Public Face, Private Heart

Everyone has a public face. It's the one we show to the world. We gussy it up. Smile broadly. Pluck and tweeze relentlessly. Smooth our hair. Edit out the flaws. Enhance our expression. 

We literally show our best face. 

For a long time, that was my Facebook profile picture. It's a self-portrait I played with in Instagram. I like it but it's only part of the picture. Only part of who I am. 

The other night I was reflecting on living a big life, a true life, a vulnerable life. What would it mean for me to show my true face? The private me. The one that no one really sees. Maybe not even me. 

I took some pictures with my phone and played with them in Instagram. One in particular struck me as more revealing, more honest, more true. 

Before I could change my mind I made it my profile picture. 

The moment I did I felt a sense of relief, like maybe I wasn't hiding myself so much anymore. Like maybe I could speak with more authenticity. Like I could be vulnerable and still feel safe. 

Since then I have felt this new sense of power. Of knowing. Of being. 

In that instant of showing my true face I changed my understanding of myself. And my relationship with myself. And that's changed my relationship with the world. 

It's a surprise to me that so much has changed. I don't want to over analyze it or make it something I'm not sure it is. I merely want to be grateful for the opportunity to be me. 

What If's and Why Not's?

When I head to the studio I bring two very important questions with me. I ask myself, 

What if?

(meaning, What if I try this? or What if I risk that?)

and then I answer

Why not?

(Why not try this? Why not risk that?)

These questions, when I remember to ask them, offer me tremendous freedom to try new things. It's like a hall pass for creation. Instead of feeling trapped in a certain way of creating, I give myself permission to wander at will and follow visions and ideas with abandon. I make new connections and discard old expectations. These powerful questions offer me creative liberation and when I yield them, I soar.

But that is only when I remember to ask them. 

I have to remember.

Because when I walk into the studio without them, it's too easy to fall down the rabbit hole of expectations and burdens. Without these two questions, I take the known path and follow the well-worn tracks to certainty. I begin to listen to the cruel counsel of my inner critic. Without them, inspiration vanishes and creation stagnates.

And so I am considering my life to be a creation too. I'm thinking about how I've gotten to where I am now and envisioning where I would like to be. I'm daydreaming about my future and what I want it to hold. And I'm setting an intention for who I want to be and how I want to live. 

As I was envisioning my future, I was struck by a question,

What if I bring my two studio questions to my life?

The only honest answer I could offer was

Why not try?

What if I dare to shine as brightly as a supernova?

What if I take down the facades and just be me?

What if I live and love with abandon?

What if I trust in my dreams and challenge myself to make them real?

What if I trust in my dreams and challenge myself to make them bigger?
What if I start now?

The only honest answer I can offer is

Why not try?

Why not?

 

Loving Cat Pee

Last week, after an extremely long 13-hour day, Kevin and I arrived home to discover something that cat owners dread: our calico cat had peed on our bed. In my spot, to be precise. While we stripped the bed, peeling away layer after layer of sodden quilts and bedding, we talked about our shock and concerns. Callie is 15-years old and recently diagnosed as hyperthyroid so litter box issues are not unknown or unexpected. But we know our cat and this seemed more personal. Our long hours have kept us from giving her attention she needs and that always upsets her.

So while I loaded the bedding into the washer and googled "how to remove cat urine from memory foam mattress", Kevin found Callie and gave her some snuggles. We were concerned and stressed. Was this related to the new medication? Would this be the start of a new habit? Or, was it true, as we suspected, that she was giving us a more personal message?

The next day, the vet "reassured" us that it was not likely to be the medication, but that litter box issues were especially common in elderly cats and the causes are often unknown. All we could do was experiment and try different things.

So we did more internet sleuthing and bought another litter box. We also began adjusting our schedules so that she would never be alone for more than a few hours at a time. Over the next few days our conversations centered around Callie. We followed her around the house like a hawk. We gave her lots of attention and playtime. And we sighed with relief every time we arrived home to a house that was dry where it was supposed to be dry.

The day after our discovery, I arrived home to find Callie sleeping peacefully on the bed. She gave me a few cranky "why are you bothering me?" meows and stretched. Shortly afterwards she padded out to the kitchen and gave me a few demanding meows. I knew she wanted attention.

One of my rules for life is "When in doubt, love." So when I find myself in a sticky situation and I'm not sure what to do, I remind myself that love is a verb. I think of the most loving way to respond. Just the process of loving often provides clarity and allows me to move forward.

So I picked her up and carried her to the couch. As we began snuggling, I was present with her. I didn't pick up my iPhone to idly surf until the snuggling was over. Instead, I brought forth feelings of deep love. I thought of our may years together. And I envisioned a warm golden glow surrounding us both. Her purrs deepened and she relaxed into an extended nap on my chest.

Since then, I have continued to be present with her. Kevin and I continue to give her plenty of  attention and playtime. And we have not had one problem in a week. I know that life is uncertain and that the situation could change, but I also know that if I am in doubt, that love is the answer.

Word for 2013

It's nineteen days into 2013 and I'm changing my mind about my word for the year. If my word for 2012 hadn't been IMPERFECT, I don't think I'd be able to do this. I'd think "You chose this word and started the year with it, so you have 346 more days to go until you can change it." But living life imperfectly last year taught me that flexibility is a virtue. Instead of trapping myself in an arbitrary rule of perfection--that the word chosen on New Year's Eve must be held for the next 365 days--I've decided to change my mind.

I entered the New Year believing that 2013 would be my year to DARE. At first it was exciting. I copied all kinds of daring quotes into my art journal. I thought about all the opportunities I would seek out to challenge myself. I imagined myself living a bold, adventurous life.

But quickly I began feeling uncomfortable with DARE. I chalked it up to fear and my generally risk-averse nature. As days passed, DARE felt like a pair of shoes that don't quite fit. I felt pinched and trapped. I worried that DARE would lead me down paths that weren't right--that I would say "yes" to things out of a desire to be daring rather than from an intention to be true.

I thought about DARE as a word and what meanings it held for me. As a child of the 80's, the ultimate daredevil was Evel Knievel. But somehow jumping a motorcycle over a river while wearing a spangled jumpsuit wasn't the role model I was seeking. And then there is that famous Helen Keller quote, "Life is a daring adventure, or nothing." That always seemed horribly unfair to me to because a simple life can be profoundly beautiful.

So I turned the question around. I asked myself "How do I want to feel at the end of 2013? When I look back over the year, what do I want to see?" The answer was clear: I wanted to make a lot of art. I wanted to take risks and be bold with my art. I wanted to inspire and motivate and teach people to discover their own creative hearts. I wanted to create a beautifully simple home. I wanted to live a life of art.

I was reading Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch and came across this quote:

"The work of the improviser is, therefore, to stretch out these momentary flashes (of creative inspiration), extend them until they merge into the activity of daily life. We then begin to experience creativity and the free play of improvisation as one with our ordinary mind and our ordinary activity. The ideal--which we can approach but never fully reach, for we all get stuck from time to time--is moment-to-moment nonstop flow. This is what many of the spiritual traditions refer to when they speak of "chopping wood, carrying water"--bringing into the humdrum activities of daily life the qualities of luminosity, depth, and simplicity-within-complexity that we associate with inspired moments. We can then say, with the Balinese, "We have no art. Everything we do is art." We can lead an active life in the world without being entangled in scripts or rigid expectations; doing without being too attached to the outcome, because the doing is its own outcome."

We have no art. Everything we do is art.

Yes.

Oh yes.

In my heart I felt a single word float into place: ART. 

ART will be my guide, my intention, and my constant companion. I will practice awareness and seek beauty. I'll challenge myself go deeper, express more, and live with honesty. I'll carry my sketchbook everywhere, dive into my studio whenever possible, and share my work with the world. I'll create with an open heart. I'll love abundantly. To be fair, that sounds like a daring life to me, but the difference is that it is daring on my terms with deep intention.

Shine Your Love

I 

A couple weeks ago I was feeling unsettled. An anxious uneasiness was eating at me around the edges. I felt disconnected from the present moment and uncertain as to my path.

My normal tendency would be to withdraw and hibernate until I regained my equilibrium. I'd seek some solitary space to go inward and explore the source of my dis-ease. I'd heal by myself, alone, in silence.

But something inside me resisted that tendency to hide. Retreating to a secret shelter didn't sound healing to me. My gut was telling me that instead I needed to reach out, to connect, and to offer love.

Offer love? That seemed so odd. Here I was feeling vulnerable and my intuition was guiding me to share my heart? Where would I do that? How would I do that?

I sat with the feeling for a while and became more and more certain that it was the right path. I remembered three lines I wrote in my art journal a while back:

Can you shine imperfectly?
It seems to me that if you offer of yourself and give of your heart, then it's going to be full of light.
Can light be wrong?

I reached out to my sisterhood of painters on facebook. I told them I was feeling uneasy and unsettled and that I wanted to try something different and send out blessings of love and light. From the moment I pressed post, I felt a sense of lightness and release. And my painting sisters responded with great love and light in return.

The uneasiness calmed and I felt a warm sense of well-being.

Since then, I added love to my practice of mindfulness and gratitude. I sit quietly and open my heart and let the love shine out. The more I practice, the more love I find I have to share.

In a full heart, there is room for everything,
and in an empty heart there is room for nothing.
-Antonio Porchia

 When in doubt, love is the answer.

How Hands and Feet Made Me Forget

Last spring I took an online painting class BIG with Connie Hozvicka of Dirty Footprints Studio. To say it was transformative is not an overstatement. During those six weeks, I nurtured my intuitive creativity, learned to release my inner critic, healed some hidden wounds, and discovered a deep love of fearless painting.

When the class finished, I vowed to keep painting and stay connected with that sense of open joy. I thought of creating a painting that reflected how it feels to be open to the world, to trust in my intuition, and to be fearlessly creative. A vision flashed in my mind of a woman sitting cross legged in the midst of flaming lotus leaves. When I got home that night, I taped together four pieces of paper to make a large surface (48" x 72") and sketched out my image. I quickly blocked in the colors. I was thrilled that the painting so reflected the vision I had imagined.

I knew how I wanted to continue. I wanted to add detail to the leaves, add depth to the colors, and outline everything with black for contrast.


But I hit a wall and stopped. Something scared me. Painting on my own was different from painting with a group of supportive sisters. And so the painting sat in its unfinished state for the entire summer. And although I created lots of great things during that time, I never really painted again.

Just last week I received notice that Connie would be offering the second online painting class, DEEP, for the last time as live group class. Even though life is busy, I knew that I didn't want to miss the chance to paint fearlessly with a fabulous group of sisters again. So I signed up.

Today was the first day of class. I nestled in the recliner with my laptop and watched Connie's welcome video. Within minutes I was crying tears of loss. I hadn't realized how much I lost when I stopped painting. I had started playing it safe, avoiding creative risks, and hiding from myself and the world. I lost that deepest connection with my creative self.

And so having finished the video and dried my tears, I went into my studio. I had an assignment in hand, but I also had permission to follow my intuition and paint what I felt--assignment be damned. I began taping two pieces of paper together with the intention of taking down my unfinished painting and beginning something new.

But that didn't feel right. My unfinished painting reflected exactly those feelings I was hoping to rediscover through the class. So I decided to start painting on it and see where it led. I turned on my favorite Pandora station, loaded up my palette with an array of gorgeous colors, and dipped my brush into beautiful gooey paint. 

Within minutes I lost myself in the paint, which really means I found myself again. 

Time passed without my awareness as I danced in front of my painting. When I found myself holding a brush in my right hand, another brush and palette in my left hand, and a third brush in my mouth, I felt so good I wondered why I ever stopped.

As I finished painting the leaves and the background, I was faced with painting the body and face. I then realized why I had stopped painting--it was those darned hands and feet. Back in the spring, I was so nervous about painting hands and feet that I stopped painting altogether.

But today I had a different way of thinking. This painting was not about hands and feet. It was about the feeling of creative joy I get from fearless painting. I didn't really care what the hands and feet looked like. What I did care about was how returning to painting was like returning to myself. I wasn't going to let some silly appendages keep me from that.

So I loaded my brush with black paint and drew some outlines of hands and feet. That felt like blessed freedom. Look! Feet and hands! Are they perfect? Not even close. But that's not important to me. What is important is that they are. They exist as hands and feet.

I finished the painting soon after that. I don't think I can adequately describe how I feel. It's like a mix of relief, release, joy, and hope. Those missing hands and feet had weighed so heavily on me. But now they are.

And more importantly, now I am.

A Painter's Eyes and an Artist's Heart

I am discovering that I have the eyes of a painter. What do I mean? I am starting to see the world in a new way--in terms of colors and forms and lines and compositions, rather than constantly making the mental translation from form to object. When I look at the changing orange leaves on a maple branch, I see terra cotta and pumpkin specks over a deep espresso crooked line--rather than orange leaves on a brown trunk. In other words, I am beginning to see with my eye, rather than my mind.

I first noticed something different in my seeing this summer, while whizzing past highway hills covered in wildflowers. The patches of varied greens interspersed with soft lavenders, deeper eggplants, shocking yellows, and subtle pinks made me want to stop the car on the spot and immediately learn how to paint landscapes in oils. Since then, I have been practicing mindful seeing as I drive, which leads me to stop driving at times and try to capture what I am seeing. (All of the photos in this entry were taken with my iPhone and filtered through Instagram.)

I am also discovering that I have the heart of an artist. I deeply feel the things I see. I can be overcome by a glimpse of subtle beauty, such as a single yellow leaf clinging to the tip of a branch silhouetted against the grey stormy sky.

I remember driving to work one morning in early September. I rounded a bend and was deeply affected by the view. The golden, slanting light filtered through the foliage and dappled the mature greens of late summer. It was breathtakingly sublime and my breath caught as my heart filled with deep joy and gratitude of the beauty of our world.

It's a wonderful gift--this transition I am experiencing in my eye and my heart. And one that I want to honor. I'm going to begin studying photography, so that I can capture more readily these singular moments that steal my breath away. And come spring, I'm going to begin learning to paint landscapes. I'm ready and excited for the challenges ahead as I stretch myself to capture in paint and pixels that which I see and feel.