Clinging
Clinging: adjective 1. to hold fast by grasping to and winding around, to avoid falling.
I have been wrestling with a piece of artwork for the past 4 weeks (at least), returning to it most days. Sometimes I’ve been tweaking and sometimes coming in with more radical changes.
I’ve spent a considerable amount of time gazing at it, asking for its help, or just standing mystified as to where I go next.
Everything about the piece is clunky and awkward; even the colours are at war with each other. I keep encouraging myself to ‘stay with it’ and let it do its thing, but I’m getting weary and wondering what it is that I’m not getting. It feels like I’m living with a sullen teenager who hardly acknowledges that I exist and goes out of their way to keep me in the dark about who they are growing into.
Do I scrap the whole thing and just chalk it up as a casualty of a conflict zone, or stay in the game and hold my nerve?
Then I decide to ask myself one question: ‘So, when did you lose your joy?’
And in a heartbeat, I knew the answer: ‘When I stopped having fun.’
It was when I got too precious about certain bits and refused to give them up for the flourishing of the whole. When I started trying too hard and I clung to certain bits saying, “I like that”, and “That can’t go”. I can see that I got too attached and too clingy and then the tightness came and got me.
I’d made certain marks that I liked very much, but they were holding the whole piece back and I wasn’t willing to paint over them. And now I was stuck, so it was time to blast myself free…. somehow!
Then it suddenly occurred to me that I cling to things in life too.
Things I believe I can’t live without
Attitudes and ways of thinking that I won’t give up, because I believe I’m right
Relationships that I cling to and wind around, but rob me of joy
Back with my teenage analogy, I pondered what would need to happen to restore some trust and start to build back a path between us and I thought, well, I’d probably need to start by simply saying, ‘what is it you need from me?’
Could I actually say this to my piece of art without seeming utterly bonkers?
Why not? It’s worth a try, I concluded. So, I spoke and my art came right back instantly.
“Just set me free”.
So, I forced the issue and committed, then and there, to do something radical with the areas I’d inadvertently fallen in love with. They were the bits I was reluctant to paint over and where I was being held hostage to change and a chance to break the status quo.
It sounds bazar, but as I took my brush, laden with paint and briskly worked over my beloved no-go areas, I felt a strange rush of freedom (for us both).
Let me be honest here and say that I was still standing in no-man’s-land, but I felt very different and I knew joy had a chance and the game (of life and art) would move on.
“There is nothing to cling to, or run from” – Buddhist quote
Jane x
