Heartsong Studio

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 !