The Gardener, 30 x 48″
When I first started painting, I didn’t know what I was doing. I just showed up. I never knew what I was going to paint: I’d arrive at the easel, and let it come. I made about 60 paintings like this before my mind started interfering with the process, trying to steer me down well-worn paths. Then paintings took longer and longer to finish, but I was comfortable, I thought. I refined my techniques and the work predictably sold.
But lately I’ve been experimenting with just showing up and not listening to my mental resistance about what and how I’m allowed to paint. I just paint what I have energy for. Inspiration comes mid-stroke, and the painting emerges. People call this the muse: It’s the grand surprise.
I painted “The Gardener” in two days. My mind was saying that I’ve never painted bicycles and I don’t know how.
So what? However imperfect my knowledge or the end result, the painting needed to be made.
This weekend my yoga instructor Betsy read this poem by the Australian poet Andrew Colliver. Perhaps he says it best when he just says, “Come.”
Every day I am astonished by
how little I know, and discouraged,
obedient as I am to the demand to
know more–always more.
But then there is the slow seep
of light from the day,
and I look to the west where
the hills are darkening,
setting their shoulders to the night,
and the sky peppered with pillows
of mist, their bellies burnt
by the furnace of the sun.
And it is then I notice
the invitation didn’t say, Come
armed with knowledge and a loud voice.
It only said, Come.
