I’ve been laughing to myself here lately about a fantasy I used to have about my art ‘career’. I saw myself being represented by a few galleries in different cities, probably nearby so I could load up a rental van and transport the work myself. I’d have a full calendar of rotating shows and that would be that. I’m realizing more and more, though, the reason I haven’t pushed harder to make this fantasy a reality is deep down I know that I work too slowly for that pace of production. Knowing that AND finding some humor in it has been liberating.
This week I continued to look at the subject matter that is asking to be deconstructed and rebuilt, spreading it out on tables in the hopes of hearing what it has to say.
Puttering around with these drawings is a necessary phase, but it is indeed a phase. I’m getting better at listening to the rhythms in the studio. Sometimes I paint 8 hours a day, sometimes I’m just physically doing nothing but feeling the butterflies flit as I figure out a way in.
I’ve been re-reading some writing I did a few years back based on the prompts from this incredible book Mapping: The Intelligence of Artistic Work by Annie West. (Sadly, it looks to be out of print.) As I read my response to the prompt below, my shoulders began to relax because I was reminded there is a lot of important subconscious work going on right now.
Speak to the silence in your work:
The work incubates in life’s quiet moments: walks in the park under the trees; pushing the grocery cart through the store then out through the parking lot to my car; lying in bed staring at the dresser, the hallway, the painting on the wall, the ceiling fan. And then there’s the quiet within the chores that actually make up the bulk of life: cooking, washing dishes, laundry, tending to animals. These parts that make up the whole is where the experience of making arts has a chance to season and brew. The finished work doesn’t break the silence because it’s actually the visual representation of the silence itself.
