I can't do anything. It feels like not being able to feed myself or forgetting how to walk. It's awful. I laid out my pallet, loaded up a brush with paint and brought it to the canvas and nothing happened. No shading, no contour, no values: just paint. I manipulated clay and it never became an arm or a nose or anything other than mud. My hands have betrayed me, my eyes do not see. I am bereft.
I question everything. Why do I bother? What does it all matter? Who cares if I make art? My art doesn't measure up anyway. I think I'll throw my paintings in the garbage or burn them. Smash my sculpture and stomp on it.
It fills me with despair. I blame myself, my husband, my bank account, my students, everything. What is wrong?
Am I tired? Am I empty? Have I given all and left nothing for myself? Have I failed to nourish my body, my spirit, my mind? Do I need to sleep? Walk? Play with the dogs? Swing on the hammock?
I'm going home now. I'm going to take a nap and sip a beer and swing on the swing and call my momma and play with the dogs and wish Isaac a happy birthday and watch a Woody Allen movie and sleep late in the morning and go to church and spend the rest of the weekend praising God for all his many many gifts. And maybe next week try it again.
3 comments:
Sis, you okay? Or are you just bein' a temperamental artist? I should have called you yesterday! I didn't see this until this morning tho. Is today lookin' better, I hope?
Now think about this...you're in the pits of dispair today, but remember that painting you showed me last week? The one where you thought it was the best thing you had ever done? Oh yeah, THAT one! You don't just do stuff like that every day. Give yourself a break! Pat yourself on the back for having cranked out such an amazing piece and let your mind and body rest for a while. Not every piece can be a masterpiece. You now measure everything by that and that's not fair! Don't do that, k?
I did all of the above and I feel better. YES it was the rant of a tempermental artist! But dang, do we ever get up in the morning and forget how to dress ourselves? Or how to drive a car? Or how to log on to a computer? NO! This are all functions of another part of our brain/being/soul/whatever. But somehow, sometime, somewhere I left that "other" part of me and it cannot be commanded to return. Someday I hope to find that switch that turns on the light but right now it comes and goes of it's own will.
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