I’ve been using the photos I took from a recent trip to the Ciener Botanical Gardens, to create some little drawings/paintings. The crazy thing about tulips is the vast variety of them! Round and bowl-like, spiky and sharp, lots o’ petals, few petals, etc. This one caught my eye with it’s pointed petals and lovely color pattern…standing out amongst the crowd.
I’ve always felt like the phrase, “Dare to Be Different”, meant that I needed to go and change who I am, do things I wouldn’t normally do, etc. But this tulip made me think that the ultimate in “being different” is to simply be who you were made to be. Sometimes we expend so much energy trying to be what we are not! Certainly it’s good to try new things, to go on adventures, to be daring! But our “differentness” is actually found in being who we were made to be…whether that’s round and bowl-like, spiky and sharp, lots o’ petals or few……;)
May your day be one in which you “Dare to be Yourself!”
I woke to a chilly morning with sunlight streaming in our home and dancing around the landscape of our neighborhood. As I began to get things ready for Maddie to have breakfast and go off to school, I thought of this phrase…”the unbearable lightness of being”. I’ve never seen the movie or read the book, but I did just look up what meaning might be attached to this phrase. And while I’m still uncertain as to its exact meaning, I gather the gist of “lightness” and “weightiness”, which is exactly what’s been going through my head.
This “lightness of being”, this joy upon waking to sunshine, the gladness to be alive and able to move around pain free… it is sometimes so exquisite or heavy that it could be described as “unbearable”. I had this same feeling in the weeks following the birth of my children…a deep joy that comes out in tears, a feeling that one is too small or fragile to contain the hugeness of Beauty that’s been given. Such is my morning here in Kernersville, NC. Who am I to have been granted LIVING? As the weight of this thought falls on me, I feel a lightness that makes me want to stand up under it and fling paint, knit riotous colors, walk for miles and miles in the sunshine, and drink in the faces of my loved ones!
I’m wishing you a “lightness of being” kind of day! Maybe not “unbearable”, but definitely palpable and real!
Last weekend, when Maddie was sick, it made me remember a wonderful morning just a couple of days before with two visiting artist friends from Reidsville. After combing the creations in Eclection, Vintage Jane, and Renew, we sat talking away at Amalfi’s about how to be artists in and around our lives as mothers. It’s a subject near and dear to my heart, as I have tried to work this thing out for nearly 16 years now…pursuing art and all that it encompasses from learning to creating, to exhibiting. Motherhood is perhaps one of the most interruptive jobs one could have. No two days are alike. Just when you get them into the school years, so many other things arise, visits to the doctor, dentist, orthodontist, sports. And of course, sick days halt whatever artistic goal or path you had hoped to pursue that day.
Suffice it to say that I’ve been, for many years, on a quest to find a sustainable art, though I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it that way. A couple of summers ago, on our trip to Michigan, we met up with old friends there. The wife’s job was to work with companies to make what they do more “sustainable”. As I listened to her describe what this meant, I gathered that her job was to help companies do what they want to do in a more humane and gentle way both for their employees as well as for their clients and to the environment. Over the long haul, these new or improved ways of doing things would allow for resources to not be used up, for employee satisfaction and less burn-out, and clients who feel served over a long period of time. Something about what she was saying made me think that this was what I had been trying to figure out in my artistic life. At the time, I felt I was actually finding the answer.
When I began to paint and draw in earnest at the age of 32, I did so in and around the busy life of a mom of little ones. I grabbed whatever time I could when my children were napping or asleep at night to paint and draw things that would hopefully be purchased in an art show or gallery. Several years into this, it began to feel very difficult to keep up this pace. I was schlepping paintings hither and yon to broaden the exposure of my artwork, while soccer games, gymnastics, church activities, etc. vied for the same slots as the openings for these shows. It was getting increasingly harder to justify the expense of framing all the works on paper (my preferred medium), to buy the tubes of paint, etc. It was also getting harder to find space in our small house to store these paintings if and when they didn’t sell in the exhibit or gallery. It felt incredibly hard to work as an artist of this kind, trying to keep it up. I got to a point where if I only had 30 minutes to paint, well that just wasn’t enough time to really do anything so I just didn’t do any “art” that day. Several of these days strung together and became a year, then two, where I didn’t do any drawing or painting.
Fast forward to this post here, when I discovered Peter Reynolds book, Ish and Danny Gregory’s book, The Creative License. I began to work (play) in a sketchbook, getting down all the “paintings” in my head, using any and every medium I enjoyed, in any and every method I wanted to. Total freedom. Easy on the pocketbook. Much easier to store. Portable. Do-able in and around a busy, chopped up, life of a mom.
What has been most lovely for me is to find working in a sketchbook to be a sustainable art that I can participate in no matter the circumstances of my life. Though I can still draw and paint for an art show when I want to, I am no longer limited to that. I can draw and paint anytime, anywhere: when my kids are sick, or at the orthodontist, or at a college orientation day, or on trips, or at the hospital, or ANYWHERE!
This may not be important to some artists, finding a sustainable art, but it has been to me. And one must find the artistic expression that is authentic to them! This is also why I love knitting and crocheting…a portable art form that can be sustained in and around a busy life as wife, mother, and teacher.
**Note: The above sketch was made along with My Balloon Tree post. Again, one of those times where the meaning of it is unclear while making it. I see it now with me standing outside my home, Balloon Tree in the backyard with an endless stream of lovely balloons of creativity flowing from it.
I’m not certain I can articulate this well… But there’s something about drawing one’s life which transforms that life. It’s as if by drawing something about your day, your world, your city or town, your home, your yard…you are viewing it through a different lens or filter. This idea came to me afresh as I’ve drawn and painted on these very gray days we’ve been having.
Gray days make me think of England, and when I think of England, I think of tea. My girls and I had a little tea party, something I love to do when I have the chance.
Gray days also make me think of walks on the moors. Where I get this I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s my reading of Bronte works that shapes this thought. But I look out our windows on these gray winter mornings and it’s enchanting…the dark, misty blue, with inky black trees.
I’m aware that sometimes my thoughts precede my drawings. And other times, the drawings precede the thoughts. But it all works together to transform an otherwise dull gray day to something evocative, romantic, enchanting, or just whimsical. Am I merely living in a fantasy world in my head and in my sketchbooks? I don’t think so. I think this is a necessary element to living fully, to drinking the juice from each and every day we’re given. To take the ordinary, the gray, the not-so-desirable and transform it in some way to extraordinary, vibrant, and delightful has got to be part of our lives.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it here again: My pens are the straws through which I drink the juice of life. Won’t you join me this year in drinking deeply of your life…gray days and all!
**Afterword: Although this post was written and drawn a few days prior to my previous post, it occurs to me now that drawing has the ability to transform on many levels. It not only transforms your outlook, your view on life; it also can transform you, your thoughts, your questions, your frustrations. This is what my Drawing Your Life Mini Lessons are all about. As I work to get these in paper form, enjoy reading through them again. And I’d love to hear from you as you read them, how are they helpful, what do you glean from them? Thanks!
I sit outside, in a brief interlude of warmth and peace, gazing up at the winter trees. An idea begins to form…those lines, those lovely lines…they make shapes, hold spaces where shape resides.
The idea I have doesn’t take shape fully yet. I’m searching, thinking about these spaces and the shapes that inhabit them. I can’t sleep ’cause the formless shape won’t let go. I rise early to search it out on paper. I draw.
The shapes that come out are round inside those lined spaces. I didn’t know ’til now. All these circles, these doodles in the tree, the tree that sits IN the path, with a couple others off the path. Why am I drawing this? I still can’t make it out.
I’m nearing the end of my search, my doodling, and one circle, which has lifted off the tree develops a tail and becomes a balloon. A balloon! Oh! How fun! But I still don’t know it’s significance, or why, or what for.
I paint. White opaque gouache mixing with the watercolor, some light tones, some vibrant. Enjoying the process of searching. I “finish” the doodled page wondering what it is, why I had to get this thing out of my head. Would this just be a searching page with no answer? That’s ok.
I go to rinse the chalky water out of my bucket, I clean dishes leftover from the night before. I wonder, a bit frustrated with myself (once again), why I do so many different types of creative stuff, even different types of drawings and paintings? Why can’t I stick with just one thing? Just splashy watercolor? Or just pastel? Just portraits? Or just knitting? JUST ONE THING?
And it hits me full force, hands in the sudsy dishwater. It’s my tree. My creative tree. Full of bright colored balloons sitting there waiting for the right breeze to come along and nudge them free. No two balloons exactly alike. Some have shades that are similar, but each one waits to be loosened from the lines. To rise gently and softly, without fanfare, off into the great beyond.
I’m no longer frustrated with myself. I get it now. It’s all ok, these differing ways of creating. It’s because of my Tree, and I like that tree. And there are many balloons yet to be released. And I can’t wait to see what each of them is going to be.
Thank you for checking in on the Balloons that get nudged out of the Tree. Maybe you have a Balloon Tree too? Please share it with me.
“Out of sight, out of mind” doesn’t really work for me. I ‘spose for a bit of time after I’ve packed something away, I don’t think about it much. But pretty soon, I start hearing things.
You’ll doubtless think me crazy, but my studio/sunroom has undergone a few overhauls in content over the last several years. Years ago, I switched out much of my drawing and painting supplies to make way for yarn on the shelving in my studio. The color-sorted wire trays on each shelf were so cheerful and made the yarn very accessible. A couple of years later, all that yarn was put into clear tupperware bins and stowed on top of a high shelf in our upstairs bedroom. Painting and drawing supplies filled the studio shelving which I desperately have more need of these days!! Being a creative person comes with loads of “stuff”, which I’ve tried to wrangle into a manageable chaos time and time again.
I need not go into all the other places where yarn is stowed in my house. But I start hearing things coming from the bags, boxes, cabinets, and of course these two bins, all of which is cleverly stashed (or NOT so cleverly) upstairs. I hear things like, “Knit me!” “Crochet me!” “Make this blanket!” “Finish this sweater!” They aren’t yelling. It’s this sweet melodic call, almost like music, that tickles my ears. It doesn’t stop (sometimes growing louder and louder) until I take a bin down and begin rummaging, pulling out something to knit or crochet.
Does this happen to you? Maybe you have your drawing and painting supplies in bins? Maybe it’s scrapbook stuff. Or fabric, or bits of glass and ceramic for mosaics….whatever. There’s something about packing it up with the thought that this is gonna go on a way back burner, that makes things start happening. Is it just me?
Anyway, I’ve been pulling these bins down quite often of late. I thought about (only briefly) trying to find a way to have it displayed or at least put in a more accessible spot. And then I thought: No! I like hearing things! I like the music I hear! Drawing and painting is like breathing for me. It is essential. But it’s kinda fun to have a hobby that tugs at you from time to time.
If you’re interested in seeing some of the things I’ve been making in response to my hearing things, pop over to my knitting blog. And if you’ve ever wanted to learn to knit and just never have, try learning from my tutorials there. And, of course, let me know what you think!
As I’ve been thinking about 2012 and that it marked the year when I took my sketchbook places I’d never taken it before, I started to wonder what other places in my life I could take my sketchbook and draw.
I HAVE taken it to my school where I teach and I’ve drawn there on a few occasions. But I’d like to do that more!
I have taken it with me on trips to visit with family, either to Boone (above drawing is of mom, who always “hides”:)
I have taken it to Mr. Whicker’s field at the top of my neighborhood.
And, of course, I’ve taken it into my yard numerous times.
And all around the inside of my home!!
But I haven’t ever taken it to church or to church activities. Maybe once or twice. Perhaps this will be the year I’ll draw the people I love in our little congregation. Maybe I’ll sketch different events there.
I also haven’t ever taken it with me to the grocery store or to Walmart, where I spend a good bit of time. I’m not sure that I’d have the guts to stand or sit there drawing in these places. But it might be a good thing to do. I have a feeling that if I took my sketchbook with me to the Mall in nearby Winston-Salem, I could get some really cool sketches of people shopping and of store windows. But I’m not much of a Mall shopper. We’ll see…
How about you? If you were to draw where you’ve never drawn before, where would that be? Would you like to sketch in these places? Why? or why not?
It’s fun to think about anyway. I love this quote about artists.
“Draw everywhere and all the time. An artist is a sketchbook with a person attached.” (Irwin Greenberg)
If any creative act, (be it visual, musical, theatrical, written or otherwise), is a definitively spiritual endeavor, then there are certain qualities to that activity that are common to all of us. For one, there’s a sense that a battle is going on. At the very least, the effort involved in climbing to the tippy top of the tree to pull down heaven is hard work and can be very exhausting.
Lately I have felt, alongside the exhilaration of creating, an increasing weariness. Participating in an art show, painting commissions, looking for and recording beauty can be very tiring in a manner different than other work tires. My husband read one of his incredible short stories to the students and faculty at my school where I teach. He recounted how exhausting that was, to offer his work “out there” in the world. As we drove home from this event, the weariness was palpable. Every time we talk to our daughter at college as she studies music, she is exhausted, pulling long hours in the practice room, theory tests, exams, and an unbelievable performing schedule. And my music educator friend, Sheri, told me in our swim team conversation, how tired and worn out she is at the holidays teaching music and performing in various holiday events in the area.
I am learning from a wonderful book by Steven Pressfield, that art is war. His book, titled, The War of Art, affirms the spiritual nature of our creative commitment to bring beauty into the world. He speaks in a martial tone, rallying us as if we artists are, in actuality, soldiers fighting a cosmic war. He outlines the weapons needed to pull down deep heaven, though he does not use that specific phrase.
The effort involves showing up to the page or canvas, doing our scales, honing our craft, working on technique, practicing, preparing. And then we must offer it, share it, put it out there, get in the ring or out on the dance floor, run the race, fight the good fight, never giving up no matter how beat down we may feel by critics, reviews, circumstances, or our own thoughts. We are to fight the resistance that comes in any form it may throw at us to keep us down, or out of the playing field.
Being engaged even on a small level in pulling down deep heaven is no mere trifling. It requires a soldierly mindset mixed with childlike mirth as we place one foot in front of the other up the tree, climbing ’til we reach the tippy top. The climb down may be harder…carrying what we have gathered there from the heavens, and then summoning the courage to share it with others. It requires miles and miles of walking or riding on a donkey to an unfamiliar town, to give birth to our heaven-sent burden in less than ideal surroundings and circumstances. We are to write, draw, paint, make music in and around our messy lives. None of it seems to go the way we imagined or think it should. I have a hunch Mary, the mother of Jesus, may have thought this as well. Yet we are to continue on this journey, like Mary and Joseph, until it is time. Time for what heaven wants to bring to us and through us, be it a babe, a sonnet, a drawing, a song.
May we have the martial spirit of Mary in our hearts and daily lives this season. May we be encouraged by the thought that our exhaustion in creative endeavors is due to the fact that we are in the fight: the calling and work of pulling down deep heaven.
I wrote the above several days before Friday, December 14th, the day someone entered a school in Connecticut with the express purpose of killing. Children, adults, his aim was all. If ever there was proof that a battle is going on, and that we need to engage in that battle to bring down the light of Deep Heaven to shine in these dark days, it is now.
Rise up, oh Artists of all kinds…Rise up and wage battle with the darkness! For we do not fight in vain!
It can happen even at a swim meet. A dear friend of mine and I sat talking in between watching our kids swim their events. She, a musician and music educator. I, a visual artist and art educator. Our middle children swim on the same team. Our oldest children are in college learning to be music educators and singing with an incredible choir at their school, Wingate University. We spoke of the breathtaking music we had each heard recently at different events the University Singers were participating in. Each of us recounted how thrilling and enriching these musical events were to us. Sheri said:
“I sat there hearing the Messiah for the umpteenth time…and I had never heard it so beautifully played or sung. It was as if we were hearing what heaven must be like. As if heaven had come down to us sitting there in the auditorium. That was, for me, my Christmas. But I wish it was performed all through the year.”
We continued to discuss the wonders of how art and music, the lines and layers, the chords, the phrasing, the brushstrokes, all combine to give us this taste of the world beyond. Today, in light of our conversation, I’m thinking that we, the artists, are pulling down bits of deep heaven. Sometimes, it falls in big huge plops, other times it’s as light as mist.
However it comes to us, through music, through a painting, a drama or play, a book or an essay… deep heaven it is. C.S. Lewis used this phrase, Pulling Down Deep Heaven, to title one of his final chapters in That Hideous Strength, the third in his science fiction trilogy. It is a phrase pregnant with a meaning that comes out in many of his writings, both fictional and otherwise. This weightiness of glory (Lewis wrote a book titled The Weight of Glory) descends on us and both terrifies (as in the shepherds being sore afraid) and satisfies with wonder (as in those who worshiped Him at the manger).
It reminds me of another favorite author, Annie Dillard, who wrote:
It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. -Teaching A Stone to Talk
Dillard goes on to speak of a god who terrifies. Those who find Him in the manger know that though He is not tame, He IS good. Deep heaven brings with it a wildness that borders on dangerous, a beauty that aches, and an exquisiteness that fills and suffuses with joy!
When we are involved with any form of art making and sharing it with the world either in shows, or choral concerts, symphonies, theatrical productions, gallery openings, poetry readings and the like, ANY measure of this activity is a definitively spiritual endeavor. We are involved, no matter how small our part may seem, in ushering deep heaven down to us. Bless those who give their lives to this endeavor. Bless those who sing in the Messiah’s this holiday season. Bless our children who are studying to be musicians and teachers, artists, and actors, writers and playwrights.
Even in our swim meet conversation, with splashing and diving, screaming and hollering all around us, our glistening eyes told that a drop or two of heaven had come down in our words to each other. It can happen that way. In the most unassuming places as well as in the concert halls and galleries of our world, the tunes of heaven can be heard. In small sketches dashed off in a sketchbook, in the music played at coffee houses and malls, it’s there, raining down on us.
As this season unfolds before us, may we have eyes and ears to take it all in, to anticipate, and even participate, in bringing down deep heaven to our world.
*This is the first in a series. Others will be sprinkled throughout my postings from now ’til Christmas.
I didn’t see it until later…a week or so after I drew this. I was merely in the moment, reveling in my spot to draw at Tanglewood Park, perched with pen in hand on a little hill enjoying a pastoral view across the road.
But now I see how the image and the words I drew that day speak volumes.
That fence. That dark, right-across-the-middle-of-the-page structure, barring me from the pasture beyond. Horses grazed off to the left in the light dappled field. The fence represents a place I’m not allowed to cross over. Yet something reaches back to me from that beautiful field. The shadows from its glorious trees reach toward me, envelope me, touch me. I sit in those lovely shadows from beyond.
This is a picture of my life. I am not yet allowed beyond…to that place I call home, my real home. I do not/cannot go there yet. But as I draw…as I draw near to God…He draws near to me…and I see hints of that world here in my own. I may only be seeing the shadows of that lovely land to which I go. But they are beauty full! And the very shadows call to me to draw more and more of my sustenance from looking, from peering, from seeing beyond the veil. In doing so, my travels here are made more beautiful.
An exquisite pain of homesickness pierces me now as I see this drawing afresh. Draw near. Yes, I will today, this Thanksgiving Day. I will gaze into the faces of my family around the table and I will see the dappled light of the beyond dancing in their eyes. I will taste of the Feasts yet to come, in the opulence on our Thanksgiving table. I will hear the bells of glad tidings beyond, that reach my ears in the form of their laughter.
And I will give thanks.
In drawing, I am drawn. By drawing, He draws near to me. Through drawing, I see. And from drawing, I hear the music.
