My Art Process & The Higher Power

This is a drawing I did yesterday with rapidiograph pens and markers.  I drew it for a childhood friend because I had emailed her photos of a couple of other drawings done in this style and she wrote back that they were "delightful" and reminded her of the artist Paul Klee.  These types of drawing are so very different from my generally realistic drawings and paintings, but that is part of the fun of it, experimenting with a variety of styles and mediums.  When I start a drawing like this I do no prep work, but just begin to make marks on a page to see where I will go.  After I've laid down the black and white drawing, I go on to choose colors one by one to color in certain sections.  Again, there is no plan.  I pick colors intuitively and see how the colors I've laid down interact with each other and then just keep going.  Usually it winds up becoming some strange, fanciful world that I can enjoy visually, but cannot interpret.  This approach is a lot of fun, but each time it takes courage to lay the first mark down.  I'm hoping that I continue the practice.

I've been trying to get myself to draw and paint more within the last few weeks and have been having only partial success.  Over the last several months I have bought a lot of art supplies, initially because I gave my older supplies to a friend last year who was interested in making art at a time when I had lost interest, and then because I was finding good deals at an online store called Dick Blick and found myself unable to resist.  Earlier this year I had painted a couple of seascapes based on photographs I found on Google.  I used a new medium -  water based oils.  I had heard of them years ago and was curious.  Could they measure up to regular oil paints?  I had switched from oils to acrylic because I work in my living room and my six cats roam around and demand attention while I'm working.  I didn't want them around the paints or the turpentine, etc...  I also worked with watercolor and gouache for the same reason.

I found as I used the water based oils that I really liked them, more than the acrylics I had been using.  The seascapes, painted on 10" x 10" canvases, came out well.  Then I went down to Florida with my brother to clear out my father's apartment because he had been moved permanently into the nursing home.  That was emotionally exhausting and when I returned I wasn't ready to start painting again.  Then I got the urge.  I bought a standing easel, put it together and kept it in my living room.  I picked out another seascape to paint and then found I couldn't do it.  So I turned to my watercolor pencils and drew this:

It didn't come out the way I had hoped.  It was pleasant enough, but still not what I wanted.  I wanted to use the oils and felt blocked.  That's why I turned to the rapidiograph pens and markers and colored pencils, going in an entirely different direction.  That's good, too and, for now, I can accept that.  I'm not sure why I have this block.  Perhaps it is the Higher Power directing me.  I hope so.

I've been turning my will and my life over to the Higher Power much more consciously in the last 6 months.  It's a strange sensation.  Each morning after I get up I take my medications for the day - one anti-depressant and one anti-psychotic.  I thank God for the medications and then I pray for guidance.  I say aloud "Please guide my thoughts, speech and actions today."  Then I go on to pray for some of the people I know, wishing them to have guidance for the day, too.  If I have a particular problem I'm dealing with that day, I ask for help with that also.  Finally, I read from 2-4 daily support readers and reflect a bit on each one.  That is about the extent of the structure I create for the day.

I have never lived a very structured life, except, at times, when I was in school.  Because my family has been able to support me financially through all my illnesses, I have not taken on the responsibilities that most people do.  My desire since I was a child was to be some kind of creative artist, but I could never commit to it the way others have, even though I tried to over and over again.  And I continue to keep creativity a big part of my life be it with writing, songwriting and singing and making visual art.  It has been a godsend to me to have a lot of creative abilities and outlets, especially when I was in the midst of acute illness.  I believe creativity is a must for everyone, regardless of their mental state.  It's a basic way to stay in touch with oneself and the Higher Power at the same time.

So as my day progresses, I turn to the Higher Power in gratitude for so many things and ask for direction as to what I need to do in the moment.  Yes, I make some plans each week to see other people, or to call them or to do certain things that need to be done, but mostly I go with the flow and see where it leads me.  And there are times when I lead myself in a wrong direction.  Most of this week I spent alone meaning to reach out to people by phone and mostly not doing so.  I spent part of my day re-reading a few journals I wrote in 1993 at age 30 when I was separated for a couple of months from my then boyfriend who had been abusing me cyclically for over 3 years.  At that point in my life I had discovered Al-Anon and their daily readers and other support books.  When I was away from my boyfriend I seriously embraced recovery, but it was a very upsetting time for me, trying to decide whether to return to living with my boyfriend or not.  As I read, I felt respect for myself and how hard I was trying to heal, but still it stirred up emotions and I felt depressed.  After experiencing a couple of days of this, I stopped reading the journal and redirected myself to more practical matters and this helped.

I see art making as a practical matter.  The practice is down to earth and meditative.  It gives me a break from my studies (because I do study for hours each day either support literature or books on addiction, dysfunctional family systems and Buddhism) and allows me to let go.  It is also the most direct means of connecting with others on the internet through sending images I've made to friends through email or posting them to Facebook or on this blog.  People don't always have the patience to read what I write, but they do have the patience to quickly take in and respond to my images.  I need some of this connection and feedback.  It makes me feel happy.  It is self-revealing in a socially acceptable way.

I also know that I need to slow down each day.  When I work, I work hard and have to take breaks mostly lying down on my couch for 5 to 10 minutes.  It also helps to sit at my table in front of an open window and listen to the birds singing and feel the breeze, look at the trees and sky and feel peaceful and grateful.  So I'm living and learning as I should be.  The cool thing is that even when I go in a wrong direction, as long as I learn from it, it has great value, just in recognizing it and in becoming more aware.

Traveling

Out West 1980s

My three week trip has come to an end and I am home once again.  My brother and I cleared out my father's apartment and he is now permanently in the nursing home of his retirement community.  This marks a life change for me.  I am in the youth of my old age, one parent gone and one starting to disappear.  I will turn 53 in a couple of weeks.  It's a sad, tired, sweet transition and I'm still journeying.  I cannot remember much of my life with clarity and yet I feel the past still within me or connected to me.  Turning my black and white negatives into digital images has helped to reconnect me to me.  But I remain a mystery to myself.  I'm not sure who I was as a child, adolescent and young adult.  Even my memory of my middle age is a bit hazy.

I do know my present moment.  I am much more mindful of now and less mindful of regrets about the past or worries about the future.  I accept myself.  More than that, I respect myself.  I've always been a basically kindhearted person.  I needed to learn to be a more kindhearted person towards the one person I mistreated the most, myself.  The only way I could profoundly learn that lesson was through the extreme loss of balance inherent in psychosis.  If I couldn't accept myself during the worst of circumstances I would never be able to truly appreciate myself in the best of circumstances.

It is uncanny looking at photographic self portraits I took in my twenties.  It's like looking at someone else.  I don't identify with me back then.  I identify with me now, but even there there is a lot of blank space.  Right now, I feel good even with all the not knowing of the bigger picture that surrounds my small world.  As for the big, big, big picture I know that I cannot know and that is part of the spirit of fresh wonder.  I stay open and waiting and hope that I die that way too.

I feel peaceful in this moment.  I don't need to know who I was in order to love and accept myself now.  I believe I fought the good fight and will continue to do so as long as I'm allowed to be here.  The good fight is the fight for self honesty and honesty with others.  That has the core of integrity in it.  Living in the present with mostly acceptance is liberation.  The motive for existence is clear:  to be a peaceful, peace loving being.  When I keep it simple, I can be that.

I keep it simple by asking for guidance each day and night from the powers that be.  There are three moves that can be made - move forward, stay still, fall back.  We live lives within interconnecting rhythms.  Loud and soft, complex and simple, moving towards and away, up or down.  Whatever we focus on whether it be thinking, speaking or acting there are phrases that connect one section to another.  There's the music and there's the pause to the music.  There can be a lot of freedom in either part, but the pause is key.  That's where I ask and listen, intuit and feel.

And then I act.  Or wait staying open so that my spirit, which must go beyond my consciousness, can receive the guidance I keep returning to.  I've been guided to live a simple life.  Work, rest and play interconnect and there can be an interplay between them.  Because I commit to seeking the help I need within my spirit, I know my place.  I am humble towards the higher power(s).  My orientation is not particularly egotistic.  I am no longer self centered; I am higher power centered.  I'm no saint, instead I'm am a small being acknowledging that I am contained within a greater spirit.

Something greater can show something smaller how to expand.  Expansion is about joyful exertion.  Something greater can support something smaller as it grows and also give it plenty of space.  Because I've felt so much support and space for so long now, even through this last psychotic break, I live with a lot of gratitude.  I know what it is like to have that support and space partially withdrawn. Even a partial withdrawal for me was quite traumatic.  I feel relief and happiness.  For so long I experienced life in a partial darkness, somewhat blindly.  Now I see better than before even though I have farther to go to see as best as I can in this lifetime.

My faith is vague yet not shallow.  It has a powerful substance.  The only reason it is vague is that though I can see, I am near sighted and what's in the distance is blurry.  But I do believe it will become clearer and clearer as I continue traveling.  

Depression

This has been a hard month for me.  I’ve had various physical problems accompanied by severe depression, especially in the last couple of weeks.  The depression is much worse than the physical pain because it robs me of a sense of purpose leaving me with nearly no motivation to do anything but sleep.  Even my ability to pray for help gets greatly diminished.  Telling myself that I am where I am supposed to be obviously doesn’t help either.  In my helplessness, I wait it out.

Yesterday I managed to get myself to lie on the couch and listen to an audio recording of Pema Chodron, the Tibetan Buddhist nun.  She was talking about the important practice of gratitude.  I knew she was right  and I have relied of this practice many times before when I’ve been in psychological pain.  In my little corner of the world there are no bombs falling from the the sky, no military men paroling the streets and roads.  I have food, shelter, water, electricity and a functioning automobile.  I have the company of my beautiful cats and friends and family are only a call away.  Despite some physical problems I have the full use of my body, all of my senses are intact.  Even my mind is free of paranoia and delusions.

What the depression really does to me is to damage my connection to the Higher Power.  Without this strong connection my view of myself turns towards the negative.  I see myself as pointless and stupid, sort of a lost cause.  Without having a belief in myself, a belief in my right to be here and to contribute something, however small, to the world through speaking, interacting with others, writing and making songs, I turn away from the very things that normally give my life meaning.  The piles of books I have surrounding me at my usual spot at the dining room table become burdens instead of doorways to understanding and freedom.  What keeps me holding on is the natural world, my cats, the view from my windows of the expanse of the sky, the trees, the sound of the birds, the breeze and the freedom to lie down and soak it in.

But still, without faith, it’s as if I’m in a beautiful, even nurturing, prison.  I feel the depth of my sickness and when I try to turn to man-made creations -- films, fictional books and music -- I feel the depth of other people’s sickness as well and it is too much for me.  I forget to concentrate on the health within art.  I forget the lesson I learned that wherever there is sickness, there is also health.  The Higher Power never abandons us, no matter how dark everything seems, there is some light.  The necessary challenge is to find the health and focus on it and learn from it.

I used to tell my voices when they were particularly sadistic that despite their sickness they still had the wonderful healing gifts of intelligence, sensitivity and creativity.  That was the gift of God within them and everyone.  God is not out there somewhere, but inside the very fabric of our minds.  But we are also given the free will to choose what to do with those gifts.  Either we can use them as tools to generate health within ourselves or we can use them as weapons to attack ourselves.  With these voices I chose the path of compassion and I’ve seen over the years how my persistence in believing in the goodness and health within them has transformed them from a hateful way of being into a much more tolerant and kind way of being.  They could have attacked me while I was down in these last few weeks, but they did not.  Instead they mostly chose to detach.  As I sat with my pain, so did they.  Sitting with our own pain and that of others and not reacting or running away, but instead accepting it, is the basis of compassion.  Compassion is the path of peace.