How to Love the Layers - Meandering through Creativity

I sat at my kitchen table, casually brushing modge podge over a specific section of my art journal page. I pulled the thick stuff not over the entire page, but only places where I wanted to be sure the overlays and textural elements had a doubly tactile feeling.

 

Written across the top of the page were my words:

Layers of Pain. 

 

I attempted to replicate such layers in the minimal words and of course, the texture of the page itself.

 

I had written in my conventional notebook about the layers of pain thanks to a prompt from Kim Owens of Blissjournaling. She borrowed the concept from Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way which I simultaneously love and hate. As always, I took Julia’s work from the early 1990’s and tweaked it a bit, but not before the pain took a chunk out of my gut and made the darkness of truth leak onto the page alongside the light which has come as well, albeit at a slower pace.

 

It isn’t an either/or thing, these layers of darkness and light within pain, after all.

 

The layers of pain transcend labels and finger pointing and sooty smoke or dawn’s shy shafts of light.

 

I took paper I made when I was experimenting for my “Artistic Mother” group. I learned through  some new methods of painting paper from Shona Cole's book for art journaling and mixed media projects, so not only was I reusing paper meant initially for the trash can or recycling bin, I was making a different sort of background paper.

 

I loved what I made.

 

I grabbed a couple sheets and started tearing, without even knowing what I would do with them exactly. I sprayed adhesive on the journal page and started layering paper along with the remnants of an Art Trading Card which had become damaged. It started out as my favorite art trading card of a recent batch, so its return to me initially saddened me in a “beyond words” kind of way which I came to know as perfect as the slow and steady pace of "light" slowly showed me the beauty of the card's “initially dark” return.

 

Isn’t that how “beyond words” works, when we get out of the way and allow it to do its thing – when we stop splashing unconscious labels and meanings on everything before their time?

 

That is what this entire process reminded me, as I sat there, goopy modge podge on my brush, lamenting my losses of the long ago past and the present.

 

The assignment from Kim vis a vis Julia Cameron went like this:

 

“The Deadlies. On 7 paper strips with 1 word: Alcohol, drugs, sex, work, money, food, family/friends. Draw one of the folded strips out of an envelope and write 5 ways it has negatively impacted your life. Draw 7 times.”
- Julia Cameron

 

I shifted it by also writing “the other side” of pain. “Write 5 ways it has positively impacted your life.”

 

The first paper I drew was: family/friends.

 

I rolled my eyes when I saw it, angry at Julia and Kim and not wanting to continue yet, I did. I wrote in my notebook:

 

Family/Friends and episodes that impact my creativity.

 

Negative:

 

1. Being dumped by core group of friends twice – in the 5^th and 7^th grades
2. No (extremely limited) contact with family
3. Conditionality (is this perceived or is it actual?)
4. My ability (chronically, it seems) to disappoint my family and friends, sometimes it feels like by breathing alone I am somehow a disappointment.
5. Being pushed away or not invited to events, activities, opportunities to given a chance to connect at all.

 

Positive:

 

1. Without words hugs I both give and receive
2. Invitations to many events/activities/happenings (more events than time available.)
3. RSVP’s and showing up. People: both family and friends who DO show up.
4. Surprise gifts
5. A cadre of believing mirrors who encourage, support and cheer me on.

 

I looked at my negative list and let it roll up to me, like a wave about my toes and soles of my feet, made sandy by the ocean. The power of these negative experiences awaken tear-daggers which jab my eyelids. These are core pains, layers and layers and layers I slice through in order to create anyway, all the while knowing I am risking more pain each time I do.

 

On the other hand, when I create I don’t risk losing any visible proof of love from some  family and some friends-of-the-past because I don’t see love from them now anyway. That is sort of a pessimistic optimists way of seeing it, I know, and yet, it works – because when I scroll my eyes down to the positive list, there is undeniable evidence that I have many people who enjoy being my “creative playmates” who may or may not be related to me by blood.

 

I was reminded, once again, it is important to look from each side using labels like “positive” and “negative” simply as starting points, not finishing points.

 

They are simply a part of my process.

 

At the bottom of my journal page I wrote a synopsis, a sort of mantra declaring what is the most significant:

“I try. I fail. I don’t give up.”

= = =

  

 

Julie publishes her ezine, the Daily Passion Activator, which includes an Essay and a Poem every week day - inspiration delivered directly into your email box. Why not Subscribe today? It's free.

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Comments

[Square-Peg Karen]

BEEEEEEEEEautiful! Thank you so much! This hit me right in the gut -- I've got similar pain and sometimes forget to (or try to race thru) processing - this is fantastic! Thank you for your vulnerable, helpful, lovely heart!!

[Trudy callan]

Love your papers!

Trudy Callan
Coordinator for The Artistic Mother Art Group
www.artisticcreationswithtrudy.blogspot.com

[Heather]

Thanks for stopping by my everyday graces:) and for your enthusiasm. It looks like you are off to a great start...the papers look great. I am debating whether to just jump in with the bag or start at the beginning since I have missed the first few weeks.
And about today's post... it constantly amazes me how people share the same pains. Thank you for going "there".