Art as a way to work through pain and suffering…
I have had some very heavy and painful thoughts and emotions today. Some things happened that were completely out of my control which brought my thoughts to a very painful place. It is a place that I need to deal with, a layer of the onion that I really don’t want to acknowledge, but one day will be forced against my will to work through. This drawing was left for a few weeks on my tablet untouched as I moved first to a black paper tablet and then to a water color tablet and then didn’t draw much for 2 weeks due to other things going on in my life. But there was the beginning of the drawing on the tablet this morning when I sat down to draw. Little did I know what drawing would be produced.
Both Rhoda and Nick loved the drawing when I showed it to them. Rhoda loved the circles and the color gradations in the shades of grey. Nick loved the composition and generally loves the new non-icon work that I have been doing lately. Neither of them saw what I see in the drawing until I pointed it out to them. I see this drawing as being very aggressive. I see the two outer shapes consuming the inner shape. I can also see at least 3 faces on this piece, one on each of the 3 bodies on the drawing. I see deep psychological meaning to this drawing. When I pointed this out to Rhoda she reminded me of the past month that she spent working on her 3 recent commissioned pieces which took all of her time, being and energy to produce and which pushed her to new limits of artistic endeavor. She reminded me just how exhausted emotionally she was when it was all over and how those pieces caused her to grow and suggested that in the same way this piece was a way of my dealing with the dark thoughts that were bothering me this morning.
As I mention in another blog post which I am simultaneously working on and will post soon, art is not always easy. It is not always fun. But if you stick with it, it is always worth it. There are times when your art, no matter what genre you work in, will be your way of working through painful places. It is therapy and it is free, but you must be willing to go to it and stick with it, even when the going gets tough.
