Beneath the Mountain

I think I was nine or ten when I began to become interested in image-making, and then I spent much time as a teenager ‘copying’ the works of artists I liked. (Those were the good old pre-Internet days when time existed in greater abundance and there were fewer distractions.)

Having CFS, I wasn’t well enough to study Fine Arts at uni, and in hindsight I was naive to think I could. I didn’t understand what art was, nor would the ‘student art community’ have been a suitable place for me. In the end I studied Art History instead—all theory and no practice. Again, I’m not sure if it was the best choice, but it did keep me busy for several years, and perhaps that was what I needed at the time. However, it meant that my art doings, already affected by illness, were relegated to the background of my life—to the holidays, and the rare occasions when I had a surge of energy and inspiration. 

And I still didn’t know what art really was. How it was made. What it meant. The power it could have.

Perhaps illness was partly to blame, as it has a tendency to blunt the senses and blur understanding. For me, at least. I dwelt only on the surface of life.

And perhaps family, school and culture didn’t give me the education I truly needed (not to apportion any specific blame—no one can teach what they don’t themselves know). I did stumble on certain ideas, read books from the library that I didn’t fully understand, that resonated with something deep within. Yet it wasn’t enough. I fell into forgetting, and what I needed to create got locked up inside—suppressed—hidden—buried.

I think I needed time. Time to be ready. Time enough to learn about what is from the right perspective (i.e. a non-western, ecological and ancient one). And time to let things brew.

Still, it feels like so much time has gone to waste when I could have been creating. And much is still suppressed. I’m just beginning to find my way.

I understand that there are seasons in life, and in the creative process: times of fruiting, times of fallowness, and times of filling up, in readiness to flower. But my journey is one of extremes, with low lows, when I doubt myself entirely, lose contact with Source, and feel bereft and lost. I sometimes have a great deal of trouble thinking of myself as an artist, taking myself seriously (when I am not being inappropriately grandiose). Likely this is normal for most creatives. We’re sensitive, prone to mood swings and uncertainty. 

Yet illness puts a different slant on things: the lack of energy limits activity; disturbed cognitive function limits understanding; disconnection and the inability to receive drives creativity underground, where it becomes inaccessible.

Life can be turned upside down and inside out when the heart is tired, and closes itself to the world.

Yes, creative urges do return, along with the energy to act on them. Yet I don’t know when they will come, or for how long.

I’m not in control.

This is as it should be, even if it makes things difficult, and painful. There is so much more that I need to learn from my life journey, from my body, from all of the hidden and buried things.

I don’t know if this image-making will ever form a part of my living. I was pondering whether to have some of my work professionally digitised, so I can have some good quality cards made. Maybe even giclée prints of a few of my best pieces. But during a global crisis is not a great time for such considerations. Nor do I feel comfortable going down that path—for my ability to make art may, like my ability to write, disappear at any time, with the unpredictable waxing and waning of my health. 

What’s more, my inner critic says, Is your work really good enough?—even as I try not to pay any attention.

I don’t know what will happen—to myself or the world (though I hope both world and I will learn from these strange times)—only that I must keep making images, whenever the desire to do so aligns with my bodymind’s capability. I must keep exploring the depths.

So I’ll just leave this mountain here. 

Beneath the Mountain, watercolours and gouache on gesso prepared card, 2020