So I have this new studio. Fabulous. Spacious. Everything I ever craved or dreamed of. Everything is now over there - every image that feeds, pretty much every stick of charcoal, every tube of paint.
But I can't yet do any work there. I love being there. I pace the space, I sing. I look, at all the images that have appeared in recently months, at the residue of India. I expect myself to start to DO. But doing is all wrong, yields only results that remind me of times past, when I made marks without understanding what I was trying to do.
When will I start to understand that everything counts as 'working', that things never stay still? I've had this supremely flowing process since coming back from India, a process that only seemed to be gathering momentum, to be getting easier. The drawings got larger, my house was groaning with so much art art clutter, there was nowhere to do sandpainting, nowhere to put the large drawings that just wanted to come and come. The studio flowed in to my life like the answer to a prayer.
And now everything is upside down. I don't know where I am, I've lost my place. Actually, that place has probably gone now, and some other place is trying to be born. I had just, after more than four years, got my space at home perfectly arranged, holding me in my process like a tight cocoon. Constraints. Swaddled in the known so perfectly that work was slipping out, day after day, easing its way into the light through all the constrictions.
Now, suddenly, the constraints have pinged off. I've burst out into something wider, more spacious. What I needed, but what I have no idea how to manage. Starting all over again from a new place.
Seeking solace, seeking inspiration, I find this on a facebook page feed:
You’re walking the labyrinth of life. Yes, you’re meant to move forward, but almost never in a straight line. Yes, there’s an element of achievement, of beginning and ending, but those are minor compared to the element of being here now. In the moments you stop trying to conquer the labyrinth of life and simply inhabit it, you’ll realize it was designed to hold you safe as you explore what feels dangerous. You’ll see that you’re exactly where you’re meant to be, meandering along a crooked path that is meant to lead you not onward, but inward.
Martha Beck
Jaime Zollars Fine Art & Illustrations
Ok, thanks, that will do just fine for today.
.
