Honoring the Rhythms of Growth and Transformation
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“But when does something's destiny finally come to fruition? Is the plant complete when it flowers? When it goes to seed? When the seeds sprout? When everything turns into compost?”
― Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers
Wabi-sabi is a Japanese design principle rooted in Zen Buddhism and tea ceremony that perfectly reflects the aesthetic of autumn. In wabi-sabi, everything evolves from or devolves into a state of nothingness. The passage of time, birth, growth, decay, and death are key parts of wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi asks us to contemplate our mortality, to mingle nostalgia and comfort knowing all existence shares the same fate. It invites us to be fully present where we are with only what we need.
Wabi-sabi represents the physical forces and deep structures that underlie the everyday world. How clay cracks as it dries, the color and textural metamorphosis of metal as it tarnishes and rusts. The nicks, chips, bruises, scars, and other forms of wear and tear are honored as indelible testaments to histories of use and misuse.
Wabi-sabi reveres the beauty of things that are imperfect, impermanent, well-used, and incomplete. It elevates all things modest and humble. It recognizes the beauty of the unconventional, inconspicuous, and overlooked. It honors the evanescence of life - when the luxuriant tree of summer is now bare branches under a cloudy sky that is wabi-sabi. When all that remains of a splendid mansion is a crumbled foundation overgrown with weeds and moss that is also wabi-sabi.
The wabi-sabi approach to beauty means accepting the natural aging process - wrinkles will come, and spots and stains will appear. What matters is being able to recognize, remember, and find happiness in the moments that have passed. The fulgent blossoms of summer give way to seed, dry leaves, and decay and another cycle begins.
The closest definition we have in English is “rustic”: simple, artless, unsophisticated with surfaces that are rough and irregular (Webster)
A wabi-sabi home is a lived-in space, not a showroom. It contains the stories woven into the fabric of your life and physically manifested in your home. Wabi-sabi is about the threadbare couch, not the plush leather sofa. It’s about the history, contentment, and appreciation for the lives lived inside the home. The small beloved objects and careworn surfaces. All things wabi-sabi feel intimate and are designed for human interaction and comfort.
Wabi-sabi things often appear odd, misshapen, awkward, or ugly. They are made from materials not far removed from their original condition and are rich in raw texture and tactile sensation. They beckon you to get close, touch, and relate. They inspire a reduction of the psychic distance between people and things. Their craftsmanship may be impossible to discern.
Things wabi-sabi are made from materials like raw wood, natural fibers, bamboo and iron that are visibly vulnerable to the effects of weathering and human treatment. They record the movements of the sun, wind, rain, heat, and cold in a language of discoloration, rust, tarnish, stain, warping, shrinking, shriveling, and cracking. They may be on the verge of dematerialization but they still express an undiminished poise and strength of character.
Wabi-sabi things are unstudied and inevitable looking. They do not blare out “I am important” or demand to be the center of attention. They are understated and unassuming, and they easily coexist with the rest of their environment. They do not need documentation or provenance. It is best if their creator appears to be anonymous.
These things are earthy, simple, primitive, unpretentious, and fashioned out of natural materials which are never representative or symbolic. They eschew surface decoration, pattern, geometry, smoothness, and perfection; instead, it's about releasing excess and honoring the essence of what you have.
For the Japanese wabi-sabi is also a worldview, a metaphysical mindset. Simplicity is at its core. Truth arises from the observation of nature. Greatness exists in inconspicuous or overlooked details. Beauty can be coaxed from ugliness. All things are imperfect. All things are incomplete and unfinished.
The word “wabi” means a way of life, a spiritual path, the inward, the subjective, a philosophical construct.
The original meaning of “wabi” referred to the feeling of isolation and loneliness felt by religious hermits living in nature and the paradoxical beauty of imperfection. It suggests a discouraged dispirited, cheerless emotional state. The self-imposed isolation and voluntary poverty of the life of the hermit/ascetic in its more modern form shifted to become the kind of life where appreciation of quotidian minor details became the path to spiritual richness.
“Sabi” refers to material objects, art, and literature, the outward or objective, an aesthetic ideal, and temporal events. Depending on the context, sabi can mean withered, lean, or chilled but more often it refers to the beauty of aging - like the changing hue of wood, the comeliness of rust, the delicate droop and dying of roses in the sun.
All around, no flowers bloom
Nor maple leaves glare,
A solitary fisherman’s hut alone
On the twilight shore
Of this Autumn eve
- Fujiwara no Teika
Wabi-sabi is not about having the latest thing or following trends. It asks you to exercise the restraint of simplicity without crossing over into ostentatious austerity or minimalism. How do you attain simplicity without inviting boredom? How can you keep things clean and unencumbered yet emotionally warm? Wabi-sabi is never cold or impersonal.
Wabi-sabi is the delicate balance between the pleasure we get from things and the pleasure we get from the freedom from things. It's about knowing what to let go of and when to let things be. It invites us to appreciate the cosmic order, slow down, be patient, and look closely. It asks us to pare down to only the necessary without losing the poetic. To be unencumbered and to tread lightly on the planet.
It is often easier to speak of wabi-sabi in contrast to what it is not.
Wabi-sabi is:
Asymmetry, not conformity or evenness
Humble and modest, not arrogant, conceited or proud
Earthy, imperfect, and variegated, not seamless, polished, and smooth.
Growth, not stagnation
Natural decay, not synthetic or preserved
Slow, not fast
Abstemtious, not gluttonous
Unhampered by materials, not materialistic
Dignified, not indecorous
Minimal, not ostentatious
Withered, not fresh
Fluid, not rigid
Unfinished, not complete
Small moments, not grand events
Appreciation of wabi-sabi is best attained in small doses. In a poverty of distractions, the spiritual richness of the unappreciated is more profound. When you get rid of all that is unnecessary the effect of each carefully loved object becomes more potent. The closer things get to nonexistence the more exquisite and evocative they become.
Beauty in wabi-sabi is a dynamic event that occurs between you and the observed. Beauty is an altered state of consciousness and a moment of poetry and grace that spontaneously occurs given the proper circumstances, context, or point of view. An object obtains the state of Wabi-sabi only for the moment it is appreciated as such.
Wabi-sabi is often practiced in the worlds of architecture, interior design, and tea ceremony.
Is there a way to incorporate the aesthetics of wabi-sabi into painting? What elements might we use? What questions should we ask?
Most things wabi-sabi have a vague, blurry, or attenuated quality. Once substantial materiality becomes spongelike. Once bright saturated colors fade into muddy earth tones or the smoky hues of dawn or dusk. There is an almost infinite spectrum of grays to dabble in. Wabi-sabi is muted, understated, sophisticated yet modest. It hints at a deeper complexity within. It relates to natural processes and the journey you are on. Wabi-sabi lends itself to abstraction with just a suggestion of realism below a textural, layered surface.
Some of the words you might consider as jump-off points for your painting could be:
Simple, minimalistic, natural, textured, abstract, representational, identifiable surface characteristics, natural processes, irregular shapes, intimate setting, unpretentious, earthy, murky, unfinished, incomplete, variegated, fluid, faded, emergent, ephemeral
The most frequent metaphor for wabi-sabi is the cherry blossom. Every spring cherry trees bloom for about a week at most. A sudden rain or wind can cause the delicate pale pink flowers to fall away at any moment. During this brief window of opportunity, large and small groups of people spread blankets and mats under cherry trees throughout Japan. Instantaneously a place and an event are created where the poignant ephemerality of the blossoms are honored with melancholy and joy.
Andrew Wyeth and his son, Jamie are masters at evoking the melancholy of wabi-sabi. Notice the textural quality of their work and how they use bare trees and withered branches to convey the bittersweet passage of time. These paintings retain the characteristics of paint while inviting studied contemplation of the deeper meaning of the complex marks and subject matter.
Autumn is a perfect time for you and me to contemplate the cycles of nature and its relationship to our own mortality. Where do we fit in the cycles of the year and our lives? How can we embrace the mindset of wabi-sabi in a way that enriches the quality of our happiness and our understanding of the world around us? What can we simplify and release? What poetry should we hold onto? How can we honor the marks we have made on our homes, our bodies, and our art? Can we use the aesthetics of wabi-sabi to bring in more contentment, mindfulness, and gratitude?
I hope I have given you some food for thought and a new appreciation of an ancient artistic concept. If you are interested in embracing the beauty of change, and acceptance of transience and imperfection, I would like to offer my mentorship, guidance, and advice. I am happy to share my insights and my knowledge with you.
I welcome the opportunity for conversation, cooperation, collaboration, and commissions.
With Light and Delight
Susan
My resources for this month's newsletter were:
Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers by Leonard Koren Stone Bridge Press
A Little Book of Japanese Contentments by Erin Niimi Longhurst
Updated: Oct 27, 2023
“There is no joy in the rectangle, the triangle, the square, I try to create with shapes that are friendly. I try with my work to give a positive feeling, something opposite to the news” - Gaetano Pesce
If you'd like to read this August 2022 article in its original format along with all the illustrations please follow this link: https://conta.cc/3TEDe0I
What a wild, strange and weird reality we are living in right now!
My conversations this month have circled around fear - of climate change, of civil war, the end of times, world war, inflation, depression, homelessness, doom scrolling, drought and disconnection from nature.
For many of us disorder appears to reign.
Large and small offenses without consequences have created the impression that rule breaking is the norm rather than the exception and a sense that lawlessness will only increase.
It depresses me to know that more than half the world’s population now lives without access to nature in rigid boxes that are more canvases for the display of status, ideology or brand identity, than spaces for the cultivation of joy. Work has become about endless productivity gains, rather than the joy of craft or creation. School has become a push for achievement rather than an exploration or an adventure.
Bland good taste is associated with safety, with righteousness, with a disciplined form of goodness that suppresses our childish love of color and play in favor of a monotony of sharp corners, harsh lighting, lifeless gray beige and institutional drab dullness.
It’s no wonder you and I feel pushed down. When we’re stressed or anxious we are less tolerant of ambiguity and risk, which in turn makes us more likely to reject ideas that are strange, offbeat or new and hold onto old rigid ways of being.
It feels to me like the joy is being squeezed out of daily life and that our culture has declared joy to be superfluous - the icing on the cake rather than an integral part of the cake itself.
What would it be like for us to face our fears, and feel them all the way down to the abyss of powerlessness?
What if we surrender to our grief and let it
spread all the way to our toes and wiggle it out?
Could you sing into your pain? Could you create the silliest song you ever sang?
What if you paint your rage bright red and splash it with glitter?
What would it be like to dance with the great bear of your fear?
Could humor, curiosity, creativity and contradiction interrupt the rigid framework of what Margaret Thatcher called TINA (There Is No Alternative) thinking?
Joy is a high energy form of happiness characterized by the intense momentary experience of positive emotion, one that can be recognized by certain telltale signs; smiling, laughing, and a feeling of wanting to jump up and down.
Joy evolved for the express purpose of steering us toward conditions that encourage us to flourish. We feel joy most strongly in the presence of nature, rich colors, abundance, in community, in celebration and surprise.
Think of the last time you were suffused with joy.
Where were you?
Who was there with you?
What was happening?
Chances are you were feeling healthy, abundant, connected and enlivened.
The drive toward joy is synonymous with the drive toward life.
Joy has the power to free us from the rigid f
ramework of our physical and mental environments.
My inspiration this month came from the book “Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness” by Ingrid Fetell Lee.
If you have the opportunity I highly recomm
end that you spend some time with all of the research and insights in this book. I couldn't put it down.
Ingrid identifies nine aspects to the power of joy; energy, abundance, freedom, harmony, play, surprise, transcendence, magic, celebration and renewal. Each of these categories has its own aesthetics, vibration and opportunities to add more joy to our surroundings.
One or more of these aspects will resonate with you and may provide you with some inspiration for ways you can bring more joy into your life, your surroundings and your art.
It can remind us that nothing is irredeemable in this world, nothing so ruined it is ever beyond hope. The things that bring us joy open our hearts, our minds and bring us back back to life. Even the smallest efforts to share our joy have an infectious quality that can begin an upward spiral that elevates us, our homes, our neighborhoods and our communities.
The energy of joy is vibrant, colorful, invigorating, exuberant, enlivening and dynamic. Joy is twirling, skipping, giggling, and dancing. Bright vivid colors animate music festivals, fairs, parks, parties and playgrounds.
Color pulls joy to the surface. Consider how we associate color and feeling in our language; we are caught in a black cloud, feeling blue, our life is golden, we are green with envy, in the pink, lighthearted…
Color and light have an alchemical relationship. Light energy is color's power supply. Our eyes cannot perceive color without the vibration of light. Each color has its own frequency and our eyes can only see a limited range of the color spectrum even in the best light. At night they say, all cats are gray. Their true color never changes but we cannot perceive color in darkness.
Over millions of generations of evolution, bright saturated color so reliably predicted nourishment that it became intertwined with joy. Color gives a vibrancy that lets us know our surroundings are alive and can help us to thrive.
Johannes Itten, the German colorist said this “Color is life; for a world without color appears to us as dead.”
Light and color also have a profound effect on behavior. In a study of nearly a thousand people in Sweden, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, and the UK people working in bright, colorful offices reported being more alert than those working in duller spaces. They felt more joyful, interested and confident than those working in drab buildings and offices who reported feeling restless and unable to concentrate.
Teachers and students say they feel safer and attend with more regularity in brightly colored schools. In a study of elementary schools, students in classrooms with more light learned faster in reading and math.
The flourescent blue light of most office buildings resembles a cold and cloudy day and interferes with our perception of warm colors. Notice how these solid, unchanging indoor environments drain your energy.
Last month when I visited my ob-gyn I noticed how the whole office was designed to be cold and sterile rather than welcoming. The lights are cold, flat & blue, the wall colors and the cushions are dark green and black. Everything is rectangular. All the paintings were old and faded and sunlight entered only in the lobby. The staff were nice enough but hardly warm and welcoming. I imagine that it feels depressing to work there and the turnover must be high. It made me want to redesign the whole space for them and add some joy.
Hospital patients assigned to sunny rooms
are discharged sooner and require less pain medication than those in rooms with less light. Variable sunlight is best, but broad spectrum artificial light has been shown to alleviate seasonal depression and can be as effective as antidepressants in treating depression. Bright light can even reduce both depression and decline in Alzheimers patients.
For brighter more energized space, or painting, consider reducing dark, light-absorbing colors and infusing bright warm colors like yell
ow and orange in shadowy corners or adding small pops of vivid or fluorescent color for more warmth and life. The shape of joy is curved and flowing, soft, organic and enveloping.
Abundance is overjoyed, brimming with happiness, lushness, sensory overload. Abundance awakens all of our senses. It is small things repeated many times, like confetti, sprinkles, glitter, pattern, rainbows, fields of flowers, buffets, jelly beans, candy stores, farmers markets, shopping malls, sparkling lights, polka dots and stars.
Abundance is the opposite of impoverishment and it tells the story that we have more than enough energy and vitality to share. Adding layers of patterns, dots, stripes, bouquets, etc. enhances the fun for both artists and viewers
.
Freedom is unconstrained. It is open spaces like fields, lakes, parks, gardens and beaches, wide blue skies, forests and connection with nature.
Contact with and views of the green natural world relieve stress and have a restorative effect on our minds. Access to nature improves sleep
quality, decreases blood pressure and lowers depression and anxiety.
Did you know that more Americans visit zoos than attend professional sporting events?
Artistic motifs for freedom include landscapes with wide open vistas, sunrises, sunsets, sailboats, soaring birds, verdant greenery an
d loose curvilinear mark making.
Consider where you feel most unrestricted; is it sleeping under the stars, riding in a convertible, skinny dipping, out in a boat, at sunrise yoga?
Harmony and order suggest the presence of an animate force and the smooth flow of energy that order creates. Our brains release the pleasure hormone dopamine in environments with enough complexity for us to identify patterns, connections and correlations.
Disorder gives us a feeling of powerlessness and anxiety while order is the tangible manifestation of unseen harmony working to sustain us.
Harmonious environments are stable, complete and inclusive. They are characterized by symmetry, rhythm, and balance. There is har
mony in a circle, no hierarchy in a round table. You might employ circles, complex geometric forms, grids, bilateral or fractal symmetry to invoke the energy of harmony.
Play is our greatest means of accessing delight.
Play allows us to practice giving and taking, empathy, fairness, flexible thinking, problem solving, resilience, imagination and frolic. Think back on your favorite childhood games and toys. Did you save some of them? Do you have a special collection of “Joy Toys” that make you smile just to look at them?
Some examples of joyous play might include hula hoops, kiddy pools, bubbles, balloons, balls, googly eyes, squiggles, splotches, splats, gooey, giddy, giggly, stretchy, bombous, bulging and other organic forms.
Our mind associates curved forms and oversized eyes with safety and positivity, they send the message that we are operating in the world of imagination where spontaneity, whimsy and silliness prevail.
Stuart Brown of the National Institute for Play says “The opposite of play is not work, its depression”.
Play is something we do solely because it produces joy, it can be the ideal reset button when we are feeling blocked or blue.
When you wish to reverse the constant feedback loop of anxiety, failure and fear nothing beats the power of surprise.
The expression of surprise is closely related to the expression of fear; wide eyes, dilated pupils and an open mouth prepare the body to react to a sudden threat.
Surprise redirects our attention, alerting us to an unpredictable gap between what’s happening in front of us versus what we had anticipated. Surprise engages us in the contradictions between the strange and the familiar.
The unforeseen pleasure of surprise incites curiosity, invites exploration and increases the chances that we’ll interact with others in ways that keep the positive vibe flowing.
Surprise welcomes the weird and the whimsical, it is the antithesis of restrained good taste, plastic flamingos, giant balloon animals, pinatas, mystery vacations, colored linings inside drab coats, Easter eggs, yarn bombing, pothole gardens, tiny fairy villages, tree faces, Jack in the boxes, towering sculptures of ordinary
objects and pop-up cards all encourage us to approach and engage with the unexpected.
Surprise has the power to puncture our worldview and force us to reconcile new information with previously held beliefs.
In this state of joy we are more likely to accommodate a fluid and accepting mindset.
Like surprise, the joy of transcendence is a wondrous shift in perspective from the mundane to the elevated.
Transcendence lifts us up from the pull of gravity to the feelings of walking on air, on cloud nine, swept off our feet, in high spirits, elevated to a place where we see the light. Elation can be magical in its ability to clear our mind
s and open up the space for joy.
We find transcendence in mountain tops, canyons, tree houses, towers, cathedrals, skyscrapers, domes, Ferris Wheels, zip-lines, rockets, gliders, kites, balloons, and everything that floats or flies.
Transcendence is closely associated with the feeling of awe - a connection with divine presence where the sense of peace and purpose is so vast it is outside our usual frame of reference and overwhelms the senses. In transcendence our small self experiences a sense of oneness and euphoria that dissolves the boundaries of nationality and culture and is vital for giving our lives meaning and purpose.
As artists we can invoke transcendent joy using upward sloping lines, curvilinear movement, light, sky-like colors that shift in upward gradients, tall trees, a bug's-eye view and subjects that appear to soar and float.
Arthur C. Clarke, the great science fiction writer said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” We live in a moment where technology is redefining our world at a dazzling rate, making what was once impossible possible every day.
Have you experimented with the visual AI Dalle-E who produces images to match the phrases you submit? It looks like magic to me!
Try out Midjourney, Stable Diffusion or Craiyon.
The joy we find in magic stems from a deep impulse towards expansion of the mind and the human condition. The realm of magic is the world of story where big dreams are within reach, enchanted creatures roam the earth, caterpillars transform into butterflies and where coincidences, luck, spells, and superheroes break the fundamental laws of physics every day.
When we find ourselves in situations rich in amb
iguity we call on magical thinking, superstition and even wonder. Wonder overlaps with awe when it ignites our curiosity about the boundaries of the world we live in.
In our love of rainbows, comets, fairy tales, unicorns, mermaids and elves is a belief that the world is bigger and more mysterious than we ever dreamed it could be.
Extraordinary magic surrounds us everywhere we look and as artists we can call on optical illusions, mirrors, mysterious lights, invented creatures, invented worlds, mirages, extreme magnification, iridescence, angels and other spirits to invoke the joyful possibilities of magic and make the world richer than we have
dreamed it to be.
The essence of celebration is that it is a participatory form of joy. Joy’s highest highs bring us into a collective experience of belonging and attunement.
Celebrations mark the pinnacles of joy in our lives; marriage, birth, harvest, growth, victories, new beginnings with ritual feasts, toasts, dances, costumes, bonfires, singing, kissing, embracing and the relaxation of societal hierarchy.
Sharing a group affiliation makes us more comfortable with less personal space and we exhibit greater trust in ourselves and in others. We are more likely to sacrifice for the benefit of others when our focus moves from our own needs to the needs of the group. Heart rates and movement synchronize in coordinated
song, dance, chant, and movement with the group.
The physical movement of celebration expands our bodies as joy courses from the center of our hearts to the ends of our extremities. Celebration is about the bigness of our feelings. Big objects signal the bigness of the emotions - giant cakes, parades, fireworks, tents indicate something different and important is happening in the life of a community. The joy of celebration magnetically draws others into our circle to join in our delight.
Celebration can also facilitate an ecstatic release of energy allowing latent emotions normally kept under wraps to emerge in communal catharsis and healing.
How might you expand your own circle of delight and celebration?
How can we use celebration to become more inclusive, unified and interdependent? Pay attention to the aesthetic cues at your next celebratory event - look for: garlands, glitter, disco balls, sparklers, tinsel, rhinestones, ribbon, ruffles, fans, pompoms, lanterns, feathers, inflatables, banners and streamers…
Out of destruction, renewal creates beginnings. The energy of renewal reminds us that every joyful beginning is also the end of something else.
We may be at the end of an era, the end of a way of life that is familiar and comfortable, but it is also likely that we are at the beginning of something new that just might be joyous.
The relentless drive of nature to endure and propagate reclaims every space where humans have lost interest. The great city of Troy
was only recently rediscovered, a magnificent tomb just uncovered in Egypt, The wreckage of Chernobyl now hosts the return of endangered wolves and lynx.
Environmental renewal is at the center of our attention every day. As we debate how to repair the damage we have done to our fragile ecosystems with our sprawling development and ravenous appetite for natural resources we need to also consider what else we humans need to thrive and flourish on this planet.
Without joy we may be surviving, but no matter how comfortable and well fed we might be, we are not thriving.
Can we follow the guidance of joy to things that animate, stimulate and sustain us?
The lesson of renewal is that from small seeds, big things grow. Even our smallest efforts, a single flower, a painting, a party, a mural might be the beginning of an upward spiral that changes a community, a neighborhood, a life.
In my search for ways to use my creative gifts to make the world a kinder, more hopeful place Ingrid Fetell Lee gave me many suggestions for creating a bright life raft of joy in the sea of negative thinking that often overwhelms me.
I love the idea that I can use humor, curiosity, creativity and contradiction to interrupt the pervasive gloom in the media and conversation and send up a signal flag of hope.
I think the most radical resistance we can offer to the anger, fear and anxiety spread by both the red and blue teams is living lives filled with as much joy as we can handle.
Would you like to join in becoming a Joy Ambassador - spreading a pandemic of color, fun and surprise? Let’s scatter seeds of radical joy and bring rainbows that swell into the empty spaces in our lives - blighted downtowns, oppressed communities, or hearts ravaged by loss.
Together we can manage joy in the opposite way that we manage money. Let’s spend it every chance we get!
Do you hear laughter? Do you have paint, glitter, music, and balloons? Let’s broadcast joy far and wide so others can join in. Because the more generous we are with our joy, the more we will have for ourselves.
We are here to see rainbows and to paint them, to be tickled and enthralled, to eat a second gelato with a sprinkly cupcake if we choose.
Let’s create art that lights us up inside. If you are already spreading radical joy please share your experiences with me. If you'd like to work with me to make your own life more joyous please reach out. I welcome the conversation.
With Light and Delight,
Susan
Step Outside Your Comfort Zone
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Learning is the difficult work of experiencing incompetence on our way to mastery.
My kids are back in college and my teacher friends are preparing their classrooms for another year of learning. There is always anticipation and excitement at the prospect of a full school year dedicated to learning something new.
As a teacher creating a curriculum, I try to include as many different ways to convey understanding as possible. This means I have to learn my material so thoroughly that I can explain it clearly in many different ways. This is why teaching is also one of the best ways to learn. I am fortunate to teach art because in art there are no right or wrong answers. An artist is in a constant process of self-discovery, interpretation, experimentation, and solution-seeking. As adults, this means we are often required to teach ourselves.
Each of us is unique in the way we take in new information. There is no right or wrong way to learn. Do you know your learning style? Are you a visual, auditory, emotional, or kinesthetic (movement) learner? Are you motivated by grades or achievement outcomes? Are you a lifelong learner? Do you enjoy the process of learning?
Do you have a preference for the way new information is transmitted to you? Do you prefer to learn in a group, or alone from a book or video? Do you take notes or do you prefer an experience that touches your heart? Do you spend hours researching health concerns on Google? Do lectures put you to sleep or stimulate your imagination? When other people question and finally grasp a topic does it activate understanding for you too? Do you learn best from experimentation, failure, or observation?
The one constant to learning regardless of your learning style or your subject matter is the discomfort of work and practice.
Who could you be? What could you accomplish if you could get comfortable with being uncomfortable? Sometimes what we know gets in the way of what we need to learn and we get set in our ways, complacent and stale.
Vitality and vigor require us to stretch and take action on our green, growing edges. Yet I find it harder and harder to leave my zones of expertise and venture into those areas where I am clueless and clumsy. Aging is a convenient reason for not pushing myself, but is it a legitimate excuse?
Initial findings from a long-term study, published in NeuroImage: Clinical, found that a lifelong career in academia can also have a positive effect on brain health.1 . This study indicates that by keeping our minds active and engaged, we are less likely to have degeneration in older age. Psychiatrist, Julian Lagoy puts it this way "The more you use your brain, the more oxygen it requires, and your body increases blood flow to it to fulfill the higher demand. This is what keeps it healthy and active and benefits brain health...It's similar to how cardio exercise every day helps benefit the health of your heart. It’s just like working out your other muscles, he explains: "The more you keep the mind engaged the healthier you are for it, whereas if you don't use it regularly, it is more likely to atrophy."
The Call:
For about a year I’ve been hearing a call to transform my watercolor painting style. I follow some painters on Instagram whose work takes my breath away. Some of their pieces give me full-on goosebumps and a rush of green envy. Strong emotions like these are a sure sign that I have found the next turn, the next obsession, on my painting journey.
Refusal of the Call:
For months I looked at their work as something beyond my capabilities. Sort of like the art I admire in museums yet I know I will never dedicate myself to learning. But there is something about this flowing watery style that feels enticing to me. Why couldn’t I learn to paint that way? What is it that holds me back from even trying?
In June I decided to pay attention and take action. I made a commitment to spend the next 12 months on a Hero’s Journey to see if I can learn this very wet watercolor style I love, in a way that is unique and personal to me.
I am adopting the stages of the Hero’s Journey as a metaphor to help me stay engaged with what I know will be a long and arduous process that will bring me new relationships and new adventures as well as the artistic transformation I seek as the final prize.
Meeting the Mentor:
As a coach myself, I know how hard it can be to find the right guidance. It is important to find someone who has mastered the skill you want to learn and is willing to work with you. When you reach a high level of performance those experts are even harder to find. I am pretty good at teaching myself from books, but in this case, I know I am going to need assistance.
Throughout this newsletter, I included examples from my favorite artists: Sabrina Garrasi, Endre Penovac, Antonio Ortega Perez, Barbara Nechis, Lois Davidson, Jean Haines, Yutaka Murakami, Kari McGowan, and Keith Nash.
My path would be much easier if these artists I admire offered workshops where I could go and watch them paint and ask a million questions but just like on the “Hero’s Journey” obstacles abound.
In July I started doing research on my favorite artists to see if any of them have books, videos, or workshops coming up in the near future. I came to realize that almost no one in the USA is using or teaching the style of watercolor I would like to learn. I could only find two North American artists doing similar work, Barbara Nechis and Linda Kemp. Both are now mostly retired, but they put me on their mailing lists and will let me know if they are creating any workshops in 2024. I ordered their books and I will be working through them on my own.
Crossing the Threshold:
Spanish artist Antonio Ortega Perez has become my first mentor. Although he does not speak English or offer workshops, I was able to download a dozen of his artworks onto my phone to study and then I signed up for the three short instruction videos he offers in Spanish and started to paint. The advantage of learning from a video is that you can stop and start as often as you want. You can repeat any section and paint alongside the artist, pause to catch up and double-check your understanding. Since he speaks only Spanish I got to learn some new words like “salpicar” (splatter) and arbol (tree).
Trial and First Failure:
If the month of August were a film I would title it “Embracing the Suck”. My daily discipline has been to create two paintings a day based on Antonio’s work. I can’t even begin to express how hard it has been to force myself to do something I normally love. What a revelation this has been for me! I really hate being bad at something I normally do very well... To be completely transparent, I really don’t like being bad at anything. Do you?
Your internal voice can be your greatest strength or your worst enemy. Fortunately, I have been working really hard to develop an inner voice that supports me instead of undermining my efforts. An encouraging inner voice is the greatest gift you can give your kids. Your internal dialogue, your ego, begins speaking as early as 5 years old but really gets going at around 4th grade. This inner voice, your ego, repeats the language you grew up hearing. Many of us have an inner voice that wants us to quit when the going gets rough or when we start to feel the pain of transformation, or even success.
This internal voice is a function of language and its purpose is to keep us safe. It is not the voice of our highest, truest self. For years I have coached students through this phase of unsatisfactory work and nothing is more rewarding than seeing their faces light up when they accomplish something they didn’t believe they could do. Knowing this is a phase has kept me from giving up, but I can confirm that it hasn’t been fun either.
Here is a story that circulated a few years ago that illustrates the importance of letting go of perfection and instead embracing quantity over quality:
A ceramics teacher announced on opening day that she was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, she said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. Her procedure was simple: on the final day of class she would bring in her bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pounds of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one - to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of the highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
In two weeks I’ve completed about 30 bad paintings. Each painting is a ¼ sheet or smaller and takes about an hour. The stack of ugly paintings is now about a foot tall! The good news is I am starting to see some improvement. I am not nearly ready to create my own versions of Antonio’s work but my copies are not nearly as clumsy as my first attempts and I am kind of proud of one or two of them. I plan to produce 100 of these one-hour attempts before I move on to a larger scale.
Instead of feeling like I am failing I am using these acronyms to redefine my crappy paintings.
FAIL = First Attempt In Learning = Forever Acquiring Important Lessons = Forget About it Loser = Found Another Interesting Lesson.
Meeting Allies and Enemies:
Remember that the minute you take your first step into the life of your dreams, the first to greet you will be fear. Nod. Keep Walking. -Brianna Wiest
Fear stands at the end of my bed to greet me every morning. There is fear of failure, fear of not-enoughness, fear of wasting time, fear of success, fear of wasting money, and procrastination. The desire to quit or run away is universal and it is incredibly helpful to know there are others taking just one more step and deliberately choosing the challenge.
Podcasts are my go-to for encouragement and my ally here is Tim Ferris. I love listening to his interviews with people at the top of their game, while I work on something challenging or frustrating. I find a lot of encouragement in hearing successful people describe their own process for overcoming fear, failure, procrastination, and inertia.
I found Lois Davidson’s YouTube tutorials on how to paint in Antonio Ortega’s style to be very helpful; Loose Urban landscape watercolour painting, watercolor hake inspired by Antonio Ortega Perez
Georgia O’Keeffe is my ally too. Here is my favorite quote & some of her watercolor images.
In a few weeks when I feel a little more comfortable with Antonio Ortega Perez, I am going to move on to work with Linda Kemp. Although she has mostly left behind her wet-in-wet style, she still has some videos and great step-by-step examples in her books for me to follow.
Please reach out to me if you know of other artists painting in this style I might consider for my squad of allies, especially if I might be able to meet with them in person.
I am excited and hopeful to see what opportunities arise over the next few months as I continue this exploration. Perhaps, I will discover an artist living nearby who can “show me the ropes” or maybe someone I know will know someone else who can put me in touch with one of the artists I so desire to emulate.
Growth and New Skills:
The next stop on my Hero’s Journey is Growth and New Skills. This means practice, practice, and more practice.
To become really good at anything, you have to practice and repeat, practice and repeat until the technique becomes intuitive. — Paulo Coelho
Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired. — Martha Graham
Super successful people aren’t the most gifted people in their fields. They just work, study and practice more than the competition. — Jack Canfield
Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. — Tim Notke
My daily painting practice is making a difference already. Please give me feedback on my new paintings as they appear and let me know when it is time to call out the next marker on this journey, “First Success”
The remaining stops on the Hero’s Journey are still in front of me:
Grand Trial/ Revelation & Insight, Discarding the Old Self, Accepting the New Role, The Road Back, The Final Challenge, Restoring Order, Taking a New Place
As the coming months unfold I will keep you up to date on my progress in this newsletter. I hope you will be my accountability partner and help me stay true to my path through the inevitable obstacles and distractions I know lie ahead.
If you are interested in taking your art on a Hero’s Journey of your own, I would like to offer my mentorship, guidance, and advice. I am happy to be your ally and to share my insights and knowledge with you.
I welcome the opportunity for conversation, cooperation, collaboration, and commissions.
With Light and Delight
Susan Convery
