In which she learns that there's more to her than she might realize...
Thursday, April 17, 2008
I've always worked better with restrictions. I'm not so good with simply "write a story" or "paint a picture" or just go create something...without any guidelines to follow. For many people, this might feel freeing. It allows them to be as creative and inspired as they want to be. Not so for me. I am inspired by figuring out how to create inside of limitations. A puzzle or a problem if you will. Free reign makes me uncomfortable. Freedom makes me second guess. While the lack of limitations very clearly says "there's no right or wrong", I am constantly left feeling as though I can still do it wrong and will. That mine will never be as creative as everyone else's.
This was the case when I got my first assignment for class last week:
On an approximately 8-1/2 x 11 (or larger) posterboard or reinforced paper, and using collage, water color, goache, or any other medium, "explain" yourself in color.
The color part was easy. Sort of. There are colors that I know I'm not. I'm not green and I'm most definitely not blue. I don't really think I'm so orange. I had colors that popped into my head immediately. The problem was that I had to remind myself that this was not about colors I liked and, given my proclivity for fashion, I also had to remind myself that this was not about colors that looked fabulous together. The latter of these two caused me to initially think monochromatically (simply because I felt like it would look good) but I quickly realized that there is no chance in hell that I am just one color with many different tones. After repeatedly reminding myself that this was about colors that describe me (not look good on me) I settled on yellow - bright yellow, but also some gold, and red in shades ranging from cherry to deep fire to more pinky magenta.
I went to the art store and bought paper and some paints and mosaic tiles and those sort of oil-y crayons that we used to call craypaws in first grade (oh wait - I think it was craypas...like French or something. Goes to show you how sophisticated I am). I had almost zero game plan, but I figured it was good to start with some supplies. I knew that I'd try to find images in my colors in magazines and I knew that I wanted to have some sort of structure to my collage. I got home and started cutting. As I flipped and searched and cut, I came up with the concept of doing a huge flower with each of the petals being a different color and all of them swirling together in the center. Sounds great - Right? Say yes or I'll kill you. (Or make you pay for therapy.)
Actually, it wasn't. It turns out as I started laying it out on the paper, it was anything but great. It was, in fact, horrible. So I started playing around with the different magazine cutouts, trying to figure out some sort of plan, some sort of concept. The more I played, the further I felt from coming up with anything.
At about midnight on Sunday, I ended up screaming, "I am not a freaking artist damnit!!" to absolutely no one since my husband and dog had gone to bed several hours before.
As I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, I felt completely and totally discouraged. My project was supposed to be FINISHED by that time, given that I would be at work from 8:30 in the morning until 7 at night for the next two days and I couldn't exactly get away with painting and pasting in my cubicle.
I awoke at 6 the next morning, determined to find another concept. I perused magazine upon magazine and finally, found exactly what I was looking for in the pages of Domino. It was a painting that had the exact kind of feel I was going for. The picture had a yellow background with two black rolling hills and 2 figures walking on the hills. One of them was picking a flower in one hand and had a cornucopia of flowers pouring up to the sky in the other hand while the other was dancing along the hills with a small armful of flowers. I loved it! I would do my own interpretation using the paints and all the floral magazine cutouts that I had. AND I could find more floral pix at work during the day so that I'd have more than enough!
(I managed to find the painting on line...I LOVE THIS. We can add this painting to my want list...k? And you can find it here. The artist is Maggy Rozycki Hiltner. I heart her.)
That night I came home ready to make my own version of this picture. The plan was to make a gold hill with a magenta figure carrying the cone of flowers. I drew the picture and started to lay the flowers out and realized that this wasn't happening either. It wasn't for my lack of drawing skills and the concept came across just fine. But my way, it didn't work. Maggy's way sort of says me perfectly. But my job was to do it my way. And my way was NOT working. Even though my cornucopia of flowers was full of yellow and red, it looked nothing like me.
I wiped the many little flower cutouts away and stared at the page. I was surrounded by scraps of magazine pages. Everything was spread out on our dining room table and none of it made any sense. I felt totally and completely screwed. I hadn't waited until the last minute to start, but here I was - at the last minute, totally panicked. I stared at the white piece of paper in front of me and all the little cutout flowers around me. I opened the paint brushes and paints and I just started painting. I swiped colors across the page, I smudged the craypas to mix into different hues. I sprinkled gold over red and magenta over yellow. I didn't know what I was painting but I knew that I had stopped worrying and I was having fun.
The end result was a picture that could be looked at in one of two ways - as something that might hang in the Museum of Contemporary Art (ummmm....longshot) or on the wall of a kindergarten classroom (much more likely). But it was done. And while I was still concerned that I'd totally done it wrong and that everyone else's was going to be better than mine, I was happy with. It seemed a little out of control and in places even messy - but it was...me. (which clearly is at times out of control and messy...who the hell am I kidding??) And me wa the assignment - right? (You have to say yes here, because that was the assignment. It was...)
We got to class and hung our pictures at the front of the room. There were some beautiful pieces and all of them were totally different - not, as I'd been concerned - "right" or "wrong".
The lecturer for the evening was an expert on color and composition. And she was about to tell the entire class about our personalities based on our pictures. Fascinating.
She started by talking about the whole planned and controlled vs. spontaneous and free mindset. She discussed the fact that obviously, most people are a blend of both, but that often, from this assignment, it was clear which end of the spectrum the creator veered toward.
It's obvious which end of the spectrum I'm in...I'm a control freak. I like everything planned out and in it's place. But as I looked at my picture, it was clear that was NOT what it said.
Yes, ladies and gentleman, yours truly created the picture that was picked by several people in the class as the picture that exhibited the MOST spontaneity, the most fly by the seat of your pants attitude. She said that my picture exhibited the ability to go with the flow and just get carried. My picture exhibited a lot of emotion and passion. The few random circles on the page seemed to suggest some moments of frustration. The yellow represented optimism and the belief that I hold power within myself. The gold said that I was extroverted, occasionally like to sparkle and make some noise. She spoke very little about the red actually - except to say that it suggests that I have strong emotions and I'm passionate. Later on she spoke about other meanings of red - but I think it's interesting to talk about the parts of the painting that she felt stood out and spoke to her because she seemed to be pretty spot on.
It was hard for me to even think about the meanings of the colors because I was sitting there baffled by what my picture was saying about me - not only to the expert, but to a classroom full of people.
I'm...spontaneous? go with the flow? fly by the seat of my FREAKING PANTS?????
But the truth is that it actually makes perfect sense.
I often spend my life trying to control things - planning and plotting and making lists. But life seems to have a plan of it's own...and you often have very little say in it . Things have a funny way of rarely turning out how you plan them. And as my very wise therapist has often pointed out to me, control is an illusion on every level. We can try to control and plan - and most of us do - but really, we're just pawns in the game of something greater. Call it the universe, call it God, call it whatever you want. But something or someone else is up there pulling puppet strings, making it all happen.
I tried and tried to plan this project exactly how I thought it should be. I pondered, I had a well thought out plan. But my planning didn't work. In fact, my attempt at planning left me exasperated, frustrated, downright pissed. When I let myself get carried by the project, it all worked out. Maybe I need to spend a little less time planning and a little more time getting carried by the brushes and the paints and the ideas swirling around. Maybe I need to let it all happen a little more and not spend so much time pondering and trying to figure out how to fit it together. Maybe I need to let spontaneity take the reigns for the moment.
Posted byMeesh-elle my Belle at 7:08 PM
Labels: life lessons
That's really neat! And now you made something you can add to "your collection"!