Finding our way through creative practice + Somatics series starts next week
“The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint”. -Georgia O’Keeffe
What’s coming up with Go Slow Studio:
Somatics classes start soon! I’m running a 5 week Intro to Somatic Movement series from Feb 20-March 21
In-person—Tuesdays 6-7 pm at Refuge Event Space in Troy, NY
Online—Thursdays 7-8 pm ET
Sign up is open now at this link
What is Somatics/Somatic Movement? Link to my previous newsletter describing the practice and what to expect in a class.
Values to Vision Workshop—Now available for download!
If you missed last month’s workshop, but you’re still interested in trying some practices to get in touch with your values and learn how they can help enrich your life, the materials are available at this link. Offered at a discount for the remainder of February.
What I’m learning/thinking about this month: Finding our way through creative practice
I’ve finally started working through The Artist’s Way. This was a book that kept coming up in conversations with friends and in things I was reading. So about a year ago I bought my own copy, but it sat on my shelf until a couple of weeks ago. It was a Friday evening and I had planned to go out, but was feeling miserable and recognized I was pushing myself to want to go dance when my body was screaming for rest. I retreated to bed, but first, with the feeling I needed something new to read, I grabbed from my stash a new novel and then, with some kind of instinctive sense, The Artist’s Way.
Rather than reading, I ended up turning on the tv. And, again with the feeling I wanted something new, I pulled up Painting with John, which had been in my queue for a while. It turned out to be a great combination of distraction and inspiration. In it, John Lurie, a jazz musician and artist, tells stories as he paints vivid watercolors and films odd little scenes of his life on an island somewhere in the Caribbean, occasionally references his own journey with chronic illness. As I watched, I noticed I became calmer, and in that calmer space, a thought bubbled up telling me, “I need to do more to honor my introverted and artist self”. While I’ve been making time to write this newsletter and work on other little projects here and there, I haven’t been acknowledging or nourishing myself as an artist and I think that may be a missing piece of my healing journey. While I’d love to be out dancing, I was in the space I needed to be in. My body was urging me to slow down and pay attention to the kind of nourishment I really need.
Attention is what it’s all about. In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron shares that no matter what’s going on in our lives, “the quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.” In this sense, delight does not have to be joy, but is more something rooted in connection, perhaps literally catching a feeling of something “from the Light”. The book focuses on how art making is a spiritual practice because by paying attention we’re able to tap into the creative flow of the universe. Cameron feels that we all have the power to do this, and for many of us, it’s absolutely necessary in order for us to feel grounded and fulfilled. However, many of us are creatively blocked and we need to nourish our inner artist in order that we can emerge and feel more connected to ourselves and to the creative forces of the universe. That really resonated with me. While I may have physical symptoms, I recognized that some of my healing needs to come from a restoration of this sense of self and sense of spiritual connection to the universe. Walking in nature, I regularly feel that connection and can find myself struck with delight at the color of moss or feeling fully present as I watch migrating ducks dabble out on the water. Yet I think I’ve been neglecting the connection that comes through creativity and spiritual practice.
So I’ve gone to work with The Artist’s Way course. I’ve been dutifully doing my morning pages and I also went on my first “artist date”. These two things are the cornerstones of Cameron’s process for creative recovery. The Artist Date is time you set aside to go on your own and do something fun or frivolous or inspirational that’s meant to engage and nourish your inner artist.
From my home in Troy, NY if you drive an hour in any direction, you can find some of the most incredible museums and natural areas. It’s a rich place for artist dates. But for this first one, not feeling up to driving and having set aside a Thursday evening, when pretty much nothing is open, I decided to go to the library. I thought, I’ll grab a stack of photography books and just enjoy perusing them for a couple hours. I’m so glad I thought of doing this. How wonderful is it that we have public libraries where we can just go and have space to spend time with whatever resource we need or want? So that’s what I did. While our Gilded Age library has enough Tiffany windows that the building itself could’ve been the artist's date, I headed for the 700s. I didn’t find much in the way of photography, but grabbed a book from an exhibit on art related to the Hudson River, one on an artist couple who were contemporaries of Picasso and Man Ray, and one simply titled Georgia O’Keeffe. When I sat down I also noticed Poetry journal on the periodicals shelf and I grabbed that too. I started with Poetry. I don’t read a lot of Poetry, but that’s why I needed to make the time for this. I soaked up some really wonderful and creative pieces of writing. Then I began to just browse the other books. When I got to the Georgia O’Keeffe book though, it was like time slowed down and I could feel myself become truly present with her work. This book came out in 1995 and included some general background written by her and then large prints of many of her paintings with notes about their content and/or inspiration.
I’ve always admired images I’ve seen of O’Keeffe’s paintings and remember gaping at the giant Sky Above Clouds IV at the Art Institute of Chicago, but reading her own words was a little bit magical. She described why she chose certain shapes and colors, or really, how she observed and began to create from things she noticed, but then let extra colors and things come out. It was so lovely to learn about, and a great example of art as a spiritual practice–
To notice, to begin to create, and then let something divine come out through your work.
It was such a wonderful compliment to having started The Artist’s Way. I was both so present with these vivid colors and also moved by the descriptions of her inspirations and process. And while O’Keeffe is often noted for her flowers that evoke images of vulva, I was struck by how visceral all of her work felt. Even one of her most famous pieces (at least in my mind, as a child of the 90s, when I saw the poster everywhere), Music Pink and Blue, is an arch made of gentle colors that she created as an exercise in translating music into visual art, and yet it has these beautiful folds with fleshy volume and depth.
I was particularly struck by the piece pictured above, Red Hills and Sky. I’ve never painted with oils, and I only have a little recollection of going to the desert when I was 8 years old, yet I felt deeply connected to this painting–lured by both the visual content and learning about the process of abstracting the image of the rock’s edge. Even now, on the computer screen, the bold colors and abstracted lines call in my attention, and I am nothing but present with this image.
And “there’s nourishment in staying present”. That’s actually something I wrote about last summer, “In taking time to be present …we can take back some of the control and allow ourselves to be nourished” (you can read more at this link). While that piece was mostly referring to movement practices, I think the idea of being nourished can resonate for any creative practice. Though with art, it’s important to note, it’s not about producing a piece of work, but letting the practice itself be nourishing, as nourishment is what we need to heal and to feel more fully ourselves. This is what I liked about the Georgia O’Keeffe quote I used at the top. She writes, “The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint”. In being present with the process of creation, we’re able to connect deeply with truths inside ourselves and really with universal truths.
I noticed that when being present with this work, I also felt myself relax. Reading Poetry journal and the Georgia O’Keeffe book was like a mini-vacation for my mind. Being present with them was totally engaging but also felt like a respite. I think that feeling of respite is a sign that the nourishment is working, and I hope that as I keep going with the creative practice, a deeper, more holistic healing will continue taking place.
Often when I talk about somatics I use the term bodymind, but I think after the practice of writing this I understand more why some use not just bodymind, but bodymindspirit as a term to reflect our somas. So today I encourage you to do something you find nourishing for your bodymindspirit. For me, that’s often movement and this week was looking at paintings. For you it might be drawing or cooking or running or even just taking time to actually rest. In the face of our current societal pressures and things that want to take our attention, it takes practice to really be present. Yet it’s essential that we find whatever bits of time we can to really pay attention and be present and remember we’re part of something bigger.
I’ll leave you with this poem by Mary Oliver:
WHERE DOES THE TEMPLE BEGIN, WHERE DOES IT END?
There are things you can’t reach. But you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.
The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily,
out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing
from the unreachable top of the tree.I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.
Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
as though with your arms open.And thinking: maybe something will come, some
shining coil of wind,
or a few leaves from any old tree-
they are all in this too.And now I will tell you the truth.
Everything in the world
comes.At least, closer.
And, cordially.Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake.
Like goldfinches, little dolls of gold
fluttering around the corner of the skyof God, the blue air.