Tag: creators

A Journey All Its Own

The painting above is called “Mountains and Sea“. It hangs in the National Gallery of Art and it was created by Helen Frankenthaler, a famous American abstract expressionist painter. I started researching Helen Frankenthaler because I read one of her quotes, and it reverberated with me. Here is the quote:

“Every canvas is a journey all its own. There are no rules. Let the picture lead you where it must go.”

The word “canvas” can be replaced by so many other words in this quote and still make so much sense. “Life” works. “Season” works. “Relationship” works. “Vocation” works. I think this is an utterly divine quote.

Helen Frankenthaler also said this:

“I don’t resent being a female painter. I don’t exploit it. I paint.”

To give this quote context, Helen was born in 1928. She did most of her major works in the 1950s-1970s. During this time period, art was still dominated by male artists. Today, we seem obsessed with labels. We label everything, even by giving people labels that essentially mean “label-less”. I think the people who are arguing for and against categorizing people in certain ways, are missing the point. Labeling anything takes away the individual essence of anything. So if anything, we need less labels. The quirky cardinal who frequents my yard and likes to noisily bark at me to remind me to fill my feeder, gets severely limited in the way of his own special individuality when I call him “cardinal” or “red bird.” Of course, he doesn’t give a damn what I call him. He doesn’t “resent being a male red cardinal. He doesn’t exploit it. He flies.”

“What concerns me when I work, is not whether the picture is a landscape, or whether it’s pastoral, or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is – did I make a beautiful picture?” – Helen Frankenthaler

Sometimes friends or family will discuss one of my blog posts with me and they will say “thank you, they really need to hear “such and such message”, and sometimes that message which they supposedly got from my post is a message which is equally new to me, as well. And I am so delighted by this. I believe that really good art, whether it be paintings, or poetry, or dance, is a medium that brings people closer to their own inner selves. Really good art stirs people’s emotions and inner worlds and messages from their intuition like nothing else can do. Really good art makes us more open to exploring what is behind the hidden doors of our spirit. The only thing that I ever want people to get from my writing, is a feeling of understanding and more intimacy with their own souls.

“In relations with people, as in art, if you always stick to style, manners, and what will work, and you’re never caught off guard, then some beautiful experiences never happen.” – Helen Frankenthaler

With this quote, I believe Helen is saying to live and to create with a little imagination and fearlessness. Sometimes you have to change course, add some extra ingredients, don’t get stuck on the “tried and true”, in order to experience magic in your life. Is there anything as cheerful and interesting as a “pleasant surprise”? Or as Helen Frankenthaler says it plainly in this quote:

“I’d rather risk an ugly surprise than rely on things I know I can do.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Not Alone

“Nothing I can say can have any effect, except to say to somebody else, “You’re not alone.” That’s as far as it goes.” – Kurt Vonnegut

I think that a lot of us creators, whether we be writers or painters or actors, poets, photographers, etc., have the secret impossible ambition of trying to help save the world with our art. We believe that if we do it just right, or we say it just right, or we come up with the perfect, exquisite wording, or we take one profound photograph that encapsulates all, it will end up being that ONE thing that helps to bring everyone in the world together, in recognition of our connectedness, and the pure beauty and majesty that is Life.

Maybe that overarching ambition is just ego. Maybe we creators are really just trying to find/save/understand/inspire/purge one person – ourselves. And when our creation does that for ourselves, and it sometimes even does it for a few others, as well, we rejoice. We totally rejoice in relief and confirmation. We feel connected and understood and validated and less alone.

I wish that I had the inclination, and the ability to save lives like firefighters or surgeons do, but I am more of a hindrance in emergencies than a help (plus I have a hair trigger gag reflex). I wish that I had the inclination to start a company that would create hundreds of good jobs to support hundreds of good families, but I don’t do well with structure, and math, and office politics. I wish that I had the inclination to get into politics and really clean up house, while also having the ability to stay personally clean while doing it, but I’m sane enough to not even dare to put my big toe into that arena. I wish that I had the unending patience and purpose of a teacher, but I often get bored and frustrated as easily as a toddler.

And so beyond my ambitious wishes, I write. I do what it inherently seems like I was meant to do. I like to believe that at the very least, as my writing heals me and helps me to make sense of my experiences, it sometimes gives that little spark of familiarity and comfort and recognition that says to someone else, as they let out a big, deep sigh, “Oh, thank you. Wonderful. I am not alone.” As Kurt Vonnegut says, “That’s as far as it goes.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.