The Portrait. My Story about Being a Young Art Student. (Recently Selected for Publication by Ruminate).

I felt completely seen and understood when I saw her. The light fell dimly in the room where she was bent down on her knees, her thighs and calves supporting her torso and upper-body. Her legs seemed solid and strong, carrying her weight as she kneeled on what looked like a cold tile floor. Her body was turned to the side. From my perspective I could see every detail clearly: how her muscles and joints were pressing slightly against her skin. The intricate nature of her hands and feet were drawn with clarity and precision, the soft charcoal coaxing the firm roundness of flesh into existence. She was moving, her head coming down to the baseline of the image, moving her weight onto her haunches, then back to the floor again. She was completely bare, hovering over something unseen. The artist had drawn herself with part of her skeleton exposed, her skull rising above, yet still part of her. The movement of her mark-making, the gesture of her trained scribble, was used to create unity between her body and her bones. The movement of that scribble was like wind through a willow tree, or how sand must feel being sifted and pulled from the shore to open water.

This drawing was a departure from the images of women I was used to seeing. Airbrushed and Photoshopped, wearing peach colored lip gloss.  Women with impossibly arched backs pushing themselves into a pose, morphing into poster children for a Coke and a smile.  Or in the pornography I found hidden inside my brother’s nightstand.  These images were glossy and contrived.  I became spellbound by their celluloid nature, but also eerily repelled by them in equal measure.  I felt the weight of an ideal that was absurd, impossible to achieve.  This portrait was, by contrast, honest. It contained texture and dimension. Beauty informed by design and ineffable grit. Its splendid composition carried a story of what it felt like to live in a female body--and the contradiction and cultural weight that came along with it.

As I stood in front of the portrait, I remembered the first time I felt the need to cover my body. I was eight years old. My grandmother (who often took me to church in the hot summer months) began to take a keen interest in my wardrobe. The length of my skirt or the amount of my shoulder exposed were of particular interest. She would say nothing. It was more her squinted-eye and furrowed-brow that told me she disapproved. When I asked, “Why?” I remember silence. This silence triggered an enormous amount of shame. That shame followed me into my years as a young adult. It had followed me to that a day as a beginning art student.

In traditional life drawing, the instruction is done with a model that is completely unclothed. Our class would be drawing that day from live models, but this course was offered from a Christian University that used a tight filter to sift its theology.  As a result, the study of the nude figure was deemed inappropriate. As the model, dressed in her swimsuit, came into the room I picked up my porous charcoal.  The medium scraped then softened, welling into the microscopic crevices of the paper.  I drew her with a primordial longing to know my own original goodness.  

Now, the classroom was empty, scattered with abandoned easels and discarded drawing paper. The portrait was hanging in the classroom, having been placed there as part of the university's permanent art collection. I stood next to it, gazing at my silent mentor. It seemed implausible that I could make a drawing with such honesty. But still, somewhere inside myself, I hoped it was possible. I knew that the artist who drew this image had started in this classroom. I saw the evidence of what she had made. I knew that if she could make this sort of work that it was possible for me.  In my mind I drew an imaginary thread from the portrait into the center of my being.  I held on to that thread like it was life itself.

When I was eight, I had taken the look my grandmother had given me and embraced it.  The disdain, consciously held by her or not, became etched inside me. Her gaze like a hand drawn image, a portrait of what it meant to be a young girl. My childhood mind understood that I was loved only if I met certain expectations—and I came to believe I was innately flawed.  

That day, in the light of the empty classroom next to the portrait, I started the process of drawing and living in a new way.  I became aware of what Mary Oliver meant when she spoke of the “soft animal of your body.”  Her words, calling me toward a reclaiming of a lost birthright.  I began to understand the distortion and untruth of what I had internalized.  I do not want to hand that message, the distortion, on to my daughter. So I continue the process of drawing something new. With the images that I make, but more importantly, with how I look into my daughter’s eyes. I want her to know that her body is miraculous, that every part of her is a gift.  She a combination of dust, mind, and spirit.  She is originally good.  I honestly believe it is true.

In the pursuit of making art and living a life that makes sense to me, I find evidence of truth and beauty present in the world. There is a Living Presence that meets me through the process of artmaking.  This Mystery is beyond my understanding.  On my better days, I know myself to be completely seen and understood in this love. In my mind I draw an imaginary thread between myself and this Mystery.  I hold on to that thread like life itself.

Safe Space Painting Project

I wanted to make a series of abstract paintings for an exhibition this fall, but the figure kept coming into the composition. You may not be able to really see the figure yet, it's partially cropped out, and not clearly articulated.   This image began to emerge after hours of painting and wiping everything away, and starting over.  Again and again.

After I got past my own trying, this movement came, and I knew it was the beginning--it just felt right.  It's incomplete now, in the raw, unfinished.  But it's real.  I plan on keeping things unrefined for now, but we'll see where the process goes.

Here is a start of a series inspired by my daughter.  Who says that the only place she feels safe is at home with mom.  I've wanted to create a space for a seven year old who is smart and sensitive, who somehow has figured out why she and her classmates have lock down drills at school, and understands things I wish she didn't have too.

I don't have answers for all of her questions.  Just an endless amount of love, and encouragement to persist with a messy grittiness.  I tell her over and over that she is innately good, and loved just the way she is.  That the whole damn thing is one bittersweet gift.  Except I don't say damn, she's only seven, after all.

Now that I've stated working on this series, I realized that there is an ache in all of us for this.  Hemingway wrote about it in "A Clean Well Lighted Place."  Dillon sings about "Shelter from the Storm."  Many artists have tried to articulate what shelter looks like.  Or what the absence, or lack of shelter feels like.

So here is the beginning of the Safe Space Painting Project.

When Enough Became Enough

When I was completing my Master’s Degree in Fine Art, I studied abroad in Italy.  What I learned there changed everything.  I had come with the idea that I would encounter an ancient culture, and by ancient I mean a culture that was less advanced than what I knew.  I found just the opposite. As I was walking through the remains of the city of Pompeii, I realized that we have not done things better than in Renaissance Italy.  Partially because of the intelligence, the design, and the innovation.  But mostly because of the hand-made craftsmanship that is everywhere.  The handles on cutlery found in a Pompeiian home are painstakingly well crafted.  The quality of the marble floors and intricate detail of the mosaic walls, the expanse of the architecture, it all holds up and surpasses anything that would be made today.  In a postindustrial, information saturated age, the cost of such craftsmanship is irreplaceable.  We couldn’t afford it.

 When St. Paul writes in Ephesians 2:10 that, “…We are God’s handiwork…”  I consider his words in the context of the culture Paul was writing in, a culture similar to what I observed in Pompeii. I am not talking about Religion or a Christianity that is overly Westernized or simplified.  I am searching for what it means to be fully alive and human.  The Greek word Paul used for handiwork is “poiema.”  It is where we get the English word for poem.  Some researchers would go so far as to say that Paul is describing humankind as God’s Artwork.  In Paul’s day, artwork wasn’t in some quiet museum waiting to be observed, it was all around. A part of everyday experience.  Everything was handmade, and considering what I observed in Pompeii, handmade extremely well. Paul was a craftsperson, financing his travel through work as a tent maker.  I imagine craft would have meant a great deal to him. Considering where Paul lived and traveled, he would have been exposed to Etruscan frescoes depicting beautiful landscapes and Roman Architecture with grand and expansive columns and ornate reliefs. I wonder if Paul was thinking about a particular work of art when he wrote this passage, and if so, what kind of significance did it have to him? I do know that he asks me to remember my identity is a beautiful, one of a kind, hand-made thing.  Maybe he knew something about creativity and craftsmanship that we have forgotten today.  Maybe this is how we are designed, to make and invent things.  Innately, just because…

I used to think my value as an artist came from what I did, but now I know that the real flesh and blood matters are found in my artist’s heart.  The heart I was born with.  I used to put the mantel of financial success on my work. Or how popular my work became.  Or praise I got for its uniqueness.  Because if I am honest I have a real fear that…when it’s all said and done that I will have missed it. That my life will pass and that I won’t make a significant contribution, that I screwed it up—my one chance—and now I will dissolve like a vapor into the unknown and nobody will notice or care.  There is this primal longing within me to matter.  I try to get a handle on this fear by performing.

We live in a culture that affirms the idea that people who work hard enough, who are smart enough, invest their money well and don’t buy expensive jeans, that keep that twenty something appearance well into middle age, or who get all A’s, who exercise when they are supposed to, and who have a diet of only greens and lean protein. That they are the ones.  They are the ones worth it.  They are the ones keeping all the rules just right.  Those who reject this social norm we label dilatants, slackers…they are shamefully insignificant. It’s probably why we don’t value our elderly like we should, or our mentally challenged, or even our children.  Because when you get down to it, we find a person’s real value resides in the status of what they do.

But we are poems.  We are artwork.  It sounds too good to be true. It sounds like a lie that dreamers believe who don’t live in the real world where results matter.  But what I have observed is this: Those who are truly doing creative work, who have the kind of lives that everybody else wants, they know this.  They let this belief reside in their bones.  They don’t do work chasing anything, they do work because they already have it to give.  They have changed the dynamic of life from one of a transaction i.e. you do this to get that, to one that starts and ends with joy.  It is life changing.  It is changing me.  It changes the space from which I make my work, whether it is work that supports my family financially or not.  I no longer work for money, I work for money that supports a life well lived.  Money is a means, not a master. It creates more opportunities to be grateful on all kinds of levels.  And when I get a chance, I break bread and wine with others, and maybe cry and then laugh, and then cry some more.  Because poems we are.  Every one of us.

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Being Rich, Dark, Ink is Not a Mistake

Today I painted the canvases thick.  Red, Yellow, Blue. Zinc White. Galkyd Gel. Mix. Repeat.  Gradually.  Slowly.  Until the deep rich darkness of the three primaries coupled with white blended down together and began to take on the appearance of think black ink.  Not too purple, not too brown.  Dark and heavy and viscus.  It’s the color of black tar, of murk, of lurching echoes underneath the Milky Way night sky.  

It longs to become clear fresh, crystal clean water, but for now ink it remains. 

I have come to believe that it is not a mistake to sit in the dark ink places.  Maybe, as Sister Glennon says, it's a response to being a sensitive soul in a messed up world.  The veil of time that keeps us suspended in the ink needs to find expression.  And that's okay.  In fact it's a healthy and wholesome act.  A vehicle to truth telling in a world largely more comfortable with glossy and perfect and presentable. Especially from a girl.

Because that girl has been called beauty.   Skinny jean and hip enough to play a part with the arty girls, wearing oversized eyeglasses and dyed hair.   Or she's felt that she needs to be jock enough in a man’s art world, speaking all moxie and bravado to be heard.  And/or smart enough for the Deconstructionists, the philosophers, the smart people in the know.   Or how about just sexy enough for plain good old fashioned advertising, let's just start there.  Edited enough on Photoshop.  A body with all the right proportions, a vehicle to sell.  I would be remiss if I did not add a curated Facebook feed, complete with memes and updates at just the right times with just the right about of content. And on. And on. And on.

I’ve wanted to be something other.  But what I’m finding is to be the dark ink.  I want to look like the water.  But that would be dishonest.  Pretending.  Because it’s not a mistake to be the ink.  In the light, water may get the attention.  It may speak to perfection.  But in the ink is where the Know is.  It's good soil for creativity if you let it be.  And there is power in that. 

Because I’m tired of putting on roles that don't fit, and never did.

Today, in the studio, a small dismantling of those roles took place, leaving me to speak from my voice.   In writing these words, too.  I need both paint and words just as much as the ink to make them.  

If this is you, if you have been feeling like ink when all you want is to be the water, then let’s find places to dismantle together, you and me. 

Because that is where the life is.

For further resources and reading, and to connect with others who are finding their voices through dismantling, I recommend:  

Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton, Finding God in the Waves by Mike McHargue, The Artist's Way by Julie Cameron, The Poems of Mary Oliver, especially The Journey.  Shauna Niequist quotes this poem in her new book Present Over Perfect, which is wonderful as well.  Anything written by Brene Brown, especially Daring Greatly.  These authors have taught me so much about being brave.  It's possible to be in this world and do the work that brings you to life.   In fact, I believe we are wired and created for it.