Last Tuesday, I walked out to my studio for 90 minutes of uninterrupted art. I rarely get more significant chunks of time dedicated to painting and often settle for 20 minutes here and there. But I hit ninety minutes in my studio last week, and it was amazing!
Music blaring, jumping up and down, and heartbeat racing, amazing.
It was undeniably perfect for several reasons. One was the amount of time I gave myself; it was enough time to adjust and melt into my creative atmosphere. The second, the part of creating, designing, and immersing yourself in the arts that I want to share with everyone, was a 90-minute or 5,400-second allowance of time where my thoughts, emotions, and existence as a nuanced person were allowed to clash.
The combustion of circumstances can be revealed through art in the most beautiful way. There can be tension, joy, confusion, grief, contentment, and a simultaneous existence of who we are as beings, and the result is the emergence of art.
What flows out in any given moment when creating art is physically aligned with your prominence of thought. The combustion of intuitive and cognitive thought gives us access to an incredible space to heal, understand, grieve, love, and experience the complexities of who we are as people.
On Tuesday night, I painted and had the space and time to allow my existence to emerge on the canvas.
Only days prior, I had a conversation with my husband about the uncertainty of parts of our future. Will our child need extra care beyond the typical age? Will we have the opportunity to travel, or will our presence in the day-to-day be required beyond the anticipated age? What's going to happen medically? At our next appointment, are we deciding on surgery? Do you think he will look back on his childhood and feel like it was one doctor's appointment after another? What phase are we in? Are we just getting much better at accepting how different our circumstances are? How do we juggle parts of this when the sentiment "it's only a season of life" doesn't really apply?
On Tuesday night, I made a mark on the canvas, reacted to the mark on the canvas, made another mark on the canvas, and allowed myself to respond to each individual mark, one at a time. This process, this development of artwork, allows a sequence of processing to form in our minds. Much like a finished painting must be created mark by mark, one step at a time, we must also do the same for the entanglement and organization of our thoughts as we navigate life. The process of sorting through art and life can happen in unison when we allow ourselves to create!
We must find time to create. We must find time to experience the arts. Through the sequencing of mark-making on a canvas, a note of composition in music, and a turn sequence in the choreography of dance, we find our footing and ability to organize our thoughts.
On Tuesday night, my thoughts swirled, my energy was enormous, and I experienced an overwhelm of clashing thoughts and emotions that finally left my body. On Tuesday night, I finished a painting that holds every ounce of who I am as a person.
We cannot make art simply for the benefit of aesthetics; we must make art because it is imperative in representing the complexities of who we are as people.
Pick up a pencil. Pick up a paintbrush. It's time to make art.
Thank you for sharing. We raised a special needs child after an auto accident changed the course of ALL of our lives when he was 5. I sometimes look back over the last 49 years and wonder -- what if? But then I often end with "Thank you God to entrusting us with this task!!" Blessings to your family!! Cinda Stocks