Not that I post with any kind of regularity or schedule, but here I am on a Tuesday. I’ve enrolled in a five session course on portraits with acrylics and the first session went pretty well. The advantage of acrylics is the drying time and how it’s much easier to take it home to continue work on it. Compared to pastels where the work has to be carefully transported, acrylics are easy. I’m enjoying these courses which are in series of five sessions each time focusing on a particular medium as I feel like I want to understand how different mediums work.
I do enjoy portraits a lot and I want to try and see what different things I can do with it once I get the basics down.
When I was a young girl, my mother once showed my notebook of writings to the daughter of a friend of hers. I think my Mom was proud that I was writing, but I was quite embarassed because her friend’s daughter was (at that time) already playing the violin for a big orchestra. I was like: Eh…Mom. Why?
But instead of dismissing my work, this young woman looked at it carefully, then she said something to me which I’ve carried around much like a puzzle that I keep trying to unfold.
“An artist,” she said. “Can see beyond the leaf.”
I never got around to asking her what she meant because soon after that this violinist went abroad to play with other orchestras and our paths never crossed again.
I think of her words every now and then, though.
Today, those words came bubbling up again and I thought of the following reply:
“Beyond the leaf is a world (maybe more than one)
Lives are lived. Not all are told or written down in story.
Not one is insignificant.“
To you who read these words, may you be surprised by small moments of daily joy. Thank you for stopping by.
Here’s one of my favorite exercises from this week. On a background of sennelier soft pastel, an impression of branch and leaf.
It’s cold in the house. I can’t decide whether it’s winter moving into Holland or if it’s in its final throes. I like the days when the skies are clear and blue and where the sun comes out even if there is a chill in the air.
I don’t think I’ve ever listened to music so much as I have in the past few months. It’s as if my entire self is striving to compensate for an absence.
This morning, I’m listening to a group called Fun. They sing…it gets better. And I believe it does get better. At present, I am struggling to find the balance where I can be the Mom my kids need me to be and still carry on with the things that fuel me. Finding the headspace to write has been the most challenging of all. I’ve had my computer open to scrivener and the pages I worked on previous to the trauma of loss. Just a little bit more, I tell myself. Just a little bit more. My novel is almost done.
Let me gather up my brains…they’re scattered all over the place.
I fluctuate between now and then…and I grab onto the things that anchor me to now. Now and the future. Now and the future. Push onwards. Push.
I’m slow, but I’m gathering up the things that have fallen by the wayside. The thanks that haven’t been put into writing just yet because there are too many things demanding time and attention and it takes so much energy to focus on now and the future. I am still here. It’s morning. Waking up isn’t easy, but I am greeting the day.
At the end of her speech, Le Guin says that the name of our reward is not profit, it is freedom.
I think of freedom as I reflect and go through the notes and the memories that I have from New York and Janis Ian’s masterclass in artistry. Le Guin’s words resonate with the lessons learned from my time with Janis.
In New York, Laura and I talked about Janis’s commitment not only to her art, but also to taking hold of the business aspect of her art practice. It was an aspect that she brought up a number of times and listening to Le Guin talk of freedom, serves as a reminder that whatever proceeds come from the exercise of one’s art–they all go back towards the artist being able to keep on practicing that art.
The practical truth of it is that we cannot exercise or develop our art when our energy is gone, when we are too tired or worn out, or when we our head is filled with worry. I think of how I would never have finished or published the stories I have if not for being given space and time to practice my art free from the stresses and the tensions of daily life. I am grateful to my fellow practitioners–to the artists and writers who have opened their homes to me and who have so generously given me flights of freedom.
Freedom.
To be able to practice our art in a space and time when we are free from thinking of anything else but that practice is a vital and precious good. The writer cannot live without writing, and practicing art means we must be able to center ourselves on the work most of all.
Which then leads me to a question Janis Ian asked repeatedly in various sessions:
“Who among you wants to be famous?”
In thinking on that question, we are forced to recognize that fame does not equate into freedom, fame is not the same as success. Indeed the boundary between fame and notoriety is so thin that it’s easy to cross over without realizing it. Rather than fame, I value more the freedom to practice my art, and the knowledge that I have remained true to my vision.
Because, as Janis Ian reminded us, no one else has the vision that we have; and while there are many things in this life that can be faked, talent and art can never be faked.
Even as she said these things, she reminded us too that talent is not enough. The artist must do the work–must master their craft. If talent is a spirited horse, craft is what will ensure that your talent will not run away with you. In the course of the week, Janis continued to emphasize the need for artists to grow and add to their skillset (what we also call our toolkit). As artists, we need to be constantly developing ourselves. Being equipped with a wide range of skills makes us capable of answering to the call of opportunity.
I think of these things and I think to myself–the sky is unlimited.
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One of the interesting features of our week was what Janis called the Museum Wall. At the end of the week, we were asked to answer the question: What does all great art have in common? I’m sharing the image of the wall here. You answer the question.
From the Beloved Country 
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