Beyond the Studio #6 - Slow

As it turns out, I am pretty slow. I don’t like the thought that I am slow, but there it is. 

Expectations, BoldBrush FAV15%, October 2019

 
I don’t really know how people get so much done. Even my Beloved Husband is a complete mystery to me in this way. My nephew married a beautiful girl who now runs a farm home, is raising three young children, cans, freezes, gardens, bakes, runs for parts, works out, teaches her kids to do chores, helps my mother, is active with church… and so much more. HOW IN THE WORLD DOES SOMETHING LIKE THIS EVEN HAPPEN? 

Is slow a requirement for being an artist? 

There is a trend, it seems, in some art circles for “slow art”. I have felt resistant to this trend – as I do to most trends, but that’s another story – feeling like it is pompous and pushy for someone to tell me that my art should be slow. Sometimes when my brush is on the canvas my art is really fast! But, actually, that is the thing. There is so much of my art that happens when my brush (or fingers or scraper or other miscellaneous tool) is NOT on the canvas. So much thinking. So much watching. So much interacting. 

An Interesting Place

You know that stereotype of an artist in his studio standing back, head to one side, staring at his canvas? Well, that really happens. At least, in my studio it does. I spend a lot of time looking, evaluating, changing, responding to things I like and don’t like on my canvas. MOST of my abstract paintings start and stop and get set aside as I try to see what happens next. 

There is that transition time, too, between art and everything else. Somehow everything inspires me for my art, but it also interrupts me. I literally have a difficult time understanding words sometimes when I am painting, so if my Beloved Husband comes home and speaks to me, it takes me a couple of minutes to transition to being verbal. If the sunrise sky changes color, I have to go and look, and it takes me time to get back. 

Along with all of that, my art is inextricably intertwined with my worship of my Heavenly Father. 

I have found out that my time in ‘my spot’ in the morning, reading my Bible and praying and just thinking as I look out the window toward our woods and pasture – that is time that helps my art. My walking in the woods and looking at everything - do you realize how long it takes to walk in the woods? Not to exercise, though that happens too, but to be all there and see everything... it is overwhelming sometimes, and is completely necessary for my work. 

In my studio I have several scented candles, and when I remember, I light one. It seems to make more of a place for me, somehow. My favorite candle is cassia scented. I chose it because it reminds me that there was a particular fragrance that was to be made for use in the tabernacle and temple in the Old Testament. For me, it is part of worship. And it is part of my work.

I have a medical ‘syndrome’ that requires me to rest during the day. Every day when I lie down on the couch, I tell my Heavenly Father that I don’t want to be wasting time there – I only want to be there as long as necessary. Sometimes it is short, but sometimes it feels way too long. But while I am there, I am thinking through what I want to be painting, or what I want my painting to be expressing. I guess that, too, is part of my work.

Walking along the trail in the woods, I had to stop to look more closely at the glittery frost on the leaves in several places. Also, there were the long shadows leading me further down the trail to the spot my Beloved Husband made for me to rest if I need it along the way. I found a little tree with buds all along the branches that were tiny green balls. Buds in December? It was a pleasant surprise, and stopped my progress for a while. 

2 Corinthians 11 was my chapter for this morning. A phrase in one of the verses really caught my attention. “…the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.” This is what I want my life to be, and what I want my art to express. The simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. And that is not something that is fast or easy to check off of a to-do list. 

I am slow. And it is part of my work. 

Coram Deo,

Brenda