What it means to practice art

-2015

It has really only been in the last year that I have fully embraced the title of artist. Previously, I’d break it down to writer and/or photographer (depending on which stage of “I quit!” I was in). But never artist.

I pictured an artist as someone who paints or draws or sculpts or molds. Never someone who takes pictures or puts down words. When I dressed up as an eccentric artist for Halloween several years ago, some of the comments I received were, “But you don’t paint” and “You can’t even draw.” Let us set aside the whole point of Halloween and dressing up as anything you like to address those statements alone.

By its very definition, artist means, “a person who produces works in any of the arts that are primarily subject to aesthetic criteria.” {Dictionary.com}

Aesthetic? “relating to the philosophy of aesthetics; concerned with notions such as the beautiful and the ugly.” {Dictionary.com}

How does writing and photography not also fit?

All the same, I never saw it myself, so I can forgive anyone else who wonders. Yet, I believe every act of creation, whether it be a book or a piece of paper with doodles, is art. Something created where nothing was.

That’s what I do. I create. I arrange words where a painter might arrange colors. I seek light and composition where a sculptor might twist clay. We all see what could be and then make it, swaying along to the music that is creativity.

Sometimes I hear the call to try something new. I feel a stirring to branch out, or to change something in color to deep blacks and whites. Sometimes words call out to me in whispers of poetry, begging release. And sometimes a whole new medium asks me to just play, give it a try, have fun, no pressure.

So I swing by the crafty section in the store and grab the first thing I see that winks at me, flirting for the chance of meeting and seeing if we could connect. Watercolors this time, the kind packaged for kids, with its tiny paintbrush and no instructions other than how to get the paints out of the clothes they will inevitably find themselves bound to. I bring them home and set them out and wait for the inspiration.

The truth is, when it isn’t your regular medium, the inspiration may only come as a gentle call: “Let’s play.”

Several months ago, I bought a larger art journal. I am not by nature a scrapbooker, despite my photography and absolute love of story-telling, but I felt called to its wide, thick pages. I felt I would do something with it involving pictures, but without a clue, I simply sat it on my bookshelf and waited. It was this journal that I pulled out, ready to add to its stark white pages, ready to play, ready to just practice art.

I had already written hard words for the day, and blogged, and processed pictures for business, and cleaned the kitchen. I wasn’t bored, but rather I was feeling a need to delve into something new and beautiful. And really, I just wanted to prove to a part of my negative brain that I could make art and it didn’t need to be sell-worthy or loved by ANYONE. I just needed to practice, to get outside of my head of “make it perfect!” and just swish colors together until I felt it was finished.

That’s all. A half hour spent swirling and dipping the tiny, cheap paintbrush into color, sometimes not sure at all which color I’d get (Oh, that’s orange, not red at all!), all for the sake of art – just practice. Just nurturing that side of me. Just taking care of ME in the way that I needed to in that moment, in the middle of work, in the middle of life.

The end result is by far not what anyone would classify as brilliant art. But I love it. Because it’s a reflection of my heart, the way I see the world, all colorful and bright and beautiful, even in the midst of hard things, even in the middle of clouds that turn everything to grey, even in the middle of continued healing. The colors speak to me in a swirl of happy, a reminder to keep living this beautiful life, to keep hoping in the best of people, to stay open to the possibilities of possibility.

Creating for the mere sake of creativity is one of the most nurturing things I can do for myself. Practicing art is permission to seek, to experiment, to listen, to be still, to journey onward. It is good for my soul, for my heart, for my life in the day to day hustle that is keeping up with breathing. When I write, when I take photos, when I experiment, when I paint, when I see, I am reminded to live, to press on fully and as brilliantly as I can.