getting comfortable with discomfort in the studio and beyond

Oh… how long I’ve been meaning to write here.

It’s been a strange and unusual year — Hmmm…. maybe we all can say that?

Yet for me it’s been a year of unusual uncertainty, especially in my studio. That’s wholly unfamiliar terrain for me. Which is what made it so damn uncomfortable, especially in the early months of the year. I just didn’t know where or even how to focus my artistic expression. None of my usual methods resonated. I flailed.

Maybe it had something to do with turning 60 late last December. Or spending so much of the previous two years either away or focused on “commission work.” I don’t know. But early this year, every time I attempted to start something, I felt repulsion rising up within me, as though an impudent child were saying, “No! No! No! I don’t want to do that!”

So many of my artistic efforts over the years have been focused on creating art that others might appreciate — and, hopefully, spend money on. After all, that’s how I keep a roof over my head, right?

Yet in January, every time I picked up a paint brush to paint in a familiar manner, that impudent child went into a tantrum.

What I will share just now is that, while Mara seemed determined to block me from my well-worn, comfortable ways of painting, he inspired me to explore other channels of creative expression. Some were old ways I’d once loved but forgotten, and others I’d only dabbled in — like poetry.

Indeed, while Mara put a lock on my oil paints and hid the key this summer, he opened a floodgate of poetry for me.

As I log off to tackle my interminable To Do List, I’ll part, for now, with a poem of late summer, which some of you may notice quietly echos my post from a year earlier, my annual late summer ritual.

Meanwhile, blessings of Thanksgiving to you. May you have much to be grateful for. As for me, I’m gonna strive to welcome and set a place for Mara at the table.

upon deleting all data

Can’t I blame sleep deprivation,
a numbing head cold,
or the parade of distracting summer visitors?
No, I think I need to chalk it up to stupidity:
I should have snapped that
“DATA” on my new mirrorless digital camera
doesn’t just erase
the settings I had set
in a blur of incomprehension
but rather “DATA” means PHOTOS,
so when the camera asked
“DELETE ALL DATA?”
what it really meant was —

Do you want to delete
the rippling green leaves
and the white glow
of the aspen grove?

Or the verdant field vibrant
with cow pen daisies?

Or the sun-bleached logs
of the old homestead, overgrown
with summer grasses and
asters and blue chicory?

Delete these?

Do you want to delete
the Rio Chama, swollen with summer
snaking in brown curves
through the valley?

What about the slurry stains
of eroding earth,
like paint spilling
down seams of coral canyon walls?
Do you want to delete these, too?

Or Pedernal
glowing blue
on the horizon
ocher and rust buttes
seeming to vibrate
in resonant response?

Delete all of ‘O’Keeffe Country’?

And what about
the hummingbird
who sipped
a sip from your water
while you picnicked
near the Brazos cliffs?

Do you want
to delete this, too?

For surely you have no need
for these; there’s already
so much ‘data’ in the world.

—

On this one day each summer —
this annual, near-holy date with myself —
to travel alone, silently,
mile after New Mexico mile
to reflect on loss
and love
and capture
with camera in hand
all these visions
of this sacred day —

maybe what my camera really
was asking of me,
when my misunderstanding
wiped away
the ‘data’ of the day,
was: do I want to delete
my dependence on this
all-too-easy crutch for recall,

or instead,
etch this near-perfect day
into the mirrored depths
of my memory

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