Bringing Images Down – A Reflection on the Creative Process
I have started painting again. Every time I find it is so hard to break through all the early falters, and finally birth new art. This is one of my first new paintings in over a year, Burning Woman… the lost archetype of the feminine to whom my new book is an ode.
I have also found that the images in my writing need to find form in my painting – the two are intimately interlinked. My journal is full of sketches – not of any skill – but visual representations of the energetics and symbols that my writing explores. I find if I am stuck at a crucial point in one medium, I need to move over to the other. If I am stuck in both, I need to show up here to the blog! Each has the power to get the creative flow moving again in a different way… but I am a slow learner, and still I resist and try to figure it out by worrying about it, or by doing the same thing…
So I was going through my archives today, as I work the new book, looking for seeds and clues in past pieces of writing and found this. It’s still so true of the painting process, three years on, so I thought I’d share it.
Calling you into being
Singing you into life
I do not start with a plan, a vision
Because you are the unknowable destiny.
And so I simply paint,
With faith in my heart
As I wander into the void.
I sing a song with my brush as it caresses the canvas
Colour on colour,
I watch as patterns emerge,
The seeds, the clues.
The narrative emerges in my head, calling the picture into being,
I hear its story on the wind, its images hovering in my minds eye.
But where is the bridge from here to there?
And finally, when I believe I cannot paint,
When the junction of despair has been reached,
I have the chance
To turn home or walk on.
I walk on…
And there, emerging,
The image that always was, though I didn’t have eyes to see.
There all along.
In front of me.
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