Painting

The imagery for my paintings and drawings does not come to me fully formed. I poke around terrified on the edge of the abyss and leap in scribbling and wiping it away. I am terrified because I am an astronaut without the protection of a rocket ship. The terror comes from the vulnerability I feel when being out there receiving the signals. When I am not feeling this sort of vulnerability I am usually not in a painting phase. I require this particular sort of receptivity to make paintings which is also a painful state. Perhaps this is why it's called pain-ting. So I am painting when I am most frightened of it. Does this make sense? I am always hoping to accumulate some courage along the way or lessen the fear but maybe I'm just not designed this way. I must accept my way of being; fear in one hand and trembling courage in the other.

It is all very hard for me to accept myself I guess it is my life's challenge. I have two to three month spells of terror 'receive mode' which is when I paint. Then my energy shifts to sensory and physically hyperactive 'transmit mode' and I must bake and cook and write letters and vignettes and I feel overflowing energy with accompanying joie de vivre, confidence and optimism. I keep thinking I'd probably get somewhere in life if I was just one way. Bill says that's a myth I carry and anyway it's not an option. It's not how I was made. I know he is right but I am having a very hard time letting go of my notions. My pal Susan would say What is it about this notion that am holding onto and invested in? Perhaps I am still preserving my mother's voice that said I am all wrong with bad wiring.

My painter pal Ken Maryanski said years ago Change your beliefs. I have been told all my life that my internal energies are what enable me to paint. I think of the quote by Stephen DeStaebler Artists don't get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working. I am trying to convince myself and accept that this switching from internal to external is a gift and not an impediment to making work. But don't REAL artists face one muse every day? Not necessarily and many of my painter friends don't either. Maybe what I have to accept is I have two different muses one in my sensory body (love of words) and one in my haunted head (mind full of colors). I can barely use words when the paint happens and I can't paint when the words replace colors. I accept day and night and the four seasons, why can't I accept this?

In Early September when I went from sensory high energy this summer to dropping down into internal September mode I had a vivid scary dream. It was a predawn rollover dream.

I dreamed I was crouched on top of a friends refrigerator while I harpooned a big bear that was pursuing me. I apologized before skewering him a bunch of times. Then he was dead but as dream logic goes he was suddenly alive again and I finished him off with BBQ tools. Then I went around bragging that I killed a big brown bear with BBQ tools forgetting that the real work was with the harpoon.

I have been thinking about this dream for weeks. At first I just thought it was just a crazy rollover dream then I started thinking of the bear as a metaphor for my painting and how when my energy shifts I make light of the terror and the fight. I brag that I killed the bear with BBQ tools forgetting the real work is with the harpoon. Also in the dream the bear could be a stand in for my mother. She has been a big scary bear in my dreams before (and in my life) and perhaps I am still apologizing for having to kill her off to get on with my artistic life, and accept myself as I am. Another interpretation I had was I have a lot of tools and I must use them all. Another friend said that to him the dream means make do with less. I liked that too.