I’ve always thought of myself as a Clydesdale artist–the kind that applies sheer will and fortitude to obstacles. It must be my pioneer heritage (a epigenomic proclivity?) that programs me to just keep walking no matter what. I have ancestors who did that as they made their way across the North American plains in the mid-19th century.
For the first time in my life that hefty, heads down approach isn’t working. It’s only been a month since my mother passed away, but I’m still not ready to return to the studio. I’m trying to be gentle with this state of mind, but it is peculiar territory for me. It has its own lessons to offer, but what those are is not yet clear.
A dear friend, Kathryn Kimball, knew exactly what poem to send to me from her safe haven stone cottage in the Lake District. The simple physicality of the image has given me a source of light in these ongoing hours without power.
Not Writing
A wasp rises to its papery
nest under the eaves
where it daubs
at the gray shape,
but seems unable
to enter its own house.
Jane Kenyon
The loss of someone close to you is something you can never get over. I lost my partner three years ago and it doesn’t get easier. It’s not the birthdays or anniversaries that get to you. It’s the little, insignificant things. I remember how he would always have a little frown in the corners of his mouth before he giggled, how we used to have a shower together every morning and how much better it felt having him wash my hair.
All I can say is you have to go back, face your feelings and put those emotions and fears in to your work. It’s scary and shaky at first but every day you will feel better. That’s not to say you won’t have days where you burst in to tears over the smallest thing that reminds you of your loved one. There will be days where you want to curl up in a ball and disappear but you have to push ahead for the sake of your sanity.
Thank you Aria. Your words are wise and deeply felt.
the “pioneer” spirit is what i love most in america: i feel so much for you.
wishing you well.
a walker
a
Thank you Alaleh. I am touched by your concern.
That Jane Kenyon knew how to put it!
Deborah, knowing you I know you could go to the studio and get some painting done if there were a hurricane (inside or out), but this is really different. This is, for everyone who passes through it, a shift in the ground of all being. Even people who neither loved nor liked their mothers feel it acutely, because it’s not like anything else. It’s really OK if you’re thrown by this, and it doesn’t mean you’re a pioneer falling down on the job. It may even portend that painting will need to be a little bit different when you can resume it, and you’ll have to pioneer your way through that.
Consider that if you did get right back to work, you might just be doing it on auto-pilot. Probably everyone reading this knows from experience what it means to work on something tremendously meaningful to you in a going-through-the-motions kind of way. That’s fine if you’re doing leg-ups or entering data, but it’s a horrible and distressing way to paint.
You have a big work ethic, and if your habits have temporarily released you, there’s a reason for it. Maybe the real job is to find the reason, and use it to go deeper when things normalize.
E, Thank you for framing this in a way that honors both the doing and the not doing. This is new territory for me, and I’m so grateful when map fragments appear along the way.
I hate to make a childbirth analogy, but it reminds me of something that happens in labor. When a women is fully dilated sometimes she has a latent stage where her contractions space out and she feels no desire to push. She can catch her breath for that thirty minutes and be sustained. When the surges do start up again they are so powerful and productive, she cannot do anything but birth with newfound energy. When your soul is ready I know you will birth/create again.
Celeste, never hold back on the childbirth analogies, not with me anyway. What’s more primal? Thank you for your wise words.