Welcome to Week 11,
Awake and Creative.
Today I address the crunchy time over the canvas.
The time where making sense makes new sense.
The quote comes from a beautiful artist,
Dorothea Rathburn.
Let's dig in.
I'm in a place in my studio.
In my work.
That is uncomfortable.
Frustrating.
But not unfamiliar.
That at least,
The familiarity,
Gives me a little peace and keeps me getting back in there and facing it.
Yet at the same time,
It's a confusion.
It is that frustration.
And I sure wouldn't mind if it just stayed comfortable.
But I know better.
Just like the cycles of the seasons and our days and months.
The rhythm I take in the studio has its own system in play.
If I try to fight it,
Or if I try to stay in the comfort zone,
Then my work goes dead.
It is,
It's lifeless.
Has no more vigor or appeal.
It could look the same as the full series that came before it,
But because that series ran dry,
Its story had finished being told,
And I push on to more.
Those more pieces hold no strength.
All this to say I know better.
And still after all these years,
I hit this part of the rhythm,
And I want to fight it.
I want to reject it.
Oh,
There's a lot going on.
But because I can't make sense of it,
And it's not within the wheelhouse,
If you will,
Of where I'm usually standing here before the palette,
It's frustrating.
I don't trust it.
But I know better.
You too,
As you face forward into your creative explorations today,
Do trust it.
You may be in a different part of the rhythm,
Fully engaged in the system of discovery,
And you've found that final aha that is pulling the series together.
Keep going.
But if you're like me and that series has finished telling its story and you're moving on to something new,
Well,
You hope so anyway.
Can you allow the frustration into the room?
It may require some time away,
Stepping away,
Coming back,
Stepping away,
Coming back,
Staring at walls,
Cleaning the floors,
Straightening a pile that's already straight.
All of these things I daily practice.
But I can see that they too are offering a way through,
A way in,
And a way of clearing my vision to follow the instinct and intuition.
Because of the conundrum going on in the studio space,
This week's quote is a simple one.
It's a mantra I let calm me.
And I invite you to do the same,
Because I know this time will come again,
This time that the quote I'm going to read suggests.
Dorothea Rathburn is an artist who exclaimed this.
I do not think in the studio.
I do not have thoughts when I work.
Thoughts come before I work.
Thoughts come after I work.
No thought when I work.
I've felt that.
I know that.
That's the deep and passioned flow.
And I know I'll get there again.
So I await in this week of exploration.
And I keep on trusting.
Awake and Creative.
Today.
