Tending the World: Making Art as a Sacred Act of Care and Attention (and Play!)
Also, deepening the mystery, resurrecting the Self after hardship, and honoring the Summer Solstice
“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” —Francis Bacon
Today, I want to focus on art and art-making, the great love of my life.
Deepening the Mystery
I love this quote above so much because what it says to me is that it isn’t the job of the artist to figure things out, explain, and elucidate. The role of the artist is to present the beautiful mystery of life and deepen that mystery, so we can enter into it and appreciate it more fully. That’s a job I can happily sign up for, one I’m well suited for.
That mystery is the place of unanswered and unanswerable questions, the place of wonder and awe. The realm of what the poet John Keats called “negative capability, a quality he considered essential in a great artist and which he defined as “when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”
Human beings have a hard time living with uncertainty, which is the very foundation of our impermanent existence. We yearn for more certainty, control, surety, security. But, in the realm of art, these uncertainties, mysteries, and liminal spaces are charged with animation, rich with possibility, fecund with symbolic readings like dreams. They bring depth and power to our art.
So, it’s best not to rush too quickly to such questions as “what does it mean?” or “what is it for?” when reading a poem, listening to a piece of music, or looking at a work of art. And it’s best not to push ourselves as creators to define and delimit our work.
Art as Play
Lately, my art practice has been securely seated in the land of play. As I’ve shared in previous posts, I have been playing with visual art quite a bit, not my main area of creative output for the past many decades, and that’s precisely why it feels so freeing. That, and the fact that it doesn’t deal with words and the linguistic brain. I’ve been learning various drawing practices and exploring watercolor.
This month, I signed up for the “Inchie Challenge” at MindfulArtStudio.com. We are learning a deceptively simple process of working with a limited palette on 2”x2” pieces of watercolor paper within a circle drawn on those “inchies.” I’ve also experimented with some 3”x3” pieces to let myself spread out a little more.
The teacher, Amy Maricle, has shown us three different basic forms, which she calls Landscape, Flower, and Geode. And we’ve been learning about glazing and layering and color, and discovering, through repetition and variation, what we like and don’t, what works and doesn’t. It’s been fascinating, fun, and meditative. A lovely way to spend half an hour on the days I can get to it.
Will I make anything out of all these inchies? I don’t know yet. I’m still exploring, learning, discovering.
I also wrote an essay last week, which I submitted to The Sun. We’ll see if they take it. And I submitted three poems for consideration to an upcoming anthology by Tupelo Press. So, writing has not been absent from my creative practice. And, of course, I keep writing in my journal and these weekly essays here.
I try to make some time daily for art-making. Most days I succeed. Sometimes it’s ten minutes, sometimes thirty minutes, sometimes an hour or more. The daily practice keeps the gears turning, and brings joy and pleasure to my life.
Art as Tending
As I read Rick Bass’ beautiful account of a year in remote Montana, The Wild Marsh, and as I make these simple, repetitive bits of watercolor, I realize that making art is an act of tending. Tending to the soul, tending the world, tending to beauty, truth, the imaginal and the real (which for me are not distinct and separate but bleed beautifully into each other). Through our art-making, we attend to the world around us, its movements, details, sounds, shapes, happenings. We attend to words, paint, line, color, form, or whatever our materials are, as well as to our sources of inspiration. Making art is a profound act of care and attention, and, as such, it is radical and necessary.
Far from frivolous, meaningless, or something to be done only when the “real work” of the day is done, making art is one of the most extraordinary, beautiful, magical, and revolutionary acts in a human life. Akin to the beauty and necessity of caring for children, plants, animals, the living world, or any other being.
Making art invites a deep communion with the world, with Beingness. Whether or not your art goes out anywhere in the world. The act itself is precious and transformative. Make time for it. Make space for it. Gift yourself to it. Gift it to yourself and our world.
Resurrection (again!)
We went to the San Francisco Symphony this past weekend (for the second time this month, after years of never going!) to hear Mahler’s Second Symphony, the “Resurrection” symphony. It turned out to be Esa-Pekka Salonen’s final night as Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony. And it was a magical night. A huge orchestra and chorus, plus two solo singers. Ten French horns! Twelve upright basses! Mahler created some extraordinary effects, including an off-stage grouping of horns and timpani at one point (in addition to the ones onstage). According to Wikipedia, Mahler’s Second Symphony was voted the fifth-greatest symphony of all time in a survey of conductors carried out by the BBC Music Magazine. It was tremendous to hear it live with such a great orchestra.
Then, the next night, I found myself back at the Emergency Room of our local hospital in level ten pain. It took them an hour to get any pain meds for me because the place was mobbed, and two ambulances arrived just after I did.
I’m still recovering from the physical trauma of it. And it demoralized me, leaving me feeling that I’m not making any headway in healing, for all my efforts and all the emotional healing that has clearly happened. I’ve been looking into what else I need to do for my body, and, at the same time, feeling sad, concerned, and disappointed. And, I’d been feeling so good!
Now, I have to resurrect myself once again. Mahler’s symphony describes a dark passage, full of doubts and despair, before getting to the resurrection at the end, which is not about the Christ story, but is about resurrection for each of us. Here are some of the words:
With wings which I have won for myself,
In love's fierce striving,
I shall soar upwards
To the light which no eye has penetrated!
The Time of the Greatest Light
Today is the Summer Solstice, the time of the greatest light. It is an annual resurrection in nature from the long dark of winter to the brilliance and abundance of summer. In cultures all over the world, this sacred pause has been honored for centuries as a time of rebirth, enlightenment, and expansion. Every year on this day, I host a sacred fire circle with a celebratory potluck preceding it.
The Power Path School of Shamanism says of this solstice “This is the time of the sun’s greatest power to heal us and brings abundance into our lives at the deepest levels. We can embrace new opportunities and release patterns of worry, anxiety, and discouragement.” I certainly need to do this now. I imagine many of us do, given all that’s going on in our world.
So, I encourage you to take time on this special day to consciously release your worry, anxiety, discouragement, depression—send it out on wings into the world to dissolve and transform into light—and invite in healing for yourself and our world.
I’ll offer more solstice suggestions in our Wonder Sparks below, for paid subscribers. And I’ll also share some lovely free resources for writers or those wishing to explore writing as a creative medium.
Thank you to all who “liked” my recent posts. It helps me know what resonates, what you might want more of, and not feel so alone. Even more wonderful is when you comment. I love conversation. But whatever you do or don’t do, I’m grateful you are here, and I hope that what I share here expands your life.