This is one of my recent paintings, mostly finished. It emerged in a torrent one night after having struggled intensely with emotional distress… about my own issues (mostly health) and about the state of the world and its wars. This is a painting about war.
I have never seen a war in the way most people think of war when they hear the word. But there are obvious wars between countries, and then there are internal wars. Struggles with memories of past hurts and losses that come to the forefront of the consciousness so vividly and quickly that it feels like yesterday and all manner of fears and pains result from these triggers. This is what prompted me one night to pick up a brush.
No need for me to go into particulars about my internal wars, my “dark night of the soul”, and anyone who might actually read this won’t need to be further informed, as I’ve already shared so much in my writing here. One thing I will say is that art is a powerful healer. Healing doesn’t necessarily mean that everything is pretty and safe and all better now with unicorns and rainbows dancing about. Real, true, deep healing means going into the dark places, the darkest spaces, the most painful spots within and instead of covering them up with a smile, to dive deep deep deep into the dark water, wrestle with what is found there, face it head on, feel whatever comes up for us without judgment, with compassion, and work our way through it all. Art is my way to do that.
Darkness needs a place to go. If we hold it inside, not only will it take a toll on our mental and physical health, but it might come out in ways we wouldn’t choose it to, For instance, people who start wars - the big kinds of wars, attacking other human beings, embracing violence, and committing genocide. We’ve seen it happen and always say never again, and then there it is. On a personal level, if we hold our darkness inside because we judge it as being inappropriate to share, or others prefer us to have a smile on our face when we’re in agony, it still has to go somewhere. It will eat us up. War eats things up.
My painting above is about both kinds of war, personal and external. I did it for myself and definitely felt lighter afterward, so much so that I began another painting about war titled “Grounded Storm” which I’ll post when it is finished. Even though I did it for myself, as I was painting, I absolutely was almost consumed with thoughts of anger and helplessness about what is happening in our world today. This painting speaks to all forms of war. So does “Grounded Storm”, also almost complete.
I am loving this new way of working. It feels free. I didn’t know what direction my art was going to go in and certainly I couldn’t choose what it would be with my conscious mind. Not with the head. I had to let it lead me. Before I began I had no idea what would come. I wanted to do abstraction, or keep to my weirdly surreal representational imagery, or go back to the Circle Paintings for some peace. None of them felt right and as I said, it wasn’t a matter for the head to decide. I had to get into a place of PLAY. Get the paints out and just GO. That’s when it happened. And one thing that surprised me was the draw to use black paint, which I hadn’t used in decades. God, the black felt good.
Darkness has to go someplace and I don’t want it inside of me. On a canvas is better and the journey of it getting there from inside of me is one of the most cathartic things I can do. Do I want to bring beauty into the world? Of course I do! But as an artist, I see tons of beautiful art by other artists that I’d love to have done myself, but their art is not the way my art wants to move out of me. I have to honor my own personal gift which I am so grateful for having been given, to create. Honor my authentic self-expression. Do what James Baldwin said: “All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.” I’ll keep painting this way as long as I need to. If more beautiful “palatable” works eventually emerge one day, authentically, then so be it. I look forward to being lighter on the inside, however that manages to happen.