Once an Artist, Always an Artist

Even when there's no work to show for it.

Detail from “Anticipation”

Back when I was living in NYC, I was in a major drought as far as my art was concerned. This was nothing new for me - it has plagued me my entire life.

A fellow artist friend stopped over one day and saw me standing frozen in front of a blank, freshly-gessoed panel.

He took his thumb, made a few thumbprints in the center, and said, “There. Just start.” He later wrote to me and said:

In retrospect, I see that his words of wisdom could be applied to more than visual art.

That thumbprint somehow managed to help me break through the inertia, and I went on to paint one of my favorite paintings ever. A whole series, in fact.

Was that experience the end of my dry spells? I wish! I went through another one for several months, where I would literally feel nauseous when I would pass by my work table. I was in the middle of some pretty serious health challenges, so I guess my body was telling me to put my attention elsewhere.

While I was in art school, I had a studio mate who would be diligently painting still lifes daily while I had two working speeds - fast and furious or stuck in idle.

I’m still like that, and not just related to my art.

I once went a whole year before posting a blog on my website.

Now, I have at least a half dozen posts started in my Dashboard here on Substack.

I used to fret about this. Massively.

I’m not productive enough.

I’m wasting precious time.

My work style is so irregular.

Uh…yeah! That is literally the hallmark of a Vata-type person.

Now, I recognize just how much creativity imbues my life every single day.

The thing is, whenever someone would ask me, “What do you do?” (literally, by the way, my least favorite question in the world) I never said, “I’m a painter.” I always said, “I’m an artist.”

That’s a pretty broad term.

If you have lived your life as an artist, whether or not you’re making any art, you know exactly what I mean.

So much time is spent (not wasted) in observation mode.

Daydreaming.

I often thought that if I were more of a representational artist, the process might be easier.

But I think it has something to do with my lifelong love of abstraction.

When I was five years old, my mother took me to art classes in the basement of the Detroit Institute of Arts. I can still conjure up the smell of tempera paint and clay.

Crayons.

I have very few early childhood memories, but that one is strong.

After class, I would race to look at Native American art, African art, and Egyptian art. I was fascinated by the drawings on the mummies.

I always wanted to be an artist.

My love of abstraction was born in that museum. I had little interest in the intricate and representational work of the masters.

I loved to look at lines. And color. Shapes.

As I got older, the art that made my heart leap was that of young children.

And folk artists.

Their art seemed to be a combination of abstraction and representation. It wasn’t perfectly crafted. It was a little chaotic and messy, just like me.

Every once in a while, I think, “I’m going to draw things.” It never happens.

I have the blank sketchbooks to prove it.

My least favorite class in art school was figure drawing. My second least favorite was still lifes.

I probably could have saved myself a lot of money because, in the end, I made art that just flowed out of me.

Almost always, abstraction.

I am my worst and best critic. If I don’t like something I’ve created, you could offer me a lot of money, and chances are I wouldn’t sell it.

Conversely, if I like a painting or a drawing or a photograph that I’ve made, it doesn’t matter who else likes or doesn’t like it.

It needs to feel authentically mine.

It’s interesting (to me, at least!) that most of my creative time these days is spent writing.

I never fancied myself a writer.

I haven’t painted or drawn anything since I moved here in 2020.

All of my paintings are locked up in a storage unit in Jersey City because of a bad moving decision (I was exhausted and not thinking straight.)

But, in writing this post, I’m realizing just how intricately connected writing and painting have been for me.

Way back in high school, I started incorporating text into my paintings. At first, it was just random letters and numbers and words.

Then, a line or two of poetry.

When my life got more complicated, as life does, I found myself using my paintings like journals; only I would cover up my private thoughts with paint so only fragments of them were visible.

“Don’t You Ever Smile?”

And then, I remember the day in my studio when I let some of these thoughts out for the world to see. Just some, though, not all.

I have always liked to work on big, hard surfaces, never flexible ones like canvas. I would paste paper down on wood panels because I loved the feel of pencil and crayon on it.

Once, I did a painting about a disastrous trip to Paris. How can a trip to Paris be disastrous? Let me count the ways.

“Misadventure”

It was in an exhibition of Michigan artists, and I’d had a casual conversation with the curator about my failed trip. My “Misadventure.”

The Sunday after the show opened, I was sitting in a restaurant having brunch with my husband. I opened the arts section of the local Detroit paper to see a photo of “Misadventure” with a telling of my trip.

Let me say that there were other people involved in this trip, and so my honest journal-like painting sort of bit me in the you-know-what.

Oh well. I learned a lot from the trip, the painting, and the putting it out there.

Writing this post is bringing up a flood of memories of my more active making art days.

When I was younger, I always used oil paint. Oil sticks. Oil-based household paint. I never liked the look or feel of acrylics.

But I stopped painting for a while when I had two young children, and when I resumed, I could no longer tolerate oil paint, turpentine, and other toxic products. I got headaches. I was nauseous. The healthier me today is grateful I got those signals.

I was not fond of acrylics or much of a watercolor painter. What was I to do?

I turned back to crayons, pencils, collage, and guache—water-based house paint.

Detail of drawing

I started taking more photographs and eventually had a teeny darkroom built in our basement.

It was my refuge.

I started to notice that even when taking photographs, I still often see things abstractly.

When I was over at the Audubon Preserve across the road recently, I was in a reverie, looking at the shapes in the water.

Atwood Brook

Truth be told, I often like the details of my paintings as much, if not more, than the whole.

I love looking for abstraction, even in my abstract paintings.

When I scroll through my photographs, there are so many where I’ve zoomed in on Nature.

In 2018, while living in a dirty urban environment, I started to think seriously about where I could move to be surrounded by Nature.

To breathe fresh air.

To live somewhere where I could walk out my door into the woods.

And see mountains.

Medicine for my city lungs.

I painted this on a giant sheet of cardboard.

“Medicine for My City Lungs”

I started loving the color green.

It’s the color of the heart chakra. Doesn’t that just figure that our hearts and Nature would be so intricately connected?

My process of making art has always been instinctual. Dreamlike.

But the business side of it…UGH.

I have never kept track of who bought my paintings. I stopped updating my bio years ago.

I never enjoyed the whole gallery thing. It was downright painful.

That being said, one of the kindest things an observer of my art ever said to me was during the last open studio I participated in the year before I moved.

People would come into my space, which was 3/4 home and 1/4 studio. My loft was filled with plants and stones, and I always had frankincense burning.

Sometimes, they would comment more on my lilac velvet sofa than on my art. Or they would say, “There’s nice energy in here!” That always made me smile.

But, in this instance, I noticed a young man lingering in front of one of my paintings - “I Had a Happy Childhood,” so I approached him and introduced myself.

We talked for the longest time. Something in my work struck a chord with him.

I told him a bit about how I’d veered down the holistic health path after a long illness. I don’t remember much else about the conversation.

My art isn’t pretty. It isn’t delicate. And I know it’s probably not many people’s cups of tea.

I always like to say that we don’t like the same books in a library. Or paintings in a gallery or museum.

But, on the rare occasion that someone gets it and appreciates it, that’s just icing on the cake for an artist.

After the open studio, the young man, Leandro, left a comment on my Instagram post:

“Barbara, in a few minutes with you in your home/studio I could understand the meaning of the word holistic. You’re all in your artwork and it’s so rare and precious…”

I share this not to pat myself on the back or pump up my ego but to remind myself that art (in any form), as personal and vital as it is to the artist, can also gift something to the viewer.

Why do artists put themselves out there? Especially uber-sensitive introverted ones such as myself. I think D.W. Winnicott summed it up when he said:

“Artist’s are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.”

I daresay it’s not about the money. Being true to yourself doesn’t often pay the bills. The starving artist archetype is no joke. I’m not starving, but very few artists I know are making a living strictly on their art (including writers.)

No, it’s almost hard to describe what drives us to create. I sometimes imagine we’ve spent lifetimes being artists. If I close my eyes, I can remember the reverie I felt as a little girl coloring with crayons, both inside the lines and out.

Having studied energy healing for many years, I know the energy of creating something. I feel it in my body when the seed of a painting or something I want to write springs to mind.

My heart beats faster when I see something in Nature and look through the lens of my camera.

Lately, ideas have flooded my sleep, meditations, and dishwashing. I couldn’t be more grateful.

We all have it within us.

Someone who loves to cook probably feels it when they dream up a new recipe.

Or a builder making plans.

It’s a pure, sacred energy when we connect to Source with our own process or by experiencing someone else’s.

The first time I stumbled upon a Cy Twombly painting, I cried. I had gone to New York with my friend to see a DeKooning exhibit at the Met and went over to the MOMA on a whim, where there was a Twombly retrospective. It was love at first sight.

For so many people, his work looks like child’s play. My heart always beats a little faster when standing before his work.

“My line is childlike but not childish. It is very difficult to fake… to get that quality you need to project yourself into the child’s line. It has to be felt.”
—Cy Twombly

I’m not one to pick a favorite this or a favorite that or a favorite who, but he is/was, hands-down, my favorite artist. It was interesting when I began reading about him that many of my influences were his influences and that I was also drawn to other artists who shared my love of his work.

Cy Twombly was a very private person and rarely gave interviews or allowed photographs. I’m guessing he didn’t particularly enjoy gallery openings any more than I did.

Shortly after my partner died in 2011, I spur-of-the-moment ended up on a trip to Italy and France. On July 4th, before flying back to the States from Rome, I asked the concierge about finding a museum or gallery where Cy Twombly’s work was represented. An American, he had lived in Rome for many years. Surprisingly, The concierge hadn’t even heard of him, so I flew home disappointed.

The next day, Cy Twombly died at a hospital in Rome.

When I did a massive purge of my books before moving, I could not bring myself to part with any of his books.

We never know when someone else’s creation will enrich our lives.

As you probably know by now, winter is my favorite season. A lot of people think that’s just nuts. But, I love the quiet solitude that comes with it (if you let it), writing more, and dreaming up ways to further marry my artwork with my writing.

In the meantime, The Little Barn, just a stone’s throw from The Little House, is waiting for me to take action and make her my studio. She’s not heated, so it’ll be a while before anything happens. But I’ve got some ideas percolating.

Thank you for reading and/or listening to my musings. Sometimes it seems like writing is just me working things out in my head, and I wonder if there’s any value for you, the reader. I hope so!

If you’re a fellow artist, do you relate to any of this? We’re all so different and yet alike in so many ways.

Much Love,
Barbara