Arts alternatives further explored

I am not arguing against selling one’s art to make a living at all. This is a valid return on the energy and makes perfect sense on some levels.

I am challenging the undervalued and exploited position of the arts in the present society.  I am challenging the prevailing thought that the arts are entertainment for a few by a few and are no more significant than that. I am challenging the marginalisation of everything the arts stand for which is culture and our essential humanness.

The arts are not seen as essential, therefore artists are put in aposition where we need to argue and convince, compete with other artists and profile ourselves to get the attention of people to buy what is seen as a fringe or luxury product anyway.

 

I know I am not going to change this by myself, but I do know that my voice is one voice in a ground swell of other creatives who are seeking to create positive changes  in the way the arts are seen in a society based on commercial  rather than social/spiritual values.   

Making beautiful products available for people to buy is just one way to bring the energies artists work with into the world.  Creative expression is a powerful healing force for the person practicing it and for the people touched by the end result of the creative expression.  I want to see more room for this, more acknowledgement of it in the mainstream. This means a fundamental change, a society moving toward more spiritual values rather than just material ones. There needs to be a balance, there needs to be an emphasis on right brained functioning as well as left brained. 

This would mean that beauty would become as important as function when designing a building. It would mean that values would change to be able to once more be able to pay artisans to decorate architecture with stained glass, wood carvings, frescos, murals, tapestries and other embellishments which lift the heart and spirit. 

Public spaces would become more friendly to people, cars would be limited to certain areas, children would be able to play outside in safe green spaces.   Neighborhoods would plan festivals and celebrations, people would eat together regularly and share each others cultures through story telling exchanges, theater and dance.  Workplaces would be designed for the health and well-being of those who work there, and there would be less separation between creativity and work.  Hospital environments would be warm, homey gentle places, full of silence, or music, living green spaces, rooms for contemplation and recovery. Rather than the hypertechnical super efficient noisy madhouses they often are, (incidentally with forests of GSM masts on the rooves, sending radiation throughout an environment that is meant to be for healing.. )!

There would be respect for values besides commercial ones. Objects would be valued primarily for their aesthetic and enchantment quality and their ability to contain stories and cultures, not for whether they could be bought and sold.  People would be treasured for their eccentric differences rather than forced to conform, and would have more freedom to create their own means of livelihood rather than fitting a certain job description. 

Thousands of grass roots creative initiatives would thrive and contribute to the diversity of life.  

All of these trends are already present in the society to some degree, they are fragile though and  need to be recognized, nurtured and strengthened.

Art and artists: integrated and valued

This post is a continuation of, “Shaun McNiff and ‘Trusting the Process”.

Shaun says,’Creation is a circulation of energy’. 

So selling our work is just a miniscule fraction of doing that.  He continues’:

It [creation] is always putting things into new relationships within a continuously interactive process. We [could] promote creativity in work environments by introducing varied sources of energy and letting them find their way to solving a problem.

He imagines a workplace infused with the arts:

For years I’ve imagined what a large company would be like if it provided studios for art, dance, voice, music, and creative writing on the premesis. Why not give workers a chance to exercise the creative spirit in the place where many of their tensions and conflicts are located? Imagine the implications of transforming stress at the job instead of taking it home or discharging it somewhere else….. Creative expression will infuse the workplace with imagination, new perceptions, and different ways of interacting.

In my own vision for what art could be when moved out tf the periphery into the center of life, the first change would be for everyone to embrace their creative side and use it for personal expression in all areas of life. This is already happening, there is a democratisation of art underway.

Obviously there is a difference between this kind of practice and the life of someone who has committed deeply to art as their life’s calling. But we need to challenge the prevailing opinion that those anointed few are the only ones with the  ‘licence to create’.

We need to expand our ideas of what constitutes a creative act. McNiff goes into this issue in detail, but I am giong to move on with my own thread now.

So, next to ordinary citizens reclaiming their right to create (through the help of artists) , I see professional artists being supported and integrated into mainstream society in entirely new ways. I see a paradigm where artists are as valued in their communities as computer repair people are today. They would still create some of their work in the needed solitude of their studios, but there would be much more outward movement, and it would be easy and supported by the society.  The artist would be invited as a treasured professional resource to share the workings of the creative process in businesses, community centers, schools, hospitals etc. They would be paid well and provided with social support like any employee, such as medical and unemployment insurance.

I see artists helping non-artists to discover their own latent creativity so that this can be engaged for the individual’s own healing, balance and creation of a meaningful and connected life.  Workplaces, buildings, neighborhoods, city environments would be enriched by people coming  together to create , beautify, and reconcile. I want to add, and ‘pray’ but I mean this in a universal way, where people acknowledge that there is a deeper mystery to life than what we see and they form a relationship to it to honor its movement in their lives.

 All this is already happening in small grass roots movements. New gestures such as Look up, or High five, or free hugs (look these up on YouTube). We just need to be conscious of it  and contribute to it in our own small way.

 

 

Shaun McNiff and ‘Trust the Process’

This post refers to the previous one, ‘I Protest’.

One of the most insightful and succinctly written books on the creative process I’ve read to date is, ‘Trust the Process’, by Shaun Mc Niff.  He’s provided me with some clear insights on creating as well as some welcome support for my unpopular view that selling my work is NOT my SOLE PURPOSE or my SOUL purpose on earth.

 For instance, at one point he compares the discipline of contemplation and meditation with art making:

Can you imagine people feeling that their prayers, spiritual exercises, and meditation must be exhibited in a gallery or commercially published? This simple distinction between spiritual exercise and commercial production describes the most fundamental values of my approach to art.

and:

As I get older, public or external recognition for my p intings feels increasingly secondary. The primary emphasis is creative exercise and the  intrinsic enjoyment of the act.

In his book there isn’t one word referring to selling as in any way related to the creative process. And there is  lots of support for stepping outside the current paradigm of what art is and what artists do. He challenges many longheld views, such as that art needs to be made by an individual isolated from the rest of the society. Here he speaks about infusing more creativity into the everyday work environment:

The work environment offers yet another paradox of creative expression. We are overwhlemed with demands and things that have to be done, and we react by longing for more free time to create. We assume that we will be more creative when we are dislodged from the daily regimens that ask so much from us. I find that creativity is generally viewed through the lens of romantic isolation from the world rather from the more realistic perspective of romantic immersion. We still see creativity as something that exists exclusively with ourselves rather than within the activity of our environments.

So what is the new paradigm then? Well, surprise, it is what all of us who are seriously questioning these issues and trying out other paths are making together.  I’ll put forth some visions for how it could be  in the next post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I protest!

I recently read a list of things you can do to make it easier to sell your art online.  Of course it started with BE VISIBLE, hang out on Twitter, FaceBook, network, start an Etsy shop, etc etc.

I wondered why my heart didn’t start beating faster with anticipation of doing all these things and why my imagination wasn’t engaged.

And I realized that it is simply same old same old, but this time online.

In our present society, if you want to sell, you have to work at it constantly.  Whether you are carting your work around to galleries and getting newspapers to cover your opening, or whether you are trying to get noticed on the latest online craft depot you need to attract people to your work and convince them to buy it.

One online artist friend mentioned her aversion to ‘raising my profile online’ and her resignation to having to do it. 

I feel the same way and regularly beat myself up for not being more consistently entreprenurial. But instead of feeling like I am a failed salesperson or that my art isn’t up to snuff,  I wonder if some of us shouldn’t listen more closely to those feelings of resistance. They may have something important to tell us.

People blithely say artists are habitually  not good at selling.  I see it another way. Art and artists  exist in another context  than the marketplace.  Art is more, goes way beyond being a product in the consumer chain.

Some people, mostly a younger group, are perfectly suited to making work with the object of selling it online. I think that is just wonderful. It is valid, and interesting and sometimes inspiring.

These musings, however,  are for the rest of us, the ones who are asking some difficult questions about what art really means in their lives and the life of the community. 

 I want to argue from outside the paradigm that we all seem to be caught in, that if you make things, this automatically means that you need to put them to work to earn an income for you.

I PROTEST!

More in the next post.

Emily Young’s angels

Angel by Emily Young

London was in the middle of a heat wave.  The familiar streets of Kensington where I’d spent childhood vacations were strangely Mediterranean in feel, Holland Park was tropical.
It would have been a beautiful time except my mother was dying in a hospice in St. John’s Wood.

I was staying with my aunt and uncle and would travel by tube every day from the High Street to St. John and Elizabeth’s to visit mom. She felt she was there for respite care and would soon be returning to her flat and beloved piano. During my visits, we would chat and read together and reminisce a bit. The room was warm but cozy and light. I’d leave in the early evening and return the next afternoon.

In the mornings while she was receiving care, I would be free to wander my old haunts in the neighborhood. One day when I looked down from my aunt and uncle’s fifth floor flat, I saw that there was a sculpture garden in the back of Leighton house.  That morning, I met for the first time, Emily Young’s angels. And I recognized them from deep in my soul.

For me, angels have never been those sappy fat little girls and and naked baby boys. They were always vast, fiery and dangerous in their huge intensity. My angels don’t fit on a head of a pin, they spread over galaxies. And dance.

Walking among Emily’s giant winged angel heads I felt that deep kinship and returning to oneself that great art always catalyzes.  The gardens were deserted, sheltered, holy with presence. I felt enfolded and comforted and strengthened for the impossible task of letting my beloved mother go. No, letting her go was easy compared to seeing her in the hospice and knowing she would never come home again.

Every day during my mother’s last week on earth, I visited those angels and rested in  their large presence. Looking closely at the Purbeck marble used for some of the heads, I found endless little worlds of fossilized creatures, like filigree on those great winged heads.

I don’t remember now, which came first, the call that my mother had died, or looking down from my aunt’s apartment to see bare grass dotted with yellow postage stamp squares where the angel garden had once been.  But these two losses will be forever linked in my memory. As well as gratitude for being carried on those stone wings during that  hot summer in London.

Art, calligraphy, Tai Chi and singing

Continuing the insights from the previous post, ‘Enchanted Vessel’, I am always struck by the universal principles that seem to run through all arts.  The deeper you go into disparate arts like painting, calligraphy, singing and Tai chi the closer they come to one another in their essence.

In Tai Chi beginning students usually get caught up in the fancy arm movements without realizing these are grounded in combat sport. If you watch a Tai Chi master execute the form (a ritualized series of movements) , it is filled with power and a controlled tension, as well as a fluid grace. If you try to just imitate the graceful arm movements you get only empty decoration. But if the movements originate from your center, they begin to contain power.

In singing, novices try to create volume and resonace by ‘doing ’ something with their throat or mouth. But true resonant sound comes from deep within the center of the body and from the connection between  resonant membranes in the entire body. It can’t be forced or faked.  

In painting, beginning and even experienced painters can get caught up in imitating a certain style.  But usually , a style is a set of techniques combined with a visual vocabulary that an artist has evolved over years of consistent work. The power of an artwork is intimately linked with the artist’s passion and dedication. Imitating a style will give a trendy quick fix with no depth or staying power.

Calligraphy and tai Chi are very similar. When we start, we want to be able to make all the fancy letters and swirls, but without grounding in good letterforms and consistent spacing, these will look weak and unconvincing. The power in a piece of calligraphy comes from mastery of form, then comes the freedom to improvise within that form.

In all of these disciplines I constantly learn that periods of effort give way to letting go and letting it happen. Trusting the body, to make a sound, a stroke, a movement. Sidestepping the ego’s sense of, ‘Aren’t I doing this well’  to being in service of the art. To put in enough hours with humility, that maybe one percent of the time, excellence can emerge unbidden and effortlessly.  And even more important that excellence is simply, truth. That I may make true tai chi movements, sing true notes, draw true letters and use true colours.

And when you give up all sense of needing recognition, or returns or a sense of being special, all of a sudden,whatever the art form it becomes one’s own totally unique expression,  who I really am is recognizable in that form.

Enchanted vessels

Enchanted vessels 1, mixed media

Yesterday during the first singing lesson I’ve had in months, my art, singing and Tai chi came together in a beautiful resonating whole.

My teacher was speaking about letting the sound move up my spine, and I connected this to the chi energy we work with in Tai chi. When I sang as if I were doing the slow meditative movements of my tai chi, I entered the same centered flow that sometimes happens in doing the form.

When my teacher then asked me to imagine the sound coming from the bowl of my pelvis, everything came together .  In Tai chi the movements originate from the tan tien, the body’s center of gravity just under the navel. Making the sound from there was very powerful and created a bell like resonance that moved all through my body.

And the next piece of the puzzle was the realization that in most of the art I’ve done in the last years the bowl form or vessel as been central theme.  Bowl, center, container, woman, pelvis, womb, earth, receiving, singing bowl, garden bowl 10 garden bowls filled with music…..enchantment, interiority.

And ‘Water, Fire, Love’, where the bowl symbol was linked with fire and light, was a gift to a particular young doctor whose specialty happens to be focused on the pelvic area of women.  
But I hadn’t made this connection when I chose the piece for him- or rather when the piece seemed to choose itself.

Anchor piece for B

B asked me what it was that made ‘Water, fire, love’ the anchor piece for the new series. 

One answer is the way that the design, color and totality work in this piece.  I also love its power, it achieves another level the others reach for but don’t quite get to.  It is an entryway to something new. This doesn’t negate its predecessors, that level is also valid. I love all those previous pieces, but for me they led up to  this one. And the ones that came after refer back to it.

If, out of a series of 18 pieces, one soars, that will be the one closest to the artist’s heart.  You already get a taste of it when you are working, you enter ‘flow’ where your own intentions are still present but they get taken over by a larger wave of creative energy. You know exactly what to do with out questioning it and the piece births itself somehow.

When you stand back after it is done, the feeling is one of surprise, gratitude and grace. I see in front of me something I never could have planned for. I never knew I had it in me and I don’t know where it came from but I recognize it down to the depths of my soul.

And once, once in a very long while, someone else recognizes it at the same level. This is the greatest gift an artist can receive, in my experience.

So B, thanks for everything, but thanks most of all for that.

Water, fire, love

Title: For Marianne

Title: Water, fire, love

Title: Warfhuizen Moonday

Continuing on with recent work, here are some more from the series (see more in ‘Gallery of Current work’ under the ‘Pages’ heading to the right).

The far left one I just made for a friend, it is only 3 by 3 inches.

I like the one in the middle best. When I look at it I get that gut feeling of connection and rightness that comes with one’s best work.  In person it is strong with the dark turquoise shades, and the little metallic gold lightning flames just glow.

I guess one of the things that is most satisfying with breakthroughs like this, is that I can recognize elements of some of the art which has really moved me in the past recurring in this work. Like the period when I was immersed in Krabbé’s oil paintings. I hit a dead end trying to imitate them, but after having let it go, I see elements of what I liked most surfacing in this work.  For instance, some of the forms, but most of all the feeling of lightness and play.

Once again I have experienced:  in art, if you want to do something, you need to approach it sideways, never head on. At least that is how it works for me.  Things need to be left alone to ferment and ripen in their own time, and then, when you least expect it, it snaps into place entirely surprising you, yet entirely your own.

New direction

  

First piece    (top)                                                           Birthday Party

 

One evening I sat down with my oil pastels and played for awhile. I’d not touched them for several months because even though I felt a sea change was needed, I couldn’t seem to break out of my old ways of working.

I didn’t like the final piece at all, and partly in frustration, and also just to see what would happen, I ripped it methodically into a number of large strips.  They were wonderful little miniature paintings and I started to collage them on the same color paper I’d used for the original. 

The next night I did the same, but this time I worked on a drawing knowing it would be ripped into pieces.  This was tremendously freeing for me because I didn’t have to think out a composition, I could just let loose with the colors. 

This way of working led to a series of 16(so far) oil pastel collages, 25 x 25 cm (about 8 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches)I like how the collages evolved from pure abstract to containing some recognizable things. The appearance of creatures, birthday cakes, houses and more were surprises and delighted me. I have rarely had such a good  time creating work.

Well into the series I started to go back and weed out some old work and use it for the collages. I’ll add more images here later, including some closeups.