If making art were easy, it would be hella boring
The process is holy, AND we're meant to work at it
Welcome. I’m Sarina, Mother, artist and writer.
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At the risk of sounding like a spiritual wanker, I’ve been getting clear creative visions during tea ceremony lately.
Meditation is great for not being an actual wanker IRL, but I’ve yet to discover anything more humbling, inspiring and vision-offering than tea.
Is it the ancient spirit of the tea itself? Is it the silence and stillness for an hour and a half? Probably something unknowably mystical and greater than the sum of these.
All I know is, my thoughts drive me crazy for the first two or three bowls of tea, then something begins to shift, my hips relax, tears flow, humility ensues and visions arrive.
When these particular visions I’ve been getting lately have arrived, I’m like ‘WHOA’ and ‘Thank you, this is soo clear it feels easy.’
A history of ‘please show me the way’
I’ve gone into ayahuasca ceremony just twice, several years ago, both times hoping to gain some creative direction, and instead being slapped about stupid, violently awoken to how far away from Love I’d strayed.
Profoundly gratifying and life-correcting, and yet, not quite offering the clarity I’d wanted about my direction with work.
I realise now, I was giving my power away to a plant, like ‘Please show me exactly what to do and how I should do it because I don’t know where to go from here.’
I was never given visions of the creative kind; the whacky, nauseating, kaleidoscopic kind - yes. But one distinct message toward the end of my first aya journey, as I was swaying to the medicine music was, ‘Don’t doubt your art.’
About two decades of self-doubt dropped away from my body just then, even though I wasn’t sure what ‘art’ this was about.
At the time I didn’t consider myself to be making any art, even though I was then a makeup artist, I knew this message was not about that. I was so damn ready to hang up the makeup brushes and make the kind of art that mattered to me, I just didn’t know which way to turn.
Putting pressure on our art
Right now in my life, I write and make visual art almost every day. Much of it I scrap and much doesn’t even need to see the light of day.
But I do not doubt the purpose of my art - to create something outside of my body that captures a static moment within the continuum of my being. What’s to doubt?
(Thanks aya)
Sure I scrap the crappy stuff, but this isn’t doubting my art, it’s filtering out what has been produced from force and trying too fucking hard to make it good, and what has come into form from innocence and delight.
Regardless, every piece scrapped and every piece kept or shared, is each a single thread weaving this jaggedy existence together. The kept pieces were birthed by virtue of the scrapped pieces. Every piece has it’s place, every piece has it’s purpose.
I no longer measure my worth by how ‘good’ something is, nor by how much I produce.
I am a slow maker of art, I move at nature’s pace.
Not that it hasn’t taken at least a decade to come to peace with this, because certain de-conditioning takes tiiiime.
What I’ve learned is, if we put pressure on our art to perform for us, or to be ‘good’, it will likely flop because Nature does not support forceful energy.
Transaction must not be the motivator. As Rick Rubin says, if we are creating for a certain outcome such as money or validation, that’s not art, it’s commerce.
Following through on a vision because of the expansion it brings, is the most fulfilling motivator.
Fun fact: A friend gifted me a mini set of watercolours for my birthday. I’ve never liked watercolour because it always felt hard and I messed it up every time, so I’d stuck with acrylics. The green on the left was my first attempt since school at watercolour, and it worked, I loved it - it came from no pressure on it to be ‘good’, but from the innocence of ‘gotta give this watercolour thing another go’. I tried recreating the green one with blue, it worked but looks like an entirely different technique. Then, I really struggled with the last ones, I was trying to make it ‘good’ and expected it to be easy like the first. I was frustrated and can even ‘see’ the self-sabotage happening there.
Feeling like a fool
Hilariously to me, I recently found myself trapped again by giving my power away to a plant, this time - tea leaves.
Tea ceremony was offering such clear visions, but until I actually began creating the thing, I realised there were missing pieces.
Like, I’d drawn the pieces at the top and bottom of the page as soon as I could, before the vision left me, but now the question was, what was supposed to go in the middle of the page?
Sure, I was given clear visions, but not piece-by piece direction.
Did I need to sit tea again to fill in the blanks? Was I foolish for thinking I could be spoon fed instructions for creating a thing from beginning to end?
The pieces I’d seen in the vision, now on the page, and the blank space in the middle was glaring at me mockingly. I had no idea which direction to take. So I put it away and gave it space for about a week, half in trust, half ‘what was I thinking - that this was going to be easy?!’