Tuesday, March 20, 2012

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?

24 comments:

  1. Carole, the older I get the more childlike I want my art making to become. To have fun creating it, not listening to the inner voice criticizing or telling me to behave. I want to trust like a child. To believe like a child. To make mud pies again. xo Carole

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    1. trust and play, yes!! this is what makes our art authentic. you are definitely on to something. ah, to work from this space is blissful. we all have it, uncovering it is the trick for some of us!

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  2. i echo carole's comment... and i surely agree with you that uncovering it is the trick. it's a practice, really a practice to come back over and over again to that childlike place. i'm amazed by how quickly i can veer off into some adult-must-look-good place.

    xoxo

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    1. I think that's why art makes such great "dharma" practice. never a shortage of material to work with!

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  3. oh hey, i forgot to tell you how much i love the bottom piece... that is *nice*!!

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  4. i really thing you might put your wonderful prose pieces together in a sort of chapbook with illustrations.

    love the commentors comment about making mud pies. how fun that was when i was a kid. how forbidden. well, okay to make pies but dont get dirty. LOL.

    the thing I love about painting on canvas is i can endlessly gesso over anything, or scrape off, revise and redo.

    or, can set it aside and wait and maybe it will change of itself. i made a relief piece using paper pulp, paint and embedments years ago. It just didnt work. I set it aside for several years if not more. Then, suddenly, I saw how to finish it and someone bought it days later off my living room wall. My own "judgements" about my work so often prove only to be figments of my imagination. Others see the work differently.

    Have fun painting.

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    1. Thanks for the kind words, Suki! I do love the gesso. I get a lot of miles out of one canvas! And it's true we are often not such good judges of our own work. Too close, I think.

      I have taken to working on a number of pieces so I can switch back and forth, that seems helpful in the not getting too obsessed about things department.

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  5. I have found my 'best' creative efforts always arise when 'I' no longer strive to be a 'good' artist, or a 'great' writer. Instead there is just playing, and painting, or for the last few years, writing . . . It helps to contemplate death also, and impermanence. None of the marks that we are making really matter in the end. Hence, we might as well enjoy the process. :)

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    1. "None of the marks that are making really matter in the end" I like that, there is something freeing about it! Yes it's finding a way to "get out of the way", isn't it?

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  6. what a wonderful post Carole! your writing is fabulous and your honesty is so humbling. You have the same guests in your workspace that I do and as you do, I embraced them and used what they gave me to explore as I worked. They don't visit as often now and usually sit quietly in the corner, but I know when they are there. They gave me the courage to be honest with my work and explore all the blocks that negativity can throw up, because after all, they are part of the whole me. Like Lynnie, I really like the second piece - it has so much mystery and gentleness, xo

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    1. ah, Jeane you are an inspiration! You make me feel like I am on track to make friends with my demons. I see the results in your work which I love so much and how you are having fun when you work. Keep those videos coming!

      and I like that, the upside of making friends with our demons is that it releases energy and is the seat of honesty about our work.

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  7. Ahhh, our definitions of SELF was on my mind, too. Thank you for this lovely description of some of its colors and flavors.

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  8. yes, my Zen teacher used to call it "the little self", the one that goes through all the machinations. And holding it all is the greater self who can hold it all.

    That's it isn't it, getting to know all it's colours and flavours?

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  9. What a touching and honest post... Have come back to read it several times - resonating. Looking deeply into ourselves is a tough one, grappling with those little gremlins running around within our minds and still being able to see the beauty in it all. And what a lovely metaphor for being able to see beyond them to the original canvas... Beautifully said!

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  10. Thanks, Christine! Ah, yes the gremlins. Like nightmare creatures I think they get bigger if you don't turn around and look at them. always good work.

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  11. I think that's why art makes such great "dharma" practice. never a shortage of material to work with!

    yes, yes!

    i agree with sukipoet about publishing your writing and art in a 'chapbook'. i'm not sure exactly what a chapbook *is*, but it sounds delightful and just like what your words and art should be in.

    xoxo

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    1. xoxo to you! for your kind words. chapbook, is it a smallish book??

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  12. How much I appreciate that honesty you offer up here, Carole. So often I relate, or relate to something you share that niggled me in the past and so have so much empathy for. When you said, "Frustration and I are deeply connected in this lifetime," I recall how I used to have deep moments with frustration. That was before I was on the Buddhist way though, too. ;o) Your canvas in progress on show here today has wonderful potential! I'm thinking that beauty can have a purpose, a deeper purpose. Not the sole purpose of art maybe, but a deeper purpose. I, too, enjoy creating in abstraction. Lately I've been working/experimenting with what I call "ambient" paintings, where I create a kind of atmosphere. Something that I and the view can be found in, in what at first seems like a place to get lost in. So it's more about being found than lost. :o) Art offers some great practice! Happy Spring ((HUGS))

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  13. I am a lover of beauty in many things, to me it means order, coherence and harmony, so I agree that not as the sole purpose of art, but an aspect of it (and not all art), some is meant to disturb, I think. So many forms of expression and communication.

    I like that word "ambient" art, it communicates a lot to me and I like the idea of found, yet lost in something appeals as well.

    Hope Spring has come to Norway! We are still in winter temperatures though the light feels like Spring and daffodils and salmonberry seem to know it's Spring. Hugs to you!

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  14. Exactly right.. our head tells us not to compare ourselves with others.. to paint for ourselves... to paint our feelings and our own unique style.. and we know better! and yet we still battle the devil on the other shoulder always trying to bring us down..

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    1. ah yes the devil, Mara, really always tempting us with those tantalizing thoughts of doubt. That's our work, isn't it to head off in a different direction leaving Mara in our dust (at least now and then!)

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  15. Carole, the more I look at that top painting the more I see! And the more mysterious it seems to get. Don't know if it was intended, but to me there is a kind of "face" on the right, with two eyes looking to the right of the painting. And a kind of a nose-mouth combination. Amazing... The more I look, the more mesmerizing it is. :) Isn't it funny how the mind tries to make some "thing" of it...

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  16. Hah, it's gone painted over on it's way to becoming something else. I'm kind of liking it's new incarnation. I will have to post it when it's done!

    It can be fun to see things in abstracts, like looking at the clouds!

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