The clock in the kitchen holds a steady glow of 12:30. I huddle under my blankets to keep out the apartment cold and wait impatiently for sleep to overtake me. I do not want to sleep tonight, I want to continue to create and draw…..
…..Flashback to earlier in the evening. My creative dry spell has suddenly broken and images begin to fill my head and pour out of my hand. I sit at my art studio, lite only by a 40 watt antique lamp, and try to capture the images on the blank artist page. The images flit in my head, like elusive butterflies, with me trying to catch them and pin them down with bold strokes of blue and subtle shades of purple. Just at the height of creativity I reach the end of my sketchbook. Frustrated I flip through it, trying to find another blank page. Each page is filled with unfinished designs and abandoned drawings that were not intense enough to keep my attention. I give up finally, set the sketchbook aside and look out the patio door, to the city outside. A few people in the apartment across from me are still awake, one doing dishes, the other watching TV. I have an engagement early in the morning, and tonight I already know I will cancel it. When the butterfly images come they demand full attention, forcing me to put regular life on hold. As I look out at the city, the lampposts spots in the darkness, the staples sign a bright beacon in the distance, I wonder if artists really choose to be artists, or if it’s the art that chooses them. For true artists the need to create is as imperative as breathing, and to not create the same as suffocating. I forced myself to suffocate for years, burying my intense need to create under ‘have to’s’ and ‘should’s’ until I could hold my breathe no longer and gasped for air, causing a small earthquake in my life – jobs quit, art supplies bought, studios created. The damage has now settled and I find myself doing exactly what I should have been doing all along. There is nothing left for me to do that night, so I close the curtain, turn off the lamp and force myself to sleep.
…Flash forward to the next morning. I am jolted out of dreams by the annoying song I choose as my cell phone alarm. I awake quickly, and flip the alarm off, making a mental note to change the song. The creative fury of the night before is still swirling inside me. I wait impatiently through morning coffee for the art store to open, and as soon as my clock hits 9:30 I am dressed and in Island Blue. I quickly scan the sketchbooks, looking for the size I need. I have grown wearied with drawing large pieces. The large images bore me and I feel they cover up my true talent because I can not fill them with the intricate details that I do with my smaller pieces. With the large pieces, the mixed media becomes the focus and the drawing is secondary. I have forced myself to work in large format for monetary reasons, but realized the night before that money is not worth forcing myself to create an image that I do not believe in and holds no emotional interest for me. It becomes just a picture with no substance. I am still a naive enough artist to believe in artistic integrity.
I find the 11X14 size I need and carefully test the paper between thumb and forefinger to see the texture. It is the right texture so I buy it and am then heading up the Fort street street to Chapters. This morning I am filled with an intense drive to create and need an uncluttered and undistracted place to do it in. As I walk up the street, a slight rain starts, a soft spring feeling one, and not the heavy cold of winter. When I reach Chapters it has also just opened and Starbucks is nearly empty. I order coffee – although I don’t need any – but think that if I am gong to use the establishment for my personal art studio I should buy something. So I count out change for a Pike blend coffee and put the fresh coffee carefully aside on the checkered booth table I sit at, the one where I can see the fireplace from one angle and outside the wall of windows from the other. I set up my art supplies, and begin to draw the one image that has haunted me since the previous evening. Soon I am lost into the world of creation, my gaze focused on the the shapes and colors and lines that come out of me. The art comes easily today, pouring out of my heart and hand, and I watch the creation just as much as I participate in it. I do not know which image will come next – which color I will use, but I create with no fear, just a calm confidence the image will work and it will be whole and complete. There are many times when I have had to chase after the butteflies, grab at them them with large nets,but there are also these, more rare times, when they come to me, landing softly on my hand until I am finished with them.
Starbucks begins to fill and the noise starts – a man constantly sniffing, coffee being ground, two students studying over one laptop. This morning the noise does not bother me or break into my artistic concentration. It settles into a background hum that I barely hear. Occasionally I take a sip of coffee, but it is mostly forgotten and soon grows cold. This too does not bother me. When I am in a state of real engagement with my work the only thing that bothers me is someone breaking into my concentration, and pulling my attention away to something else they want me to hear or to see. This morning though, the world leaves me alone, and it is not until two hours later that I look up and reengage with life. The blank white sheet of paper is no longer white, but covered in hearts in amongst hearts, and small circles with designs growing around them and through them. The drawing came so easily that I question whether it is any good, because isn’t an artist suppose to suffer for their art? I take a moment to look about the coffee shop before glancing back the work. It is good I think, it is the image that wanted to come out. I lean back now, contented, the creative storm quelled, the butterfly image caught.
