Soulsearching

In October, I decided to paint at home instead of in the studio. I started painting at the kitchen table and on our back deck. I wanted to surround myself with the things that I love and to follow my whims each day rather than pursue a linear program. I decided to structure this project by giving myself two goals 1) track my discoveries by taking written notes 2) paint 30 small paintings in 30 days.

One day, I lopped a branch off our potted begonia plant to paint. I adore begonias for their wonky, asymmetrical leaves like angels’ wings. This begonia has white polka dots which provide irridescent windows into the leaf itself. But it’s the colors that make me swoon. The surprise flash of maroon on the underside of the leaf, the olive green of the leaf’s surface and the tender new leaves that unfurl in chartreuse and pink like the folded paper fans that I made as a child.

A couple weeks after I snapped off the branch of the begonia to paint, I revisited the cut limb of the plant. To my delight, I see a new shoot emerging from the site of the wound. I long to be more like the begonia, to pivot and find the opportunity hidden in the loss. It is much easier for me to stew in the disappointments than to move on. I imprint easily.

This summer was disorienting as I underwent a process of disillusionment when a paid mural opportunity didn’t materialize the way I had expected. On the artistic journey, every artist faces ups and downs but I have never been able to grow a thick skin. As summer wore on, I began to realize that I am being invited to enter an inner door, to go deeper into myself. The real adventure this year turned out to be less about achieving an outer goal and more about deepening my interior life. As with all growth spurts, this one has been painful. I have felt an unnameable ache and a restlessness that I can’t touch. The inner turbulence born of perimenopause powers deep soulsearching.

Even though exciting opportunities have since arisen and I feel a renewed optimism about my creative path, the interior transformation continues full tilt. I am at midlife afterall which demands a kind of internal reckoning with what has come before and what you want to do with the second half of your life. In many ways, I feel like a begonia that is having some of its nonessential limbs lopped off, changing in ways that I cannot predict. I had grown accustomed to performing to achieve a sense of worth. Now I am being invited to love myself in my vulnerablility and nakedness, as God loves me.

“Essence,” polymer clay, 5 x 2.5 x 2.5 inches

Last Sunday, I sat at Deception Pass reading a book as two leopard seals exhaled loudly coming up for air, and then submerged again to muscle their way through the water. It’s supposed to be this hard. This is how you know that you are alive. And I am comforted by Wendell Berry’s remarks that:

“it may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

Out of this crucible, I am re-emerging to share my vulnerabilty and my strength. And I’m giving myself breathing space to explore who I am becoming.

Honey I Shrunk the Art

The Coat That Flies Sometimes