The honest clock

Do you ever feel like time is pressing up against you, in a physical sense? I’m talking beyond the “full calendar” feeling. Sometimes I feel like there are rows and rows of ideas lined up inside of my head, waiting to be addressed. Story ideas. Painting series. Mixed media concepts. Tapestries. Installations. Workshops. Vignettes of little worlds that don’t exist yet. But I can envision them in full color and somehow they already feel alive.

I always get a little excited when i stumble across another artist making things that align with the vingettes in my head. It’s the dopamine rush that comes from recognition, followed by pressure to go hurry and make something.

And the idea themselves feel urgent, like they want out. In Big Magic, Liz Gilbert talks about creativity as spiritual forces that brush past us as they search for willing participants. Ideas arrive, like birds on a window perch. If you ignore them, they fly off somewhere else. Gilbert compared the process of chasing creative ideas to trying to grab the end of a tiger’s tail before it disappears around the corner. I suppose all art is trying to catch hold of something already in motion. Is this why creative folks sometimes seem to experience time so differently? Because we’re living more than one life?

The other night I was talking to my friend who is also an artist. He’s a musician, and he mentioned something that has been lodged in my brain for the past few days. He mentioned that there wasn’t a time constraint on Artists. Athletes are directly connected to their bodies, which deteriorate at varying paces with age. But Artists deepen. And, because I’m me, I immediately pushed back with, “Until arthritis/dementia/cataracts.” Bodies change, energies change, and time changes us whether we like it or not….

But he smiled (in the kindest way) and said that he truly feels as though he has all the time in the world. And if I didn’t love this guy and his wife and kids so much, I’d envy him. Because I don’t experience time that way AT ALL. At alllllll. I feel like I’m living closer to its edge, like an animal in the wood listening for the sound of snapping branches. I feel seasons ending while they are still happening. I notice my children becoming older while we are brushing our teeth. I see all of the subtle shifts in every moment. I feel the joy of ideas arriving and sadness of them leaving.

And because I live in that intensity of daily life- caregiving, regulating, cooking, cleaning, with uninterrupted moments lightly sprinkled in- “time” doesn’t feel linear to me anymore. It’s fragmented and quiet time is rare and expensive. And yet, I can’t read a single children’s book to a child without forming a parallel story in my mind, complete with illustrations. And please know that I don’t believe that I possess a rare talent by any means. I’m really just trying to describe the urgency I feel to “do something with it” and guilt I feel, constantly, for falling short of my overactive imagination. It’s like I constantly feel like I’m not handing in my assignments at school. I never feel like I’m “nailing it” but maybe creativity isn’t ours to conquer. Maybe it’s “enough” to just stay in conversation with it and to remain porous enough for the ideas to keep chasing us.

Back when i was an art teacher, everyone made fun of me because the clock on the wall never worked. I wasn’t disciplined enough to keep up with changing the batteries and it was NOT to be counted on. The only honest clock in the room was the drying rack. Kids would ask how long certain projects would take and I would tell them we’d have to see how things kept unfolding. My lesson plans and calendar required me to allocate a set number of class periods for each project, but things were more fluid than that. Back then, I thought I was teaching them about art but I was also actually teaching myself how to live. In a world obsessed with acceleration, visibility, and proof of completion…creativity operates on a totally different timeline. Noticing and processing is part of the process and to create we must absorb and reflect.

So is there a wrong way to experience time?

Is it healthier to assume the future is abundant, or wiser to understand how fragile it all really is?

IDK. Maybe it’s enough to make half finished things in chaotic seasons, instead of waiting for the perfect weather. Even if the work remains unfinished. Even if you only had 10 minutes before the next time you were needed by someone. Even if the paint is still drying.

On Magic, Part 1

I’ve been letting this collection of thoughts marinate for years & I’m constantly rerouting my beliefs on this….but it’s time to just share, for my own sanity. I’ll call this “Part 1” because it’s something that I think I’ll come to.

Several years ago, one of my children asked me whether Santa was real. Before I could respond, he threw another hard ball at me: “Is Magic real?”

“Yes,” I confirmed, catching my breath.

He met my eyes, searching for something. This particular child of mine is highly literal and tends to see in black and white (which he gets from my husband.) I imagined a future version of himself answering the same question asked by his own children. Would he answer differently?

My answer felt solid, though. I never stopped believing in magic…or if i did, it was only for a little while. Or maybe, it wasn’t that I stopped believing, but that my understanding of it unraveled a bit before coming back together.

There was a time I simply thought “magic” was a world running parallel to ours. Elves working through the night, reindeer flying just out of sight, fairies slipping between moments like fireflies. But then my brain developed and began building a stable map of reality…which is what I am seeing now with my middle son. The prioritization of predictability becomes a key survival instinct. The trade off of neurological streamlining is, of course, the fading of unused pathways. Maybe it’s not that the magic itself disappears. Maybe the pathways just soften, like trails we stop walking, folding neatly back into the landscape behind us.

There was also time when I thought “magic” was performative. A theatrical bit that everyone around me was putting on…a series of magic shows. I appreciated the artistry of these performances, the how did they do that? element as our minds attempt to dissect the anatomy of the trick. I took my kids to a magic show last year and they begged for a magic trick “kit” for Christmas. I’ll never forget watching them take everything out of the box and turning it upside down, as if looking for something else, like magic pixie dust, to fall out. Having to explain to them that this genre of magic was entirely based on illusions was a little disheartening.

And, in more recent years, I’ve thought magic looked like signs and symbols, like rainbows appearing in the sky at “just the right” moment, heart shaped shells on the beach, little tokens of luck you can carry in your pocket just in case. There have been times where I wondered if something unexplainable was an act of God or an act of magic. My favorite quote from the entire Harry Potter series was something Albus Dumberdore said: “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry…but why on earth should that mean it is not real?” I painted this quote in my old classroom to remind myself and my students that magic and faith overlap in ways beyond our comprehension. We become very good (obsessive, even) at naming things, and much less comfortable with letting the mysterious remain mysterious.

Let’s call it what it is. I don’t think we “outgrow” magic, I think we rename it. And I’m not particularly interested in explaining it away, just to make it more acceptable. I’ll stand firm in my belief in magic & in the quiet ways our lives connect, in ways we don’t fully understand. Call it what you’d like. I know what it feels like.

Impressions of Motherhood

I’ve been thinking lately about how loving someone might be one of the most complex art forms. There is in the same way a painting is constructed, through layers through instinct through letting loose and pulling in. Through knowing when to zoom in and zoom out. Through the quiet realization that nothing is ever final. Just impressions.

These mini recent mother/child paintings (“Held in Color”) are a somewhat of an ode to a Charleston favorite, Teil Duncan. I stumbled upon her nude portrait series at this point of my life when I desperately wanted to be a mother. When I saw them, I always saw a little child bouncing on the laps of the women. I know I was just projecting, but I couldn’t unsee them and they’ve been with me since.

It was the color blocking aspect that kept me locked in to these. The push/pull, the act of traveling from one joyful color to the next. The islands created and bridges between them. These shapes slowly becoming figures. The figures slowly merging together. Together, but always connected. I used to quote Vincent van Gogh a lot back when I was an art teacher, and one of my favorites has always been: “There is no blue without yellow and without orange.”

I keep coming back to the idea that nothing exists in isolation, that color is totally relational, independent and alive simply because of what surrounds it. That’s motherhood for me. This constant arranging and rearranging of the pallet. Learning when to move closer, when to step back. Trusting the image even when it feels unfinished. Like fields of color & like love itself….we’re all shaped by our surroundings and held together in ways both seen and unseen.

Nothing is ever truly lost

Last summer, we threw most of our belongings into a moving truck and moved to South Carolina. Most of the “things” made the trip perfectly fine, but some things got damaged in transit. For example, one of my canvases somehow got sliced down the middle. Truth be told, I wasn’t particularly attached to this untitled/ unfinished painting. Instead of throwing it away, I tossed it into a closet and forgot about it for about 10 months.

Which brings us to last week, when I discovered it while I was spring cleaning.

Piece by piece, I cut the canvas off of the stretcher bars and recycled the bare frame.

From that undoing came the small squares, cradled in the middle of striped wood. They’re small gathered forms that feel a bit like nests. Resting places. Fragments of color, texture, shapes, and history. Woven back together, but softer this time.

There’s something instinctual about rebuilding from our own remnants. Like returning to something you didn’t realize you were making all along. You know, maybe nothing is ever TRULY lost. Just rearranged. I think about how often we outgrow things, or leave parts of ourselves behind, only to rediscover them later in a different form.

These feel like that.

Here’s to finding ourselves again.

Psssst. You can find these for sale in downtown Charleston at the Candlefish Maker’s Market.

Xoxo, Kristen