Arriving and in between
When that in-between feeling kept moving me along...
As I lay in bed the other night, I remembered a hike my sweetie John and I took recently along a ridge trail in Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia. The trail was glorious—a carpet of moss everywhere, a dense grip of coniferous trees, a tumble of rocks underfoot, and a crisp coldness in the air. There was a beautiful quiet, and the mood reminded me of the northern mountains of Kyoto.
It took me a while to relax into the hike, however, and to take in the moss, and trees, and rocks and let myself be taken in by it, too. At some point I arrived, I remember thinking as I walked onward. So often I feel like I’m in between and never quite arrive. And here I was, feeling like I had arrived. Arrived where? In a place that seemed familiar and also mysterious. We hiked among moss, trees, and rocks for hours, mostly in silence.
LIKE / NOT LIKE
After the hike, I was back in my studio. I felt that in-between place again, which is typical whenever I start creating, but I wanted that feeling of arriving again—that feeling of the familiar and also mysterious.
I wanted to take a few of my new handmade brushes, dip them in black ink, and see what marks we could make together. But there was hesitation in using any of those precious objects of art that I had made them into, and I liked them all too much. Maybe I wouldn’t like any of the marks they would make.
I wanted to explore other kinds of marks, too, and break free from my usual way of mark-making, which often has a script-like quality to it. Maybe these new handmade brushes could offer that, and I wanted to be open to it.
Initial marks are often erratic and shaky. I knew it would take a bit; it always does. It took me a while to accept seeing different marks and feeling different things because I didn’t like the marks and didn’t like the feelings.
It took one day, then another, and another of being in my studio making marks. I slowed down, trying again and again to make marks that appealed. Then one day I stopped trying and moved to the way the brush wanted and the way my mood was.
It’s not that I didn’t like them. I did, but the in-between feeling told me there was more.
There was a stack of mark-making papers, and I hadn’t arrived yet. I didn’t know where I was going either.
COLOR / BLACK AND WHITE
In the online course I’m taking, “Perfectly Imperfect: Discovering Your Visual Language,” color was introduced, and the instructor, Lorna Crane, made it look so cool and inviting. I’ve never been good at color, aside from natural colors in my artwork.
She suggested color oil pastels to draw over and under our mark-making pages. So I tried that. I made different kinds of marks, holding oil pastels in my hand, and I was intrigued by those marks. The colors were too much, though—overpowering and jarring. None of them were natural. And none I really liked.
I found old monoprints in my art cabinet, colorful experiments using leaves, and I tried again, holding the oil pastels in my hand. The marks were curious, unfamiliar, and different, keeping me going. But only so far. The colors were confusing, a kind of out-of-control and too-much-ness of color and texture and riot.
Abandoning color, I went back to black and white, using watercolor crayons this time on those original mark-making pages. Something was different—the layering of blended techniques, the washes of gray, the marks of white on black and black on white.
Something was familiar—I recognized my style in the movements, moods, and marks. And also mysterious because it looked different. The blacks and whites and grays were expressing their own visual language, too.
I had arrived at something. But I hadn’t arrived at it yet. The in-between feeling was still moving.
NOT YET / FINALLY
For all the days I spent in my studio this month, I hadn’t felt like I had arrived. And I wanted to. Was I chasing something, I wondered? Was I trying to discover something I hadn’t yet figured out in my artwork? That thing that was distinct enough, both familiar and mysterious, that I could recognize and honestly like. I wanted to feel it as much as see it.
That in-between feeling was moving me to try something else, something more. I cut up several of the latest creations into smaller squares and rectangles. Maybe it was a way for me to focus or control something that still had “too much ness.” It became more manageable and, in that way, exciting.
Like the hike, it took me a while to relax into this process, and take it in, and let myself be taken in by it, too.
As I arranged and rearranged the images, I liked what was happening in these curious juxtapositions—how a smaller image could change the focus and dynamic of a whole larger image. I liked what I was doing. I finally liked the imagery. I felt happy, and there was flow. The in-between feeling was waning, and I knew I was onto something.
I had finally arrived, and I was going to revel in this moment for as long as possible because I knew that after that, I would be in between again, waiting to arrive.
Arriving in between,
LouLou
