There is only and yet always, the now.
Now is the only place/time where anyone has the power to create.
This great teaching is important the Eastern religions and paths. In the Bible, it appears from Genesis 1 but is especially made abundantly clear to Moses when The One reveals His identity as the I-AM.
The concept appears frequently, especially in the famous and beloved prayers of the Bible, in Psalms such as the 23rd, “the Lord is my shepherd…” and the Lord's Prayer, “Our Father who art in heaven… as it is in heaven”, which all use the present tense of now .
Pure visual art is the only art form that can be completely experienced in a moment of now.
All other art forms, including literature, music, dance and performance take more than one moment to reveal the whole of the creation.
Purely visual art is being presented whole and complete all-at-once in the now. Yet it references time through its strokes, the smallest units applied or taken away, stroke by stroke, to create the piece. For instance, a painting by Monet is full of strokes, most of which we can see. Thus it gives a sense of the time it took to create the whole of a work such as Water Lillies. Michelangelo's strokes took away, bit by bit, the marble that surrounded his David.
Visualization and/or goal setting has a practice of setting a time frame for a goal. Examples of goals and affirmations range from a daily to-do list to I am enjoying having a net worth of $1,000,000.00 on or before my birthday this year. These goals serve to focus us. However, they also somewhat pull our focus out of the now of the present as we focus on the future.
Setting time frames for goals may be useful when consciously created goals are steps towards one's purpose(s). Purposes and missions, such as the one we all share which is be fully conscious and in the now, are always in the now. Thus, setting time goals for their achievement is at best irrelevant.
A stroke in a painting is similar to a goal in life. It adds up with other completed goals to create the whole. A stroke is finite – as is one quick stroke by Monet. The sum of the strokes, the full and complete painting (if great) is beyond finite, communicating more than the materials on canvas ever could if just assembled together in a pile of paint, canvas and stretchers. The whole conveys the mission, the communication and personal connection of the painting – the purpose of the painting, such as Water Lillies.
For many years, I truly wanted a career as an artist and a writer (in that order) , plus a kind of teacher. I have had this notion since grade school but I knew that I did not want to teach in a regular type of school and that being an artist and writer were somehow related – but that was all I knew. Also, I wanted to work with groups and somehow also be on stage, talking to people. Also I wanted to be a mother. That is what I wanted to do .
I knew all this when I was five years old in kindergarten..
My dad, who was the All Knowing person in my life, informed me I could not be a writer, since “you're my daughter”. He thought highly of writers,b nut not of himself. For a long time I accepted his judgment, since after all I was his daughter! Most of my teachers at art school wanted me to be a teacher (of art) as a fall back plan. The idea that artists could really make a living was absurd to them (that is why they taught!) and at that time it was especially difficult for women.
Around then in my special high school for the arts, and then in college and art school, there was buzz from teachers and students that I could really make it as an artist. Give me an assignment, tell me what is wanted and I can produce it. In painting, drawing, perspective, design, and with color, especially color, I am like a fish tossed into my natural habitat of water.
As a student, on my own time I struggled with trying to show a reality that lies beneath our recognition, just as the Impressionists focused on painting the light or the Cubists worked to show all sides at once. I tried to paint atoms into a seascape sunset. I tried that a few times, and basically made muddy mishmashes using oils. It is the only time I have ever failed to create what I wanted to do as an artist. It was clear that further attempts will only bring te same awful results.
Despite the encouragement of my teachers and others who have seen my work, I put aside the idea of a career as an artist. Art had changed my life and I wanted to do the same for others with my art. Except for playing around and enjoying myself, I decided that I would not paint (my primary training) or make art until I could change lives through art. I deeply believed that eventually I would become an important artist, while logical mind wondered at that notion.
I begin to go through life with the nagging feeling that I want to paint, but without the inspiration of knowing what or how to paint it. This feeling nags at me for many years.
I tried politics, watered down religion, and then stumbled into awareness. In my twenties I was a one-on-one counselor, and seminar teacher and creator. I oversaw a group of other spiritual counselors who worked with clients using bio-feedback and techniques that allowed one to become more in control of thoughts and emotions. I also learned and then taught meditation and what is now called Law of Attraction.
At the time it seemed that this was the “correct” path for me, I was helping others, I was teaching – but I wanted to paint and also write. I was studying acting for camera on the side, which led me into script writing, especially comedy, which later led me into being an entertainment journalist as it helped get my foot into the door.
Yet one day, I knew I would work and be recognized as an visual artist. I did not share this with anyone, as I recognized the incongruity of the idea in relation to the indisputable fact that I was not creating any art. Intuitively felt I was on my path, although I was floundering around and changing directions the way that one takes clothes into a dressing room, tries them all on, only to discover that none are suitable.
In awareness, from students and teachers, I saw all kinds of abuses and misunderstandings about the techniques, skills and even potential. Too many gurus and teachers were materialistic, had money problems and were rather immoral in their personal and financial lives. Students wanted control over others but not themselves. This frustrated and offended me, but I was not much better. I still had a lot to work through myself.
I began to explore deeper spirituality and religion. Every now and then I would pick up some paints and canvas, but inevitably I would put down painting as it was too important a method of communication and I had nothing worth saying that had not been said well before by great artists. Plus, for all of my own “awareness” I had my own personal problems I struggled with daily. It seemed to me that the best teachers and leaders are also examples.
I continued my personal quest; reacquainted myself with the Creator, studied religion, and took time off to be a full time mom. Every now and again I would paint, and it just felt that I was not “ready”. I was trained to elegantly communicate through art, but I had nothing unique to add.
Then, I was blessed with being bitten by a tick, misdiagnosed and I had the opportunity to struggle and then overcome the debilitating disease called Lyme's for over ten years. All that I learned thanks to being so ill will take a book, but I would not be who I am today or have the relationship with the Creator that I have, without the blessing of that physically painful and exhausting experience.
Fast forward. I am a single, divorced mom, living in our old family home in Southampton , NY , where I struggle to make ends meet. My son is living at home for his freshman year of college. I returned to scriptwriting, but am living hand to mouth with small projects. I was the NY Correspondent for an entertainment newspaper based in Florida , and was creating web sites for NYC actors on the side. When the horror of 9/11 occurs, the entertainment industry in NY basically closed down, so I found a day job for the duration, in a local print shop where I learn additional computer graphics on the side. I think about painting, and am urged to do so by friends who believe that if I would only paint would make good money. But, there is the same old basic problem – paint what? Art is too important to me to just paint for money.
Scientific knowledge and artistic paints have changed over the years I also know about physics' M theory and that atoms are huge compared to the pre-matter or essential energies of the universe.. Also, fine art acrylics have become more developed, available and I have learned to use them. Unlike oils they dry quickly, allowing one to paint easily in layers and glazes.
In my continuing studies I discover that there is a basic theology held by Christians and Jews (all branches and denominations) that when the Creator speaks in Genesis 1 , the letters of those words represent (or are) the essences or building blocks of the universe.
? I think of Pissarro and Monet who focused on painting the light to show recent scientific discoveries in their time about light. What if I use the Hebrew letters to symbolize elementary physics' branes in a painting? What if I emulate the unseen but actual reality using the letters, symbols, for each and every stroke in a painting, to show the essential energies of the universe?
I had an old small gessoed board and I borrowed some acrylics that my son had left over from a class in high school. Copying prayers and Psalms from a Friday night prayer book because it was full of Hebrew (and English translations, as I do not speak Hebrew) I paint a sunset.
That sunset is the aha sunset of my life. It is of a sun setting behind an imagined mountain. During writing this piece, I realized that the mountain represents all I had to learn and accomplish that along my path before I was ready and able to paint that picture.
Finishing the painting I saw that it was certainly unique and something within me certainly unique, and I something within me stirs. I immediately began another, this time a seascape sunset. The letters are all interwoven and layered, creating an effect that cannot be read, yet one is aware of them, as these are a different kind of stroke.
I show the two small paintings to a good friend who has a B.F.A. in art and a rabbi (to make sure it cannot be read by someone who knows Hebrew). Both confirm that I am really onto something. I search the Internet, figuring I cannot be the first to do this, but I am. Everyone else is into micrography or Word Art, where the letters can be read. I am the only one who is painting and basically hiding and layering and jumbling and glazing the letters to specifically emulate and represent the energy of the universe.
At some point during the early stages of these paintings, I have another aha moment. Everything I have ever professionally done or studied done sort of flashes before me. I see it all, the counseling, seminars and teaching, management, business development, acting for camera, writing (including PR, fiction and non-fiction, scripts, commercials). Web site creation, graphics training, acting for camera, etc. all as part of the skills and experience that I am going to need to not only be an artist, but found a whole new theory of art that will grow into a movement. All the avenues that I would rush enthusiastically into learn and then move on to something else with enthusiasm finally made a kind of sense. I am falling upwards into my destiny.
I call this new theory of art UnGraven Image, since as ever stroke is a letter, any image produced cannot be graven. I paint and paint and paint, refining my technique and discovering newly created materials, such as watercolor pencils and canvas that allow me to work using my symbol-strokes. I create a web site, blog and write articles about UnGraven Image but also about including about good gallery shows and art fairs, a manifesto booklet and now am working on a book, a knid of “Visual AlephaBet Soup for the Soul”, plus I begin to have speaking engagements and give seminars about UnGraven Image. Throughout the last few years I continue making discoveries about UnGraven Image Art theory and its relevance and importance, including why the fact that Hebrew Torah font letters are binary is so very special and important.
I am now on my path.
I was always on my path. Although I was not painting, doing art, I was being an artist preparing and learning what I needed to know, overcoming my own blocks to fulfillment and learning about what I would communicate through my life's work.
Destiny is always now. But, recognizing that can take a lot of time.
“The path of youth takes a whole life.” – Pablo Picasso
