Those of you who have been reading me for years know that I've often struggled with reconciling my artist self with my practical self, trying to create a life in which I can make a living but still feed my creative need. I believe I've made greater strides in the last year doing just that, than I have in awhile, but I do have to say that I started down this road of being serious about being an artist over a decade ago. I've gone through a series of starts, halts, setbacks, and restarts, but I have never given up on giving art an important role in my life. I am a great believer in following one's bliss, even when it looks like the universe is not, as so many authors of self-help books tell us is the case, supporting one and bringing one what one needs when one needs it.
One of my greatest obstacles in this adventure hasn't been lack of money, though, or even lack of universal handholding. It's been me. I sabotage myself. Or I step forward in ignorance of what I'm ready for, impatient to get to the goal of being An Artist, whatever that may mean, whether I have what I need for it or not. You see, I have this problem in that most things in my early years came to me fairly easily, and I was a good student who didn't have to work as hard as a lot of other students. When I did things, they came out good almost from the start. I didn't have to do a lot of reworking, revising, or redoing. Especially when it came to things I made with my hands. What that meant ultimately is that I didn't develop a lot of patience. I didn't have to. So when I came up against things later in life that did require patience and repeated effort, I gave up on it. Practice? Me? Make mistakes? Not bloody likely. If I couldn't do it well within a reasonably short amount of time, I wouldn't do it. I didn't want to look bad. I'd been too used to looking good.
Translated to painting that meant I didn't have a sense of adventure or experimentation about it. In the earlier years that was fine as I was learning how to mix and apply paint. I was fine with what I painted because at least it looked pretty close to what I was copying. My skill at getting it "right" was there as always. In time, though, I wasn't satisfied with my ability to copy, but I discovered when I tried to play, I was so concerned about things looking "right" I couldn't play. My stuff was horrid. And I don't do horrid. So I'd play it safe and go back to copying other pictures, but because I wasn't satisfied with doing that, I began to tell myself negative things about my painting. "I'll never be a real artist." "My work is just mediocre." And by saying these things, I caused that spark in me that loves color and boldness and spontaneity to shrivel to almost nothing. I became cautious and withdrawn, not just artistically, but also in expressing myself in other ways. When you begin to tell yourself that the thing you love doing the most isn't really worth much, you also begin to see yourself as not worth much.
Then began the perimenopausal years. Horrible and wonderful years. Horrible because your conflicting emotions turn you inside out and upside down. Wonderful because you're being turned inside out and upside down. You're having to face things head on, do or die. What you thought you knew about life, about yourself, isn't true. Or you realize that you've been lying to yourself in order to stay "safe". I still have some serious junk in my head to work through. I'm not who I always tried to be as a wife and mother raising a family, doing the "right" thing. There's this wild child just dying to make herself known, tired of being cooped up for so long doing all the things expected of her without allowing for any expression of the unexpected. Living this way for so long it has become habit, but that doesn't mean it's natural to me. It isn't natural to me. Do I want to please? Yes. Do I want to hurt anyone? No. Am I sensitive to whether or not you judge me? Yes. Too sensitive. That is natural to me, and that encouraged my conforming habits, but the wild child under the sensitivity and empathy doesn't like conforming AT ALL, and has done what she could over the years in subtle, small ways to rebel, until recently when she hasn't been subtle at all.
Last summer my mom said she always thought of me as a free spirit. It surprised me that she thought this. I always felt she was disappointed with me when I didn't conform to an expected way of behaving, but her free spirit comment didn't come out of disappointment, it came out of love and a knowledge of who I am. My brother saw me as a hippy, a flower child. Long ago my best friend called me bohemian. These are all true aspects of me, that wild child within, but I've often silenced her in favor of the "normal" part of me that I thought people would be more comfortable with, a daughter to be proud of, a wife one could love, a mom that wouldn't be too embarrassing, a co-worker one could take seriously. Last year she wouldn't be silenced any longer. She screamed. And she's still screaming, though at lower decibel levels as she figures out how to be present without taking over. Because that wouldn't be any better than Ms. Safety having control. And at last, I'm finding my way in my painting. I may still not be great at it, but I am an artist, and though I'm taking my time about it, I am following my bliss.
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