Waiting for the sky to lighten up so Callie and I can go for a walk at North Shore . . . It’s SO dark this morning. All I really want to do is to stay where I am and write. I can’t stop writing, I’m writing every minute of the day and night . . . Waking up with threads to put into words on a page. I don’t completely understand this, but somewhere along the way I’ve ben stung by the writing bug. I will find a way to become sustainable with my writing and my painting, and I’ll do it Nancy Style . . .
What is Nancy Style when it comes to financial sustainability? This is the question foremost in my mind these days, and as a result--I’m finding bits and pieces. I recently had two encounters with friends that are giving me insight into how I’m already following my energy on the path toward an organic, deeply female, thriving, wholesome financial sustainability. One of these learning encounters came from the sale of a painting named “Aperture” to Keith, an intuitive, bright and engaging friend.
Two years ago Keith was in town staying at our home while he led a shortened version of a workshop he offers to his clients in beautiful Banff. While walking home from a restaurant we were having a conversation about the edgy relationship between static and dynamic quality, control and chaos . . . I was struck with the way in which the content of the conversation synched beautifully with this particular painting. I had the strong sense this painting would find a home with Keith. I decided to hang “Aperture” in a place he was sure to see it and clearly remember the moment he stopped midway on the stairs. He was focused on the painting and said, “Don’t sell this.” I took him seriously, and brought the painting along on the next road trip to Calgary to give him a chance to live with it for a while. That ‘while’ was over a year in which financial challenges rained down on so many of us. Discretionary funds for art work weren’t readily available.
We kept in communication about the painting. I truly appreciated his honesty and concerns about spending precious cash on art. I understand this dilemma very well, as one in the arts in a time of financial downturn. Through the entire process I checked in from time to time with my intuitive hunch about the piece and all along I came back to the same place. From my side of the fence this was Keith’s painting. It’s a boldly abstract, highly sophisticate and thoughtful piece that demands a level of astute intuition. It simply had to land with someone like Keith . . . he’s one of a kind and so is this painting! In short, I was completely at peace with him living with “Aperture.” The time frame was not as much an issue for me as the integrity of the relationship between us, and between him and the painting. In the end it came down to one, or possibly two questions from me to Keith . . . Do you still want the painting? If so . . . What do you WANT to pay for it? He did and named his price and it was acceptable to me, and life is good.
What I truly care about showed up in this entire process. I paint by following an energy to the canvas . . . It’s not enough for me to end there, the painting is meant for someone, some group, somewhere . . . The work is not complete, cannot do what IT needs to do until it, following it’s own journey, eventually finds home. How long it rests in one place or another depends on the path of the painting. This is something that isn’t written in stone, it’s an organic, fluid, dynamic process, as is my development as an artist. That’s what “Aperture” is all about . . .
There are so many levels, passages and thresholds on the journey of artistry. For me, a life within a life . . . As a child I learned to crawl, stand, walk, run . . . As an artist I’ve learned to reveal and express my artistic vision and voice in much the same organically incremental way. I began to paint after a series of dreams . . . (another story for another day) . . . I initially painted in seclusion. Slowly, as my skill and confidence grew I included an intimate circle of family and friends, and then on into the community. I enlarged the sphere of exposure as I developed my capacity to contain the inherent risks in confidence and artistic development in doing so. Exposure too early risks contamination of the personal voice so essential in creative work, and valuable learning side-tracked or potentially lost. There’s a good deal of wisdom in tending to the inner workings and stepping out when the internal ‘muscles’ can support the movement. It’s a process, and it takes what it takes in time, energy, commitment and support . . .
I can’t say and don’t know how anyone else makes sense of their lives. Life for me is an organic process constrained by what I truly care about. This is a process can’t be pushed or conformed into something that looks a certain way to be more palatable with cultural standards. I need to live in a way that makes sense to me, no matter how unwieldy it may look to another. The road may be long . . . it may and usually does take a lot of turns and at times feels uncomfortable. I’m OK with that, as long as it’s my road . . .
That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .
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