Perhaps the most difficult virtue I’ve had to embrace this year is patience- with myself, with decision makers at various levels, and with the louder, meaner voices I’ve encountered. Regarding this school year, I am not exactly comfortable saying “the end is in sight!” yet… but it is getting closer. I learned a lot. I absorbed a lot of trauma. I was stretched in difficult ways. I’m not entirely better for it, and it’s going to take me time to recover- so I will need to be patient with myself through the summer, too.
-Knowing it is OK to take a break and be unproductive is not the same as feeling guilt-free when doing so. That’s tough.-
A while back, I wrote about the importance of creative habits. I had to let go of my studio habits this year, as my work responsibilities ballooned to gigantic proportions. If I’m being completely honest, in order to be emotionally available in the way my kids (all my kids) needed, I had to put almost everything else on hold.
I need to re-establish my artistic inertia (especially as I plan for solo shows this coming year and wrap up some commissions), BUT I am enormously grateful for having confronted my work-life boundaries.
What I really crave is the space- the mental and emotional breathing room- to explore some ideas I’ve had rattling around in my head. If I could, I’d cloister myself with some paints and books… and disappear. When I used to teach dance, sometimes I would go into the studio during my planning period, turn off the lights, turn on some music, and move without any real purpose. Freedom! Freedom from being seen. Freedom from being “productive.” Freedom and the vast, empty space to fill with whatever movement felt right. I want this as an artist, desperately.
I used to stay up late to paint. I delight in being the only one up- it is so quiet in the wee hours of the night. There’s a pleasant stillness and inherent mischief in the air, a sense that the line between possible and impossible blurs a bit. It’s a blissful solitude that I love so much.
Freedom from being seen… anybody else need that in their lives? It certainly takes on new meaning after teaching through a camera being broadcast on the internet for an entire year!
It ain’t over yet, but it will be soon. I am so, immensely, grateful for my students this year (and every year, but this year those relationships sparkle in a precious way). I pray that I have the energy and fortitude to be the human/teacher/artist/mom that they inspire me to want to be.
Some recent work, with the hope of more to come.
