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| painting Live at LIB photo by Ivan Oxlahun click for large view |
2 weekends ago I had the pleasure to experience and participate in Lighting in a Bottle, the marvelous and enchanting art & music festival put on by The Do Lab in southern california every May. An amazing 4 days of music, art, performance, healing workshops, and awareness expanding seminars. Everyone came bringing their own magic in a beautifully fierce and fearless way. It's a serious convergence of astounding talent and vital artists. And I'm proud to have been a part of it! I showed a piece in the Dialect festival gallery, and painted live in the Lightning-in-a-Paintcan project in which a group of artists are spread out over two field stage side areas to paint live for 3 days at the end of which the paintings are bid on and proceeds are given to Sonic Muze.
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A festival like this one, so alive with creativity and exponential trust, creates a highly conductive field for self reflection and discovery. And I did certainly face lot in myself and my creative process during these 3 days of painting. I see now that I must have put a potent dose of pressure on myself, yearning greatly to produce something wonderful. That must be why I seemed to have fallen back on many of my past established and depended on devices, which are rather systematic and controlled. What resulted is a very nice painting, very pretty and very nice.
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| Painting at bidding point, to be continued... photo by Craig Brayton click for large view |
In the "final" moment before bidding, after 3 days of painting, as much as I liked the painting just fine, I was over it already. I knew that I needed more, more than just a "nice painting." It hit me hard: this painting, like so many images and writings I have created in the past 13 years since college, is more symbolic than experiential. What I have been realizing, and on this night it became sO crystal clear, is that the art I want to see in the world, espEcially from myself, are expressions that deliver gateways to EXPERIENCE and feeling, rather than simply present representations of ideas. And the avenue that creates experience is what Jennifer honed in on way back in the day and voiced to me in 1996: story. Story, created with moments, beats, images to hone in on & create your own visual stories from, access points for your imagination.
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It hit me hard, but goooood. All that night I felt sO Over it! So over myself and all my "ways" and the debris of my needs for control and preparation and perfection. But refreshingly so, none of this was out of judgment or self deprecation, as I have done with myself before on many a self-renewal occasion. It was an experience of pure liberation from outmoded illusions and of pure excitement to create from a raw and unknown place! An excitement from a deep inner knowing about potential potent expressions that can only be unearthed via the darkness of my uncharted creative courses, and from explorations with story. I felt robustly new, like in new skin, full with a fresh emptiness.
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The night I returned home, my body proceeded to physically reflect this renewal with a 24 hr flu that had me purging and sweating everything out of me. I completely surrendered and, although obviously uncomfortable, I never resisted, trusting in my body's call to release. I awoke 2 mornings later in seriously brand new condition, in every way. A week later today, I remain clear and alert and fearless.
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Check back for the posts on what I paint next. And from this renewed place I'd also like to bring a fresh closure to my painting from LIB. I'm getting in touch with the winning bidder to see if they are open to it. If and when I do, I will post a photo of the "finished" piece.
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| click for larger view |
I am so thankful for painting exactly what I did, so I could clearly see, right before me, all that I have been, all I want to let go of, and the enthralling beginning of what I want to create. I must say that there is in fact one area of my art, of my life, that is and has been already aligned with the quality of free self expression, experimentation, story, and experience that I am now infusing into all areas of my creativity: ZBOOK!!! Dude, just when I thought that I was just now coming into this awareness and practice, here I hold in my hand 14 years of developing this process already, and in divine collaboration with Jennifer, in ZBOOK! Wow. And this is how our art is helping me heal and grow. How wonderful that I cannot deny knowing how it feels to create from this beautiful and playful abyss... yes! What a gift to have access to this feeling and bring it into everything else I do. "Another reflection gone... and yet saved to ponder... on & on & on & on..."
∞ ceci
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I actually have been making breakthroughs in this direction with a few paintings in the last 6 months (unfolding at dawn, seed, and eco) in which I have allowed my abstractions to take form in creatures and terrains of sort that may catch a viewer's imagination into story. My painting at LIB simply revealed to me the last gasps of a highly controlled painting process that I'm finding leaves my "organic" expressions feeling suffocated, therefore lacking life, therefore more a symbol than an experience. I shall incorporate my prior methods, like tools in my tool box, but I'm now over relying on them as the very expression itself.
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Dear one,thank you for continuing your quest into expression - your abundance and discipline are well attuned to your truth and honesty.
ReplyDeleteI am glad to see now the work from LIB we spoke of - it is in truth more than nice, at least to my eyes - and also, I loved the energy of our last conversation in which your vision for "finishing" this work was a simple element addition toward the story of this work...and I hear from your post how you are understanding and celebrating the 'angst' of this transformational moment in time for yourself - your clarity in support of your presence with your presence is a joy to hear. Thank you for sharing your courage in self-reflection and for the incredible honoring which is the truth of our continuing collaborations in zbook and life - interposable in many ways!
man, i'm lengthy in my sentences today, it happended earlier too in a reflection action from my parent council work this year to another - wow, it's still happening - crazy jiggles!
love ya,-J.