Alignment August 21, 2009

Summer seems to be quickly coming to a close, the light is changing, school is starting and everything seems to gain more of a structure as that happens.  This summer has been unusual and I have not been able to paint like usual.  Our house is on the market, and so we are constantly facing the challenges of living in a house that needs to keep that ‘non-lived in’ look, so I have had to shrink my studio space needs down to a fraction of what it was.  That means that instead of the usual 7-10 paintings going at once, I have only a few smaller ones that can fit; and instead of my usual everyday fervor, I am compelled to go down and work on them only when I have enough time and energy to pull them all out and put them all back when I am done.  This doesn’t work well for an artist, as most of us like to spread everything out and have it waiting for us in that same way when we return.  It keeps the flow going and there’s room to move about and think and see.

But that is the way of it right now–I spent my typical time of bucking it, or feeling like I should be doing more, or that things should be different than they are.  But now I realize that my life is simply providing me the opportunity to put into practice what I have been studying– loving things the way they are.  I stumbled upon an amazing body of work by a lady named Byron Katie (and here, she would affectionately say, ‘Is it true?’ because she does not see anything in the world as so finite that you can put a lable on it–even if it is her own name).  The premise:  the only suffering is the suffering that results from thinking things should be other than what they are.  Reality is god, meaning that it is all powerful–it is what IS.  And by accepting that and working within that, you eliminate your own suffering as well as make way for the new that is waiting to come into being.  Fighting it keeps you stuck.

And an interesting thing happened as a result of deciding that I was not going to feel like I should be able to paint more right now–I began doing something containable, something easily picked up and put away, and something that I’ve worked on sporadically for over ten years–I began writing again on a book that I originally got the idea for when I saw a play with my daughter when she was in elementary school.  First, it began as a children’s book and that led me to painting.  With the idea for that book, I began seeing the illustrations and bought paints and trepidaciously picked up the brush and began painting.  Over the years, I got so involved with the painting that it took on a life of its own, and that is where all of my creative energy has been channeled.  But now the book, now in a different young adult version, has been calling to me again and all of my creative energies have been pouring into that.  Ten plus years of ideas are gushing out onto the page and it feels good.  It may take another ten to complete it, who knows?  But if so, that is also the way of it.

The painting above is called, “Alignment” and was born out of the idea that our lives are most purposefully and powerfully lived when we align ourselves with what is going ‘right’ instead of ‘wrong’, with ‘what is’ instead of what we think ‘should be’.  Now I can look back and see that, although sometimes it seems that things are not getting done like I think they should, they actually are doing exactly what they are supposed to.  I began writing over ten years ago, and that made me want to paint, which then led to my wonderful experience with all my paintings and now an extremely fulfilling and budding career as an artist.  And now, circumstances make it difficult to paint, which has led me back to writing.  And if there is suffering in this, it is only and exclusively when I say that it should be any other way.

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