My Electric-Pink Ladyland

Posted on Mar 3, 2012 in 2012, Art/Painting, Part 2

I’ve been painting in a space that I’ve rented for a month. It’s the first time I’ve really opened up in a studio where I don’t have to put all of my supplies away and can make an utter mess, since…well…since I became pregnant almost four years ago. It’s been a long time.

I didn’t paint right away; my thoughts on direction were as blank as the canvas. I wrote instead, and unpacked. Worked on some other business plans. I often just stared at the canvas and supplies. I really didn’t know where to begin with it. But begin I did today, and just worked. I opened the cans, bottles, tubes and buckets of paint and inhaled. I am not kidding when I say that breathing in the smell of acrylic paint is like lavender to me: familiar, relaxing, warm, home, welcoming. It was a good start.

I unwrapped the canvases and placed them against the wall to gauge which one I’d use first. Chosen, I placed the 3×4 on blocks on the floor, threw paper around the edges to catch the excess paint for later use, and then just walked around and around it. And then I began without trying too hard.

I started with drippy white.

I am an abstract artist and often throw paint, because it feels good. As scattered as it may look to some or seem to others, it’s pretty precise and deliberate work. There is a relationship of give-and-take in my practice as I experiment with control: I go with my gut regarding color and placement, and then I let it all show me what it’s going to do. Perhaps I tilt the canvas. Perhaps I blow on the paint globs, just to help it along. But I don’t try to own it. That would get me into trouble with the Universe.

But as I’ve been painting today, several thoughts and feelings have emerged. I decided to let the paint stand still for awhile before I apply anymore of it and explore what’s going on.

I think first of a good friend who owns some of my work and wondered, quite some time ago, what my art will look like now that I’m a Mother.  I didn’t really think that my work would necessarily be anything profound, nor did I think profoundly of the question for myself, especially now. Work is work. I didn’t think much of Motherhood as a source of inspiration. I just thought, I am a Mother and a Painter and now I will try to do both.

As I painted today I thought of his wonderment. Who am I now, as Mother-Artist? What am I now? What am I saying, if I’m saying anything at all? Is it significant? I don’t mean to impart any feelings of woe-is-me, or that I’m in a philosophical abyss of prophetic thought.  It’s not that at all.  It just came up.  Is there any change in my tone? I’ve involved some pink paint in this first piece, but I don’t think it implies baby pinks or blues. It is brighter, a slight shift in color choices. But it is still very abstract and busy. Do I like it? I don’t know yet. Does it speak to me? I don’t know that either. It is currently just a wet pink-black-purple painting that sits on the floor, pondering its next move.

Something else that bubbles and squeaks: hints of guilt. Ridiculous, I know. But so common, right? Feeling guilty because…I’m enjoying myself? Because I’m crafting real/other work? Because I’m away from my family, even for a short time? Yes, yes and yes. There are these other responsibilities that beckon, and I’m not very good at taking time for myself (asking, practice). It’s a bad habit we women perpetuate. Not asking for more for and from ourselves in healthy, positive ways without applying too much pressure. Indeed.  There is the underlying current of undeservedness and putting others before ourselves. I hope to banish these thoughts by day’s end.

Another element at play are those that come up for most artists: thinking about what other people want from your art. Some folks never say it.  Most would never admit that they want something different from you — tangible, explicable, comprehensible — but they do. I think often their intentions are good. But abstract art is very difficult for many to gather, place, interpret. My most famous and popular painting is an abstract flower. It is loved by many. And please understand, the support of my art throughout its history is invaluable.  It’s just that my artist friends are often surprised by that painting, as it strays from my usual work. It isn’t that they don’t like it, they just like my abstract work more, the truth and integrity of it, that it honors their own personal truth and integrity as artists. I like to paint big.They say paint big. I like to throw paint. They hope that I keep throwing. Don’t confine it. Work toward it. It’s not really in me to paint flowers, trees, houses, people. I’m not really even good at that, or that patient. I like the unknowns. I think it’s the process of the exploration of unconscious possibilities that appeals most to me about what I do.  And so I make abstract art.

What also appeals to me about the abstract art that I make, like most things I do, is that it goes outside the boundaries of the norm. Complex person, complex art. It takes most of us a very long time indeed to learn to listen to, go with and trust our instincts, to let it go and flow, to engage in passionate and pleasurable experiences, to believe that what we have to say is as important as what the others are saying, contrary to their opinions and laws and standards. We are a tightly bound and wound group of people, we Americans. That always makes for a beautiful challenge to me: the advocation of coloring outside the lines.

And so, as I create this piece of new art from some place very old in me indeed, I can hear the other voices of want in my head. Will they like it? Do I need to paint pictures of food or babies or dogs, or more flowers? I don’t know and I don’t care right now. Currently, the work on the floor is beginning to look like a happy interpretation of a polygraph test.

Apparently I’m telling the truth.

Sanctification of My Soul

Posted on Mar 2, 2012 in 2012, Child Raising, Motherhood, Part 2, Women's work, Writing

Last summer, I was going to write about last spring, as it seemed quite trying for me, like I’d heard it was for almost everyone else. It rained a lot, there were plenty of wild storms with weather alerts in tow, and it even snowed. A weather orgy for weathermen and women alike. I know that April showers bring May flowers, but what about April storms and snow and almost-tornadoes? You get a bunch of pent-up, hopeful and faithful Midwesterners.  Just like Lions fans.

But I only wrote as far as that paragraph.

Then I thought I would feel the writing urge by fall. I was going to write about how I felt like I’d been on a slow train into summer, my head against the window, lost in a romantic and lazy daydream of peace and quiet,  just relaxing and playing toddler games. I’d taken a nice long break from most of the world and went off the grid — literally:  I turned off social sites (more on that in a later post), didn’t call many people or even answer the phone much, tuned out the world and took the pressure off of whatever I thought I was supposed to press. I hung out with my daughter, meditated a lot, made food, spent time with family and listened to music. I read. I wrote intimately. I wanted to get back to the essence of my life.  My essential life. It is very, very easy in these times to be far away from that. I wanted to quiet the noise and focus on what is and what is being.

And it worked! I emerged with clearer vision, a sense of self, and all kinds of dreams and schemes (hint/plug: Lola Creative Arts). I could actually see the future like I hadn’t been able to do since becoming a mother and moving back to the Midwest with all of its life-changing events. In fact, I felt like the Part 1 of “The Re-Birth of Lola” — or Book 1, or the “from me to Motherhood” part, or the part marked by the clanging bars of unhappily-caged free radicals, by desperation and fatigue, the loss of my sense of self, yada, yada, yada — had come to an end. The settling down and into my brain and my life signaled a re-entry or re-surfacing — the “and back again” part.

In retrospect, if I had just been mothering a young child and not dealing with the rest of the Part 1 stuff, the story might be quite different. My brain might not have barfed up a blog. I might not have felt so overwhelmed. But who knows?  Being a mom is hard work and not always fun, and so is being an adult. My immediate family had been through a hell of a lot of shit in the last few years.  In fact, among the top 100 most stressful life events, we adults had hit most of the top ten. Considering that it can be scored on a scale from 1 – 10, we had pretty good math.

Nevertheless, we had all mostly emerged. I emerged and had released the free radicals into the atmosphere, like vapor, and could clearly delineate “that was then, this is now.”  The possibilities were endless. What a delightful realization.

But I didn’t write about that either.  I only wrote as far as the part about the slow train.

So when winter came, I realized that I didn’t even want to chronicle the paths to liberation. I didn’t want to talk about it at all. I go through that as a writer. Sometimes I just want to stop talking, which is terrible practice and for practice. But silence can be golden, especially when I don’t want the contents to always or often be made up of vomit. Another writer friend recently discussed this with me — the pressures of modern life and motherhood — and how, when her kids were very small, she coughed up her emotional guts through writing, because “you lose yourself” as a mother. I also think it makes for slightly easier writing, because it comes from such an emotive place. It takes less practice. The words, thoughts and energy are there at the ready. And often there is no other outlet, especially with other moms, who would rather not publicly agree with your voicing of the uglier, often challenging and boring side of motherhood, but who secretly agree with you and you know it because you can see the terror on their faces: the I’m-losing-my-mind face; the I-hate-my-mommy-body-low-self-esteem-but-when-am-I-gonna-lose-this-weight-oh-wait-I-don’t-have-time-for-myself face; the REALLY? face; the what-did-I-get-myself-into face; the face that says you feel tons of pressure and guilt from other people; the please-shut-up-and/or-don’t-touch-me face; the face that says, Take me to a remote island, while the mouth says, “Oh, but it’s a lot of fun [raising kids and not getting any sleep]” (with a touch of: you-believe-me-don’t-you face); the HELP-me face; the I-don’t-feel-like-I-have-a-choice face; the I-want-more-than-just-this face; the take-it-like-a-trooper face.

But I digress. Where was I?  Oh, yes. I’d been at this place in other phases of my life, the non-practicing phase of my work in general.  A recent perusal of old journals confirmed this habit, that I write and write when I’m in metamorphosis, and that I hibernate when the water is calm or the gettin’ is good. I could have been in this space again, this non-practicing phase, during winter, but there was a shift in thought and activity.  My daughter was growing out of toddlerhood and the motherhood girdle was beginning to loosen.  Furthermore, I consciously didn’t want to be slave to the reactive mode that the pressure chamber of motherhood can create, knowing that at the heart of the matter wasn’t just motherhood, but also that I had been on the verge of crafting my real work and it stalled because I became a full time mom.  I was utterly committed.  Now, through silence and focusing, rocking the little dream to-and-fro, I knew who I really was.  Not scattered, not disordered, but ordered and ready. I wanted to be able to practice with intention.  I didn’t want to leave gaping holes in the process, which is the work.  With the ending of one phase of Motherhood, I wanted to reclaim and restate my thoughts on Motherhood and modern life.

Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice is just practice.

As a mother, you wait. You wait a lot. You wait for your time, your time to practice, your time to begin. You give yourself to others and wait some more until you’ve just pushed through the hard shit and into the next part, where your choices are many or more, when your child or children don’t need you for all sixty seconds of the minute, when the karmic bond between mother and child is loosened just enough to do more than sneak away just in thought.

Which leads me to the here and now.  It is still winter, but just a few short weeks from spring.  At this moment, it is raining and cold and mostly consistently dreary.  Just like last spring, the spring I didn’t write about. I leave that to Keillor, who tells us that God created March to remind those of us who don’t drink what a hangover is like.  But I wasn’t really going to write about spring, and I’m not hungover. I am, in fact, working. And painting and writing and cooking and planning and Mommying, like a champ I might add. And throwing out into the Universe a little bit of this and that to see what works and what doesn’t. And trying to balance the stuff we all want to do and the stuff we need to do, and to gauge their interchangeability.  That is the mantra of motherhood: wait and see and hope and pray, your time will come.

Because, really, this is a love story.

Peace of Art Part 2: Breakfast at Epiphany’s

Posted on Apr 20, 2011 in 2011, Motherhood, Part 1

Peace of Art

Posted on Mar 14, 2011 in 2011, Art/Painting, Child Raising, Feminine, Motherhood, Part 1, Women's work, Writing

I was recently surprised to find out how much I apparently hate myself. Even writing that statement makes noooo sense to me; that’s not how I operate, nor has it ever been. But that’s how I felt Friday afternoon after finishing a relatively large painted piece for ArtPrize 2011: shame, frustration, anger and guilt, all of which were total surprises and a shocking reflection of what had been at my core that day, and perhaps for quite a while. I stepped away from the piece not knowing what to think and definitely not relating to it. It took me a couple of days to recuperate from feeling overwhelmed, and apparently, at 38, a lifetime to disregard worrying about (self) acceptance.

I re-entered my creative life in the summer of 2004, and specifically began my painting life that fall, after years of simply not acting on it, or knowing that I could and should. I was the director of an arts council in female power struggle, trying to build a food/restaurant business on the side, part of a failing marriage, and sandwiched between two extremes of personal and cultural support, all taking place in this small town I currently call home and have always called my hometown. I began to have dreams and daydreams of the walls closing in, collapsing and crumbling slowly, and felt absolutely on the verge of something else. I didn’t know what that would look like yet, but I was obviously in crisis. I felt guilty for needing/wanting to leave the supportive people I loved (needing to examine that support) and also felt utterly rejected and ejected by other aspects of and people in my life. It was becoming evident that I was not meant to be in any of those relationships, at least some just for the time being, and that I had to forge a new relationship with myself and with others to see clearly.

Feminist H/air Part Deux: Nothing is Free

Posted on Nov 29, 2010 in 2010, Body Image, Feminine, Feminisim, Part 1

It has been at least a month since I shaved my head, which I did twice. Probably no surprise to many: my head gets cold. Specifically, the tops of my ears feel chilly and I often wear a hat around the house, much to the dismay or bewilderment of my daughter. I don’t think she likes the hat thing, but she does like to pet my head and laugh and “comb” it. Anyway, I have very much liked this hair experiment of mine; it has surprisingly become more interesting and pleasant as it grows out and grows on me.

One notable difference is that my grey isn’t really grey–it’s silver. My husband did a double take the other day as the daylight hit my temples just so. He leaned back and then leaned a little more. I said, What? He said, You’re grey. I said, I know. My temples are particularly silver, shiny even, and the top of my head and behind my ears are peppered with tiny silver strands. Over the years I used to be able to see just a little grey here and there peeking through the base of my tint. I liked it. I like the natural progression of maturity. And now here it is coming out in full force as the short shave grows longer and longer, silvery, more coarse than the rest of my hair and more straight. And as it continues to grow by leaps and bounds (because short hair can only grow long and seemingly quickly), I am still taken aback by how dark the rest of my hair is. I feel like a different person sometimes. Perhaps it’s a feeling of being a bit out of touch after so many years of color.

Feminist H/air

Posted on Nov 4, 2010 in 2010, Body Image, Feminine, Feminisim, Part 1

Way back when in graduate school, a classmate, Carl — the only guy in our Women’s Studies program — asked me what’s up with [feminists and] the “short hair-thing,” gesturing around his head and mine with his hand. At the time, I had just cut my hair short again after many years of growing it long. I thought his question was a funny one, because my short hair and the short hair of many feminists were mostly merely coincidences: One is not inherently a feminist if one has short hair, nor does short hair necessarily make one an adherent of philosophies with a feminist slant. It was simply time to cut off all of my hair all, dye it really blond and wear it short–and I happened to be further studying feminist theory. I have thought many, many times about our interesting conversation, knowing someday I’d write about the air surrounding short hair, feminism, perceptions of what is feminine and the like. And so here we are, because last Sunday…I shaved my head. I found myself wondering why as I giggled through the process and continued to do so for several days after the shave. What does my recent string of short cuts say about me right now? What have I been trying to say? What have I been trying to achieve, especially now that I’m practically bald?

Let me add that, fortunately, I have really good hair–it’s thick, it’s wavy, it’s strong, much like my life and constitution. I can do whatever I want with it and do, because for most of us hair always grows back and so do we bounce back in life, so I change it up a lot. It is the chameleon in me. The first time I cut my hair short was during college after breaking up with a long-time boyfriend. I’d always loved the appearance of women who sported a short ‘do. I felt a new sense of liberation and so cut it all off. And I did feel liberated. I felt light. I felt good. Furthermore, I was surprised to find that underneath all of that old hair, after years of summer sun lightening it, my hair was really dark. Because of that, and also because of the ease of playing with short hair, a journey of fun-with-color began, mostly reds and blonds. Most of the nineties were spent with short hair. I loved it.

No Woman, No Grill

Posted on Aug 30, 2010 in 2010, Part 1, Women's work