Art Is Not For Control Freaks

Kimono Threads 11"x 14" Cold Wax on Panel

For a long time my painting life operated on the Ira Glass principle which you can read about here.  I can't say it any better than he did so I won't bother to try.  Okay, I lied I'll sum it up in case you don't feel like following the link.  Basically Glass says that early in our artistic life our standards are higher than our artistic outcomes and so we feel frustrated. We are kabobed on a skewer between our own good taste and our unskilled hand.

 Along with this I wonder how much "belief" plays a role in this perceived distance between what we love and aspire to and what we create. A study I read years ago suggested that the only variable that set creative people apart from non creative people was (get this) that the creative people believed they were creative. Another study  suggests that "belief" is such an important aspect of mind that it can influence whether food acts as if it has lots of calories or few calories when it hits our metabolic system.  So what beliefs do you hold about your work, your process, your life?  How do they influence (unconsciously or consciously) how you work and what shows up in your work (or life)?  Don't get me wrong, I am a big believer in the fact that sustained practice or the repeated engagement with our medium, whatever it is, pulls us forward in our work.  I think it was Picasso that said "inspiration finds us working." But what is the role of trust and faith in ourselves and our process?

The Secret Life of Dirt 10"x 10"

These questions interest me because I have experienced a lot of frustration with my process.  I think in part it was because I wanted something that wasn't showing up on my canvas (commonly known in Buddhist circles as rejecting what is and recognized as a source of suffering). But curiously that frustration seems to have burned itself up, for reasons I don't fully understand.  It mostly is just not present anymore.  Maybe it was a state I just had to pass through after sustained hours, like the seemingly endless fields of Montana, but I digress into geographical insults.

As I look back on this state of frustration I realize that there is an aspect of "pride" in it.  When I am beseiged by the unconscious thought, "I am better than this ugly painting in front of me, I should be able to create something more pleasing than this" I am not only rejecting what is, but claiming superiority over it.  Ouch.

A Body of Thought 10"x10"

There were many times I thought of just packing it all up and taking those art supplies to the thrift store, kind of like a friend of mine who threw his golf clubs in the lake after a really bad game and never golfed again.  But there is something that keeps me going, a sense that I am looking for something, and that something is just around the corner, kind of like tracking an animal or fishing, to use a carnivorous analogy.  I used to joke with my Zen teacher that there was something very pure in pursuing a goal that I felt I was not very good at.  William Vollman says it this way, " The most important and enjoyable thing in life is doing something that's a complicated, tricky problem that you don't know how to solve."  Wendell Berry says "it's the impeded stream that knows how to sing." (full poem here)

How To Read The News 10"x10"

I am reading "Free Play" by Stephen Nachmanovitch.  He's a musician but his exploration of the creative process spills over into all of life, because isn't life the ultimate creative pursuit?  I like what he has to say about our relationship with our work. This is the growing edge I am exploring these days. "We arrive at this effortless way not by mastering the instrument but by playing with it as a living partner. If I think of the ... paintbrush ...as an object to be controlled then by definition it is outside of me... Unless I surrender my identity, the instrument's identity and the illusion of control, I can never become one with my own process, and the blocks will remain.  Without surrender and trust -- nothing."

Nachmanovitch winds down the chapter on surrender by saying " Unconditional surrender comes when I fully realize -- not in my brain but in my bones -- that what my life or art has handed me is bigger than my hands, bigger than any conscious understanding I can have of it, bigger than any capacity that is mine alone."  Apparently art is not for control freaks.  Or is it that art, if we let it, slowly works away at dissolving the control freak in us?  Really it's all about the mystery of the process, the mystery of life, just the mystery, really.

Preparing The Inner Canvas

8"x8" mixed media on panel (at ArtCraft)

I have been struggling a lot with my art process lately.  It's my koan. I feel like a living example of Ira Glass' quote.

But truly I've been doing this for a long time in one form or another.  Just somehow with some of the reflection on  my mental habits and the energy of my sitting practice, it's become more clear.  Sometimes that makes it more painful.  (Koan # 109 Is shit shittier if you see it more clearly??) But in some ways it feels like something that is becoming larger until it explodes and turns to dust (and or debris) and disappears. Am I just trying to put a good spin on it, all dressed up like Pollyanna with nowhere to go?  Or am I responding to the inherent emptiness in all our thrashings?

Some days the experience of frustration is so intense that I'm thinking, "why am I doing this? I am terrible at it. Why don't I just give up?"  And then I see Mara's shadow and I catch on.  Yes I could throw out all the paint brushes (I had a friend who threw his golf clubs into a lake) but where would I be then. I am chasing something and some days it feels like it's just around the corner.  And some days it's on another planet.

11"x14" mixed media on panel

The judgmental mind causes a lot of grief when we don't see it for what it is.  It's true that critical reasoning can offer helpful information but when thoughts kickstart the destructive emotions into gear and pedal out a long line of unhelpful thoughts and feelings, critical thought is a bitch.

I looked at some lovely photos from a family friend this morning that oozed beauty and serenity.  And as I sat I was reminded of a comment a monk made to me when I asked him about my frustration with my painting process. He said something to the effect that "if you want to paint peace, you need to be peace." And while that makes a lot of sense to me I often end up on the short end of the peace stick.

Visitor at our back door (outside!)

As I sat with all this I was infused with a lovely feeling of tenderness and I thought that's what I want to come out on to the canvas.  I could see in my minds eye how that tenderness would look on the easel.

And so it is the unwinding of this habitual way of being in the world that is our real work, not the painting, not the writing, not whatever it is that we do.  When we can in fact "be" what it is we wish to share with the world, then it will come through us.  Until then we're just preparing the canvas.  And that's good honest work too.

You Are The Canvas

work in progress

My meditation room (read living room without furniture) is like a projection booth for my mind. This morning the image of self as landscape painting was showing on the big screen. Trouble is, I was a lovely, large canvas smeared with muddy hues along the horizon line, a painting gone awry, tinged with shades of frustration and envy. But that was okay in a strange way because I was  big enough to hold it all.  And beneath the lashings of poorly mixed student grade paint was a large, clean canvas, simply bearing witness to what came to rest on it. It could go any way.  It could be repainted at any time.

 With lots of studio time lately and a strong aim to find my voice in abstraction I find my brush frequently dipping into pots of frustration. I am suffering the distance between what my work should look like and what it does. Ira Glass talks about that here. I am suffering from my pursuit of beauty, that Peter London reminds us, in his book "No More Secondhand Art" is not the real aim of art.

My head can recite a long list of clever lectures to myself on the topic of frustration, telling me how I shouldn't be attached to outcomes, how I should not compare myself to others, how it is all creative compost.  And while this is all true my mind thinks it can push frustration away by arranging the alphabet in a certain way and spitting it out in frustration's general direction. And yet the truth is frustration arises, bubbling up from somewhere deep inside. It takes no notice of fancy words. It stays close to me, like any faithful companion.

Frustration and I are deeply connected in this lifetime. It has crossed my mind that I might make friends with frustration. If we're going to spend time together, why not quality time? I have sniffed around her a bit, trying to get to know her without getting too close. She's agitated, speedy, and completely without patience. She can make my stomach churn one time, my chest to tighten another.  My attempts to banish her having failed, I can think of nothing else to do but get close enough to know her scent. It is only my judgment that finds frustration not worth knowing.  It is my pleasure seeking self that would like to usher the difficult visitors quickly out of the studio, so I can enjoy more pleasant company.

More work in progress

 When frustration leaves the building envy has been coming to brush up against the canvas I call me.  I suspect envy has been lurking greedily around the corner almost forever. My little self hates her palour, her odour.  Who welcomes the likes of envy? And yet, there she is. Again clever mind tells me I shouldn't compare myself to others, that is my source of envy. I shouldn't lust after the success and accomplishments of others like there is only a finite amount to go around. I should not feel deflated by seeing others soar. Clever self makes me feel worse for all it's lectures about envy.  Yet I feel her hot,  brushstrokes bleed across my canvas. I feel the raw sting of her close companion, shame.  Shame rides snuggly in the pocket of envy. It's just one of those combos: bacon and eggs, toast and jam, envy and shame.  And yet there is a strange twist to this painting.  I want to get to know shame and envy. I dip my finger into their muddiness. I reach it to my lips and taste it. It is sour and bitter, like wormwood and vinegar mixed. I breath it in and hold out a cup of tea at arm's length. Come, come, feral visitors.

So these are my companions. And while the canvas seems caked with mud at some points of the day, for whole days sometimes, underneath it lies the still white canvas, host to it all.  It is only me, looking for beauty and gratification that deems one canvas covering lovely and another one unacceptable. I am learning gradually to appreciate the colours of the day as fine. I am learning that though I prefer chartreuse green to mud, there is value to it all and when viewed skillfully from the eye of practice, the wise curator, there is beauty in the mud. Like all good sculptors know, mud can be worked. It is part of my story.  What's yours?