mind racing but it is bathtime so I am done for now.

Bad Art

Yesterday one of the quotes I ended my post with was “In order to recover as an artist, you must be willing to be a bad artist. Give yourself permission to be a beginner.” That seems to be my quote of the day today. I worked on some of the time travel exercises and thought about all the different careers I might have chosen, but in my morning pages and as I fruitlessly checked my Illustration Friday post for a comment more times than I would care to admit I realized I really really don’t want to be a bad artist.  My father is an accomplished artist and as a child everyone thought I was a natural. Even in kindergarten I would not have called myself a beginner. But as someone who only makes art in fits and starts it is silly to think that I could just pick up a brush or a pencil at will and create a masterpiece every time. It is ridiculous to see myself type it out, but I believed it. I’ve created myself a list of the major things my censor repeats to me that I need to battle. Being willing to be a bad artist may not be my biggest obstacle in becoming “brilliant and prolific” but it surely ranks in the top 3.

Starting the Artist’s Way

The Artist’s Way Collective begins today.   I feel like I started 2 weeks ago when I read the intro chapters and went ahead and got started with the morning pages.  I did not manage to write them first thing every morning but I did write 3 pages a day. So far I am loving the process.  I have kept a journal off and on since I was in junior high.  Growing up I thought that if I was going to be a famous artist someday I needed to keep  track of my correspondence and write in journals for the sake of my future biographers. Needless to say there is a quite a lot of posturing and self-consciousness in a lot of what I wrote. Then about 5 years ago when I started my sporadic attempts at blogging I found that even when I wasn’t planning writing for possible inclusion in a web log I was still often using a certain tone and structure that lent itself to being read by someone else. Cameron’s permission to let the morning pages be whatever they are has been so freeing to me. I have not tried to sound deep, or thoughtful or mature, I have just let myself literally write whatever has come to mind, and that has include things nonsense like, “there are only 3 more lines on this page and if I write about their existence I will fill up 2 and then I can write about them.” And I love that that’s ok. I am however still very self-conscious about this, the blogging, part of the process. When I writing pretty regularly at Xanga I only had 3 people who regularly read what I was writing and 2 of them were very close friends. Then when I made my attempt with MySpace, again a very small number of viewers all of whom I knew. Now participating in Illustration Friday and The Artists Way Collective the possibility of actually communicating with a wider range of people has opened up. I must admit I am a little terrified but rather exhilarated too.  I really do want to push myself past being an “artsy person” and into being an artist. I want to be able to make affirmations that include the word “prolific” without wincing. And if pushing myself as far out of my comfort zone as I can bear and then typing about it will get me there, well, I’m still in.

From Chapter 1:

“Very often audacity, not talent, makes one person an artist and another a shadow artist.”

“In order to recover as an artist, you must be willing to be a bad artist. Give yourself permission to be a beginner.”

“Most of the time when we are blocked in an area of our life it is because we feel safer that way.”

The Censor

As I’m reading the introductory chapters of The Artist’s Way the idea of a censor, “our own internalized perfectionist, a nasty internal and external critic, who resides in our brain and keeps up a constant stream of subversive remarks” rang true to me. I know exactly how that voice sounds. Silencing it, or least subduing it a bit sounds great to me. So since the book said drawing a cartoon version of it would help I drew three.

The first one I did was making the censor a prim little demon perched on my shoulder. She certainly looked like a “cunning foe,” but when I went to paste her in my notebook she didn’t seem right somehow. I reread the chapter and the suggestion to, “think of your Censor as a cartoon serpent slithering around your creative Eden, hissing vile things to keep you off guard.” So I went with serpent. My next drawing I like a lot. I think it captures well how immobilized I’ve been creatively for so many years. But in that drawing it looked like the Censor was winning and that just won’t do. So I tried one more time and I think I got it. So Censor beware. I’m ready to start fighting back.