The Warm Spot

Art process and thoughts.

When I was younger my favorite art practice was scribbling until I saw something. This was slowly edged out for more intentional creation as I began to accept commissions and follow trends because money puts food on the table and you can’t draw when you’re hungry.

These days I find myself coming back to many things I didn’t know I’d forgotten. Circles meeting at the other end and old hobbies and joys resurfacing. There’s more room in me need now for sitting quietly and letting these things happen.

It’s a double edged, and sometimes sharp, silver lining. There’s more room because there’s been loss.

I’m still learning how to describe it but with the neuro disorder (FND) came a loss in how I approached art. Lines move and tangle, behind my eyelids and on the canvas. Squares warp into elongated diamonds, circles squish and even though my grid lines tell me where center is I always feel somewhere to the left of it- spinning and unmoored.

In return though- my brain has reprioritized color, silhouettes and shapely blobs. I have to make a mess and sift around for waypoints to latch onto and grow something from rather than a floating expanse of disconnect across my canvas.

There’s also the brain fog which I cannot explain to even the most empathetic person who has never had it. It’s not just being tired. It’s like being slapped with a brick wall and suddenly your brain doesn’t have enough energy to complete and string together very simple steps- like drawing a circle.

Can you imagine how frustrating it is as an artist to wake up some days and not be able to think your way through drawing a circle? Or to have complete ability one moment and then it’s washed away with the next because you used up too much brain energy for the day?

All of this to say I don’t really get to decide what I draw right now. If I have the energy and desire to create, often I need to slap around some colors and squiggles until I see something shiny I want to dig out of the mess. Conserves a lot more skull fuel.

I think this feeling, which I’ve always had with my art but much more lately now that I’m revisiting more intuitive creating methods from childhood, is why I’ve always liked this one quote attributed to Michelangelo. It goes something along the lines of:

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set her free.”

Every day the loss hurts. A raw wound like a chunk of something essential has been torn from me but beneath the throbbing ouch of it all I’m reclaiming something else I didn’t even realize I’d lost… maybe because it’s something that can’t be taken and just went into hibernation.

Wonder. The ‘ooo’ that comes with seeing a face in a pattern or a butterfly hidden neath a fern. The exploration, the finding.

This piece is called The Warm Spot. It’s another one dedicated to my darling Hana beyond the rainbow bridge, her stardust returned to the universe and glittering around every corner of my home.

In this I found her in the squish and swirls, resting in the heat of squiggle flames, never to be cold again.

Below is a tiny time lapse vid. :)

• Toodles Doodles