LightBears

If I had one lesson to tell anybody It would be to never ever — as a child, or in school, or as an adult — compare your work/results with something that somebody else has created. I was too young to understand, but I do know now. What ever we create, that is our soul song at that moment. It’s never, ever going to look like someone else’s!

My mom was super creative even as a little girl.  She drew a picture of Dopey the Dwarf on the inside of the attic door, LIFE SIZE!!! Knowing my grandmother, I’m amazed she was able to do it.  She was a gutsy, determined little girl!!!!

I remember that I used to have an easel, and a paintbrush, and I would draw these pictures. A lot of them were about my grandfather with a little girl (me) standing next to him. I know I sometimes had to create a picture for school, perhaps as part of a book report, I’m not really sure. But I know there came a point, unfortunately, when I looked at what my mother was doing and everything she did looked so, so good! I will never be able to erase from my memory the picture that she painted using watercolors of a geisha.  I have it here in the house somewhere, it was one of my prize possessions of hers, as a little girl at any rate.

I stopped painting. I don’t know why, I just never tried again. I remember on a Moby Dick book report that I did on New Year’s Eve sometime in high school, I drew a picture of a whale spouting spume into the air. The teacher was, I think, being funny, and to him the spume looked like a Christmas tree, so he put a star on top of it. It was cute.  But to be honest, it kind of irritated me.  It was supposed to be a whale, darn it all!!

I do remember having fun with my best friend when I was a teenager and we were messing around with stained glass. I feel like I did pretty well, but it never really grabbed me. I loved crocheting and embroidery, which a kind older lady taught me in my mid-teens.  I didn’t keep up with it, though, after perhaps 10 years had passed.  One of the problems was that I had a friend who really was good at both, and of course I compared my work with hers.

And this is, right here, the place where the shadows crept in, where I let my self-esteem and my ability to express myself creatively be affected, be diminished, and ultimately blocked.

It’s a terrible way to live, feeling your own silence. and knowing it’s up to you to change it. for me, for a long long time, I just didn’t think about it. Didn’t try to open the door that stood between my inner voice and what could be. and then, in baby, ant-size steps, I began creeping toward the door, to see if I could open it a crack. Once in a while I would take a brief 1 or 2 hour class on something creative. and in that class, I was able to breathe and let be — but only if I didn’t look at anyone else’s stuff. Years went by like that. Too, too many.

The key is to let the creative energy flow like a river, unimpeded, with no obstacles, and let the energy come in as you breathe and swirl around your sacral chakra, and then either come up to the part of you that you use in your physical body to express yourself whether that’s your throat in terms of speaking or singing, or whether it’s your hands or your fingers as you type, paint, play music, etc.

I’ll never forget, my very first lesson with clay: the teacher handed us all a small ball of clay and instructed us to shut our eyes, and to let our fingers mold and play with the clay in our hand to create what we would perceive as an image of darkness or the dark. At a different point she did a similar exercise with us and had us, with our guys shut, make something that we thought was funny. I got a lot of joy out of doing that. I think I still have a little figure that I made, sort of a humanoid shape, with its head bowed down to its knees, sort of huddling. For me, that was the image of the dark.

So, what if I do make a blobby mess on a piece of paper, is that really the end of the world?  Or is it just okay to let it happen as it happens?”

That’s what I did with clay, that’s how I made some of my funky masks at the end there. Sadly, I did not honor myself and when we moved to a new location, I threw out almost all of about a decade’s worth of sculptures and little doo dads I had made.

Until a few months ago, my way of expressing myself was through words, and I thoroughly enjoy writing my blog. 

Now, it would be lovely — truly lovely — to be able to draw or paint what it is that I see in my head. My imagination is very rich and I get a lot of images as people talk or as I talk or as I listen, and it really would be fun to insert those illustrations into the things that I’m drawn to write. This blog is a playground, a place where I get to have fun. 

Now, I have exciting news. In September last year (2023), I wrote a journal entry about being totally artistically blocked. Well, I gathered up my courage, and my small entry fee, and took a 2 hour course on intuitive art. We listened to a piece of music, and then we each sat down at separate tables where you could not see what the other people were drawing!!!! AT LAST!!! the KEY TO FREEDOM!!!!

It’s been 10 months now since that class. I decided it was time to let my inner girl child make mud pies on paper with paint, fabric, glue, whatever.  And since then, I must have created about 35 or so art pieces. They aren’t anything more special than that I am able to let a little piece of my heart show on paper. I deliberately don’t think about selling, about showing, about fame – I’m an amateur and I am having fun.  I make outrageous things, using different textures and colors.  Here’s a piece I call “Boundaries” because it has none!!!! the wall was the limit….

So, here’s my personal approach to art making:

(1) don’t try to imitate real life.  I am doing abstract art, not representational art.

(2) don’t even think about a color wheel.  It is what I like or not and nobody else’s opinion or standards apply, until I accidentally make mud – then I see the value of what people are saying. 

(3) never color inside the lines!  Lines exist to be crossed.  They can be guidelines, no more. 

(4) finally: Break all the rules!  I read about techniques so I don’t waste my time doing something that, chemically or structurally, just won’t hold together.  Otherwise, I take anything and everything and experiment!  I am an artistic scientist with no theorem to prove other than that making art is, and always should be, fun!! 

It’s been 10 months now and I am liberated.  I have also spent tons of money on supplies.  Probably a lifetime or more, now!!  But I have an art corner in my living room – it keeps expanding! – and I am happy.  I don’t have to make it look like fine art, and I am not imitating anyone, unless it’s other abstract art styles.  And I never copy – that would ruin it for me, besides being unethical — but I have a huge gallery of photos of things that turn me on and inspire me.

For example, a stack of fabric folded a certain way, or the lines of a fence or gate, or the way curtains come together, or a knit afghan, or a pile of metal scraps, anything that to my artistic vision looks like a potential pattern or texture, I will keep a picture for inspiration.  It’s a lot of fun!!!! Here’s an example (and yes, those are plastic peanuts — I try to recycle whenever I can):

Now, this is an interesting side note.  Someone I know and respect suggested I write a book.  Cool idea, right?!  Well, the result of that brief time imagining a book was: all my words dried up.  I couldn’t write. I had nothing to say.  No matter what I imagined I could write, or how I imagined I could write it, nothing grabbed me.  So for almost 6 months the ‘word-well’ was dry.  Thankfully, my art continued to thrive!  So I still had an outlet.  Thank goodness!  

And here I am, WRITING AGAIN!!!! Again, thank goodness!!!

So… What am I trying to say to you, my readers?  I think I am trying to express how terribly vulnerable a thing it can be, for some people, to express themselves out loud, or visually, or in writing.  Not everyone has a delicate place inside that they fear to share –

or, is it possible that we ALL have that delicate place within, but that some have found a way to express what’s inside that delicate place that doesn’t leave them feeling open to ridicule or shame?  I really don’t know the answer to that question.

For now, my message to you, my readers, is simply this: try to find a way – a place alone or outside perhaps – where you can open your mouth and sing your own song, or jot on a piece of paper what you want to say as your own particular truth, or draw that little lopsided drawing that expresses the YOU within you, and just let it be. 

You will have accomplished something important: you will have opened a door and let your soul taste the fresh air of freedom.  And you will feel better for having done it.

That’s all for now, my dear readers, except that I want to remind you always of one simple truth:  You are a LIGHTBEAR!!!!!! 

Go forth and enjoy your life.