Yesterday I purchased a small, unlined sketchbook
with a beautiful cover. This time around I chose a loosely painted
birds-of-paradise image in lovely soft colors with a few bold swaths of orange.
(A beloved friend would laugh at my denied-but-everpresent-tendency to grab
items with orange colors.)
And I feel all the
enticement,
anticipation,
hope,
playfulness,
inspiration
that these purchases have offered me every several
years over the last four decades.
I had forgotten in the midst of animated
conversation with a dear one the other day, show-and-telling our art supplies
via Skype, that I’ve actually made quite a few of these over the years. This
one I expect to keep though. No burning the past on today’s work.
This time I feel more balanced about it all.
Simple images are fine.
Partial line drawings or half an image or an
unfinished mandala or a few strokes of bright color…
No need to finish or perfect.
No compulsion to spend hours at a time. Just some
moments every day or once a week
- or however often feels easy and good -
to simply immerse myself
in textured, vibrant, spontaneous, unfettered creativity with whatever supplies
are at hand.
Many years ago, I read
about women who paint elaborate mandalas with colored sand on their dusty
doorsteps every dawn. As the families go out for work or schooling or daily
chores, they walk right across that stoop: canvas for the palette of sand. As
the day wears on, the intricate, sumptuously beautiful images get rubbed out.
The women make a new one
the next morning. And the next. And the next…
At first I thought this
was blasphemy. Sacrilege. To ruin art. To stomp creativity right underfoot. To
spend all that time making something that doesn’t endure.
Now I get it: an effort to create something spiritually significant, the
act of beautifying, just for the sake of reverent engagement in the moments of
the act.
This is what I aspire to
today…simple moments of immersed beautymaking, of loosed creativity…for no
other reason than for the sacred sake of doing it.
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| This Morning's Dawning Palette |
All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2015 JenniferJWilhoit/TEALarbor stories. AllRightsReserved."
