Shining through form

Continuing on from  the previous post- ‘Old Calligraphy, old territory’, I want to explain what it is I look for in a work of art.

I want to be moved, taken out of the ordinary, jolted into a new perception, given the key to a new world. I want to meet someone at heart level, at soul level through their work. I want to be returned to myself to know who I really am at my best and deepest. I want to be given an experience of wholeness and solace. I want to be opened, pried or blasted, it doesn’t matter. I want to be left with the feeling of, ‘It is a beautiful world after all, despite everything’.

Pretty high demands, one might say, but it has happened to me repeatedly, with music, theatre, painting drawing, poetry, etc. 

But here is a paradox: The artists that create work capable of giving this experience aren’t necessarily making ‘beautiful’ things in the conventional sense of the word. I find that what moves me, whether it is a drawing by a child or a painting by a master is something ‘true’ shining out of the work.

Eckhart Tolle, author of ‘The Power of Now’  and  ‘A new Earth’,  puts it this way:

Pseudo art is clever minds trying to be more clever, manipulating old forms. Nothing new has come in.

Nothing in that kind of art can lead you back into the formless which is the original reason for art—to be a portal, an access point for the sacred so that when you see/experience it you experience yourself.  In it you see the formless reflected, shining through form.     -From a talk given at Findhorn in 2004

He goes on to say that true art always contains another dimension than just what you see or hear. It is always more. And the ‘more’ is the energy that emanates from the work. He says too that this kind of power comes from a place of stillness.

And that leads me to a whole new thread, to be continued.

Old calligraphy, old territory

Recently I saw a catalogue from an international calligraphy exhibition. Most of the works were conventional in the sense that the aim was to make beautiful letters and arrange them well. There were hardly any pieces that went beyond this given. The work was adequate but it didn’t move or inspire me.

The last half century, the craft of calligraphy has been aspiring to be recognized as an art form, but there are only a few practitioners who embody this. Mostly it has stayed stuck in the basic levels of mastery of technique and material with little to say beyond the text contained in the quote.

I think part of the reason for this is that what it would take for calligraphic art to soar would require letting go of the very thing one aspires to as a practitioner of the craft- beautiful letters. Also, I think that to make art one needs to be an artist first and calligrapher second. Usually though, people start the other way around.

To move out of the closed circle of more and more perfection in the letters(and less life in the work),  you have to take some hefty risks. You have to be willing to let go of being a ‘good calligrapher’ and navigate a period of chaos.  You need to allow yourself to make ugly letters or no letters at all, and produce failed pieces.  Maybe for years,  until something true surfaces, something truly your own.

Looking at the pieces in that catalogue I could see exactly who had folowed what workshop with which famous calligrapher. Out of all the entries there was only one obscure piece that had broken away and explored new territory. The territory of their own heart. 

 

 

Refresher course

This is a joyful period where life’s lessons seem to be clustering around the previous topic, ‘letting go of having to be the authority or teacher’. Letting go of using will only, and making room for trust and grace.

I hit a wall teaching my 11 year old drawing student. I was running on empty and was no longer giving her the quality I felt she deserved. I also saw in her a similar trend to mine of going for results at the cost of process and even at this early age, identifying with being able to draw well. She was gobbling up techniques as fast as I could give them to her, and I felt pressured to keep coming up with new things. She, meanwhile was perhaps not getting the time needed to digest all she was learning.  This is all natural in the first stage of learning a new skill, but I felt she needed a balancing influence  in order to develop wholeness in relation to her art.

This is where my dear friend M was called in. She is starting her own practice in working with children and art and she has an entirely different approach than I. She is more a painter than an illustrator and and her work is more raw and dynamic, while mine tends more to aesthetic and controlled.  With the agreement of E and her mom, M took over E’s lessons for about 2 months.

My approach had been to  plan every lesson thoroughly, being aware of the goals, material skills, and procedure.

M , on the other hand,  made her studio inviting, prepared a general idea with a loose theme, set out materials and set E to work. She didn’t interfere or try to ‘teach’ E anything, yet she was totally present to what E was doing and did jump in if there was a question. The child worked solidly (this particular girl has ADHD) for an hour or more in total concentration. She explored and experimented and flourished with very little open interaction between her and the teacher.

Of course the intent was slightly different. E came to me with a clear request to learn to draw, in this, failure is an inevitable part of the process. With M the goal was to get acquainted with paints and have room to experiment with few constraints.

She is coming back to me on Monday. The break has given me time to refresh myself creatively and to reassess my own teaching method. I realize that I can give E the room to make her own mistakes and discoveries, can intervene less and generally step back a bit.

Disciplines of a Facilitator

Friends of mine, the Jenkinses, have written an excellent book, 9 Disciplines of a Facilitator.  I will review it at a later point, probably on Amazon, but it got me thinking.

Yesterday I led a workshop on ‘Creativity and Success, the inside story’. It was more or less the ’soft’ marketing workshop for women I had been fantasizing about several months ago.

Beforehand, I was debating just what my role as leader of the workshop was. Was I there to teach, preach, convert, raise consciousness?  I have led workshops in such a way, and when they were successful, I was left with a curiously empty, cheated feeling.

Somehow, this had to be different. I felt I was asking the 15 participants to take some creative risks, which meant I needed to take some myself.

The risks I set up for myself were to let go of the need to be the teacher. I couldn’t do this entirely, it will take several times before I find a new way to be with the group, but this workshop was a step in the right direction. I let go of some of my agenda to make room for the participants to share their own wisdom and thoughts on the subject. And I saw myself as someone sharing the wisdom of my experience only, so it could be enhanced and given meaning by their own experience.

Part of the workshop was a hands-on art exercise, this too was an opportunity to let go of showing hoew to do everything. Actually there were too many people for me to give individual attention to, so some were left to improvise, and they were the ones who got fantastic results way out of the box of my expectations for the assignment.

There was good feedback on the workshop, and I felt great afterwards. For me it had been an experience of sharing the love I have for creativity and my belief in the power of creativity to transform and heal.

And I am learning that the power of a workshop to touch lives comes less from covering all the points in the lecture than from creating an environment together where magic can happen.

‘I in drawing, drawing in me’

‘Nori’s jeans’

This is one of the drawings made by Tomoko, a private art student I took on after a long period of not teaching.
Tomoko hadn’t drawn since she was a child. She had loved drawing and was discouraged by her surroundings from pursuing it as a study because, in her society, art was held apart as a high aspiration for talented people only. I guess those around her didn’t have the eyes to recognize her genuine talent and love of art.

In her first lesson, and from then on all the talent that had lain dormant for 20 years or more just flowed out. She was doing university level work after a few lessons.  She, in her utterly creative and poetic version of English, spoke of the healing she was experiencing as she rediscovered her drawing ability.  But being able to do art also returned to her a part of herself that had not been allowed to flourish, and with it came growing self confidence plus a whole new set of life questions. It was a beautiful thing to be witness to.

It was very hard breaking off our lessons and weekly contact when her husband’s period of study here was over, but we have kept in touch. And helping Tomoko rediscover and develop her artistic ability was a gift for me too. It reawakened my joy in teaching and got me drawing again.  Plus I have a dear friend in Japan now.

  

Drawing is fun

 

E’s drawing from today’s lesson 

My 10 year old drawing student has been working very hard these last months. It takes concentration and discipline to learn to see what is in front of you and draw it on the paper. For our last lesson of the summer I wanted her to experience that drawing can also be easy.  Together we looked at my cyber-friend Michael Nobb’s drawings-  wonderful nonchalant pen sketches of everyday life and objects.   I liked her insight about his drawing of an empty glass, ‘It isn’t exactly ‘perfect’, but you can tell what it is’.

I set up a bunch of art materials for her to draw and a large (50 x 70 cm) sheet of paper. The assignment was to just enjoy drawing the objects in no special order, proportion or perspective. She worked directly on the page in permanent marker then added colour freely with a brush and drawing inks. The result is above, I like it very much.  

  Part of the point of this assignment was to also learn that an artist has many styles available to her. We looked at ‘Groceries’ by another cyber-friend, the South African writer Harry Kalmer.  Both Michael and I have done illustrations for this book and besides being a great collection of essays inspired by groceries, it contains a wealth of illustrations by international artists in a variety of styles. (It has been highly commended in South Africa, unfortunately I don’t have an English language link for it).

 Here is my Pentel Color Brush and wash sketch from the same session.

Horse crazy

Recently I’ve begun taking on private art students again after a long period of not teaching. It is incredibly stimulating to my own art; I’ve rediscovered the delight of drawing simply for the joy of it. My Friday afternoon student is 10 years old and horse crazy, as I was at that age. We discovered that here in Holland, she had the Dutch version of  Walter T. Foster’s,  ’How to draw Horses’  book. It was the same one I had as a child, and it was one of the few books I rescued from our old house in Pittsburgh after my father died. So I showed it to her and we had fun looking at the similarities and telling each other which horses we’d already drawn!

One of the things I enjoy about her in regards to her art is that she is fearless. She tackles each new drawing with the assurance that she can do it. Through her, I see how years of ‘being an artist’ can sometimes be the worst thing for one’s art-I mean one’s real, close-to-the-bone and soul art. The art that has nothing to do with galleries, trends, or superficial identity.  I am reminded that being oneself is sometimes the most important ingredient in making art because it produces something authentic.