Passion.

“It’s not about passion. Passion is something that we tend to overemphasize, that we certainly place too much importance on. Passion ebbs and flows. To me, it’s about desire. If you have constant, unwavering desire to be a cook, then you’ll be a great cook. If it’s only about passion, sometimes you’ll be good and sometimes you won’t. You’ve got to come in every day with a strong desire. With passion, if you see the first asparagus of the springtime and you become passionate about it, so much the better, but three weeks later, when you’ve seen that asparagus every day now, passions have subsided. What’s going to make you treat the asparagus the same? It’s the desire.”
– Thomas Keller

Closing The Book.

April 25th, this past Wednesday, was my university’s Senior Art Exhibition. It is the final art show for all graduating art students at West Chester University.

Many friends and family members came out to see my senior work, help support The New Gallery’s fist student show and also just to celebrate a very positive event. I won second place for body of artwork and am graduating with honors.

The book of my undergraduate career is finally closed. It’s been a long haul. I am excited, happy and tired. Over the next few months I’ll be recovering from surgery, getting back in shape and taking a look at what I want to do with my future. There are many roads ahead, each I will be open to and embrace with passion and love.

Live life and climb on!

Getting On With It.

figure sketch © ChossyGrl

“There’s a difference between meaning that is embodied and meaning that is referenced. As someone once said, no one should wear a Greek fisherman’s hat except a Greek fisherman.” Art & Fear

Classes for the fall semester are over. Next week I have a senior art thesis proposal meeting. This is, in large part, a lot of the work I’ve been doing the past couple of weeks. Along with essays for class and figure work, I’ve been gathering ideas and trying to conceptualize what it is that I want to say next semester, with my art.

I had a breakdown yesterday. I guess, that’s great, I needed it. Life is funny, sometimes surreal. All the things you think matter and are important really mean nothing when you strip away a lot of the external context.

I’m terrified of graduating. I’ve said this before, but not like this.

I have panic attacks. I’m not sleeping. And I have not been able to make art in over a month. Not a dry spell, but a brick wall.

So I took a good look at what I was really feeling yesterday and it’s fear. It’s fear of the unknown after college, it’s fear of not being a good enough artist. It’s fear of being content to be alone and not wanting to get close to anyone. It’s fear of not growing as a person, and only growing into myself.

I don’t know if the passage of time has anything to do with this. Time being a constant: it’s so intangible, but we count it in everything we do, it becomes omnipresent. Maybe getting older is affecting me this way. I had a thought about how I reached all the goals I had set for this year, and how maybe the constant of my momentum had just finally taken its toll.

I have three and a half months left of college. I’m researching graduate schools. I day dream a lot.

Sometimes those dreams are about rock climbing in other places. Sometimes they are about cycling. Sometimes I am hiking to the top of a mountain and I am by myself and everything is peaceful.

Perception & Recognition.

Relationships, John Dewey said, are active, direct, energetic; simply stated, they always do something specific, and we should not fail to consider what they do lest we fail really to see what a thing or situation is. – John Dewey

Spirits on the Road.

I’ve been putting in a lot of miles on the bike for MS training and that’s going really well. Hitting the trails and road with my bike buddy and starting some training rides with other teammates this week. All in all, I feel really good about the biking. I had thought, when starting out, that one of my main goals should be speed. I quickly reassessed that goal when I realized that distance and endurance were more important. That and just being comfortable. I’ve slowly learned that just getting out as often as possible and riding helps a lot. Short rides, long rides, some sprints, but mostly rides where I can commit a lot of time and miles and just get into a groove, with myself, sometimes my buddy and definitely the bike.

Things that have helped a lot: proper nutrition, proper hydration, and rest (breaks during the long rides, and resting appropriately after them.)

I haven’t been rock climbing in well over a month, maybe it’s been two months. I’ve lost track of time where that’s concerned. At first I was bummed out about it, then a little nervous, like it was something I had to keep up with. Then I took a step back and asked myself why, what was I getting out of it?

I miss rock climbing now, but the biking has really settled into my life. It physically agrees with me more. My joints don’t ache, I’m not coming back from biking sessions bruised, I also don’t feel let down by rides. I used to feel let down by climbing a lot. Let down by myself I suppose, for not getting a certain grade, or making a certain technical move. Now, it’s just kind of like going the distance.

(Conversation Across Light Years….)

I was having this conversation with a friend and it actually helped synthesize a thought I was struggling with concerning climbing and biking, and their relation to myself. I think a lot, all the time actually, about everything. Maybe it’s part of being an artist. I’m never bored, always processing ideas, and colors and thinking of possibilities and philosophizing. This was so hard when it came to climbing, and actually made climbing more complicated. I had to work very hard to turn off certain thought processes when climbing, so I could just make moves, and enjoy it. With biking, my legs and lungs know what to do, and I can think about so much. The thoughts never seem to get in the way of riding. When I need to push myself to ride harder or faster, or farther….I dig deep, pull a thought and push it to the surface. I don’t know why there’s such a difference between the two: why one would benefit the thoughts and the other suffer from it, but it’s been neat watching and feeling everything unfold.

So that’s riding. I’ve also been hard at work painting. I finished the portrait commission of a friend (for another friend) and started the second piece for their series. After the two are given together, I’ll post finished photos, but here are a few of the starting process for the second piece. It’s been great having the free time to get a lot of painting done over this break from work and school. Classes and work pick back up the last week in August and a part of me is restless for the routine, but also grieving for the time I know I won’t have. Graduation is close and that’s so exciting and scary.

Dogpaint1 © ChossyGrl

This is the base coat and prime for the second piece. Painted on woodboard.

Dogpaint2 © ChossyGrl

Sketch on the primed board, getting ready for the first glaze.

Dogpaint3 © ChossyGrl

First glaze.

Part of my life is literally spent watching paint dry. I think it helps with patience. Excited to see where the next few weeks take both myself and this painting. Fall is right around the corner.

Progress & Gratitude.

The portrait I’ve been working on for a friend is slowly taking shape. A couple weeks ago I was getting up early before class and work just to have an hour or 45 minutes to get a few strokes and colors down, now that summer classes are finished, I can sit for hours and push the brush. It’s nice to have the time back to explore with the paint and the forms, and I’m grateful for the time again. The piece is taking shape, and I can see characteristics of my other friend, starting to come through, which is always a cool process. Sometimes I think to myself, when painting “does this really look like the person I want it to? Will they recognize themselves?” Some times they do, other times they don’t and are surprised that I would interpert them that way.

Something I’ve learned from painting over the last year: it has to do its own thing. I can start off with an idea, or general impression of what I want to achieve with any piece, but realistically, I have to be open to everything. Sometimes accidental strokes make the best new beginnings. When you start to command the paint or the brushes, a piece looks artificial, not sincere or spontaneous. At least for me, I’ve found this to be true. So, I’m excited to keep working on this portrait, and I want to prime some more boards for a few others while in the process.

I had this moment last night, and I wanted to put down a few words about what happened. Even if just so some day I can come back here and reflect and be like, yeah, that’s why all of this matters…

I went to a happy hour for a friend last night, it was great to see them, and meet some new people, laugh with some old people and just have a good positive night. Afterwards I went food shopping. When I left the store it was almost dark. I looked up at the sky while putting the groceries into my car and the skyline was lit by pinks, oranges, purples and blues. Some of the clouds stood out starkly against this bright background, others simply melted into it. It was an amazingly beautiful moment. I had to actually stop while leaving the parking lot and just sit by the car and watch it for a while. It was that beautiful.

I thought to myself, how nice it would be to see others in the lot, watching the same moment I was watching right then. But people were just driving by. They looked at me, but never looked at the sky.

It was a weird moment. I felt grateful for my family, for the friends I had just left, for my bike buddy Amanda, who is always positive during our rides, and has kept me going all these weeks. I felt relaxed, like time didn’t matter, the reason it existed was for this moment. I also felt sad because sometimes there is a part of me that wants others to see these things and feel them the way I do. I am not sure if they do, or if they understand the deepness of them in me, or in life. It is only a piece, I know, but something I think about….stopping to see what’s there, instead of looking for the next thing.

Today I woke with this feeling of deep gratitude. Still some lingering sadness, I think that is always a part of me. I accept this most days and am ok with it. But today, just reflecting on the many things in life there are to be thankful for, and how beautiful that makes it.

Depression & Art

If the level of intensity of anybody’s disorder is sufficiently high, you can’t move. For people who’ve experienced clinical depression the problem is getting to the next moment. The room tilts, you lose your balance, you’re incapable of coherent thought.

It’s a popular notion that it is exclusively suffering that produces good work, or insightful work, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think in a certain sense it’s a trigger or a lever, but I think that good work is produced in spite of suffering. As a victory over suffering. – Leonard Cohen on depression and art.

The Meaningful Relationship.

About three days ago I picked up the brushes and starting painting again. A new portrait, for a friend, of another friend, and I find myself filled with many things.

Crossing the divide and peering into the gulf below, the chasm mutters half-truths, it’s easy to be lulled into it if you cross the chasm unaware or weary…

And this is what art is sometimes, making art, speaking through art, picking up that brush or pencil and making those initial strokes. This is what it feels like when you’re contemplating the commitment. Starting a new painting is like starting a new relationship. There’s this choice you make about being vulnerable. About actually deciding what and how you’ll expose all those parts of yourself to another, whether or not they will be worth anything of note for this other to respond.

In a way, painting (art in general) leaves you vulnerable because you risk connection.

Not painting though, not taking the risk of making something and of having that connection is worse than failing at it, over and over again. To never have attempted it, is like dreaming when a part of you knows that the dream could be physical and real.

"J" In progress 1 © ChossyGrl

 

"J" In progress 2 © ChossyGrl

 

"J" In progress 3 © ChossyGrl

Under-paintings are beautiful….and sometimes I wish they could just be paintings by themselves. But then I think….what about what’s next? I want to see where everything goes.

The painting, itself, does this thing that I’m finding more and more…metaphysical. Ethereal? I have often thought, that the dance I do in the beginning of a portrait where I’m thinking at the canvas, about the person I’m going to paint, sometimes for days, is really like giving the canvas an impression, physically, of who they want to be or host. Almost like an imprint, and the paint is the medium that brings it out.

Sometimes, especially when I’m staring at a canvas covered in the same ground color, a single stroke seems to define a friend so significantly, it’s like the canvas itself holds the direction of the brush…and not me.

Crossing the chasm aware, not wearily.

 

Cynicism: Belief, Doubt, & Worth.

We have met the enemy and he is us. – Pogo (Art & Fear)

How strong is your belief in yourself? Do you value yourself? Perhaps there are times when you second guess yourself, despite the presence of what you might call “worth” or “self-worth.” How far outside of your own environment do these actions extend? Do you at times value others but then second guess their intentions or motives? Would trust be a good word to use in a situation like that?

It’s easy to fall back on the belief, that something has to be worth something else. That no one thing can be worth anything of value or substance on its own, basically, that a thing can be of worth in itself. I wonder at times if this has to do with trust and belief, with past experience and expectation, or with something as simple as motivation (or a single motivator.)

Self Portrait (Blue) © ChossyGrl

I will infrequently talk about my job, here in this space, because I hold it as sacred. That is to say, that my job is something I do because it is rewarding of in itself. Not because it pays well, or because it affords me material things, security, health care, or even stability. My job is sacred because it’s become a space through which I can feel at peace & balanced. I’m not sure if other people can say that about their work, or if they could only say that if money were a motivator, or if guaranteed work were a motivator.

Some things are  in a way such that, to attach a value to it, would demean it and reduce it to a thing corrupt and not pure. (experiences, people, emotions.)

This is how I feel about my job.

This is also how I feel about painting. I believe, that just through the process of actually applying paint, I can experience something wonderful. Or sorrowful. Or mediocre. What ever that thing is meant to be, for me at that time, painting will let me know. And as a viewer, you will be able to see what I was feeling at that time as well.

Cynicism, though fun to laugh at and joke about, is also viral. It can infect you and your work, and your environments.

It’s easy to disbelieve. To devalue something in order to make it more acceptable, manageable, or easier to digest. Like taking something at face value….there could always be another reason or purpose for something, but what about what is only there?

Only the necessary.

Acceptance.

The artistic evidence for the constancy of interior issues is everywhere. It shows in the way most artists return to the same two or three stories again and again. It shows in the palette of Van Gogh, the characters of Hemingway, the orchestration of your favorite composer. We tell the stories we have to tell, stories of the things that draw us in – and why should any of us have more than a handful of those? The only work really worth doing – the only work you can do convincingly – is the work that focuses on the things you care about. To not focus on those issues is to deny the constants in your life. – Art & Fear

Last week I had a conversation with my mother about the past. She said something that moved me deeply (if there were ever a time in my life that I would be grateful of the support of my family, I often times think that it is now.) I was telling her how hard working toward the future feels when there are things in my past that seem as though they cannot let me go, cannot let me move forward. Despite how much effort I put in, sometimes it really does feel as though I’m doing the “one step forward, two steps back” dance. She listened and said, “Don’t carry the past into your future. The only place it belongs in, is in the past.”

I was moved about the idea of acceptance.

You can accept, forgive, in a sense, who you were and things you have done in the past. You can accept people, forgive them too. Sometimes people accept and forgive you. Still, somewhere in the conscious, we are aware of the past, and it makes impressions on our present and influences our future. Its place though, is the past, as a learning experience, as a teacher. A way to discover new things about the self.  A way to grow.

Loneliness and being alone….

There are many things about who I am that I accept. Many things challenge me physically, mentally, emotionally. All these things are part of who I am. To deny them, would be denying myself. Who I am. I’d rather, tell the world I have hurt, I paint, I’m human and I cry sometimes, than to pretend that the world would not accept me if I had all these things in me.

Acceptance….

Is not the same as tolerance. Tolerance is expecting a change. You bear a situation, emotion, physicality.

Love where you are and if you can’t, change it. Don’t carry your past into your future. Make your future your own.