Putting the Pain in Painting
An old ghost visited me this past week. Though her presence familiar, her timing was unexpected and I felt compelled to tell the story of her arrival. She and I have a rather strange bond, and though I have felt haunted by her, she has taught me much much more than I could have ever expected to learn from her presence in my life.
Her name is, Pain.
I have a close relationship with her. Though it is not a relationship I speak of often, it is a bond I hold close to my chest for multiple reasons. Namely, I do not like pity and telling people about any type of malady tends to invite well-intentioned yet unsolicited advice.
Chronic pain has been a sort of constant in my adult life. Fortunately for me, it is no longer as persistent as it was when I was younger. I have come to know it as my body’s way of talking. Pain is the language she uses to let me know I’m doing too much, that I am not honoring my needs, or that I need to move through emotions that are being held and not released. We have not always had an amicable relationship, however, I have arrived at accepting her as part of my life even though it has taken a while for me to get here.
A bit of a disclaimer before I continue… I want to assure you that I am in good health, I am safe, I am cared for and have plenty of support. So I am not sending this message to alarm anyone. Authenticity and vulnerability are two qualities I value deeply and ones that pertain directly to the way I create. I am also human, and pain is a very human thing.
I recently had a flareup that I realized after a few days was an indication I needed to pay very close attention. What emerged was a wave of grief I had not expected, yet knew when it began to wash over me that it was something I had long awaited. A shadow in the recess of my psyche, lurking, waiting to emerge when life was calm and placid.
I realize I often speak about painting in terms of creativity and inspiration, of blocks and flow. But I don’t often talk about it as a portal for transmuting suffering.
It is a beautiful thing to be able to weep, or to become enraged when a boundary is violated or a need is not met. But sometimes the weight lingers heavy on my shoulders or burns too hot to bear and a physical shift is necessary to move out of this state.
Time and time again I have taken a heavy or ignited spirit to my workbench and just painted whatever image flashes when I close my eyes. It is instinctual, my body moves swift and fluid. Flicks of the wrist, loose arms, body hovering over, water sloshing, flung. I am not hunched, eyes close to paper, focused on detail. I am the painting. My mind is not present. I am all body, all feeling, all Source from the top of my head, out the fingertips, balancing me on the balls of my feet. I am lifted up up up, out of my body. In meditation, in prayer, in holy reverence, I offer up my creation to the cosmos. It is of me, it is for this moment. In honor of grief and in hope of suffering eased.
It works every time. To be able to take pain and set it free into art is to me some supernatural force humans are innately born with yet feels like some secret I have tapped into all my own. It is power and beauty into form and I feel like I have touched the face of God and the moon and the stars all in the same each time it happens. Through me some cosmic force flows and blooming before me is some creation beyond what I even knew I was capable of making.
This phenomenon, more than anything is my engine. It is a high I chase time and time again. It makes me want to feel deeper, to dig wells into myself, to touch the water beneath the surface, just so I can dance with a brush in my hand and feel grief and rage and frustration leave my body and become free.
I believe that a major part of the human experience is the ability to feel our way through the spectrum of human emotion and to move from one and onto the next. It is a gift to feel. Evidence of our spirit and humanness.
When emotion and creation come together is when art has spirit, meaning. We all know music that brings tears to our eyes without being able to explain why. We all know what it is like to hold a beloved book to our chest and wish to experience reading it over again for the first time.
My hope first and foremost when I release my art into the world is that it delivers feeling. That some inexplicable part of you wants, needs to walk into it, that it speaks to parts of you unknown. Because what draws us to these creations made by the hands of another is the human in it. It is not the painting without flaw that sings, it is the one shaped by the fingerprints of a human spirit.