Detail of a collage piece created in 2005; the piece itself is now undergoing a transformation.

Within the four walls of my studio lies an artist’s paradise – plenty of light, two giant boards to tack on inspirational images, notes and a map of the world, an easel, shelves filled with inspiring books, and oodles of boxes, crates, drawers and bins where a myriad of art supplies are kept.  These are my tools, and my creative space is one giant toolbox, where just about everything I need is within arm’s reach and I can get as messy as I want.

In addition to the items one normally associates with the term Artist’s Tools – the pencils, paints, brushes and palette knives – there is one other tool I have come to appreciate tremendously, perhaps more than any of my other instruments.  That tool is Walking Away, and I pull it out of my invisible box of tricks all the time.  This is why I tend to work on multiple pieces at once, because I need time away from each individual piece more often than not.  For whatever reason, one of the most important elements of my creative process is that moment when I get stuck or frustrated or blank and simply put that piece away and move on to something else for at least a little while.

As adept as I’ve become at using this tool with individual creations, I am only just now beginning to see that a grander version of Walking Away is also sometimes necessary to re-fuel my creative reservoirs.  After my last show at the end of March, Moving Yet Again became my full time job, and the to do lists for that latest project is just now beginning to wind down.  During the first couple of months of being wrapped up in house-related tasks, I got pretty antsy, cranky and frustrated that I had to be away from my work for such an extended period of time.  Lately that has shifted, and it is almost as if I can literally see the waters swirl back into my creative ocean with an entirely new kind of sparkle.  I have been in full show mode for so long – planning a show, figuring out a theme and creating work specifically for that – that I pulled myself too far away from the idea of creation in its rawest, purest form.  In other words, most of the work I have been doing over the past two years has been done with a specific agenda.  This is not bad per se – I have created a mountain of work, most of which is now sold and happily scattered all over – but I think that in order to delve into my deepest work I must approach the next blank canvas with an equally blank mind, or as close to it as possible.

During this time of studio reprieve, I have been still been working on smaller projects – commissions for paintings, my Etsy shop, submitting work to an upcoming group show – but more than anything I have been employing that extra special tool.  More than anything I have walked away and stayed away and I have only recently begun to feel that pull back into the creative frenzy I love getting myself into.  I am now enjoying the anticipation of the first brush stroke on my next canvas, and ideas for where that first stroke might lead me are looser and more organic than they would have been had I not taken this time off.  Even when it comes to the things we love the most, sometimes Walking Away is the most compassionate step we can take, for it gives these special gifts we treasure so much time to rest.  My creative self has had the luxury of a small sabbatical, and she is now beginning to make her way back into this toolbox where everything she needs to create awaits her, ready for her to use in whatever way her heart moves her on whatever day she dips her brush in that first blazing, gooey handful of color.