Dear one,
I hope you are well and I wish you the best for the year ahead!
I’d like to share something with you because while it is a personal little thing, it might be something you will relate to, something to support your own journey.
Recently I walked away from a painting I had been working on and struggling with, for days, frustrated and fed up, never satisfied about any of the different versions it had gone through and I was seriously thinking about putting it unceremoniously on the scrap pile!
The day after, I even posted about it on FB as a “going nowhere” experimental painting.
In any case, I left it there, considered I was done but I did not clean my palette on which remained various amounts of paint with just a vague “Just in case…” in mind.
A failed experiment.
That was OK, by the way, because failure is just a part of learning.
And I had learned a thing ot two with this one.
But eventually, late that morning, I grabbed my palette and started laying colors rapidly, using them up, adding a lot more, without trying to make sense of it.
I let my hand impulsively do what many years of practice had taught it.
I got in the zone. I let it happen.
Then I stopped.
I was in front of a very different painting. Unrecognizable.
Though some of the initial structure was still there, now all the painstakingly accumulated shapes and details were gone.
It was flowing. It was luminous. There was a breath, a breeze, a motion, in it.
The darkness remaining was just accents to all the light permeating everything.
Colors of previous layers where peeking through in spots, giving some depth and texture.
I felt “almost done”.
I slowed down, I looked, I noticed an arc, like an invitation, something beconning… and I knew what I needed to do to make it complete, to really bring it alive. So I took a new color and delicately applied it with a knife, carefully, in small touches, and there it was, at last, flowing and vibrating.
The name came naturally : “Breakthrough”.
I had no doubt this time that it was complete.
I felt exhilarated.
All these hours fumbling around and getting nowherehad actually brought me there.
All of it. Going through the contrived, overly processed, boring versions of it was not wasted time.
It was percolating, exploring, adventuring…
Not often working on abstracts though I love them, I had needed that struggling and tinkering to build up a solid base on which I could freely play.
It was all part of it.
Isn’t it true for all breakthroughs?
I can see that pathway from struggling to flowing being the same no matter what the experiment is about; would it be a painting or a study in a lab, we start with what we already know, as little or as much as it may be, and use it in a kind of blindfolded way, like trying to assemble pieces of a puzzle of which we don’t know the final look.
We keep moving things around, we get random results that are mostly disappointing, but something, a spark, a desire to create or to discover further keeps us going, keeps us exploring…
And while nothing seems to happen, and we consider abandonning, there is a whole unconscious processing going on.
What is always true for me, is that at a certain point I have to let go; I have to SURRENDER.
Eventually, after surrendering, something breaks free. Something gives. I uncover the missing part so to speak.
At that point it’s never ever about ego, it’s never about making a point, never about proving anything.
It’s just the flow of creating.
Reorganizing pieces already there, and seeing them in a completely new light, new form, new interaction… and getting a step further in the quest, no matter what it is.
Creating is fun. It’s what we are geared for, it’s in our genes.
We just have to give ourselves permission to fail as many times as the process will take and enjoy the uncharted territory we are in.
Even if nothing significant was to come out of that process, or seemingly so, it would still be a precious learning and growing time. It might be useful much later down the line…
When we live our life that way, nothing is ever wasted.
Create, dear one.
Throw yourself in the fray, wrestle, fumble, stumble…
Along the way you’ll be given priceless moments of grace and aliveness that nothing can replace.
With much love
Emmeline