fearless Creating: going wild

If you consider pages, I have not made much progress in the book.  But if you could peek into my head you would be amazed! Like a teenager's closet, I am bursting with surprises.  I am living in that wonderful place that is rich and full and exciting. 

Maisel, the author, describes a painter he was working with and it was like reading about myself.

Usually he would bring a preformed image to the painting moment.  The activity of painting was rather more the reproducing of that ready-made image than the encountering of a blank canvas.  On a regular basis the finished product looked like what he'd had in mind and possessed technical merit, but struck him as conventional and dead.

OMG--when I am totally honest with myself, this describes much of my work for the past few years!  Ahhh, no wonder I was not excited or enthusiastic about painting.  

Somewhere along the line he'd turned correctness into a synonym for good-ness and defined good painting as painting like an Old Master.

Somewhere along the line I'd defined good painting as painting like all the painters celebrated in all the big shows--AWS, NWS, etc.  Not that I don't admire the work these people produce, much of it takes my breath away.  BUT why did I decide that I wanted to paint like anyone else?  AND how do I now break away from that?

Maisel suggests that in addition to hushing and holding, the artist must learn to be wild.  He describes wildness as an "amalgam of passion, vitality, rebelliousness, nonconformity, freedom from inhibitions.  Think of this wildness as working naked."  And then he suggests working naked!  Seriously!

Now, this guy has really gotten into my head, and I am totally digging the doors he is opening to me so I am seriously considering this "activity" but here's the thing.  My studio looks out onto open fields, foot hills and mountains, but it is also within sight range of a major interstate.  That's one, two, it's winter in Idaho--that means sub-zero temperatures and three, I am just not a naked-in-the-house-kind-of-girl.  (Totally different on hot summer days anywhere near a body of water.)  I think it would just prohibit me, I would be totally conscious of myself and not my work--so until further notice I will not literally paint naked.

Rather than strip myself--I stripped my work!  The very next exercise was to draw my Wild Faces and give them a name.  While hushing an image came to me, a face obscured but emerging from some wild Eden.  Working very intuitively and allowing total freedom--I found Her! 

Emerging

multi-media

8"x10"