What's Your Relationship With Your Work?

Tracking 8"x 8" cold wax on panel

On my last post someone made the comment that they were interested in their relationship with their work.  Hmmm, I had never really thought about it. My relationship with my work? Did we need therapy or counseling, my work and I? Hmmm, I frequently think about my relationships with the people around me. I try to listen, I attempt compassion and understanding. I remind myself that I am not the centre of the universe.  I know, I know, that surprises you too, right?  But my paintings, that I spend so many hours with, do I ever think about these canvases and panels covered in paint in this relational kind of way??  Even this was telling, to relegate my work to the lot of "inanimate objects".  Do my paintings have a soul, do they have feelings and needs? It was a bit shocking to see my own insensitivity, up close and personal (well, I mean again :)  And perhaps you are a better painter and are tssking at me as you read, sucking air between your teeth and shaking your head.  I apologize for disturbing you in this way, really I do. I hope I have not caused any small capillaries to implode or your toe nails to fall off.

Crossing The Earth At Dusk 16"x20" 

And yet in this modern world of ours we frequently divide the world in this way, the animate, the inanimate, sentient beings and other, TV dinners and real food.  It is a type of unawareness I think. People who live(d) closer to the natural world perhaps are more aware of how the world is filled with energy and spirit that do not identify as sentient beings. Everything is alive in it's own way, don't you think?

In slight horror, I began to investigate my relationship with my work. It was a humbling experience to see that I am not a good listener.  In fact I am quite deaf to what my paintings might be saying to me most of the time.  If you were my painting, you wouldn't give me the time of day. I realized I am bossy, often beginning work without any enquiry as to what might be needed, to what the painting might want, suggest, be asking for.  You'd probably give me a smack upside the head if we worked in the same office.

I certainly am not at all good company for my work.  I rarely just hang out with it, sit and appreciate. I think I don't really know how to be a good companion to my work.  I watched a documentary a while back on Leonardo da Vinci and when he was painting The Last Supper he would visit the painting for days on end and just look at it, never lifting a brush. Now that's companionship, that's listening.

The Trees Are Calling Your Name 12"x12"

This whole relationship can of worms has prompted me to work in different ways, though I must say listening comes hard.  I see how the mind wants to get started when it  has just the tiniest idea, how it thinks it knows so much when it has considered so little. I have realized this promotes what I refer to as "mucking".  I have noticed that when I consciously generate feelings of warmth and appreciation for the parts of the work I like (instead of complaining about what I don't like) that the state generated is more conducive to good work.  It's all about process, right?

I notice a feeling of tenderness toward these little entities, these brave, new, embryos of paintings.  I can remember my Zen teacher used to say in relation to our practice and all the goofy things we do, "the eternal can wait forever, how long can you wait?"  I get the same feeling about the paintings.  They are in no hurry.  They humour, they tolerate and they wait.  They wait for me to learn, they wait for me to see, they wait for me to listen.  They are the best teachers.  Unlike me, they are never bossy or frustrated. They never demand or criticize.  I think sometimes they smile and wink and call gently from the corner.  And then they always look so pleased when I happen to get it right.  Who could ask for more in a relationship really?

Thrown By The Wild Horse of Painting

11"x14" oil & cold wax  "As The Light Falls"

The instructions are "never judge your meditation session".  It's just a sit and good for you that you put your bum on the cushion.  Hmm, couldn't the same be said for doing your creative work, whatever that is.  No, sitting on your journal or canvas does not count. But how do we know what's good or bad anyway?  You know the Taoist story of the villager with a horse? One day his horse runs off.  The villagers tell him how bad this is.  Hmm, says the farmer.  A while later his horse returns leading a wild horse home. And the other villagers tell him how good this is. Hmmm, again from the farmer of few words. His son breaks his leg after being thrown by the wild horse.  The villagers are all over this one. And so on.  You're getting the gist, right?  Read the full story here.

Why then is it so second nature for me to have this very visceral sense that a painting session is good or bad? Human nature?  Habit?  Yes to both, but I think it's about trust.  It seems to me that you need to trust that what is happening is okay, whatever it is.  It's here, it's in your lap, then just say okay.  That's the recipe for non suffering. That's it.  You have no idea where your work is going, how it will turn out but you trust that what you did today is enough  It's not that I'm getting all new agey, woo woo or fatalistic on you.  It's just logic.  Think about it.  How could it be any other way?  That would be arguing with what is...  and you know where that gets you.  It's not like we lie there like the studio door mat, all limp and lifeless and covered with paint (though I have been known to do this).  We can adjust our course tomorrow.  We can learn from what transpired.  That is never negated by accepting what is. But what just happened is over, done, case closed, unless you want to get all quantum on me but that's a whole other subject.

Another thing I've known in my head but not in my paint brush is that you need to get the mind, the judging, evaluating one out of the way when you work. Sometimes I wish someone would just tell me how and put me out of my misery.  But it's not supposed to happen like that.  You have to figure it out for yourself or else it doesn't have any meat on the bones, just a dry stick to chew on.  And that's not very tasty or sustaining.

12"x12" cold wax & oil "A Day In The City"

Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche talks about painting until the mind let's go and then you have a painting.  I did this quite by accident the other day when I painted the pieces above.  I had spent some studio time mucking about and I mean mucking.  I was feeling so discouraged that I got out the black paint and covered this piece which was originally light green and turquoise.  You will see small children do this with art work and for them it is exploration.  For me it was more like a tantrum, an "I'm done here." And then some stuff started to happen on the canvas that felt pretty exciting. There was some recognition of something new and authentic looking back at me. I left the studio feeling like I'd had an aha moment.  It was  an accidental experience of letting go.  It was more like giving up, there was nothing left to gain or loose.

On a foot note I felt pretty inspired to get back to the studio to explore.   But after a bit I noticed old mind sniffing and slinking around trying to recreate the same experience (more good, please, easy, nice, thank-you).  And you know how that turns out.  But  there is a little trust there now where only wanting used to live.  And its resting on the fact that everything is fine as it is and anything can happen at any time.

The Value of the Open Road

reworked piece from last post 24"x24"

There is something about road trips. You are in this compartment like thing, hurtling down a concrete path, the world continually coming at you.  It's kind of like a mini version of life in a strange way.  Here we are, travelers just passing through, why not enjoy the ride?  For some reason as the big prairie sky flattened our strip of highway that analogy parked itself in my brain.

We covered a lot of ground in 10 days for island dwellers. We camped in the mountains, played a Tibetan drum by a green lake, ate out with friends at a place called The High Level Diner, drank strong, dark coffee in Nelson, wandered the only desert in Canada and popped cherries into our mouths straight from the tree.

Life is surprising if you let it be.  Often when I return home I feel a little lost, like "what do I do here again?"  Sometimes I feel like a period at the end of a sentence that wants to keep on going.  But this time was different. I noticed how quiet my piece of earth is; no sounds of air brakes or trains or the hum of refrigeration units.  There was the joy of garden and paint, the air warm like a tepid bath, a deer browsing the weeds in the lawn, a tiny bunny feeding, the quail having a dust bath in the flower bed.

reworked 12"x24"

I must say that at least once while looking at wonderful art on my trip I asked myself "why do I paint?" And I asked this not in the nicest of ways. You know how we can be to ourselves, like the meanest of sisters.  But once I got home an art conversation with a dear friend welcomed me and there was an air of excitement in getting to work.

Our conversation was about simplicity and complexity and how I love work that is simple and spare  but that isn't what comes out of me when I paint.  I realized that I spit out the word "complexity" as if it is an insult.  I don't seek complexity in my work but it finds me.  Her wise comment was something like, "isn't that neat how the painting is so honest?"  News flash: it's not about what I want but it's about something less defined, more ethereal, it's about what's in me that wants to be said.  It's not about someone else's painting I love with my name on it. The painting process bypasses the thinking mind which can be maddening to control freaks who think they know what they want.  You can argue with the canvas and paint if you like.  But be prepared to be frustrated. I speak from experience (the frustrated part, I mean).  So it was freeing to finally be open to what came out on to the canvas without wanting it to be some particular way, to embrace complexity even.  There was an energy to that openness that doesn't come from wanting something in particular.

So the value of hurtling down the highway, heading always towards home in a round about way, is that if you are lucky home will look completely different than you imagined when you get there.  If you're lucky you will have a friend waiting there with some wise words.

Oh yeah and that's the thing that we love about the open road.  It's open.

The Dharma of Art or Two Days In Jeane's Studio

 painting by Jeane Myers

It's amazing how things fit together if you let them. I recently spent a weekend on retreat with Rick Hanson and then slipped below the 49th parallel to spend some time in the studio of Jeane Myers from Art It.  The retreat and the studio time melted deliciously into a unified whole, where painting and dharma practice had the sweet, tantalizing flavour of a favoured treat. The days in Jeane's light filled studio were punctuated with conversations that plunged immediately into the deep end of the pool. "It's not really about the individual piece, it's more about the process and how it connects to the rest of the way we live our life." I'm paraphrasing Jeane here. Yes, yes, I have seen how painting is the condensed milk version of what I spill out in the world.

She asked questions that I stumbled and sputtered over, like "why do you paint?"  This is not casual, filling the space question.  Jeane, a former theatre director is gathering; gathering information so she might help you find that button you dropped on the sidewalk and have been searching for, forever.

Jeane Myers Studio

If you stop by here once in a while you have heard me whine about frustration with my process, how I feel I don't know what I'm doing and that I am never happy with what I paint. (that's the Coles notes on my whinging as the Brits call it).  And there are great similarities in the way I go about my life, hoping for the quick, tidy fix and on to the next thing.  "Distress tolerance" Hanson calls it and it's a muscle I'm working on.

Another studio view

I have followed Jeane's blog for some time now and I LOVE her work. On many occasions I have been stopped in my gumboots as she obliterates a painting that I would have called a keeper.  This fearlessness and dedication to growth and process hooked me.  I see in her a person that is willing to stand on the edge, who rejects security in favour of growth.  In a way, the how she does it, is almost more important than what she does, for me.  But it's what she does that stops the eye and makes it settle down for a closer look.

We are such interesting creatures, us humans. What I told Jeane I was on the hunt for was "form" in my work.  I felt that abstract composition was a big hairy mystery to me, well actually I left out the hairy part.   By hour 2 of our time together a little light started flashing on the internal dashboard.  I didn't really come to learn about form and composition.  I came to learn how to have a conversation with my painting. And isn't that life?  Often what we think we need is not really it.  We just need a wise guide to push aside the tangled branches and show us where the trail really is.

small work I did in Jeane's studio

I needed to be able to learn from my work.  And doesn't that translate into every place in life? If someone can give us the tools, we can fish forever, instead of constantly coming back like a little bird, hoping someone will feed us.  Jeane displayed a razor sharp knack of cutting through the tangle and getting to  the real issue.  And while I had read about this "conversing with your work" I just never really got it.  I had puzzled over John Daidoo Loori's descriptions of standing in front of his work and waiting for something to shift. For me shift never happened, maybe without the f, but that's another story.

Somehow by the end of the first day, somewhere inside me I understood what "having a conversation" meant. By having me constantly turn my work around, it somehow released my busybody, thinking mind. That simple process freed a deeper, inner eye.  Suddenly I felt more comfortable, more connected to the work.  My goodness that canvas and I were chattering away at each other. I teased that I was channeling Jeane.  But in truth there is something communicated energetically by someone who knows what they are doing and has trust and confidence in the process.

Jeane's work waiting to go to the Simon Mace Gallery

In one of her posts Jeane talked about finding the "arbitrary" parts of a painting, the parts that don't work, the parts that detract and weaken the real meat (tofu for you vegetarians) of the piece.  When she wrote about this in her blog, it seemed like she was speaking in tongues.  What?  Arbitrary?  I couldn't imagine identifying the arbitrary.  And yet as we worked and looked and talked, slowly I could see it.  I am still on training wheels with this one, but I have some sense of "the arbitrary".  Before it truly sounded like a foreign language.

It was 2 days packed with so much learning, more than I could ever imagine.  Sometimes it felt like things were being communicated by osmosis.  As a teacher, Jeane displayed a complete lack of ego and  generosity of spirit.  "Here, what do you think is arbitrary in my painting?  How would you do it if it was in your style?"  She was so interested in figuring out the puzzle of what I needed.  My hunt was her challenge.  You can travel a long way to find a Dharma teacher with that same curiosity and attention to the task.

More of Jeane's painted goodness

One of the things that impressed me the most about Jeane was her understanding of how to learn from her process and the actual piece in front of her.  I loved drinking in her positive attitude (no that would be guzzling). At one point she said something like, "you have your pros and your cons. What is really interesting and where all the excitement is, is in the "cons".  That's where the work and growth is."  As someone who has spent a lot of time feeling frustrated by the challenge this was like being teleported to another planet.  Sometimes we have to look through someone else's eyes to be able to really see.

So we never took out a colour wheel or talked much about paints or galleries.  We jumped right off the deep end, me with my water wings and Jeane swimming out in front, calling out that the water was fine and that you could learn a lot from just putting one arm in front of the other.

And while my retreat with Rick Hanson was great, I can't even begin to communicate what 2 days in Jeane's studio were like.  I wish for you all, whatever your art, a mentor, an art spirit that is just the right fit for you, to encourage you and to fish out of you all that is good and amazing. It's in there.  Some people excel at helping you dip into the pond of what's hiding in your heart. If they're like Jeane they actually thrive on the challenge.

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.

Navigating By Heart

A Cave In The Heart 10"x10" mixed media

The other day while exploring the second hand store of my inner landscape I discovered the vast navigational powers of the heart. But perhaps you are more sailor-like than I, and already knew about this awesome device?  I  was combing the cluttered inner shelves of stories and regrets, moments of delight and longing, rubbing off dust and cobwebs, when I came across this valuable but rusty bit. I mean I have bumbled around with this navigational heart-tool, using it  haphazardly, perhaps even recklessly at times. And there have been stormy situations where I suspect this knowing tool steered the course while I choked and sputtered below deck.

But as I painted the other day, the words "navigating by heart" bubbled to the surface of my little mind pond and I realized that for once this is what I was doing. The imposing navigational device of my mind had dropped off the charts (perhaps for scheduled maintenance?).

Continental Heart Drift mixed media 8"x10"

I am not negating the awesome powers of the mind but sometimes reason and logic are not the best tools in the chest.  Perhaps they are best called into service as gathering tools?  The mind can collect and process vast quantities of information, bringing home jewels and treasures. And maybe then the navigational tool of the heart is called into service, working its magic, making  choices, charting the way through narrow or difficult creative channels where the course is best steered with the heart.  Sometimes you prepare a checklist for what you want in a new home or what elements should go into a story you are writing but in the final cut, you buy that home with your heart or the story veers deliciously off course to become something you hardly recognize.   When we trust our hearts we may find that the heart can know what you need when the head doesn't have a clue.

Rounding The Cape of Good Hope mixed media 12"x12"

And so it is with the process of creating as you stand before your project. The head is limited to what it can conceive of but the heart is open to unknown possibilities, its maps and charts are less well defined, more amorphous.  Because of this the heart has a reach that is greater than the head's and that's why it's navigational powers hold such strength.  The heart is charting the course by a map that the eyes cannot see, traveling in terrain where the mind doesn't go.  There are stars shining in the darkness that the heart navigates by.  There are tangles in the bushes that the heart somehow eerily anticipates, if you let it.

I recommend heartily (pun intended) that you get yourself over to the hardware store of your inner knowing, close your eyes and pick out a heart compass that is vibrating at just the right frequency for you.  Pick up a few and hold them.  You will know the right one by how it feels in the palm of your hand. There are wonderful topographical maps and charts of vast inner oceans waiting for your heart compass to navigate. I wish you wonderful travels.

Mapping The Heart

Heartwood 24"x12"

I am mapping something these days. Every painting that emerges resembles a map of sorts. There is a strangeness to it all as if I have become a cartographer, an explorer recording and etching out the roads and river of some landscape that seems important to me. But perhaps every true creative experience feels like this?

I have come following an unknown river with a paintbrush and some pencils. Little continents and landforms appear, rising and sinking into oceans of grey and white, and taupe. Perhaps I have taken up membership in some strange society of cartographers of the heart. Surely my fees in this club are overdue?

The rivers and roads arise from the wandering of sharp tools across the painted surface, small, fierce nomadic creatures, exploring the terrain. The scraping nomads need to be held loosely, with love and trust, so they can trace out their own trail because they know best. The marks that emerge have their own lives. I must let go to bring them into being. These lines remind me that we are never in control anyway. It is merely our human delusion.

And the landforms that emerge are pleasingly irregular, tracing coastlines of the wandering mind, lakes of deep thought, rivers of delight, oceans of sadness.

Geography of the Heart 16"x16"

The webs of crevices and cracks tell stories about the beauty of imperfection. Tracing tiny lines I am reminded that the richness of the world is revealed to me when I attend to the details of life. The crows feet of the land spread out to show it's smiling face.

And while some of the work is done by attending to detail. I need to move outward and view the work from my space capsule. I am reminded that everything is composed of both attention to detail and an ability to stand back and see the big picture.

Road Trip 16"x16"

My map making project went on retreat this past weekend, spending time with master cartographer of the heart and mind, James Baraz. We spent the weekend practicing paying kind attention to being present. I learned that breaths are like snowflakes, no two are the same. I will offer you two tiny pearls from my expedition. If Joseph Conrad wrote "Heart of Darkness", I think James Baraz wrote "Heart of Lightness".

 Ram Dass said: The secret of contentment is to plumb the depths of the moment.

James told of some insights he had reciting the following phrase while on retreat. He said it to himself but then also envisioned other people. He said the really tough one was thinking of his son and saying this: "You are the heir to your karma. My happiness depends on my actions not on my wishes.

Islands of the Heart 8"x10"