mcauleyhouseartists: Repost of an old favorite

Monday, March 26, 2018

Repost of an old favorite

Wanted to share an inspiring guest post from 2013 by Debbie Amylon--McAuley House volunteer.

Pathway Home-Deb Amylon

When I was young, I loved making cards for my family for every special occasion. I also loved decorating the Betty Crocker cakes I baked with designs and letters made from beautiful colored icing. When I was a little older, I got to make small mosaics from painted tiles that my mother fired in her kiln in our kitchen. Making things has always brought me a sense of peace and happiness. It is my favorite way to play.
As an adult, painting is one of the things I like to do most. When I paint, I usually get lost in the process. I have a vague idea of what I want to do, but I seem to find out about it as I go. The colors I choose express a lot about what I am feeling. The paintings I am making right now relate to qigong, a practice I am learning to help me manage chronic pain. During my qigong meditation, I have been focusing on the unfathomable size of the universe and God’s love. The images in these paintings express my feelings about my relationship to that infinite source and the healing power of love. As I practice both the active exercises and the breathing meditations, and paint the beautiful images that I imagine and remember from the past and from a future I can only anticipate, I feel a sense of peacefulness and happiness that frees me from the pain I may be experiencing in the moment. When I paint, I am able to explore these images and feelings for myself and for others to see.

Back to the Universe

Small Universe

Harmony of the Universe

About the Art Program

5 Ways to Grow as an Artist

So how would a Cassatt or a Henri or Picasso approach painting differently than we do today? How might this heartfelt fear of others controlling our painting process impact our self-understanding as artists? Here are five possible answers:

1. Making a successful picture is not the goal. Think of periods, such as childhood, when we grew, our self-understanding changed and we became more of who we are. There was an endless stream of events where we expressed ourselves and slowly began to discover the things that pleased us. As with the sense of freedom characterized above, the entire payoff was growth. The events of life when we grow are the things that happen along the way. Making art should be exactly the same. Paintings are just the series of events or steps we take. Let them go. Keep moving. Or as Henri implored, “Keep living.”

2. The painting process is always a beginning. As soon as the freshness evaporates (we are bored or lost or acquire interest in something else), stop. Do not think in terms of finishing. Picasso lectures eloquently on this. Finish is the death of our work because it means we are painting an expectation or “to be like” and that puts the brakes on painting to see and feel more deeply. Every beginning is a new prompt, a new point of departure. Begin everything. Finish nothing.

3. Ignore non-artist authorities. Juries, the grantors, the gallery, the direction from above are just so many fingers in our pie. All external measures are dangerous because they not only push us to performing, as opposed to creating, but their sense of worth takes over our own. This is precisely what Parisian artists fought against.

4. Get into a prolonged creative process. Have dozens of paintings in your studio that have been abandoned for one reason or another, left in various stages, unfinished but always complete as expressions of who you were at that moment. Work on several paintings simultaneously. You are not making shoes.

5. Furnish the world with your beauty, let the world see, touch and feel who you are. Scary I know. It is so much easier to hide within safe fortresses, the sources of praise and dignity that we can count on by pleasing our audience. This is the dreaded condition called style. We cannot be free to be who we are if we are not always risking being who we are in front of others.