day #317 - Wrappings

I was expecting for this to be a great day for painting but it didn't pan out! I'm a bit worried that this isn't the first time this has happened, so I need to be a bit more vigilant. I spent quite some time photographing the venus piece, then did some additions (I doubt I did more than 20 or 30 pastel-strokes) to the heart monster and was expecting that I'd do some new piece but instead the day got wasted in editing mosaics of my photographed and scanned pieces. It's a very tedious process I might have to relax a bit about archiving; it's not very practical spending days to photograph a piece. Anyway, what has been good about today? For a start I'm feeling that I'm ready to empty two woodboards which is going to allow me to start new pieces; I'm pretty excited about this, I've been dying to paint something new, big and loose! What else? I am afraid I can't find much. Well, I did work a bit more on my pastels technique, I got inspired to keep working with intense colors (I love them so much!); I also got better understanding of which pastels in my set are not that good (and I should start by replacing them with a better brand) and also I got thinking about working with better papers. Of course, (and this isn't negligible) I did for once more, my daily efforts, and I'm thirsty for more!

And here I am, about to go to bed and I decide to sign the venustrap and remove it from the hardboard. I'm left with lots of black acrylic paint that I don't want to throw away so I get the idea of picking up my sketchbook and doing some gestural sketches until I run out of paint. It's been good, though now I feel very stressed since I spent some moments "doodling" but a lot of time, taking the crappy photographs to upload them here. I feel very angry that I did a half-assed effort and now I'm left with unevenly lit and half cropped photos. It's starting to feel how irrational this effort of trying to put everything on the blog is. I'm even feeling anger. At what? Angry of course towards myself for forcing me to have this blog. Here we are, in a realtime crisis, prompted by the very blog.
I
feel
angry
I feel unable to just drop this blog, and bend "its rules" but at the same time I'd like for be more flexible and more respectful of my need for self-care and rest. And lately the blog, the photoshooting, the scannings and instagram, they've all been chipping away from my time for rest. And yet, I just can't drop this. So what does "this", this urgency and obsessiveness satisfy? There is a worry. A worry that if I don't do it, if I'm not consistent, if I don't keep habits, I am worthless. This feels very deeply rooted in my childhood. My primary caretaker comes to mind though I can't say for what exactly. I wonder if pooping training ever got ..intense? I don't know, it's all a blank. But How would my life be without such habits? It would be dangerous and disasterous! The thought "I don't want to be lost again" comes to mind. I'd be lost without habits and consistency. Here we are, let it sink in. I would be lost. Sad, scared, hurting, I can feel all these intense feelings crying from within. If I didn;t have a habit, I would be doubtful of myself. And how couldn't I be? I wouldn't ever paint (that's what the fear says), I wouldn't ever record my progress; I'd be nowhere. So, this strategy, satisfies a need of order, self-acceptance, movement and growth. Or at least it's aiming for those. The strategy however is failing to address what my current frustration is expressing: The need for order and purpose (I'm angry that I'm doing empty rituals that don't serve my primary purpose), I need the space for self-expression, freedom, spontaneity, rest, self-care, trust in my integrity and my lifestyle, comfort and efficiency. Let's connect to these needs again. Order/purpose, growth and efficiency. I'm stuck in my day doing tasks that don't serve much. I feel unfree to choose what serves me best in the moment and take care of myself. There is not much space for spontaneity. Rest and self-care are in the backseat. And worse, I don't trust in myself choosing what is right for me, maintaining my artistic efforts without the whip. Here it is: I don't trust myself, I don't accept myself (since I don't think I am good and capable), there is no space for integrity and finally I lose connection to myself. By not choosing to trust myself, and choosing to force myself, I choose another principal and disconnect from myself.
So here we are, a strategy that does create growth, stability and order, but in the process sacrifices self-connection, self-acceptance, self-respect, integrity, self-expression, authenticity, real growth, and self care. Now it's obvious that the only step forward, is to accept both sides' hurt (the one desparate to grow and not willing to trust, and the other one desparate to grow but needing trust and freedon) and decide with integrity which is only to let go of these rituals. I can't sustain the blog, it doesn't serve me. I need to trust myself that I will serve me if I'm ever to grow and this is very paintful and scary as a thought. What if I drop me? What if the kid drops the expensive egg? At least I will have grown, I will learn and in the process I will have trusted and understood better who I am. Oh shit, it feels so obvious that this is the way and no other.
I'm glad this is an anonymous blog, it's helping make this outpouring both safe, and thus honest, and at the same time it's serving the blogs purpose: to leave other artists with a diary of some of my struggles. So good, I drop the blog, it feels right inside; I feel calm. I don't know if I'll be dropping it now, or on day 365. This is to be decided. I'll have to see into what does dropping on a "round number" serve. A similar process like the above, but not for today. Today, I'll focus on the next strategy.
So I can save myself the time of writing the post and photographing, editing and cropping the artwork. But this work, is serving two additional purposes: The first one is that while I write, part of the effort (I'd say a 10%) is to look at my day's work and celebrate what has been good about it. I feel I still need that, or I don't. Maybe I'm past this point, maybe it's time for me to test not praising my work and see if I start building negativity around it, or if it's automatic now. Secondly, the photos I take, and the folders with dates that I make, help me revise my work: See my overall progress, find something specific, see the amount of what I've been doing when I feel down, compare the evolution of my longer pieces. In other words, what does this strategy serve? It serves me when I feel insecure to regain trust, hope and confidence. It helps me have clarity and understanding of many things regarding my work (how fast I work, how the pieces evolve, my progress, what I'm focusing on). What doesn't it serve? Efficiency, and rest. What if google photos did that for me? What if I took lazy photos of everything I did, and allowed my phone to store everything in a chronological order. Wouldn't that be enough, for me to see the bulk, the progress etc of my work? Perhaps not the evolution; since this can only be seen when I overlap the different stages of a piece, but what if I did this effort only for those pieces, and not for the sketches etc? I can feel sadness, sadness for having to leave beauty aside. Because this blog was orderly and beautiful (well, today's photos were not) but usually they are beautiful.
I can feel the need to mourn for the lost beauty. Yes, orderly is beautiful, but there are bigger fish to catch here. Rest is beauty, more creative time is beauty. I feel somewhat ready to move past this too. So here it is, today's title couldn't had been more to the point. I'm wrapping up with the blog, I'm wrapping up with writing eulogies of my paintings, I'm wrapping up this orderly archive of my daily efforts and instead I'm converting it into a more time-efficient one. Except for the days that I work on big pieces in which case I can make a conscious effort to compare the before and the after. At the same time, I can occasionally use the scanner to mass-scan my sketchbooks which I plan on doing anyway... oh shit...
And here's the discussion of the 3rd and biggest timesink. Photographing, and scanning my artwork for archiving. Because, I forgot to mention, that aside from the daily photos I take and edit for my blog, I also take (the next day) good quality photos with natural light and then edit them. And now that I got the scanner, I also scan the pieces, multiple times with different rotations and combine them to elimiate paper texture. So here we are; reality check:
I've reached a point where I have developed a few different workflows for photographing different kinds of artwork, depending on whether I want harsh texture, relief effect or not. These are good and useful. I've also cultivated my eye for it. I've also over the years accumulated a lot of work of varying degrees of skillfulness and worth and I feel now confident enough, to let some go. Some I feel confident enough that I will be able to reproduce so no need to archive them "in the best quality for 1:1 reproductions or bigger". Let's see: Watercolor pieces probably would still benefit from good photography. Plus, they are small so a single photo is enough. Probably even minor pieces that could be scanned, they are faster when photographed, but at least I have the option if the weather doesn't allow. Pastel pieces also would benefit from good photography. These ones are multipiece photoshootings taking multiple hours and days to complete. I wonder if there are pieces I could be less serious with. I have a few pieces in mind, but those pieces are few. Maybe for watercolors and pastels I still need to produce a lot more before I can feel safe. I'll accept that for now. But before, I'll reconnect again with the fear of having a ok "looking" pastel piece at a low resolution. I can feel sadness, the sense of loss. Funny, loss. It was only Wednesday that I was repeating to my therapy group that I fail to understand what loss is. Perhaps, and yet, I can feel this sadness in many things. Maybe, I'm so familiar with it that I try not to connect to it. So once again. How does it feel, to have a good piece, but not have a nice photo of it, and not have the opportunity to take it? It hurts. In damn hurts. The regrets, the pain the lost opportunity. And what is this lost opportunity that I keep repeating?Insecurity, fear, sinking; all that which could had been, but is not. Emptiness, and a inner struggling that doesn't want to accept this state. The state of irrevocability. That's deep, we're entering chambers I haven't been in since the early years probably.
Irrevocability. Irrevocability. Acceptance, of that which is, release of that which isn't. Acceptance of the pain associated with the "what if". Can I live with the pain? The pain of that which wasn't? I've done it many times, but can I do it again and again? I know (rationally) that I can, but internally? Can I? Can I live, knowing that this (another) painting left my hands, or got ruined and I'll never know how it was? Past memories of such incidents are coming to my mind; the hurt, the doubt, the yelling "I can't see it! How was it? was it good? Was it good enough? Was I conceited or was it truly good?". The discomfort of not knowing. The discomfort of not trusting that I'm good, that I don't need that particular piece, that the pieces I've made now are so much better. What if... The need for knowing, order, security and the need for self-acceptance, self-respect, peace of mind and hope. Can I find them elsewhere? Can I find order and security elsewhere? Or better yet, can I feel secure, without order (since order is a means to security)? Security. Perhaps security is built on integrity, self-trust/faith in onself through self-connection, self-understanding and proven competence. Maybe I can keep working at expressing myself, taking care of myself, becoming automomous; and perhaps that way I will feel more secure. I feel spent.
To wrap up, time for me to accept a certain degree of letting go. It feels as if a crack has opened in that direction. Maybe I can relax a bit, let a few things go down the everflow. Will I be able to choose per piece if it's worthy a multicolumn-photography archival, multiple photoshootings to achieve different texturing effects or a single photo from afar, just scanning or just photographing on my cellphone? I sure hope so, I feel somewhat open to it. I still want to scan my sketchbooks. Time for bed.

Oh, and for anybody who read this far, the technique I used, is taught online in the Compassion course by Thom Bond from the New York center of Nonviolent Communication; better termed "needs-based relating". It has transformed my life and has given me numerous tools to work internally. The following exercise is a very useful template that can be applied in many contexts.