Gather Your Tools
It is the second season of the pandemic, the Fall after the Summer we could unmask. Who knows what lays ahead, as the Delta variant occupies the news and worries those of us prone to trying to reverse engineer the future? It has me realizing that I will need a fresh infusion of resilience, as pandemic uncertainty weaves into the varied challenges and obstacles already present in my life. Which has me looking to my art practice as a form of solace, centering, and competency. It’s time to gather our tools, my friends, and start making things.
Creative endeavors provide so much potential for mastery, especially when you come to your craft with tenacity and grit. I like these words. And I think they will help us, this Fall, to face whatever life has in store. Artists across the centuries have pushed through incredible limitations to fully realize who they were and what they wanted to say to the world.
Henri Matisse was a draftsman, sculptor, printmaker, and painter. In 1941 he developed an abdominal cancer that left him bed and chair bound. With the help of others, he began creating cut paper collages, a task within the range of his limitations. He would cut sheets of paper, pre-painted by his assistants, into shapes of varying colors and sizes, and arrange them to form lively compositions. Initially, these pieces were modest in size, but eventually evolved into murals or room-sized works. The result was a distinct and dimensional complexity—an art form that was not quite painting, but not quite sculpture. They are his most famous and recognizable creations.
At the young age of 18, painter Frida Kahlo suffered a horrific accident during a streetcar collision. An iron handrail that went through her body, causing multiple traumatic injuries and she was in rehabilitation for months. The accident ended Kahlo's dreams of becoming a physician and caused her pain and illness for the rest of her life. But through it, she became an artist. She died at age 47, after many more physical challenges, but she created more than 150 paintings during her lifetime, and she travelled and studied and developed an artistic style that is recognizable around the world.
It is hard to face hard times, but your creativity is still yearning for expression, and it is especially joyful to make something when other parts of life don’t cooperate quite so readily. We can’t change covid, but we can capture images, cook something lovely, write something that tells the world about us, and compose a life in which creative pursuits give us meaning, and beauty, and joy. Pursue your art, whatever it is, with faithfulness, and I suspect that all the rest will be a little bit easier.