the artist is sustained, Monotype of the Day #335

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I literally felt revived by the red from yesterday, almost like it was blood coursing in my veins. Tomorrow I may need to explore it more. We shall see... Tonight's image put me in mind of this poem from the Tao Te Ching. The creative flow passes through an artist, nourishing and healing as it continues on it's way. Artists learn over time to submit to it's call, not to grasp and control but to allow it to unfold. Making art is about giving, not possessing. The sage in this poem is a good model for the artist to aspire to.

Tao Te Ching #2
by Lao Tzu, Trans Sam Hamill

Beauty and ugliness have one origin.
Name beauty, and ugliness is.
Recognizing virtue recognizes evil.

Is and is not produce one another.
The difficult is born in the easy,
long is defined by short, the high by the low.
Instrument and voice achieve one harmony.
Before and after have places.

That is why the sage can act without effort
and teach without words,
nurture things without possessing them,
and accomplish things without expecting merit:

only one who makes no attempt to possess it
cannot lose it.

the artist has power, Monotype of the Day #290

I'm really beginning to feel better and it puts me in mind of Hildegard of Bingen's story which always inspired me even before I fell ill so many years ago. She had visions that she was to leave her nunnery and go start her own convent, but she kept silent. Her silence caused her to become sicker and sicker until so was so ill she could not even be lifted from her bed. But as soon as she shared her visions, she was healed. This story reminds me how important it is to share what we have been given in this world and for me in particular, to keep working. It has been a bear of a year. For a full year I was on a liquid diet and truly did not know if I would ever eat solid food again. I fought, and I am eating again. I battled all year long and through much of it, I had my daily prints. These prints have sustained me, healed me, and given me vision and hope to carry on. They have layers, one is for the world and another is a very personal message of love and compassion for me as an artist from The Artist. I am grateful for this year because I have learned and softened so much. I am also so grateful for finally turning the corner. Hildegard uses the word "veriditas". It can be translated in many ways, but it is fecund, pulse of life and change the surges through creation causing everything to grow. I has seen it translated as "greening" which I love. I had the impulse to bring green in today and I believe it is the beginning of my reconnection to veriditas. xoxo

outside the window, Monotype of the Day #273

The body experiences waves of energy. So much of what passes through us is unknowable and not meant for us to understand, just to undergo. There is an alchemical connection between the surface of an artwork, the body, and the spirit. You change one part of this trinity and the other two must necessarily be changed too. I have had to change my spirit more times than I can count to finish a piece of art and I have also seen the act of making art change me spiritually. These past few days, I feel a strong connection between my current health struggles and these window prints. Making this work is releasing an energy that needs to pass out of my body. I do not understand or know the content of this energy but I feel the profound need to work so that the body/ spirit / art trinity can be transformed and healed. I am being nurtured by creativity, the unceasing flow of change and growth which undergirds all of life.