I had a great time this weekend doing a pop up at the Anthropologie store in my home town. Talking to customers about art, hearing where they want to hang it, or whom they are gifting is the best.
I also met some amazing womxn business owners who were also vending with me - bonus!
Photo credit: Christina Mun @pseumi www.christinamun.com
My mom’s been an artist since before I was born. For a while, it seemed I was heading in that direction as well. But, I took about a 40 year detour. Now that I’m back on track, we are staging our first show together!
It’s always about the trees. Mary gets it.
I finished this painting a few days ago, and for the first time in a while, no title came to me. I often work from an idea or feeling, so the title is generally an expression of the driving thought/feeling.
This time, the muse failed me. I came up with “Theorizing About Chaos” for the Instagram post, but it never resonated.
Then I was fortunate enough to stumble across the poetry of Erin Hanson while rabbit-holing on the internet. Half way down the page I came across these words:
“Her soul is a kaleidoscope
Bursting with every shade and hue
But shift your gaze ever so slightly
And she’s something entirely new”
Thank you, young poetess, for giving words to my painting. You can read more of Erin’s work at www.thepoetrymarathon.com or her Instagram account handle @thepoeticunderground.
“Her Soul is a Kaleidescope”. ©Lee McCraw-Leavitt
We had a long conversation, this painting and I.
I thought we should go in one direction. I started off confident that This Would Happen.
Painting, not so much.
Fine. I set it aside, move across country, forget about it.
Come across it again this winter and have a New Idea, lay down more paint, confident that This Really Would Happen.
You know where this is going by now.
Set it aside again, so we can both cool off.
Pick it up a third time, but now I'm ready to listen. To consider other possibilities. To let the painting unfold rather than execute. This is not a landscape, or a still life that represents.
It's a portrait of where I am right now in creating, of this back and forth "we" are having. Some guiding, some coaxing, but mostly just finding the way.
And when I stop pushing, it explodes forward.
So my GPS hasn’t been updated in almost 8 years and I sometimes find myself driving across unmarked swaths of green, hoping to land somewhere familiar again.
Painting abstractly is a similar feeling.
I paint and paint and paint some more until I’ve traversed the unknown and arrive at a place with the painting that feels “there”.
Life is art and art is life.
Drive on.
Lee McCraw-Leavitt ©2019
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, the idea of building personal agency through practicing some form of creative activity.
To clarify “agency”, I mean acting of your own will and making your own choices, not the Don Draper kind. :)
By the time we have grown up, we’ve been subjected to millions of subtle and not-so-subtle messages about what to think, feel, do. We’ve also built a bank of experiences around consequences of our choices.
As adult you may find yourself making all your decisions around work and the needs of other people. While important, it’s not all that life is meant to be.
Taking up a creative practice such as painting gives you not only an outlet for ideas, but also a way to make fully independent decisions, unhooked from the rest of your day. Self-expression through choices.
Agency through art.
Work in progress
