some of my recent experiments
So many lessons to learn from the process, and from teaching it – and to RE-learn, again and again.
Another thing about permission? I have to remember that it applies to me too.
In particular, I have permission to be a beginner again – and again. This is a lesson that I am currently navigating the depths of and struggling with in relationship to my art, and to my being an artist. Over the past few months I’ve found myself finally returning to making art again after over a year of pretty much putting it aside as I worked on getting my shoulder into usable condition again, and I’m finding it hard going as my attitude toward art-making is also transforming.
Ego LOVES to be an expert, and it’s fighting tooth and nail to make me hang on to what I think I know as an artist. It doesn’t even want me to write this post because it doesn’t want to admit to anything other than expertise. It’s so easy to get trapped by labels and styles and judgments, and our culture and the art world encourage this.
But what my inner artist knows is that this kind of thinking gets in the way of exploring and experimenting. It gets in the way of new beginnings. And that’s what the artist’s true job is – to be an explorer, to be a beginner, to see and express the world with fresh eyes.
As an artist, this is what I am truly working toward. So I’m experimenting and playing and letting my intuitive process guide me more and more. I’m letting go of what I “know” about my art, and inching toward what is actually true about my art. Which means that I don’t really know what I’m doing when I approach the easel each day, or what each completed work will look like. And while this is not always easy (and my Ego is constantly screaming at me to cling to the known), I truly believe that’s the way being an artist is meant to be.