"We must be careful not to exhaust ourselves 'waiting for inspiration' when we could have been working." - Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way
As long as I can remember, and gleaning from stories before memories formed, I have always made art. I don’t think there has been a time when creating something wasn’t vital to my being - my well being - anyway. And through my years of education, turmoil, sickness, and profound healing I’ve intimately investigated and embraced what being an artist means to me. And it isn’t always - closer to rarely - about grandiose visions and perfectly painted images.
My wife and closest friends can tell you with certainty that if I lapse in creative endeavors, that I become less myself and far less lively and enjoyable company. The inverse, however, is exponentially truer, I think. When I buckle down and focus on creative endeavors, I am more aligned to whom I get to be. To whom, I believe, God made me to be. And it’s in this journey that my making finds it greatest purpose: to delight in the one who made me creative. Whether I am sketching ideas and dreams, building my own studio furniture to further my work, playing with and mixing colors, or painting scenes observed and imagined, I am seeking my Creator.
As a college student in the throws of “finding inspiration”, my dad once exhorted me with this, stating, “Inspire something to be.” I’ve come to embrace, and even treasure, this exploration as the foundation of my creative journey.
The title of this post comes from chapter two in A Theology of Making Art + Faith by Makoto Fujimura. Makoto starts this chapter saying, “…part of experiencing God in our lives is appreciating the importance of our creative intuition and trusting that the Spirit is already at work there, often working in between established zones of culture. Our creative intuition, fused with the work of the Spirit of God, can become the deepest seat of knowledge, from which our making can flow.”
And until those visions and “perfect” paintings escape my head, heart, and hands, may I be found making.
Here is the wall-mounted easel and palette I built for my studio practice. I can’ wait to build the next iteration.