big magic

Abstract Love

/ Jodi / 52 Comments

Abstract Love – 30×48 on Gallery Canvas

Abstract Love.

Instead of trying to explain the muse that drew me to recently create this huge abstract piece  – the largest, most “abstract” painting I’ve done to date – 4 foot wide (48 inches) x 30 inches tall – I will share this quote from one of my absolute all time favorite books….

A book I have read and listened to the author read several times – Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert:

“Let me list for you some of the many ways in which you might be afraid to live a more creative life: You’re afraid you have no talent. You’re afraid you’ll be rejected or criticized or ridiculed or misunderstood or—worst of all—ignored. You’re afraid there’s no market for your creativity, and therefore no point in pursuing it. You’re afraid somebody else already did it better. You’re afraid everybody else already did it better. You’re afraid somebody will steal your ideas, so it’s safer to keep them hidden forever in the dark. You’re afraid you won’t be taken seriously. You’re afraid your work isn’t politically, emotionally, or artistically important enough to change anyone’s life. You’re afraid your dreams are embarrassing. You’re afraid that someday you’ll look back on your creative endeavors as having been a giant waste of time, effort, and money. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of discipline. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of work space, or financial freedom, or empty hours in which to focus on invention or exploration. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of training or degree. You’re afraid you’re too fat. (I don’t know what this has to do with creativity, exactly, but experience has taught me that most of us are afraid we’re too fat, so let’s just put that on the anxiety list, for good measure.) You’re afraid of being exposed as a hack, or a fool, or a dilettante, or a narcissist. You’re afraid of upsetting your family with what you may reveal. You’re afraid of what your peers and coworkers will say if you express your personal truth aloud. You’re afraid of unleashing your innermost demons, and you really don’t want to encounter your innermost demons. You’re afraid your best work is behind you. You’re afraid you never had any best work to begin with. You’re afraid you neglected your creativity for so long that now you can never get it back. You’re afraid you’re too old to start. You’re afraid you’re too young to start. You’re afraid because something went well in your life once, so obviously nothing can ever go well again. You’re afraid because nothing has ever gone well in your life, so why bother trying? You’re afraid of being a one-hit wonder. You’re afraid of being a no-hit wonder”

― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

The first stroke on a huge canvas can be so scary, yet so exciting and liberating at the same time.

The brushes and pallet knives and paints are art themselves!

The finished piece…

which is – for now – hanging above our bed.

Its temporary home?   Or its forever home?  Either way is fine, because I kinda love it!

If it speaks to you, it is available here.

Cheers & Hugs,
Jodi

 

Big Magic & Intracranial Jewelry-Making

/ Jodi / 79 Comments
abstract pink floral watercolor 10 x 14 Arches 300 lb cold press

abstract pink floral watercolor 10 x 14 Arches 300 lb cold press

I have been so inspired lately by a book I am listening to on Audible during those precious 30 minutes a day I spend on the elliptical or treadmill early in the morning at the gym.  Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, by Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) was recommended to me by Dawn, a blogging friend who shares her own beautiful creativity at Petals. Paper, Simple Thymes.  I am so glad I took her advice and got it!  And it is such a joy to listen to it read by author Elizabeth herself with all the passion and inflection she adds throughout.

I want to share an excerpt with you that hit a chord with me the other morning (and there are many of these!)  During this excerpt, Gilbert is sharing about a time she interviewed musician Tom Waits for GQ Magazine.  I loved everything he had to say to her and she wrote about him, but I want to share this little piece in particular:

“Over the years, Tom Waits finally found his sense of permission to deal with his creativity more lightly – without so much drama – without so much fear.  A lot of this lightness, Waits said, came from watching his children grow up and seeing their total freedom of creative expression.  He noticed that his children felt fully entitled to make up songs all the time, and when they were done with them, they would toss them out ‘like little origami things, or paper airplanes.’  Then they would sing the next song that came through the channel.  They never seemed to worry that the flow of ideas would dry up.   They never stressed about their creativity, and they never competed against themselves; they merely lived within their inspiration, comfortable and unquestioning.

Waits had once been the opposite of that as a creator.  He told me that he’d struggled deeply with his creativity in his youth because – like many serious young men – he wanted his work to be better than other people’s work.  He wanted to be complex and intense.  There was anguish, there was torment, there was drinking, there were dark nights of the soul.  He was lost in the cult of artistic suffering, but he called that suffering by another name: dedication.

But through watching his children create so freely, Waits had an epiphany: it wasn’t actually that big a deal.  He told me, ‘I realized as a songwriter, the only thing I really do is make jewelry for the inside of other people’s minds.’  Music is nothing more than decoration for the imagination.  That’s all it is.  That realization, Waits said, seemed to open things up for him.  Songwriting became less painful after that.

Intracranial jewelry-making!  What a cool job!”

Does that strike you like it does me?  So with this newfound creative freedom floating through my cranium, I splashed some paint around this weekend that resulted in this.  Here is some of my “intracranial jewelry” to share.

abstract pink floral watercolor 10 x 14 Arches 300 lb cold press matted and framed

abstract pink floral watercolor 10 x 14 Arches 300 lb cold press matted and framed to 19 x 23

Cheers & Hugs,
Jodi