A Passion For Creativity

How does grief affect the creative process?

Our 11 years old dog, Gypsy, died a few weeks ago. It completely threw me off the studio track into the dirt, literally. Rather than painting, I dug holes, moved rocks, and planted native plants. I needed to do something extremely physical, forget myself in the ache of burning muscles.

Now, back on course, I’m reflecting on times when I’ve lost loved people and pets, and how it affected artistic productivity. It varied greatly. For instance, when my Grandmother-in-law died in 1990, I buried myself in a frenzy of artwork, churning out very intuitive pieces, like Endangered, in a short time.

When I read my writer friend Ann’s, loving, funny tribute Goodbye, Henry, it reminded me of my need to write creatively about our dog Capone, after he died several years ago.

However, with Gypsy’s death, I pulled out the shovel, and, starting with her grave, split open the ground and dug.  Kept it up for about a week, digging, extracting rocks and boulders, refilling the spaces with Sugar Bush, Buckeye, and Flowering Apricot.

Hopefully, I wasn’t channeling Gypsy, as one of her favorite toys was a rock, and she loved digging for rocks! Probably not, but I feel better now. 

In looking back over my varied responses to death, it’s apparent that all sorrow needed defined acknowledgement, whether through ritual, words, creative outpouring, or digging holes.

Sorrow is our natural response to a big loss. Not to give it expression and voice in some form can lead to depression, which is debilitating and can kill creativity.

Writing this…I’m being tough, but it’s awful quiet here without her bark, her stirring up of the garbage…

Amethyst Rat

Did you ever read the children’s story series about The Borrowers, the tiny people that lived under the floorboards and freely took what they could from “human beans”? In grade school I eagerly read Mary Norton’s fantastic tales.

We‘ve all had small household items mysteriously disappear. It’s a lovely imaginative plunge to consider a world of minuscule people carrying off safety pins, socks, buttons, and usefully recycling them on their scale, glove fingers into pantaloons for instance. Norton, a British author died last week and as far as I know, didn’t reveal her muse for “the borrowing” story.

I’m speculating that her inspiration could easily have been the antics of pack rats. One’s been scurrying through the garage and pump-house this past year. Can’t leave anything out overnight. Every portable item is fair game. Nails, bolts, pencils, are carted off and later found piled up behind a toolbox, in a flowerpot, or buried in a nest. The foot ruler must have been a challenge as it only made it to the floor, but the bit of Velcro, store receipt, and plumber’s tape roll carried to the hoard just fine.

That’s how Amethyst Rat scampered into the mask story.

Stopping on the hilltop walk, the dog and I peered down at the lake yesterday. The early morning calm left the lake surface flat and dark in areas. Yet rows of ridges combed the water. Twenty or so parallel bands, then one gradually curved off leading into more parallel rows. In every direction, on and on, the lake was alive with currents creating patterns.

I thought of how it would look in a painting, zooming in only on the patterned rows and dark bands, so abstract, yet so representational of what is.

But instead of going into the studio I climbed on the roof to get the Mastercool going against the sudden 100% heat of the last few days. I’d promised the elderly cats that the house would not steam their fur another day. Hauling the hose up I washed the swirling dirt from the metal panels. I scooped out the brown water that accumulated in the pan and watched it run down the shingles.

At the hardware store I buy a new pump filter. Ah, the net one that reminds me of the lake. Plus some new panel screws. Look how the threads circle the shaft wave-like.

Back again, the float needs adjusting as the water dripped rhythmically down the eaves, onto the deck, and roiled away into the dirt. The overflow turned the roof’s steep angle into a slip and slide. The bottom of my walking shoes are worn smooth, no more contoured lines there. On go the Chacos, river sandals, lake sandals, sandals that let me jump over wet rocks and traverse slick shingles.

Some days are like this, chores need doing, animals and plants need tending, and there is little or no studio time.

Yeah, I considered calling a plumber. An hour and they’re out of there. But I get arrogant about paying for something I can do myself. And they don’t bring up the hose to wash the grime away, pull the rippled pads, or do all the other things that give me peace of mind for the season. Nor would they mention that an owl roosted in the pine trees above and left interesting mice-bone pellets scattered on the roof.

Still the lake image possessed me all day. Wave patterns followed me everywhere. Creative ideas are like that, itching to be realized. We are haunted by the images until we actualize them-send them into the world.

The beginning of May is near and I’m thinking back over the past busy month. This mural stood out as a fun creative idea that needs mentioning. Many participants, ranging from a 3 year-old, to someone in her 80’s, completed this mural. The occasion was the South Fork School First Arts Festival held on a sunny Saturday at the end of March.

My idea was to put together an art experience with a large scale work that people could plunge into and… one that wouldn’t be intimidating.  On matboard I loosely sketched a 5′ x 36″ fish drawing, which I then cut up into 6″ squares, so 60 squares in all. Each person that walked into the workshop completed a square, in whatever manner they wanted, using colored pencils and/or markers. Some of the kids did a couple of squares. The finished squares were then mounted on two foamcore panels recreating the original composition, and sprayed with a fixative to be hung in the school community room. A separate chart linked names to the individual images.

If this had been a workshop completed over several days, or with a specific group, they would have designed their own mural initially and the materials would have been expanded. I have seen something similar done with ceramic tile for instance. However, this particular approach worked well for a situation where people wandered in and out of the workshop throughout the 5-6 hours of the festival.

I think they did a terrific job!

Viridis Praying Mantis

I take it back already, the part about the collage series being about animal masks as this collage depicts an insect. There are a couple of birds also… so let’s just say the mask collage series is mainly about fauna, no frolicking fauns to be found-but mostly fauna, one flora, and one harlequin. The harlequin fits into what category?  Into masks and art. 

I’m dancing around words here working myself up to discussing the color green. In the distant past, green was not my favorite hue. This didn’t apply to green in nature. Nature was the natural home for green, deep forest green in plants; pine green in trees and vivid grass green. Visually I would roll and delight in nature’s green. But no icky green in clothes, man-made surroundings or furnishings for me…and I had difficulty using green in paintings. Weird! Perhaps the aversion developed because my mother had a thing for the color green and persimmon orange and would use them together freely whenever she could.

Geez, maybe it could have been used to explain away my teenage rebellion “She had artistic sensibilities and was forced to live with a huge, olive green, sectional sofa…and orange pillows, a difficult combination for her, so she became quite irrational”. 

If only life was that simple. Although now I understand how colors affect us emotionally, psychologically, and physically.

At some point in my art development I confronted green in my work realizing that dancing around that was ridiculously limiting. I did an all green painting. It was awkward and the resulting work was unremarkable but it pushed me unto a new level. Which is the whole point here. Creative growth demands that we push ourselves out of our comfort zones, whatever they may be (as I imagine some must be snickering about the color obsession here).

If we are to progress and fully engage our imagination we need to continually explore alternative perspectives. Don’t think that this applies to artists exclusively. Creativity is a natural brain function for all, but that’s another bit of writing.

While making this collage the combinations of green patterns in the various papers delighted me. I’ve learned to embrace the green! That is, I pushed my limitations and welcomed what propelled me onward toward greater understanding.

Shadow the Bulldog

The thirteen images that form the heart of the Stranger Than Fiction Mask Image Collage Series were created on watercolor paper using exotic papers, rice papers, and other handmade papers I’ve collected.

At first with The Lion collage, or My What Big Teeth You Have, I was working rather blindly, that is, arranging colors, textures, and shapes until a direction/idea began to form about what it was going to be. I use several different approaches when creating a work. With the initial collage it began purely as a design process. It could have remained at that stage, pure design, a composition of color and shapes that pleased me. However, a lion mask emerged, perhaps as I started that collage during August ’07…so I followed where it led me to the final content and the idea that the series would be about mask images.

Probably this explanation could make some people nervous, but what I’m really doing is trusting the process. The approach is essentially intuitive knowing there are ideas kept inside me, just waiting for their chance to come out and make themselves heard.

On my web site I explain my thought processes leading up to a work that uses another form of this intuitive approach: THE ARTISTIC PROCESS  

I continued the basic design approach with the next two collages and it wasn’t until I was working on this fourth collage, Shadow the Bulldog, that I was able to visualize the whole series. That it would be revolve around the natural world and animal masks.

The Lion didn’t make the final cut for the thirteen, I love the image but you’ll notice it sits on the paper different that the other two, and all the ones to follow. Oh, and this one’s a French Bulldog!

Don’t wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.-Henri Matisse