Heartsong Studio

I found this gorgeous, 8 inch amanita muscaria mushroom, a perfect speciman in bright reddish orange, like a glowing light in a dark ditch.

Amanita Muscaria

The clash of its attractive colour with its deadly poisonous effect was puzzling at first. How could the vibrant colour warn people to stay away yet be so beautiful at the same time ?

Do you reject certain colours, styles, or media in your artwork ?

When we have pain, fear, or any negative feeling, we tend to tell ourselves why this is happening, and how to avoid or fix it. We often label it as forbidden, all with the intention of protecting ourselves from harm.

Forbidden territory is known but rejected. Rejection is like not forgiving. To not forgive is to give power to that rejected thing. If you had truly given up your rejection of the colour purple, for example, wouldn’t it feel neutral ?

At one time this may have been useful, just like my avoidance of poisonous mushrooms. Now, we may be limiting our potential for appreciation and expression.

It’s both humbling and expanding.

Before we can move on, we have to give up the wish that things were different and momentarily release our ideas of right or wrong, fair and unfair, will or won’t.

Once we stop arguing with the flow of events we can become conscious of our experience instead. It’s not a bad idea to test your boundaries now and then to see how viable they are.

Here’s an opportunity to re-examine paths not taken.

Colour is an easy quality to use, though this process works with other qualities too. You can explore any rejected colours to find out if there are any you might better embrace.

But never fear. Most forbidden things are self-imposed. You forbid this colour. You closed the door. You can always shut the door again if you need to.

Start by going toward the forbidden.

Choose or mix up one or a few really repulsive, yucky colours.

Then with one of these, and an open mind, begin to make marks on your paper, pushing it, squashing it, seeing what it’s made of. Let it have its say until you begin to see something in it you didn’t see before.

Then use a couple of these ‘ugly’ colours together. Find out what effect they have on each other.

Ask yourself:

1. Which forbidden colours provided access to new territory ?

2. Which colours stayed as repulsive as before ?

3. Which now seem more natural to you than you expected ?

Next, introduce these colours to old favourites.

On a fresh sheet of paper make a piece that allows the new and old to meet and find their way. See what happens when you use them together in a new work.

Ask yourself:

1. How did your hated and loved colours get along ?

2. Do you have any new respect for some colour ?

3. Did the combination show you anything that surprised you ?

This exercise is not so much about colour as it is about breaking out of self-imposed, constricting patterns of thinking. If you start with the relatively easy topic of colour, then perhaps others will be easier.

The reward is increased vitality and well-being.

When we consciously surrender our self-imposed restrictions, it releases our potential creative spirit from the confines of ordinary thinking. The only thing that truly limits us is what we don’t know about universal Love.

How can you find the creative space to make art, with a thousand and one things that need doing ?    It seems like there are always more pressing obligations on your time, and that art, which is often seen as an “indulgence”, should come last.

“A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting,” said Maslow, the father of humanistic psychology.

Making art is a lot like preparing a wonderful meal from scratch.   It’s much better when you can focus and totally immerse yourself, rather than wondering whether you have all the ingredients while trying to pay the Visa bill, or pick up the kids from soccer practice.

Effective art, like creative cooking, needs our total focus too. Isn’t it possible to have a life which includes other creative fulfilments without having to be a starving artist 24 hours a day ?

You don’t need more time.

The advent of fast food owes its success to busy people with no time to cook from scratch.   It feeds into this type of personality, but is missing much basic nourishment.

I confess to having been a “fast art junkie” when it came to making art.  I was uneasy with unfinished projects sitting about, and so I’d rush each work to completion asap.  I didn’t know what nourishment I was missing out on with this driving habit to be productive.

It wasn’t until there were even more demands on my time and I had all but given up making art, that I realized I was starving.

Enter the slow food movement.

Slow cookers were rediscovered.   All day simmering stews, for example, can develop inner flavour and goodness while you are working at something else, and end up being far more delicious and nutritious than any take-out fast food.

Planning meals that can cook slowly on their own, or be warmed up later can be done while you’re driving, vacuuming, or shopping.   Preparation time can be done in the morning before breakfast.    When you’re not actually cooking, the flavour develops slowly on its own.

When you’re not really ‘doing’ it.

The most crucial stages in art making like mulling over the inspiration,  composition, size, and approach are all important decisions which come before you ever touch any media.

You gather inspiration while doing something else, holding your mind open to scan for possibilities day and night.

To some like me, this ‘delay’ may seem frustrating.

Once you’ve tried it with an open mind, your heart sees unexpected possibilities to be gained by letting it yeast and grow in flavour.

Then later, once it has been started, you can leave a work set up, so it’s visible as a reminder of where you are in the process.  Each time you see it, it will be in different light, from a different angle, and in a different mood.

Create in haste, repent at leisure.

Instant, one day art masterpieces happen rarely if ever to any but the truly present and practiced in working from the heart.   Ordinary mortals like us, can benefit from slowing down the rush, and taking time to savour the process as it grows, and allowing the depth of heart to grow.

“Let your hook always be cast. In the pool where you least expect it, there will be fish.” (Ovid)

It’s better to take it in small bites anyway.

Recently I caught an inspired idea for a 4 X 6 foot painting.    After setting it up with the initial sketch, there was little or no time to dig in and begin laying in the under-painting.   This huge canvas set up on the easel took most of my studio space, so it was literally in my face several times a day as I squeezed passed.

Itching to get on with it, I confess that I even resorted to rereading a couple of my own Fresh Horses articles.   These led me to focus on letting the visual metaphor grow until gradually the next small step became clear, and then the next.

There followed several days with no time to paint.   This turned out to be a blessing. It gave me the chance to consider what I’d done so far, until alterations suggested themselves.

We cannot imagine what we have not known.

This was a totally new metaphor for me, so it couldn’t grow on command.    It had to be lived in real time as I went.   Had I charged on with the initial concept right away, the metaphor wouldn’t have had the chance to develop, and I’d have painted from my head, missing the real experiences growing from my heart.

Does the world need any more fast produced, mediocre art ?

We all need to participate in and be surrounded by unique beauty.   When it grows slowly over time, a heart-centred work of art can develop flavour. This is no indulgence.

The point is not to make a big production right now.   The point is to feed your spirit through your art.

“After all this time wandering in the desert…”

a 48″ X 72″ canvas painted slowly over months, because it needed time for the metaphor to naturally grow.

Of course you’ve been expressing yourself in your art adequately; that’s how you got where you are.   If it seems like you’re starting to repeat yourself too often, and fewer people are drawn to your work any more, you might wonder how to reinvent yourself.

“Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.” (Picasso)

How can you make a shift in your work’s impact and feel that creative rush of adrenalin once again ?

Try scaring yourself.

My sister and I used to take turns lying on a bed with our heads hanging over the edge.  The other one would look at the upside down face until she saw a 180 degree different face in it. Hint — Her hair hanging down could be a beard.

We’d look intently until the strange face suddenly snapped into view.   There was always the thrill of a moment of fear, knowing our own eyes had created it.

What’s this got to do with reinventing yourself ?

Expression isn’t about subject matter or style… even though these are important factors. It’s easy to get into ruts with the thousand details like your subject, style, colour palette, texture, chisel marks, glazes. . .

Expression is about viewpoints.  It’s about personal perspective.   Basically, it’s tied to the eyes through which you see the world around you, and all the filters between your brain and the world of which it’s trying to make sense.

To shift your perspective, try this:

Think about all the sorts of feelings and heartfelt ideas you express in your art.   Now, write down a few brief sentences about what you’ve expressed recently.   Keep it simple.

It’s okay, I’ll wait. . .

Now, imagine you could hang this concept upside down and focus on it from a 180 degree point of view.   See it out of the corner of your eye.

Come at your concepts and ideas from a startlingly different angle, and write down new statements, seeing your art’s purpose as you’ve never seen it before.

See how hard it is ?

Maybe you got off to a fresh start, but how easy it is to slip back into the old rut of thinking about your work.

What does it matter ?

It matters because it’s necessary.  It matters because, in order to stay on top of the wave of a world that’s in constant flux, you have to constantly be reinventing your view of yourself.

Why?   Because if you keep on drawing, painting, or sculpting, the same old tired platitudes, you’ll go on being the same person you were yesterday. You’ll slip gently into the good night of obsolescence.

It’s not about merit.

It’s about Conviction. Courage.   It’s about why you’re on this planet.   To make a dent in the universe.   In other words, if you want to reach people from your heart, you have to dig deep.

You have to extract the essence of what you’re about, and offer it up on a platter to yourself, and anyone and everyone who sees your work.  If you hope for creative satisfaction, even sales or references, be prepared to share your very soul.

And, my friends, none of this can be done without some open-hearted introspection, dogged determination to strike to the core of who you are and what you do, and the genuine desire to connect with your fellow humans.

If you insist on swanning around with superficialities, you’ll marginalize yourself.   There’s too much ambient noise these days to just whimper, and expect to be heard.   If you want to be seen, you’ve gotta dazzle; swing from the chandelier.

Bare-naked art.

Start with the stripped-down, bare-naked, raw-to-the-bone stuff that your art is about.   But it doesn’t have to be ugly.   It can be a glorious sharing of your innermost desires, an arms-wide-open invitation to the world to glimpse the essence of who you are.  And sharing of that magnitude rarely goes unrewarded.

Some may not like what they see.   Some may object, driven by their own fears and doubts, and blame you for their pain.   Others may counsel you to take a safer road, or keep hidden, or “appear professional.”   I say, let them have their way.  You forge yours.   Let them leave.   You stay.  And shine.

Some people - the right people, the people who matter - will love you for it.

Why? Because you’ve given them something to love, something to wrap their eyes around and hug.  Those who stay hidden can’t touch, or be touched, like this.

It takes courage to step outside of your comfort zone.  But that’s okay.  I know you can do it.   I believe in you.

Have you tried and tried to make art that pulses with life, only to end up time and again with mediocre results ? If you just can’t seem to get beyond the ordinary, you may have all but given up on that elusive work that brings your special light into the world.

You may have started with a visual image that you hoped would blossom into a meaningful work. Then you tried different approaches within your capabilities, corrected for accuracy, and worked it to death, without any magic happening. But it’s not just about precision.

Making a work of art is a lot like falling in love.

To set about manufacturing an important piece would be like trying to engineer your true love all on your own. If you’ve ever tried it with love, you know how painful failure can be.

So how do you go about falling in love?

Here’s the thing — you don’t. You cannot intend to fall in love all by yourself, or dream up the finished form that will let your special light shine. You either love someone or you don’t. You’re either pulled towards an inspiration or you aren’t.

One half of a partnership cannot create the other half, yet the relationship can’t start without the special light of both meeting.

Eventually you might have given up hope of a match made in heaven. So too you might have given up ever creating a remarkable work of art, and resigned yourself to making the most of what you have.

Don’t get me wrong.

There’s nothing wrong with making the most of what you have. But, in love as in art, what you have is only half the story.

You know what’s missing — the other half. Even in great art — maybe especially there — it’s about relationship.

There’s you, the artist, longing to find the visual metaphor for your special light, and there’s the metaphor longing for the perfect you to find it and give it visual expression. Both parts must be vulnerable and able to recognize and receive the other.

How can an image respond in partnership ?

The images you choose embody personal feeling, and continue to hold that meaning for you. Here’s where faith comes in; faith in your essential light, and how you conceived of the image. If you respond to it as though it had a light of its own, then it will come to life.

Letting go is the scariest.

Just as in love you have to be willing to share control, so too in making art. There comes a time when you have finished with the reference sketch or photo, and need to let go of your preconceived idea, and step into unknown territory.

“The Fertile Void is the long, slow, deep breath — the gathering in of strength — that precedes a daring leap into the unknown,” writes Suzanne Braun Levine.

Not knowing is crucial. Besides providing excitement, this element of mystery may be the reassurance that you are not doing this alone after all.

Every step of the way, keep asking what the relationship needs. When the visual metaphor responds to your spirit as an equal, magic can begin. The most natural thing is to work in the flow of partnership, together developing the unique form it will manifest in the world.

Just like that.

Once you are engaged in partnering with a work in progress, and have forgotten all about forging it alone, the masterpiece will begin to take shape. It may seem to drop from the sky like a seed into fertile soil, or it might be a slow, delicious growing. If it is your greatest work yet, you will feel the recognition without doubt, just as you would recognize your soulmate.

Whatever missed you couldn’t have hit. Whatever hit you couldn’t have missed.

The perfect concept might already have appeared and you weren’t ready, so you didn’t recognize the sacred moment. But that’s all right. If you weren’t ready, a lover or work of art wouldn’t have come to maturity anyway.

You would have saved yourself the heartache of overworking and ruining a good idea. Besides, it may very well appear again later when you are ready.

Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.

When one work turns out not to be your special one after all, you have the opportunity to learn and grow from the experience. It won’t have been a mistake so much as a learning step before you are ready to receive the greatest work of your life.

Don’t ever give up.

When the right one does land in your heart, what follows isn’t hard work in the slightest. It will envelop you from all directions with a powerful reassuring strength. You will know without a shadow of a doubt that this is the creative inspiration for you in this moment.

A true masterpiece grows of mutual love until it fairly swoons with big, deep, wide meaning.

Her mouth was dry and her hands were shaking as Jenna headed for the podium. Though she was a master on the subject of art marketing, facing her first large audience, the footlights seemed blinding.

Does this remind you of setting up a flawless white canvas or paper? You might have had a concept of what you wanted to paint, but you were held frozen like a deer in the headlights.

What can you do to overcome this intimidation ?

Jenna had brought note cards to use, so she’d have back up support for her nervousness. Seemed like a flawless plan. But, when she looked down at the top card, she saw she had picked up the wrong set of notes !

Being an open, honest person, Jenna feigned tossing the cards over her shoulder, and told her audience what had happened. Then she went on speaking to them personally from her experience and knowledge of the subject. She adjusted it to suit the audience responses.

Having made the effort to come to this talk, people were already on her side. They loved her for being a fallible human being and her off-the-cuff talk ended up warmer and more human.

How can you charm the glare off a pristine canvas?

Spill paint on it !

Yes. It works. As Jenna fessed up to her mess up, you too can mess up the thing that’s got you stuck.

Choose an acrylic colour like yellow ochre, which is not too dominant.

Mix up a largish amount of very fluid paint.

Toss it randomly on a canvas or paper that lies flat on a table.

You can pick it up and tilt it in all directions to help the wet paint run around. Or, you can use a drinking straw to blow the paint in different directions. If you’re going to spill, might as well really enjoy yourself.

Leave it to dry awhile.

Then take the canvas or paper in your hands and view it from different directions, gazing at this splotch as you might gaze at cloud formations. Keep dreaming into it until you spy something wanting to emerge.

With white gesso or paint, ‘erase’ everything which isn’t a part of your vision. As your image form emerges, it will respond to your warmth and take on a life of its own just as did Jenna’s audience. Your decisions will be guided from here on by your relationship to the image you see. Your image will let you tease it out if you respond with warmth.

Just as Jenna won the hearts of her audience by being candid, so too will you charm the image into existence and make a more interesting painting which you couldn’t possibly have preconceived alone.

“Forget the touchy-feely woo-woo spiritual stuff, just tell me how to make art !” declares a beginning artist. The strange thing is, the same person who thinks this, knows deep in their heart that emotional responses are directly related to the expression of deep feelings in their art.

I know, because I’ve watched lots of people try the “paint-by-numbers” approach to applying nuts-and-bolts to get their art making skills going and still the juices don’t flow.

Don’t get me wrong; you need nuts and bolts.

Effective art of any kind is not just the absence of chaos, but the presence of organized inspiration. The artist needs an organizing principle to do justice to an inspired expression before it can really come to life.

With deep feeling as a motivating force, you’ve got a reason for the nuts and bolts. You cannot make good art with just the strong feelings either. You need some sort of discipline to back up the feelings.

A balance between heart and control.

When either the feeling or the technical side of things is overweight, it seems to push you away, and feels chaotic or contrived. When the delicate balance point is neared, the impact lands and fills us with personal response and meaning. That’s what making art is all about — delivering an impact with meaning.

The balance is quite easy to observe in this artist.

Lea Salonga sings: “I’ve never been in love before” on YouTube here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO65KQhCuAc

There’s a delicate blend of control and emotion. You can clearly hear the control, yet it doesn’t push you away with stiffness. Instead, her voice control draws you in. It’s all for the purpose of delivering the impact.

Which comes first ?

What sets a work of art apart from a diagram is the spirit inside it. Whether you think your feelings for the subject come first or the how-to techniques, both factors must be alive and working together before any impact can come about.

The technical parts of art making can frighten people too, just as the spiritual connection can. But techniques can be learned at any time they’re needed. When you’re motivated with feeling, a little technical learning has a real purpose and isn’t so scary.

Spiritual connection is a simple, universal way to connect with the inner feelings that can motivate your work. It doesn’t require you to make any woo-woo sacrifices or be untrue to your convictions in any way. It’s your own emotions you’re after to fuel your work.

The hard work comes in being vigilant about the ego mind. The ego mind is a crafty sucker, always trying to get control, impersonating God, and a variety of other slippery things.

It’s not a question of either-or.

Discipline is required, but not blind, unthinking discipline. It’s the discipline related to learning, to being a disciple. And this learning is about being able to discern the voice of the ego from the voice of your heart.

Effective art has both to be sure when they are in a fine tuned balance. If the technical know-how takes charge at the start, the feelings tend to get pinched out. That’s why many who have studied art formally, eventually run dry for lack of inner motivation.

No one can teach you just the perfect technique to render the feelings you need to express. You must become the expert on your feelings for a subject, and then the work becomes the joy of discovering the appropriate technique to express it.

Putting your art out for peer review or the scrutiny of the public can be really nerve wracking. Up the fear another notch by submitting it to a juried show or for gallery approval. Aside from the stomach wrench of outing your art, the experience of being rejected really bites.

Then, oh boy, let the second guessing begin.

You start wondering if maybe you should have made it more ***, less ***, or if the judges are prejudiced, or you just don’t have the ‘talent’.

It’s actually not about the rejection.

The issue is never the rejection itself — it’s always a person’s relationship to the rejection. The judges’ rejection is a reflection of THEIR stuff.

Your reaction? A reflection of YOUR stuff.

We all tell ourselves stories that explain why the pain of rejection happens.

If you think it means you are incompetent then you’re going to be disappointed a lot. Waiting for someone else — or something else — to confirm your right to feel okay about yourself, is no good.

Your opinion of me is none of my business.

Don’t mistaken your art for yourself and confuse rejection of your work with personal rejection.

It’s your art that’s judged and rejected, not you yourself.

The thing we all need to practice is gradually letting go of the need for both rejection and acceptance — so you can get to the point where you can trust your own abilities and opinions.

All other feedback, whether positive or negative, is secondary. It doesn’t define you. It’s just more information for you to consider, should you ever choose to.

What are the chances of having your work rejected ?

Logically, only 3 results are possible:

> Some will like your work.

> Some will dislike it.

> Some will have no opinion.

So there’s only a slim 33% chance of your work receiving positive acceptance.

Decide ahead of time what purpose is served in putting your work out there. What are you really looking for ?

Galleries are interested in finding styles of art that fit their clientele’s tastes. When you submit your art to a gallery to be included in their stable of artists they are not going to critique your work. That’s what you pay a teacher to do. Even a Picasso would probably not be accepted in a gallery specializing in landscapes.

If your art is singing or dancing and you want to land a plum role, then of course you’re going to have to compete with many skilled artists. Competition here makes sense but you know that going in.

You are the only qualified judge of the quality of your own work.

Beats me why anyone would seek out juried artshows. What’s up with comparing different pieces, like apples and oranges anyway? And then, who are the judges and what makes their particular opinions relevant to anything?

Great reviews are the worst.

They mislead you more than the bad ones, because they only fuel your ego. Then you only want another one, like potato chips or something, and the best thing you get is fat and bloated.

The snap win can turn out to be a tragedy of epic proportions. Your success in always being accepted might have disastrous implications, keeping you in an ivory tower, or shielding you from growing and changing.

Over time, a loss often turns out to be a win.

There have been times I was incredibly grateful that my work wasn’t accepted.

Well, okay. Not at first. But eventually I came to see the benefit.

Understanding the reason behind that rejection could unlock the door to understanding a much bigger picture than you currently see. It could lead you to addressing a part of your work that needs expanding, softening, deepening, developing… You may end up eternally grateful for that rejection, as I have been.

It takes time.

In my experience, you can’t learn to trust your own opinions and abilities overnight, unless you happen to be already well rounded, balanced, skilled, and can gracefully shift with growth and change. If you are, please let me know.

Right now you can take your feelings of fear of rejection inside. Without pushing them away as bad and thus making them stronger, accept them as your state of the moment. Know that it is perfectly okay to feel however you do. Sit with it tenderly.

When the pain of rejection has dissolved, begin again where you left off bettering your work. In your own terms. The goal is not to gain acceptance, but to gain the freedom from depending on rejection or acceptance. Stick with your chosen path by being loyal to your heart first and always.

When I first moved in with my present husband Bill 35 years ago, I found a new job on a US military base. As graphic illustrator, I was to make signs for military exercises, and I was given a mechanical “lettera set” for making them.

Though it meant I could be with my new man, after the innovative freedom of teaching at an International School, I hated the prospect of not using my creative juices all day long.

But, at first I did what was asked, and made legible signs. The soldiers were very satisfied. They got what they expected. I was successful, but bored stiff.

Who do you please, yourself or others?

A friend and client of mine regrets that she can’t develop her own ‘fun’ art because she has to churn out art that sells in her coop gallery. You may have found that friends or clients keep expecting your original type of work too. Maybe it was successful once so you don’t like to turn them down.

I bought some books on calligraphy and took a night school course. Soon I started making every work order in duplicate: one with the lettera set, and one in freehand calligraphy. Then I turned them both in and let the captain choose.

Every single time that I submitted two versions, the ordinary soldiers always chose the hand drawn calligraphy one. Within a week, I stopped making the mechanical version. This was soldiers expecting military signs, not people expecting varied art in a gallery.

How can they choose what they haven’t seen yet?

If you gave yourself the chance to develop some other sides of your art, then your clients could see for themselves the larger array of your creative capabilities.

If the soldiers instantly appreciated my creative calligraphy, how long do you think it would it take your clients to enjoy the choices of new innovations in your art?

The essence of your ‘fun’ artwork is no different from that of what you sell. All your work contains your essential spirit. You can’t help it.

Give yourself some private time to satisfy your own needs, to develop your art just for you, and see what’s in there wanting to show up. It needn’t take a great deal of extra time away from your usual work.

Try this:

> Fewer pieces but more options.

Work on your own ‘fun’ art, then introduce one or two innovative pieces along with fewer of your tried and tested ones.

> Cross pollinate.

After awhile you could interweave newly developing directions that show up in your newly emerging art into ‘old’ expected pieces, letting the ideas lead you as they seem suitable.

More creative freedom than ever.

It wasn’t long before I started to be asked to make advertising posters and tickets for the military community theatre group, and other functions. Work began to be really creative and fun.

Once your innovative side is exposed, I bet folks will start to seek you out with ideas of their own. You’ll be meeting your clients’ needs for beauty and developing some really innovative work at the same time. You’ll be much happier too, and this benefits everyone.

In our rush to satisfy what we perceive as expectations to please others, we sometimes just about forget the inner world of satisfying our own needs.

The home of the creative spirit, given any chance at all, will reveal its divine, miraculous capacity to heal, to make us whole, and to lead us to ever greater success as well as pleasure. Remember pleasure?

One painting a friend made almost by accident, moves her profoundly. Since then, none of her paintings even come close. After completing a milestone work, have you ever thought you’d lost your way, unable to produce an encore?

British scientist, Alexander Fleming was working on diseases caused by bacteria. One day in 1922 he happened to have a cold, and a drip from his nose fell into a culture dish of bacteria. He was surprised to find that the accidental drip had killed off any bacteria it had come in contact with.

Do you sneeze at serendipity ?

Sometimes when you’re least expecting it, a work will emerge unbidden, that seems curious, powerful, unlike any you’ve made before. Though you didn’t know you were looking for it, your willing innocence to find it changes everything that went before and comes after.

Maybe other scientists have had the same sort of ‘accident’ happen to them, but threw it out as a spoiled experiment. But not Fleming. Like you, he was willing to recognize the opportunity disguised as an inconvenience.

A willingness to be vulnerable, instead of intentionally trying to cause it, allowed you to recognize the serendipity for the amazing opportunities it held.

Was Fleming an overnight success ?

First he isolated the active agent in the mucus, but it proved too weak against the main disease-carrying bacilli. But he kept on doing the day-to-day work of unraveling what he could learn from the ‘accident’.

Unwrapping some of the mysterious gifts that were embedded in your first success, probably reveled a lot of meaning. You may not be ready yet to receive another opportunity of such magnitude. If every work you made were spectacular, you can see how you might lose your way, buried in unwrapped gifts.

You haven’t lost it. Like Fleming, you’re just creative.

The dryness that’s driving you crazy actually comes from your inherent creativity and optimism. For if you look closely at the art you have started since, you’ll discover that it holds reminders of nature you haven’t explored, life you haven’t lived, and touchstones for the myriad interests that beckon your curiosity.

The smaller works between the special pieces are part of the learning process of unraveling mysteries. Take enough time to enjoy living the secrets as they unfold, without trying to second guess what you may find next.

Six years later . . .

In his cluttered laboratory, Fleming noticed that a culture dish of bacteria had been invaded by a mold whose spore must have drifted in through an open window. Under the microscope, he saw that, all around the mold, the individual bacteria that he had been growing had burst. He saved the mold, and from it produced the world’s first penicillin !

When you’re good and ready, with nothing to prove and no stake in the result, you may be surprised again by surendipity. Let your heart feel the way to dance this image into a form it wants to be.

There are an infinite number of paintings great and small waiting for the opportune moment to be born through your creative hands. Like the miracle drug penicillin, one or two might even knock your socks off !

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You’re overwhelmed with too many demands: a house to clean, kids to raise, a living to earn. Seems there’s always something more important than indulging yourself in making art.

A New Yorker cartoon shows Superman, the disguise of his everyday suit stripped off and flung over a deckchair. There he lies on a tropical beach wearing sunglasses, sunblock, and sipping a cool drink, with a big red S emblazoned on his muscular t-shirt. He’s answering his cellphone right now — “Listen pal, they’re all emergencies.”

What’s Superman’s secret?

He knows he can’t possibly do it all, because he’s a normal human being, needy by definition. He knows from experience that mercy, compassion and love don’t come from him in the first place. Unless he regularly refills his own spirit with these qualities, he won’t have any left to give to anyone else. It’s simple - he won’t survive.

Several times a day, whenever he gets a call for help, Superman surrenders his everyday disguise and bares his inner spirit. It takes but a moment of his time.

Indulgence or spiritual renewal ?

You can use art making in the same way the cartoon Superman used lounging on a beach. If you can surrender your overwhelm whenever you get empty, you can make art as a way to renew your spirit. The time it takes depends on how readily you can strip off - surrender your outer disguise.

At first, make sure you’re alone when you strip.

Surrender. Go inside and with inner reflection or Remembrance, say out loud what you’re feeling. No, really; let it out: “I can’t do all this! I’m afraid I can’t cope anymore!”

The hardest thing is to admit that you cannot do it all. Surrendering seems like giving up in failure, but it’s not. It’s empowering.

For once, don’t force yourself like a good little soldier you’ve been all your life, to confront this fear and march yourself down into the basement. Don’t. Instead, allow the feeling, watch it like a mother would watch her child until it dissolves.

Then ask to be filled with mercy, patience, compassion, love - whatever qualities you need. Without second guessing how it will feel, wait until you start to actually sense yourself filling.

Take a tip from Superman on the beach:

They’re all emergencies, and yours comes first, or no one survives.

Making art this way as a regular practice renews your own spirit. It keeps the creative qualities primed and your Superman energy flowing from your heart out through your hands. Besides, you will enhance your ability to make art and care for others at the same time. Your dependents will thank you.

“Clark Kent’s Other Life”

 I based this painting on a photo of
my husband Bill taken 60 years ago. Check out the tatoo I gave him and the name of the magazine.