As I painted an abundant and floral field today, an oil painting, I met the voice of the judge as the physical sensation of holding back and being too careful.
This sensation brought me directly into the field of process painting - my body.
listening in process - hearing the judge - taking risks
This has prompted me to write about something I think we all know well.
The judge thinks it has the keys to keep me safe from risk. The risk may take many forms: receiving a negative evaluation of my new work, the risk of failure, the risk of over stretching and snapping the connection with what guides me.
I have been process painting now for a year. The benefit of taking a risk has been experienced many times, consciously. I have been witnessed and supported in doing so because process painting is not done alone. Taking a risk is like walking through a door that is too narrow for the truth.
Every moment is a doorway.
To paint without controlling the image allows me to connect with the unknown and its inherent life giving energy.
To paint without needing to produce anything is priceless, as it slows me down to sense what is the next true impulse.
To paint without having to burden the experience with meaning is a breath of fresh air for my complex (and wonderful) abstract mind.
Now the question for me is how to continue to paint and exhibit, with these same guidelines.
Here is where I am stepping into new territory.
Here is where I am finding what really matters to me and why I continue to paint, write or speak about the creative process.
Here is where I am following through.
As I painted I suddenly felt that I was afraid to be led into this floral field, not knowing where it would lead. Before process painting, I might have stopped or pushed myself through, without really paying attention to the sensation.
I could feel that I did not know where I was going, a fact of process painting I am very familiar with now.
The unknown is the ground of process painting.
I could feel that I thought I needed to know, if I was going to put this on a gallery wall in a few weeks.
The feeling of wanting to bring black into the field was coming up. I hesitated and listened to all the inner considering that arose.
What if the painting isn’t resolved before it is due to hang on the gallery wall? What if it I fail? What if I ruin it?
Wanting to follow my impulses, I knew I was either walking the gangplank or entering another doorway. All these thoughts were swirling in my head and I dove below them and followed the impulse.
Continuing to follow more impulses, I experienced myself entering the flow of the river in creative intimacy.
I could feel the judge trying to hold me safe from risk.
And it no longer felt like a place I wanted to be painting or living from.
The resulting black marks in later sessions became the invitation for another mark, and although meaning is eschewed in process, I am happy to see what feels and looks like butterfly wings, softly touching into the grasses and blossoming field of myself.
The new paintings in this mini show are recent. Some of you may have visited my studio in River District Arts and saw them last November. But that one painting is inviting me further, past it's first blush of a beautiful impression.
I am willing to risk it’s failure for the experience of painting beyond what I know. It's a little risky to even consider exhibiting again, but I am.
Life is an ever authenticating process
and I am in process.
I hope the new paintings have a sense of stepping just a bit beyond what is known,
or of leaning inward to listen,
toward what is unknown and beautiful.
If the ground shifts under our feet, it's a call for our senses to sharpen.
Friends, my hallway is filled with large unfinished paintings of trees and fields and of shapes that have no names, from my studio in Germany. There are more paintings of fields and gardens that I have begun recently leaning on the wall in the corner of the living room I call a studio. I study my life everywhere, in all the rooms of the house. It is looking as if my work has begun long ago and all I am invited to do now is to follow through.
I have never known the feeling of really following through with my work as a painter. There has always been someone else to give my loving attention to. There is a satisfaction in this focus that is new to me. And this is where I am now.
I’m not going anywhere, I’m home. I’m not looking for a better place to be.
I have developed a relationship with the unknown that I am beginning to trust.
I have taken risks to know that this trust lies in me.
I could call my mini show The Nature of Risk.
I learn from nature, she is my teacher.
It is late afternoon now, and she is calling me to a walk in the sun.
Be well
and keep your fire tended.
we need it,
Barbara
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