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Art in difficult times

The Covid-19 pandemic has challenged most of us, our jobs, our ideas, how we relate to each other and has produced fear. Fear of the unknown, the safety of our health and that of our families. Yet, it has exposed the tenacity and adaptability of some of us working from home, or just trying to stay busy as we wait for the new normal. Many of us, are using art to keep moving creatively and humming along at what our new normal has become. Creating art has a history of helping us heal during times of great transformation individually and collectively. When we create art we are co-creating with that which is unknown a kind of negotiation with what is to come. We are uncertain, but most days we play along anyways. Our art a type of alchemy that can turn our victimhood into empowerment.

Empowerment differs for everyone and the “we are all in this together,” becomes exposed displaying the inequalities that have always been. This stark inequality was witnessed while I was buying flowers at the local parking lot garden center. Immersed in the beauty of the colors, the blue sky with the anticipation of spring, clear incandescent music suddenly filled the parking lot. At first, thinking it was coming from someone’s phone, or pumped from the grocery store speakers, yet soon realized this was clearer than any mass produced music from a speaker. It was violin music, playing something familiar an Ed Sheeran song, the verse took form:

“Fighting against all odds
I know we’ll be alright this time
Darling, just hold my hand
Be my girl, I’ll be your man
I see my future in your eyes”

I was surprised to see my daughter suddenly appear from behind the rows of flowers, which limited my view as I stood in the middle of the parking lot. She said there was a man playing violin music, he had a wife and young children and was packing up, that he had a sign that read something to the effect of “money for rent and food”, my daughter gave him two dollars, and he said “God bless.” I was completely taken back now not only by the music but by the reality of what had just happened. The inequality right before us, the vulnerability of this man gifting us his music and asking for some help. When I turned beyond the rows of flowers, the man, his family, his beautiful music were all gone. In an instant, I felt the contrast of this man’s art filling the parking lot with sound that had feeling and meaning to a sudden hollowing out or emptiness. This music or art was negotiating with what was to come, the words “fighting against all odds” and “I know we’ll be alright” was this man’s hope, but it felt like everyone’s hope that afternoon, a hope for a better tomorrow and a knowing that everything will be alright.

Re-Membering with Art

Art is a shared experience that which is created from both the artists perspective and the viewers interpretation. That is the true beauty of art. Our ability to have a shared experience with that of the artist. Often, in art we can see our own experiences of love, loss, hope, change, vulnerability, when it has been manifested in art form. This can have a powerful effect for the artist creating and  the  viewer who is observing. This can stir up emotions that may have been repressed for both parties. This “release,” can transform an experience and have a “healing” effect. This Re-Membering, is bringing the pieces of ourselves back together as a whole.

When can art take a piece of our lives and record it for us to remember? The idea of “freezing,” time for a moment is what I find so exquisite in art. Art allows me as the artist to slow down, take a deep breath and capture a relationship with time. We are all having amazing moments with life whether we are conscience of it or not, and art for me can capture what I am experiencing in the moment. When I walk around my home and glance at my paintings, they become little recordings of who I was at that moment, what I was thinking, feeling, and experiencing captured in a painting. Part of my soul is in that painting, and the subject that I paint will often carry with it an essence or energy within it that reminds me of something I had reclaimed for myself. That healing or revealing is where my own true artistic expression resides.

Choosing Happiness!

“Some people chase happiness and some people choose happiness.” Robert Holden

Happiness can be an elusive thing.  I was recently painting with my daughter and found what I had been seeking for some time. I felt free for  a moment! Having the ability to put color and shape together completely unobstructed influenced how I painted that day. It shook something loose in me and I had an “Aha,” moment that I have not had in quite awhile. What was it in that moment that freed me up?

Chasing our dreams or choosing happiness is what can be so elusive. Just when you think you are closing in and have your life sketched out a certain way it changes again. That’s what I believe to make both the mystery in  art and life. In life we can feel trapped at times with our circumstances.  That is where living from a truly happy place can begin if we can carve out the precious moments for ourselves every day and art can create that  experience.

Chasing,  the water on paper, following the color, but not too closely. Allowing the strokes spontaneity.  Offering a little bit  of ourselves out with color and optimism so that we can learn more about who we are within. Our life not feeling like a paint by number but rather a life with the desire to continue the “search,” for ourselves and our happiness.

Happiness is always there for us in the moment we just need to shift our awareness so that we can choose to see it. Contentment in the present is where we can quietly observe what we are feeling on the inside.

Happiness for me on this day is sharing hot cocoa on a lazy  afternoon with my daughter , enjoying our art, and smiling and having fun along the way.

 

Live in Your Strength

“Live in your strength,” was what I read in my Yogi tea the morning of Nelson Mandela’s passing.  This made me think of how to live in my own strength. Mandela lived a life of  unwavering strength and authentic power. In fact, one of his favorite poems that he read in prison all of those years ended with “I am the master of my fate , I am captain of my soul” A soul-filled life that was able to find strength with all of those times of uncertainty. I like the idea of framing my day with the thought of living in my own strength.

What is our “best,” personal strength? Is it our connection to source, something greater than what appears on the outside? Is it our connection with who we are when we feel empowered and alive from within? I think that it is both. Our God given talents radiating out from within us and feeling comfortable in our own skin. How do we get to this place? There are the strength finder books that and exercises to get us there through thought. But, how can we get there through our senses? I think are is a sensory or tactile way of listening.  Listening develops intuition, and being still enough to hear this inspiration is unique to all of us.

For Mandela, all those years it was most likely reading that poem. Listening develops intuition, being in the moment, present and fully alive contributing to each moment. Whether it be in meditative thought, with a brush a pen or scribbling a way or thoughts on paper. Building strength is an investment. An investment in ourselves.

Because, there are plenty that will challenge and test this strength and it is up to protect it. It takes well-grounded ego to withstand the assaults from even the worst of critics most notably ourselves.  Finding strength when we feel lost weak  takes courage. Courage to find our strength and trust ourselves. “Faking it until we make it,” so to speak. There is beauty in our presence, so whether one has it all together or not, it is up to each of us to live in this personal strength. Strength that trusting in one’s own God given qualities will develop into something greater than what we see on the surface. Having loyalty to oneself, and to who we are to become in the process takes time.

For all of those years in prison, it obviously developed into a greater sense of self for Mandela. As he said “real or imagined,”  We all live in our own self-imposed prisons, of who we think we are and what we should be in this world. Instead of allowing the art in us to develop, we tend to cut it down to it’s roots. We do not allow the long process of becoming to be realized for us in all the little moments that make up our life. Just like a musical composition or an artist’s total production, we are all works in progress. It takes time for this change in us to develop into something that has deeper roots.