Heartsong Studio

In two days my family was cut in half. After years of caring for my husband with Alzheimer’s, he was moved into a permanent care home, and the next day I had to bury our older dog.

Though Bill is better cared for than he could be at home and sweet Flurry is finally out of pain, my losses seemed strangely sudden.

That same evening, the local community choir to which I belong was to perform the first of three concerts. How could I go on and be creative so soon? Could I concentrate enough to carry my part? Would I keep it together on stage when the music got to me?

Ironically, “We Rise Again” was the concert theme, yet the first half seemed to make my burden heavier. I thought that Faure’s Requiem was such dark, morose sounding music, sung in Latin, and far too difficult for us to perform well.

Why is long awaited freedom suddenly so hard?

After ages of serving others, a time will come when you finally get the green light to care for yourself again. You may already have felt the nibble of some ideas for resuming your artwork. But then, doubts rise up big time!

Can you really do this after all this time? Is it reasonable to consider creative expression after all you’ve been through? Would it be best to leave the making to more prolific artists? Can you lift yourself up and go on?

Creating art can heal.

I had received such wonderful support in my caregiver role, it seemed only natural to give some back. Following through on my commitment in spite of doubts and fears gave me a sort of star to focus my mind on.

Taking part in art making is much more powerful than just appreciating it. I found that giving my breath to make beautiful music within a group had a wonderfully calm, healing effect.

After working cooperatively with 55 other singers and an 11 piece orchestra, we eventually could focus on expressing the uplifting meaning of the music. The audience received a powerful experience, and I too felt lifted and healed.

How to go on:

1. Rekindle your inner light. Take some time to practice meditation, the Remembrance, prayer, yoga, or whatever works for you.

2. Be willing to face pain. Allow all your feelings without reserve, then let them go.

3. Give up the notion of total control, then notice how creative ideas come on their own. Allow them space to engage you.

4. Then, get on with it!

I’m beginning drawings for new paintings. Leaving room for the ideas to develop, I trust that once I’m playing my part, the whole will come to a surprising life of its own, and just as in the choir, my healing will continue.

All forms of art making feed the soul and create a container that nourishes your heart. Your renewed spirit will be reflected back to others too through your work.

Sometimes you’re too frazzled to think.  Responsibilities can rapidly change your priorities, so there’s no time to take care of yourself, let alone make art. 

As sole caregiver 24/7 over the many months that my husband was losing himself in Alzheimer’s, I had no time to spare.  When I finally did stumble into some free time, I was usually too stressed to do much other than sit.  I certainly couldn’t paint.

What can you do?

Don’t even try to make art.

I know. I know.  You’re afraid if you don’t pretty soon start creating something you’ll lose the knack.

It’s common for those of us used to requiring high production from ourselves to focus on the limits of our situation.   Right now, it’s too soon.  Things haven’t ripened yet. 

Idleness is not laziness.  

In winter, seeds are underground resting and, while idle, they’re gaining strength for the coming spring.  You too have a natural process of growth in creative expression. 

We all require some period of idleness to lick our wounds, reorient our relationship with Life in general, and get our bearings in our changing situation.  It’s an important part of taking care of yourself.

No future in sight at this stage of your life?

“I am telling myself not to feel the regret,” wrote a woman who missed out on years of making art while she was raising a family. 

Trying to look on the bright side is no way out of a difficult situation.  Instead of trying to dismiss regret, sorrow, or remorse, embrace them.  Making room for all your conflicting feelings also allows you space for new possibilities.

Neither actively search for inspiration, nor passively wait on the whim of caprice.  Instead, remain open to any embryonic images which come your way that might express your changing situation.  

Suddenly it’s over!

After struggling for years caring for my husband’s horrible disease, my situation changed in a matter of hours.  A door suddenly opened, and my husband was given a permanent placement in a care facility where he will be better taken care of than he could have been by me alone. 

Now, as I slowly adjust to the many changes in my life, I can feel new inspirations for painting beginning to take shape. 

Take it easy.

As your situation changes, so do you.  Don’t expect to necessarily take up where you left off, or to create exactly as you once did. 

Try working large if you’ve been used to working small, or smaller if you’ve been used to working large.  Work fast if you’re used to working slow, or slow if used to working fast.

Consider changing media.

However, retain one or more forms of expression which give you comfort.

A different view: 

Looking back at the process of caring for my husband, I’m starting to see it not so much as lost art making time but as possibly the most creative work I’ve ever done.  I’m learning to make the most of whatever life presents to me.  This is the same reciprocal process as meaningful art making.

A willingness to be open to your heart’s wisdom will express itself in everything you do.  The art that comes through you after a time of challenge will be all the richer by reflecting your growth.

It’s still too tender.   Right after you’ve finished spilling your guts in a heartfelt work of art, words to describe it don’t often come easily, if at all.  You aren’t finished yet externalizing and integrating your mind and spirit around the new work.

This process can be helped by avoiding words and theory.  It thrives on silence and contemplation.  Some artists report that creativity requires a sort of blind energy and focused ignorance.

The seeds of doubt may be sown by words. Within words themselves there resides the potential disarmament of creative action.  The mind can easily override the heart and try to tell you how it should be.

Others’ words.

If you ask a lot of people for feedback, you may come away like leaving a psychiatrist’s session — wondering whether to turn right or left, where you parked your car, or if you even have a car.

It’s best to show a new piece to very few until your mind has digested it awhile.   For example, when I had just finished the painting “After all this time…”, I showed it to very few trusted friends.

After all this time . . .

One suggested my painting needed an object in the foreground to give a size perspective, like a crab or a rock on the shore. I was still vulnerable, having barely finished it.  The whole meaning hadn’t quite sifted up to my consciousness.   Having multiple perspectives was part of the whole point.

Another friend pointed out that you can never lose the horizon as my sun was taking a bite out of mine.  I hunted down a photo from nature that proved him wrong.  A-ha !  Damn it.  I was getting defensive.

But then he cared enough to suggest how waves appear in the distance.   I knew he was right about this.  When I found a way to change it that felt right, another layer of meaning came clear to me.

Often the complement is a pitfall.

“I like it,” tells you nothing useful, and it tends to encourage you to rest on your quest.   Although a detailed description of someone’s liking can give you another view you hadn’t thought of, as a third friend helped me by saying:

“I LOVE it !   It is beautiful.  The waves have so much strength and joy they just feel they can carry someone to the end of the world.  I understand why people want you to put in a rock or a crab; they are overwhelmed by the openness.  I found this openness so beautiful and full of promise and opportunity like a beginning.  I can see you dancing on the tip of the wave in the sunrise.”

All these friends gave me priceless gifts.

Criticism and praise can be equally helpful when they’re honest.  It’s not about being “right” or “wrong”.   It’s about trying others’ ideas on for fit.

Friends can often see our work more objectively than we can.  If our original concept can stay open to the light of others’ words, it can be strengthened and enhanced by the exercise.

Your own perception is the most valuable.

At first you may not be able to even give it a name.   When you do title your work, it helps give viewers a clue about its meaning.  Rushing this before you know yourself can curtail your process.

Usually the beginning seed of a concept morphs and develops as the work grows.   It is often through the exercise of honing in on the perfect title that you might integrate your mind and spirit around the deeper meaning, or else realize the limits of this piece.

It can take years to see into your own work.

All your art is autobiographical to some extent, coming from your heart as it does.  If you had unraveled and healed all your issues, then they wouldn’t be showing through.

Twenty-some years after painting certain watercolours, I finally see how poignant and full of yearning they are. I couldn’t see then how they revealed my soul.  Now those issues are resolving, I have found words for them and they have become valuable diaries which I keep as records of my growth.

December 2009 —

Finally I have titled the painting which I’d provisionally called “After all this time….”  to  “Source Eternal”.  The process took place as I described in this article.

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Let’s get real. What are your chances of successfully making art at this stage in your life ?

If you were a rare prodigy like Picasso, chances are you wouldn’t be reading this. You’d be too busy producing masterpieces to be subscribed to Fresh Horses or exploring different ways of opening to creative expression.

Prodigies don’t often indulge in open-ended exploration. They tend to start with a clear idea or concept of where they want to go. Then they go there. Searching means nothing to the prodigy. Instead, they find.

One indication of a prodigy’s success — Picasso’s earliest works are worth about four times his works done later in life.

Sometimes genius is anything but rarefied.

“Sometimes it’s just the thing that emerges after twenty-two years of working at your kitchen table,” wrote Gladwell in his October ’08 New Yorker article.

We who were not prodigies may yet be late bloomers.

The personality of late bloomers is oriented to experimentation. It requires time to assimilate growth and healing in your life in order to achieve the desired goals — those that meet your exacting standards.

Late bloomers are usually on a journey through life.

They collect and grow from experiences. One thing leads to a richer something else, and so their work evolves, forever imperfect, gathering in richness through research and experience. They are always on the cusp of transformation.

If you are a late blooming artist, you are more like a Cezanne. The works at the end of his career are his finest masterpieces, worth about fifteen times the value of his earlier works.

How shall we measure success ?

In my experience, success will probably be measured by personal satisfaction more than anything. Though we understand the value of money, late bloomers tend to value their journey of personal creation and growth above the destination.

Assuming you’re a late bloomer like me, you may want to reinvent yourself at some stage in your life, or explore another side of your spirit. The longer you live, the greater your possibility of success.

Don’t go it alone.

No matter how much of a self-starter, pull-yourself-up-by-the-boot-straps kind of guy you think you are, there will come a time or three when you run out of juice and courage. What you need is the connection of someone on your side; an advocate you trust.

Seems impossible to be a success at much of anything without at least one advocate who really cares for you. A true advocate has no ulterior motive other than their genuine caring for you and your creative explorations.

By the time you know you’re getting somewhere in personal artistic expression, you’ll also feel grateful to others knowing you couldn’t have done it alone. This is one indication that you are learning the giving and receiving of true love.

Significant others.

No one in any significant profession can do it without the essential help of others. Even hard-working ten-thousand-hour obsessive-compulsive introverts have to learn to accept support and encouragement from trusted others.

For some, this comes naturally, even easily. For others, particularly those in self-starting fields, it’s a long and dusty road pocked with trial and error.

The writer David Fountain’s wife happily supported the eighteen year gestation of her husband’s work “Brief Encounters”. She had complete confidence in him.

Cezanne’s father didn’t hesitate to support his son financially, being just as committed to artistic ‘perfection’ as his son.

Theo Van Gogh’s devotion to his brother was not just financial; he was the emotional bedrock of Vincent’s life.

Late bloomer’s stories are invariably love stories in the making.

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Fifty-eight diverse people came together to sing in our local community choir. About the only thing we had in common was a desire to express ourselves. We differed in most other respects, including musical training which ranged from none at all to professional.

We sounded pretty ragged at the first few rehearsals, fifty-eight different voices all doing their own thing. Not a satisfying experience to say the least. What we communicated was our wide differences.

Some beginning artists enjoy visually expressing their innermost feelings too, yet puzzle over why this doesn’t yield any but accidental success in communicating to others.

Sure your heart has to be filled with inspiration to begin to make deeply meaningful art of any kind. But there still remains the question of how to communicate all the meanings we envision to others so it has the desired effect.

Won’t technical discipline kill heartfelt expression ?

All of us wanted to make beautiful music, but it was hard for many to curtail their socializing and knuckle down. It was because of the discipline that after many weeks of hard, two and three hour rehearsals, we eventually learned techniques of singing that enabled us to blend our individual voices into one beautiful sound.

How do you turn an expressive feeling into a work of art ?

The same way a soprano, alto, tenor or bass does — by repeating difficult parts enough times until the bugs are ironed out and it is known inside out. An artist might draw her chosen image enough times from enough different perspectives until she knows it like the back of her hand.

Just as a piece of music expresses meaning and feeling by intonation, rhythm, crescendos, pronunciation, and so on, your images need to find the best composition to communicate your intended meaning and feeling.

It’s not about individual performances. All the parts need to blend in varying proportions. Sometimes the harmony needs to be quieter so as not to drown out the tender melody. Other passages need all parts to crescendo together into a glorious peak.

The elements in your artwork are not all of equal importance either. Some need to lead, while others need to play a complimentary role, or sometimes a challenging, clashing role. If all your colours are equally brilliant, for example, the total effect becomes less than brilliant.

What ! Heart-centred math ?

When you transfer your final drawing into the different size of your finished surface, the scaling up often involves mathematical proportions. Though it might seem far removed from creativity, it can make all the difference between a beautiful work and a silly one.

Nobody’s eye will accept a horizon at sea that isn’t dead straight. An otherwise beautiful seascape is totally ruined if the water runs uphill. It is more than okay to measure the horizon with a ruler. It’s mandatory.

The rhythm of a drawing communicates feelings the same way that getting the rhythm right is crucial in music. Trust that ‘doesn’t look quite right’ feeling and take the time to study the true nature of what you really want to communicate. Take its pulse. Get the details right.

It helps to know a little biology if you’re going to draw on nature. How far back on a duck’s body are its legs ? Learn a little oceanography if you’re going to paint beach scenes. Do waves approaching shore grow bigger or smaller, and why ?

Supporting your imagination.

Because artistic intelligence often holds dollops of imagination, the world of the artist can appear greater and more wonderful than the real world. To bear fruit, the creative imagination has to be harnessed by intelligent life-skills — like hard work, focus and practicalities. These skills may need to be learned.

After warming the hearts of our local community who came out in snow storms to three concerts, we joked about bringing our unifying experience to Ottawa, as a model for peace among politicians. In a similar way, attention to detail in your artwork can enable your message to really land on receptive eyes.

“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” — Steve Jobs

Technical know-how, though secondary, is what allows you to climb every mountain in pursuit of your dream, and allows your dreams to touch the hearts of others.

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There was no question of any art-making after freak snow storms left us without power for 5 days and nights. House-bound, cold, and in the dark, keeping myself and my family warm and fed nipped any creative urges in the bud.

At first it was fun.

It was almost an adventure, like pioneering, or candle-lit dinner . . . for about an hour.

When things happen which change your day-to-day existence dramatically, like illness or accident, your priorities change in a flash.

Through no fault of your own, your art-making routine can be disrupted all out of shape by the overwhelm of added responsibilities. Even the holiday season can sabotage your creative habits.

You start to lose something.

A prolonged removal from the personal expression of creative work begins to affect your health too. Especially in times of stress, it can be very disconcerting to be deprived of this natural outlet.

Then suddenly the situation ends.

And, another type of stress is added. Things don’t always easily return to normal. It took a few warm nights sleeping without hat and mitts, and a few hot showers before I could relax and trust the return of power.

Many stops and starts – power on an hour, off again for two. Resetting digital clocks, and answering machines. Burst water pipes all over the neighbourhood. Phones dead whole days.

It’s not that you can’t benefit from a break.

The problem is afterwards, returning to some routine. Overcoming the inertia and returning to your art-making habits can take quite an effort after a prolonged absence.

Here’s an antidote to ease you back.

1. Don’t make art. Not yet.

Like finally taking a warm shower, ease yourself gently back with this loving care.

2. Just play.

Give yourself permission to be a child. Your inner artist will love to be cradled and played with.

3. Close your eyes and let your arms move in their own rhythm over paper. Use a cheap piece of paper and some ready media like crayons to further reduce the pressure.

A session or two of indulgent play will do the trick to get you back into the healthy habit. It could unearth some new possibilities; show you a fresh path to explore as well.

Much later, once you’re fully recovered, you can inch back into a regular discipline.

Turning tragedy into a blessing is a long road.

Though you may have no choice in the circumstances that limited you, you do have a choice, in the long run, of how you will view it. Once you have exercised resilience of this kind, you’ll be that much stronger in the future.

Think of the creative energy this will release ! There will be no stopping you !

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.