Right now, as I start this entry it is not even 6 am, and I have been up for a couple hours. It is still outside, and in. My thoughts are allowed to take time to form with ease and patience. There is a quiet joy in the morning before I need to face the day, and all of the activities attached to it.
I used to consider myself a “night” person. I would stay up late until 2 or 3am reading or more likely painting. Somehow, over the years, that has shifted so that now I am toast if I stay up past 11. Now I am a morning person. It’s the same quiet: I love being immersed in the silence and serenity of the middle of the dark time, when most everyone is sleeping.
When my children were little I would find myself wandering the halls at all hours seeking some quiet joy with pencil or brush in hand. When my second daughter was born, I set-up my drawing table in the living room of our small home. The kitchen was on one side of the living room and the bedroom and nursery on the other side. I did a series of drawings that year in 1 to 5 minute increments, as I passed through the living room. Stolen moments of quiet joy in the midst of the activities of our home.
This last week I kept taking the next step, and then the next, in regard to my Serenity-Cards.com endeavors, and the local marketing of the cards too. (Oh, man! I used the “m” word and I didn’t fall apart into a thousand pieces or see lightning or anything!) Interspersed amongst work for clients, I am involved in the process of designing gift items to feature on that site as well as the cards. This is a labor of love, and so the ideas are flying.
Still, at the same time, as an artist, I seek balance. My natural tendency in design is asymmetrical balance. I thoroughly enjoy taking several disparate components, and fitting them together in a way that “balances.” It is a visceral response in my being, inherent in my personal sensibilities. I’ve taken and taught many classes that discussed things such as composition and design principles, yet this core aesthetic is more base than anything I’ve learned in school or otherwise. It’s like the way the body naturally seeks homeostasis – things just need to be balanced.
Nature has that kind of balance. You look around a meadow, a forest, or a mountain, and you can easily perceive the natural order and beauty. There may be near perfect symmetry in an individual component of the whole composition, but not in the big picture. Nature doesn’t put one tree on this side of the valley, and the same size and shaped tree in the same place on the other side of the valley. Still, it always balances out, even when perfectly imbalanced.
I seek that same balance, that same beauty in my life. Being self-employed, I have a tendency to overwork… a lot. If I don’t think about it, I can easily slip into a schedule that doesn’t really support my total well-being. When I realize that I have been sitting at the computer for 12 hours straight, it is time to awaken to other activities which support my other aspects.
This month, I took on a new activity in support of that balance. I once again started painting with a friend, painting purely for the joy of entertaining the Muse. There is something very fulfilling about sharing that activity with another artist. I bounce off her ideas, and she off mine. The synergistic effect on our artwork is energizing and fulfilling. This time, instead of painting side by side however, we are doing an asymmetric experiment.
My friend lives a long way from here, so she mailed me 4 painting “starts,” and I am doing the same for her. When we have moved them along to a point that we feel is momentarily “balanced,” then we will send them back to the other to either simply work on again, or complete. I have visions of a “teeter-totter” show that will display in both our cities. I suspect it will fuel my sensibility.
I’m taking a class called GCOM 350 at City College. It’s about being in the business of graphic design, which I’ve been in for easily 30+ years. I decided it is time that I accept that though I’ve been doing it for so long, I MAY NOT know all there is to know (Actually, I’ve known positively for quite some while that not only do I not know it all, but I will NEVER come close to knowing even a substantial 1/2 of all there is to know about the business of graphics, or anything else, were I to study for 8 hours a day, 7 days a week for the rest of my life).
We’ve been meeting for several weeks now, and the biggest thing I’ve gleaned from it all is that my prices are like 10 times less than the proper rate. YIKES! And, I’ve managed to take the focus of getting the homework done to transfer to the project of getting my latest website (serenity-cards.com) mounted. It’s that old one little piece at a time that has brought that project to fruition. I still have quite a few pages and components to add, yet the cards themselves are quite viable.
It is now 11:11, an auspicious time for me. So auspicious I am yawning huge. So off to sleep I go. G’nite.
I’m not just talking about awakening in the morning or from a nap, although I would like to say, those are both joyous occasions too. I love it when I remember gratitude while awakening from sleep, for example. It is my daily practice to silently give thanks for the gift of life, and the brand new day. That is a joyous and celebratory practice that brings my whole day a sweetened by gratitude flavor.
There is a deeper awakening that carries with it an even more intense joy. That has to do with awakening to my own consciousness, to conscientiously be aware and focused in every moment of life that I can maintain the practice of paying attention. This “awakening” provides a whole new level of joy, because it intensifies the connection between my aware self and Spirit (or the greater awareness).
Lately, I have been experiencing more and more of this kind of joy, especially as I work on inner acceptance of what Spirit has to offer me. Being willing to receive from Spirit, on a conscious level, opens me up with ready receptivity to all that is good and all that serves my highest good.
Stuff just keeps getting better and better, and more and more joy-full. It’s so different from what I am used to, growing up. It almost hurts, it’s so wonderful. And so, I am grateful.
the brush
with bristles bright
and bowing to the canvas
dances, skips, and pirouettes
to music
deep within my heart
my spiritual being
transposed through pigment
my soul singing
resplendent leaping light
joyous painting
soothes uneasy plight
tempers stress
awakens luminous
spirit
today, right now
intense rejoicing
as the brush whirls
cavorts and prances
in exuberant flight
I got a call awhile back, from a thrift store. It seems the $1200. painting that I donated to the church for their fundraiser had not sold. Instead of returning it to me, they had donated it to a thrift store. Some worker there had marked it for $25. The owner called me, having looked me up on my website. She wanted to know the “real” price of the painting.
At first, I was devastated in the heart. How could anyone dis-respect my work so much? Then, I realized that it was only because I had not provided protection, myself. Even more important (at least I think so in this moment) than for work which I sell, it is critical to attach a contract to work which I may donate as well, providing for return upon the contingency that it does not find a happy home. Needless to say, I will think more than twice before I consider donating anything to that church again.
I know that some of my work may take a long while to sell. I have an extensive collection of pieces yet waiting to be discovered and claimed by the one for whom it was painted. And, maybe, in the end, that person is me.
I paint directed by the muse. It is a spiritual process that is not attached to the foibles of the marketplace. That’s why I do graphic design and illustration for a living: to allow myself complete freedom from the limitations of cultures accepted style of the moment.
Certainly it could be up to me to educate people like those in charge of the donations collection at the church about respecting an artists work, or I could just build in the respect with a contract. Either way, I don’t take it personally.
