Falling flat on my face
when the pace stopped and left me alone with what was actually there
This is a post about what happens after an active season ends. The emotional crash and how the creative process holds me.
I’m coming off of the heels of a full, intense season of growth and exposure. My paintings were on exhibit throughout January and February, I participated in two large art fairs through March and April, all while being filmed for a short documentary.
I was bracing myself for a likely crash and burn at the end of all this, and I’m currently still skidding across the pavement. It feels like a rather long, slow motion moment of falling flat on my face, as the fullness of events and exhibitions is still waning down, while my skin is being scraped off of my hands and knees.
Living as a ghost in my own life, allowed me to chronically avoid looking pain fully in the face (more on this invisibility narrative and learning to be present to grief is referenced in previous posts over the past year and this documentary). This is the downside to allowing fullness back in, the full range of feeling and growing and stretching and grieving. And falling.
In fact, life kinda feels like a roller coaster now. I don’t know why I ever expected that experiencing the fullness of life and the spiritual journey would feel consistently any one way. It never has really, any emotional “consistency” was due to numbness and disconnection. If the journey is a winding river heading toward the ocean, there are moments of dryness, moments of slow trickling, moments of tumultuous rapids, moments of violent convergence.
But it’s either that, or a stale, stagnant pond of murkiness.
So back to the crashing and burning across the pavement, after all of the events I promptly got sick. I felt a wave of sadness hit, a drop in adrenaline. Everything that feels disappointing, or unknown, or wounded became glaringly visible, as the busy pace quieted.
I’m realizing that this raw moment of stopping, crashing, falling on my face is a pretty decent time to practice creativity. Creating begins the process of bandaging, the salve, the restoration, the cry for help, the being held. Falling disrupts the distraction and the avoidance, so what is actually there confronts me with full honesty.
So I began to create last week. The beginning sketches, a clear feeling of crying out in agony. That moment felt crystal clear as the starting point, so I sketched it.
Then the canvas was prepped and I started to pour alcohol and ink everywhere for an initial, emotional layer. This part of my process is very whatever-will-be-will-be. A lot of what appeared was sprinkled with these shimmering bits. Overall muddy, raw colors, with hints of a glowing presence.
After this had dried the next day, I started to describe the story with a figure in a scene. This story is unfolding inside me, it’s not a story that not only happened once long ago, but rather a continual story thread of pain and crying out that is continuing today. The painting continues to move wherever it is meant to move, it’s grasping for the words to say what it is wanting to say. Certainly, I’m involved, and yet there’s the sense of being a vessel to pour something out.
As I was moving deeper into the layers, I read this reimagining of the sixth Psalm, a poem from Malcom Guite’s collection of poetry titled “David’s Crown”, noticing the synchronicity between this ancient prayer and what is being expressed through this painting.
I invite you to sit with me in this prayer, in it’s incomplete, not fully expressed or answered state.
With gratitude for your attention and witnessing of the process.
Psalm 6: VI Domine, ne in furore by Malcom Guite Whose mercy wakes me at the break of day? I feel my weakness. All my bones are vexed And all the faith in me seems worn away As though I've lost love's memory. Perplexed By false complexities, I mime faith's part. I keep the book but cannot read the text Unless you come, and write it in my heart, Unless you help me read it through my tears And hear me out, and, hearing, heal my hurt. How could I think you punished me? My fears Just magnified the shadows that I cast Till you were lost in shadow too. Love hears My cries and clears the shadows of my past Flinging them back before his growing light Until I recognise his face at last.
This might be going up there as my favorite work. It is STUNNING! So glad you are pouring out onto the canvas.