No Separation
August 30, 2007
Stranger :: 12" x 12" on wood
A recurring question that keeps popping into my head surrounds the purpose of this blog. I wonder if I should make it more focused – should it only be about my artistic process? Should it just be observations about life? Should I make every Friday a day to promote other interesting sites and projects? The organizer side of me keeps feeling compelled to put a more specific label on what I write about, but these thoughts have never become so loud or incessant that I actually made any of the changes I sometimes considered. They just like to pop in now and then and say hello.
As much as I love compartmentalizing my art supplies & organizing closets, the life I have lived is not that delineated. Everything I do feeds into everything else I do – my travel inspires my work which inspires my friendships which inspires my marriage which inspires my work and so on. In reading some of my old journals, I realize I have always struggled with balance, always wishing I could establish more regular routines and schedules for various things such as work and exercise. After having written about this for so many years, I am finally beginning to accept that this is simply not the way the stars have aligned for me. With each passing year, the various roles I play in life become more and more intertwined, most especially my role as an artist, and that wild, untamed, creative energy in me is what makes me who I am. If I try too hard to rein that in so that I can have a life with more structure and better "time management", I just might be throwing a blanket over the brightest light I have to offer the world.
All of the things I write about have at least some small thread of connection to my work as an artist. All of my questions and musings, contradictions and frustrations, eventually find their way from my brain to my fingertips and onto a canvas, sketchbook or wood panel. The idea of trying to narrow down the focus of this blog to only be about my "process" makes me giggle, as my process comes from all of these things I write about. The questions I pose, observations I make and conversations I try to initiate all come from the explorer in me, the one who wants to learn, see, try, do and go as far as I can.
And perhaps this is the role of the artist – to explore – and maybe the term "artist" can even limiting in certain ways. I am an artist and I create things, but I also love to mine the depths of human relationships, I love noticing tiny details in a foreign country and I love doing laundry. I love exploring all there is to explore and uncovering connections that might have gone unnoticed before, connections such as this one – between my role as an artist/explorer and all the different ways that enables me to create a life I feel passionate about. I am on a journey – a journey through this life – and my deepest desire is to take in as much as I possibly can and then fling it back out in the world through my creations, whether that is a painting or a blog entry. And it is that cycle that keeps me going – not the separation of all the things I do into their own little color-coded bins, but the beautiful, messy kaleidoscope that is created when they all melt together like crayons in the sun.
I understand that need to compartmentalize so well. I have asked myself similar questions with regards to my blog, but unlike you I don’t feel that there is this invisible web of ‘everything’ that keeps it all together, in your case your being an artist. Perhaps that is why I am struggling with wanting to have a “theme” for my blog, a purpose, because I am still unsure about MY purpose.
The reason I love your blog is because it is diverse yet all connected. I often marvel at how different our lives are, yet I regularly recognize bits of myself in your posts. Mostly, you are an inspiration for an authentic life, something I’ve been struggling with over the last couple of years.
By th way, I love the Stranger piece!
wow, its like you took the thoughts right out of my mouth! Could you believe that, I was just thinking so much of what you were saying. I even spent some time narrowing down the categories of my blog (I still have over 16). I want things to be in control I think, because other aspects are not. But I love the snippets of your life. I get to see you how you are, and thats what keeps me coming back to see what is new, time and time again. Art is more then Art. It is life woven in to a visual fabric.
amen to that. it is the kaleidoscope – as seen through your eyes – that i love to read about when i come to visit your blog. this is the beauty of blogging – how we can share our own take on things, our joys and sorrows, our experiments and explorations. My blog started as a way to chronicle my journey through bereavement and healing, and now i see it changing to focus more on my artistic journey – the next stage in the healing i guess. i read so widely in blogland – food blogs, crafty blogs, art, literature, poetry – it’s all there. I too share that urge to compartmentalise and organise and be ordered in my words (decide what ‘type’ of blog i have), but that wouldn’t reflect how i experience my world. some bits are ordered, most isn’t. just like the blog
Hello! I found your page a while ago and have always lurked, but i felt inspired to comment today!! first of all- your art is beautiful! i want to buy everything and wallpaper my house in it! and second of all- i’ve been reading a book by sandra magsamen called “living artfully”. it is an amazing book but it is really about how everything we do in life is a creative outlet. simply breathing is a form of our artful process. this thought really helped me with my constant need to be painting/writing/anything to be creating and helped me step back to see that no matter what i am doing- i can put a piece of myself into it!
thank you for your words, your art, yourself! you are such an inspiration to me!
xoxo
eMiLy
(I kinda like it here)
I so feel the melted crayons in the sun experience… thank you for a great post, about things that we all feel, about who we are, how we best represent who we are, and how all of a life melts together into stream of experience and purpose.
I was just having a conversation with my husband (a musician) about time, and wanting more time for what he wants to create and play, and it broadened into a conversation about one’s whole life is a whole life, whether you are doing exactly what you want at any given moment, or not. And sometimes the moments that feel least like your own, turn out to be the strongest fuel for the moments that do feel like your own…
Anyway, loved reading your thoughts, it felt like a continuation of our conversation here at home . . .
I love the diversity of your blog entries. But what I love most is that they come straight from your heart,that you share your thoughts with all of us and that I recognize some of it in my own life and others may recognize other elements and it makes us think or smile. I don’t have a blog nor a website but I visit yours very regularly and it is one of the most inspiring blogs I read on an almost daily basis. (I’m a compartmentalizer myself…) Thanks for sharing so much with us!
I love the free-formed, many threaded feel of the blog…
And I agree about the time management and schedule stuff. They are tools. And if you don’t need them to enjoy life and be reasonably effective (e.g. your bills get paid, no one is calling the health dept. on you), then who cares! Do what you want when you can, or when you are inspired. Nothing wrong with living a “permeable” life.