There has been a meme showing up on Facebook the last few days. It says something like this: “To all Canadians: Your weather is here. Please take it home.” Indeed. A friend and I were sitting on the beach having a meal of Tacos and Garlic Shrimp when he pointed out that it felt as though we were having lunch in Vancouver, BC. Overcast, the ocean a dark gray, people wearing hoodies, and the sand still wet from a recent rain. That made me smile and sink an extra level into my plastic chair. YUM. I needed this. Badly. My heart has been spending a lot of time in the Pacific Northwest lately. Bare feet on the smooth Mexican tiles of my studio, I have been painting women from Anacortes for an upcoming art show. WOA. The Women of Anacortes. A collection of 12 women who have had an impact on the community. Honoring them, celebrating them. So when the clouds started to shade the sun a few weeks back, I sent them a big wave of gratitude. It was such a nice support, a powerful way to help me connect with my models, with the flavor of that place I still love so much. Brushstroke after brushstroke, uncharacteristic gray sky above, Leonard Cohen singing in the background, the twelve portraits emerged and I just know that if the sun had been shining, if the AC had been on, a layer of something would not have shown up on the canvas. Just as the hot sun and sweltering heat of the summer had been my companion in creating La Gente del Pueblo earlier this year (I know at least two portraits include a few drops of sweat mixed in the paint). Our environment is so important and sometimes I think we forget this part. While we cannot always count on the sky to get cloudy to match our creative needs, we can often alter our surroundings to support us. A coat of paint, a new lamp, moving a table under a window - or away from it. Music, an apron, even a choice of tea can be subtle but effective allies. When we give ourselves the gift of taking the time to listen to our needs and make small changes, we can be surprised by how much more comfortable and inspired we become. I believe that our art reflects this. Today, I invite you to look around your art space, your kitchen, your bedroom, your bathroom, even your car, and unapologetically ask yourself: What would make this space more delicious? Then do that, even the tiniest smallest version of that. This week, the twelve paintings are making their way across the border and to the island, where I will meet them, ready to share them with the community on March 8th. If you are nearby, you are warmly invited to meet me there. A beautiful room layered with colorful rugs and pillows and soft music. Carefully chosen pieces brought back from a traveling life and made part of a rich current life.
Nothing under glass, untouchable. All within reach of human eyes, human bodies, and furry paws. A safe space to be this morning, to create. My friend’s weekly life drawing group. She had been patient with my non-commital “Can I please decide to show up at the last minute?” request and there I was, crisscross-applesauce on one of her sofas, pencil and eraser at the ready. Three of us, plus our lovely model, who is also a special friend of mine. Two dogs and two hours ahead of us. Pose after pose, sips of mint and honey tea from a large Mexican mug, I am tracing my friend’s curves. She is very still, and then she stretches and changes her body around. My pencil follows her. After a few minutes the “Is this looking right?” questions from my mind start to get quieter and further apart. Eventually, they almost disappear. It feels so good, so restful. My eyes on her body, my hand moves on the paper. A hip, a foot, a long neckline, a nipple. Then I notice something. It’s subtle and very easy to miss. I call them. I am calling her body parts in my mind as I draw them. “This is a toe.” “Here is an ear.” “Now her belly.” So weird, so tiresome. So … small. As soon as I notice what I am doing, from long-ago art classes in college, I hear my teacher’s voice: “No, no, no. We don’t do that.” This teacher had a huge influence on me twenty years ago and I love that she showed up again today in this beautiful space across the world. So I stop. I try to hold back the words, the labels. I hold back everything I have learned about how an eye looks and how a back bends. I do some inside blurring, I call on some detachment from “What I know.” I just look and I just move my pencil. A straight line. A dark angle. A curve, a rectangle. I step away from my story and my words, my past experiences, and my skills or lack of skills. I step away from my questions and I step away from my answers. I just draw. For many minutes. And right there, in this peace-infused space of not knowing, not asking, not responding, and not labeling, I receive a reminder of how sweet it would be to live - and to love - this way. No story, no pre-conceived anything. Just a journey from one curve to the next, from one breath to the next. Responding to one invitation at a time, restfully. So very restfully. Trusting, following creating. Then of course, when I look down at my paper, I love the way the drawing looks. My left brain asleep or at least dozing a little, beauty has shown up. What a Gift. As I walked out into the sunshine and sounds of the cobblestoned street an hour later, I felt slightly altered, sweetly re-oriented. Today I invite you to consider stepping away from the knowing, for just tiny bits of time. To trace the contours of your day, the lines of your minutes, the sounds of the words from someone you love. Just as they are, without naming them. I think you may love it. This life… There’s no other way to say it, no cute euphemism that will do the trick, so here goes: I just turned sixty.
“Turned” feels like just the right word, actually. A light psychological departure from the regular path. A jaunt around a corner without being quite sure what’s on the other side, or what I should pack for the trip. So yes, it happened. Quietly, uneventfully, and in a very loving way. It happened. And then, because the Universe loves to get its point across to me with the utmost clarity, within the next few weeks, I will be holding a new Baby Girl. Which again, there is no other way to say it (I tried) will make me a grandmother. Then, as if almost on cue, my right knee started hurting. Is this the end? Is this the end of my mobility, my lightness, my ease, and - gulp - my freedom? Will I soon have to sell my quad, stop wearing shorts, or dance naked around my house? The Fear. The Fear loves to talk s*** and especially loves a vulnerable audience. For a short time, I let her have at it. While I take late afternoon walks in the countryside, while I paint in my pink studio, she murmurs. She does her work, she tries. But I don’t love her company, I never have, and so I pick up her kryptonite: my pen. And there, to the paper, I give it all: her whispers and my prayers. My excitement for what’s to come, my vision, my surrender, too. My gratitude for having been granted sixty years. My joy at the possibility of having more. Slowly, line after line on the small white notebook a realization that really nothing has changed other than whatever story I am choosing to tell myself and will keep telling myself. On my birthday, I went sledding and ice skating. A few days ago, I was jumping up and down on a hotel bed in a Mexican city. I am planning my second art exhibit. I am in love. Whatever the number says, I am me and I feel me and I live like me. Yes, time is passing and while I don’t feel very different today than I did after my 50th birthday, I know that my body is slowly changing. I also know that I am loving myself more and that this shows up in all kinds of ways. Also, this weird little thought crept in the other day as I was trimming my banana trees of their huge leaves and carrying a heavy jug of drinking water into the house: there is an expiration date to this lifestyle I love. THAT thought had never shown up in my brain before no matter how / where I lived - and it was a strange one to commune with. It was not a dramatic thought, it was not a mean scary thought, but I think it was a reasonable thought. A thought that has its place right next to “I may want to start an art community someday.” Both are true, both are real, and both can be friends. Today I invite you to find the sweet spot between what’s real and “reasonable” and what’s “YOU” and maybe less standard. I invite you to give them both a voice and a place at the table and then to concoct your own blend. The one that has you jumping up and down and loving deeply and creating freely - while not being afraid to acknowledge changes. Changes that come with the privilege of blowing many candles on our birthday cake. |
SCARED OF THE SACRED
HAPPINESS SCHOOL:
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