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Fifteen minutes for thirty-one days. I called it my 15x31forArt Challenge, a way to bring a little peace into my life. My heart searched for a way to respond to the chaos in the world, so I developed a practice of creating art as meditation. Today is day 21, and as I begin the next phase of offering my work for sale, this is what I’ve discovered so far.
Years pass in a blink. Blink. Blink. Then some more. Suddenly you find yourself decades further along in life, and it surprises you. “Wait… I graduated from high school 25 years ago? Noooo. That’s not right; it was only in 199-… oh. Damn.”
When March was a day or two away, inching closer to my 43rd birthday, I was finishing up a poetry challenge with the incredible Jen Pastiloff. “Poetry,” you ask? “I didn’t know you wrote poetry.” I don’t. My creative muscles had atrophied. I was paralyzed from** creating anything. A drought of words and art, but Jen’s poetry challenge sparked something. Just a tiny spark of curiosity, but really, that’s all any of us need. I had been using art as a reward for so long now that I forgot how to move those muscles. “When you finish (x, y, and z) and complete your to-do list, THEN you can create.” Except that’s not really how it works. My muse wasn’t buying it, and she turned her back on me. Or was it more like I had turned my back on her? She knew I wasn’t ready, and I knew I needed to do something to win her affection again. Poetry seemed to be the perfect offering.
So, I said yes to the poetry challenge and jumped in with a full-fledged commitment. I said yes to allowing imperfectly messy words to fall upon a blank screen or page. I said yes to knowing that I wasn’t there for any other purpose than to allow creativity to flow again. And it did. I released words that I had been holding onto for ten years now. A decade of carrying them around. But no more. And it felt wonderful. Suddenly, the words began to return to me, filling the dried-up riverbed. I remembered how it felt to be in and move with the flow.
Consumed by current affairs, I was glued to the news at the end of February. I felt if I wasn’t watching what was happening, then I was somehow not honoring the pain and suffering that was occurring. I didn’t want to “turn a blind eye” to what was happening, but news consumption is slippery. At one point, however, the small beautiful set of watercolors that a friend gave me caught my eye. She had been asking me for weeks if I had tried them yet, so I momentarily stepped away from the horror and heartbreak on the last day of February and picked up a brush.
The poetry challenge inspired me to ask myself if I could do the same thing with art. I thought to myself, “I wasn’t a poet, and the words found me. And I’m not a watercolor artist, but maybe that’s my lead into a creative life again?” There were zero expectations of skill or being able to produce something beautiful – just the desire to move pigment. I sat down with this small square palette of four colors, including the primary colors and gold, and I pulled out a sheet of paper. I didn’t plan to make something “pretty,” nor was there an intention of using the finished piece for anything in particular – just playing with pigment and water.
I reflected upon the use of only primary colors and gold. You can make anything with red, yellow, and blue, but something magical happens when I add a tiny bit of gold to the page. Light reflected and danced in the water, mixing with color and flowing this way or that way. It was beautiful. And I wondered what we would consider primary to our makeup? Body, mind, and soul? Faith, hope, and love? Intention, integrity, and gratitude? I think yes to each of these, but again – the magic really begins when we start to reflect the light within and around us. I began to truly understand this recently when I read Martha Beck’s newest book, The Way of Integrity. She described what the ancient Buddhists called “Indra’s net.”
“Picture a multidimensional spider’s web stretching out infinitely in all directions. At each intersection of the wed hangs a multifaceted diamond. Every diamond glows from within and also reflects all the other diamonds. And in each reflected diamond is the reflection of all the other diamonds.”
– Martha Beck, The Way of Integrity
If I do not tend my own light, I’m withholding it from being shared. I’ve fallen into this pattern of using art as my reward for tasks, but the moment my fingers wrapped around my brush, I felt alive. I know that there are times when the actions of others diminish our light from within, and the trauma of such extinguishing can last years. But I realize that it is just as much a responsibility to embrace my aliveness as it is a gift and honor. So, I paint now for those who can’t. For those dealing with the loss of such basic needs as safety.
Poetry had appeased my muse just enough to allow the words to flow again, and watercolors were doing the same for my art. My minimum was 15 minutes a day, and I quickly discovered that I could find the flow and move with it – all while holding in my mind an image of someone who flashed across the screen or the unseen pain of those living in fear right here in my own country. I hold space for the heartbroken, and wronged, and lost, and grieving, and hiding, and those who are diamonds momentarily covered in ash and grime. I paint for them, and I paint for myself.
And so, it is with great excitement that I share my paintings with you! This collection, I am calling the 15x31forArt, named for the challenge that birthed them, and I am offering them at a discounted price for all of March to celebrate my 43rd birthday. This is the most extensive body of work that I have created in decades, and it feels incredible to share it with you today. And do you know what? It’s just the beginning!
