I’m Not As Calm As You Think I Am_ Musings On My 40th Birthday.

My paintings offer a sense of calm for the viewer, but that doesn’t mean I’m a calm person by nature. Are you?

I am turning forty this week and I am so grateful that I get to celebrate another year of living. I think forty is a good age to start sharing some musings with you. Musing seems like a forty-year-old thing to do, so with that being said, here are my musings from the studio this week_

Creating calmness amid internal chaos

This past summer I got to talk with a lot of people as they wandered into my tent at art fairs. One statement that I heard numerous times from my viewers was, “You must be such a centered and calm person.” I usually smile politely and say, “Thank you!” But the truth is, I don’t think my closest friends and family would describe me that way, and that is okay. I, like so many, struggle with anxiety and have had to find ways to deal with that. I am not a “naturally calm and centered person” but I do seek out routines and rituals that make me feel more at home in my body, mind, and physical surroundings. And this process is what I choose to make art about.

Some artists paint the things that they want to cultivate in their lives. Others put their most present and tactile emotions on display. Some only pose questions to their audience so as to start a conversation. For others, they reimagine a place, scenario, or different world. These are all valid and beautiful ways to create. In my creative practice, I reach for images, processes, and techniques that help me on the path to presence.

After this week, I had to turn off the news and turn to this creative, present space. And I realize the privilege in that statement. I don’t take for granted that my response to what is happening in the world is creating instead of surviving.

The person reflected in the paint

This week I created numerous sketches that included homes reflected in water,  and I also saw my own reflection in abstracted pools of water that I poured on my canvas. I witnessed the woods reflected in Lake Michigan as I painted near her shores.

I looked at the works of Japanese artists like Hiroshi Yoshida and Kawase Husai for inspiration. I took notes as I recognized repeated imagery throughout their bodies of work – reflections of landscapes in still waters, nature’s unwavering presence amidst change, dark night skies, silhouetted trees and figures, and the light of the moon bouncing off the world around it.

As I painted I thought about how we search for ourselves in the world around us, what we find on these journeys, and what is reflected back at us. I think about the pool of water on the canvas and the forty-year-old reflection I see in it. And I think about the need for self-awareness in our own self-care and how painful that process can be. None of these musings are trying to convey any one message. They are just thoughts floating through my head as I sketch images I love and push around paint to calm my mind.

We are all imagining, even the ‘grown-ups’

On that note, I would like to leave you with this excerpt from an interview with the late John O’Donohue with Krista Tippet_

Tippet: “What do you mean when you write that everyone is an artist?”

O’Donohue: “I mean that everyone is involved, whether they like it or not, in the construction of their world. So it’s never as given as it actually looks; you’re always shaping it and building it. And I feel that from that perspective, that each of us is an artist.

Secondly, I believe that everyone has imagination, that no matter how mature and adult and sophisticated a person might seem, that person is still essentially an “ex-baby”. And as children, we all lived in an imaginal world. When you’d be told, “Don’t cross that wall, because there are monsters over there” — my God, the world you would create on the other side of the wall. And when you’d ask questions like, “Why is the sky blue?”, or “Where does God live?”…

… and that every night, when we sleep, we dream. And a dream is a sophisticated, imaginative text full of figures and drama that we send to ourselves. So I believe that deep in the heart of each of us, there is this imagining, imaginal capacity that we have so that we are all doing it.”