Trusting the Process

“Images birth one another. moving us within ourselves.” -Author Sean Mcniff

In 2005, I was commissioned to create a line of greeting cards for women having difficulties with fertility issues.  They were to be sold at hospital gift shops and clinics. I found this timely, in that my husband and I were talking about starting a family. I had my own fears around becoming pregnant and did not think that I could conceive. Once, again I turned to my art and it’s process to heal my fears around becoming pregnant. The opportunity with the card company did not come to fruition so in instead I chose to take the artwork that I had created and turn them into my own card line.  I created the artwork before, during, and after pregnancy and they became the springboard for the process of all of my cards.

What I learned is that when you paint and continue to move from one picture to the next a series of pictures will emerge. The women’s series were all my personal experiences, feelings, hopes and dreams of being woman and becoming a mother. When the paintings were finished , I would gleam more of a feeling from them then a particular insight that would point me in the direction of the next painting. There was an energy to them that built on the previous ones.  In each painting, I would start with the woman figure and as I painted  new qualities would emerge from her in color, composition and overall feeling.  I was moving with the art and as the paintings were changing I was changing with them.

Looking at our own paintings gives us a glimpse at our inner landscape. When we work on a series of paintings it allows us to see our life over a period of time.  Our lives are often fragmented and we often look to the outside world for answers or direction. A world that is unpredictable and in constant change. To relax in periods of uncertainty within our art work is a skill we can take into our lives.  There is often a point in when doing art when one is uncertain what the next move should be or where the painting  is heading. This can be a place of chaos.  As in art this is true in life.  It has been studied that Creativity increases with chaos. Chaos can be a place where we flourish instead of flee from. We can use our imagination to dive into unknown and see where it takes us. To trust the creative intelligence within our own bodies and “letting go” into the unknown will lead us to new places of healing and hope.

 

Finding the Space between Moments in Art and Life

“I Come Home To Myself”

 I stand firmly in the Truth of who I AM

 Learning to take refuge in the eye of the storm

I am no longer buffeted by the winds of fear or the waves of change

The ship of me takes on no water as I gain power and strength

The course is clear, the sail is set

Confidently sailing now through the storm of chaos

Trusting, knowing, seeing, feeling

The shore of TRANQUILITY lies straight ahead

written by Anne M. Delaney (C)

 

Have you ever been in a moment where you feel a part of the experience. Where you and your surroundings are one in the same? When you are there you lose sight of how long you are in this place where time seems  to stand still.There are different ways to describe this place of “flow” or “Zen” or space where you and life merge.  The moment may be fleeting but definitely memorable. For me it was, and a place I want to return.   Like a spiritual pilgrim who makes their trip to the holy land the trip can be arduous and painstaking journey. Or, it can be a visit to a place within a moment that is quite ordinary where you can take a sigh of relief and thank God for just how ordinary it can be.

I have had both experiences, the jaw dropping all encompassing moment and the everyday ordinary one too. They say it is most interesting in art to see things in contrast to each other. I think this is true of life. So, I will briefly tell you my story of both. After graduating from college at twenty-two I decided not to take the typical pilgrimage of most graduates and travel cross Europe. Instead, I signed up for a twelve day kayaking trip with a group to Aialic bay within the Kenai Fjords of Alaska.  As you can imagine, this was the difficult and physically demanding version of my first “moment” within a moment. As we made our way along the coast to Aialic bay the motion of our paddles were in perfect unison. The ebb and flow of our kayaks floating through the swells that would peacefully rise us up only to gently release us back down.  Until that moment, when the glacier came into sight revealing itself as this divine piece of nature’s work.  We were literally and metaphorically carried away by a current in a moment within time where everything was in perfect harmony. Everything made sense and the parts of life all came together and I could see and feel a natural being. Feeling “melted” into the experience or “flowing into it with the knowing I was to be there at that instant while contributing to it’s significance.

There is an actual term for this “vital engagement” a relationship to the world that is characterized by both the experience of “flow” (enjoyed absorption) and by meaning.  It has been studied and well documented by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Psychology professor who is best known for his notion of “flow” and his years of writing and research on the topic. Csikszentmihalyi interviewed all kinds of people he discovered a common thread to their stories, he found them all describing the same feeling of “flow”  when describing how it feels to be absorbed in a painting, or playing a difficult piece of music. Watching a good play, or reading a stimulating book also produced the same mental state. It was clear from his research that the outcome was not what was sought after but the process itself.  

This was so true, in my experience in Alaska. I believe it was the process of the monotonous paddling for hours at a time that eventually brought me to a place of heightened awareness. Or as my guide at the time called an “unmasking” where the beautiful moment was revealed. It reminds me of the “OM” sounds made in the process of meditation.  It eventually gets you there yet you can’t quite recall how you got there.

I think there are many ways to get to this place. For me it comes most easily with art. I can be so engrossed within the process I can lose time and my focus is intent as the painting changes, and I change with it. Up into the point where I put it down, look at my next blank canvas and start the process all over again. I think Csikszentmihalyi  is right when he says it is not the anticipation of a beautiful picture but the process of painting itself.  

So, now about my ordinary experience of flow.  Actually, It is quite boring but just as memorable as I caught a glimpse of it again the other day. It was as I was driving my kids to preschool. Don’t worry I did not have to pull over. It was quiet and subtle experience of sensing, as I was moving with the glistening colored leaves and for just a fleeting moment I found myself again in the space between moments.

Alisha K. Duckett

Artist, Owner Healing Art Images

Be moved by art

Is inspiration motivated from within or is it nurtured by our relationships with others? This is a question that peaked my interest recently after doing some reading on the subject. The first, was the September issue of the “Ladies Home Journal” titled “The Long Good Bye,” about a mother who confronts the feelings that come from an empty nest and having to redefine who she is and what motivates her. She begs the question of the roles we fulfill as daughters, mothers, wives and if we are internally motivated from the roles we fulfill or do we feel inspiration from a place that is uniquely our own?

In contrast to this article, I read a book titled “Journal of a Solitude,” by May Sarton about an artist who goes out of her way to create in solitude with little interaction with others in complete isolation from the world and all of its distractions. She feels that it is only in this place she can truly create in a way that is authentically her own.

As a mother of two small children I was drawn to both women. Seeing the changes coming as a mother and knowing in my heart that as the article was so appropriately titled “The long good-bye” is  really what the mother-child relationship is all about.  However, I have to be honest the thought of creating in complete isolation did make me wonder if I would be a more accomplished artist with all the time and freedom to create without the distractions of everyday life.

So how to be within the world, meet the changes that meet us where we are while maintaining the relationships that help us define who we are? For now at least.  Because, as those precious people in our life change we change too. Everything is a part of this constant change. all of it.

So where do we go from here? As in my case, the little ones leave the roost 15 years or so from now? Who do I become as a woman, an artist? Were they my true inspiration? Was I motivated to create from them alone?

Yet, there is something deep within me that in my opinion is untouched. It is to be what Aristotle called “The unmoved mover.” Art can lead us to the place where we are internally motivated yet willing to move as life moves us. So, instead of a “room of one’s own,” maybe it is more realistic to have the space of one’s own.” art can provide this space. All of our feelings, and experiences from life we can process them in our own time as a way to reflect or process it.Every gesture we make on paper has movement and change. Each stroke is unique to who we are and where we are in our life.  To access this flow is how we can meet life as it changes and to hopefully move with it rather than against it. Art helps us meet who we are becoming right in the moment we put it on paper. And that is just the beginning of where art will lead us if we let it. Because, right when we think we have made our mark it changes, the paint flows together, the paper dries and it means something more than we had originally intended.

Alisha K. Duckett

Artist, Owner Healing Art Images