Journal Entry. Sept 20, 2020.
Raveling. Unraveling. Divided. United.
I’ve been meditating upon the physical nature of words that have been used to articulate the emotional state of things. My mother came by for coffee and we shared this sense that underneath all of this, we are expressing an underlying need having to do with a connection to others.
We’ve been taught and conditioned to think of ourselves as individuals. We build walls (both literally and metaphorically) for the sake of organization, delineation, management, or protection…and we destroy walls for the sake of reimagining what already exists. Nature does this too, which is why I find fallen trees and roadside flowers so inspiring!
While our editorial instincts have shown to help us in survival, I think to a large degree our editorial biases have been influenced outside of our awareness, and often to the detriment of things we desire, ie., a sense of belonging and unity. When I feel myself judging, I try better to listen and understand. When I see something destructive, I try to see the potential of reimagining what exists.
The processes of listening, observation, documentation, deconstruction, and reconstruction are the threads that tie my work together. But lately, I have been reinventing the rules and assumptions that have informed my work.
For example, I had this rule about not working from photographs. I felt that in a way, it was a matter of cheating and that working from photos took away from the authenticity of painting and drawing from observation. I still believe these things, actually. However, the aquarium paintings I did in 2014 occurred after taking a trip to the Aquarium of the Americas and being inspired by the atmosphere of the aquarium tanks. I wanted so badly to paint them but knew that I wouldn’t be able to set up like I could in the woods, so I took photographs and later came back to the studio and painted the scenes. I felt guilty when I looked at them. They did not fit into the work I was doing, and so I folded them up and put them in my flat files.
Last week, I was going through my files and saw them so I pulled them out to have a look. My oldest daughter came to the studio for a visit and said how much she loved them. “Mom, you should show these to people!” So I sheepishly took a photo and posted it onto my Instagram feed. That day a very good friend, who had been fawning over my work for a while let me know that he really needed one of these paintings. The look of joy on his face when he saw it in person for the first time is seriously the reason why I chose art as a profession. There is nothing so simple and beautiful as connecting to each other through creativity.
The experience got me thinking that the rules I have about working from photographs are probably unnecessary and might even get in the way of me doing my work, and this unnecessary shame about it kept me from sharing my inspiration and creative output with others. It made me reflect on how the rules that we make for ourselves do this in other areas of our social sphere, and how important it is to remove these unhelpful limits so that we can maintain connectivity with each other. Specifically, I am suggesting the importance of not limiting ourselves to conversing with people who are always in agreement with us or the idea of remaining open to learning by seeing something from another point of view.
Why else are we here if not to keep each other company and work together?
Bonus: Soundtrack for Aquarium paintings shared via Jimmy Byrne:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=beIDKFwXam0&pp=ygUTZmlzaGluZyBmb3IgZmlzaGllcw%3D%3D