Unknowing

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t believe in knowledge and training. However, for me, in art and less critical aspects of existence, I feel strongly that the “unknowing” is where my best work and discoveries are made. This is where flow happens to begin in my process, when I let go of the needing to know and begin trusting I’ll find my way.

I have always created my favorite work when I try new ideas, materials and methods when the only boundary is the necessary information around safety.

A few years ago, combating my scarce use of paint while consumed by the price of professional supplies wasn’t easy. Once I found a way to soften that mindset and made a contract with myself about how I insist on feeling while making my work, the paintings quickly lurched forward and began to resemble the way I feel inside.

What a breakthrough we can have in our creativity and life when we begin to set aside our fears and move towards what feels aligned, even when we don’t know where we are going or what we will have created in the end.

In the past week, what big or small way have you found yourself being held back or moving through despite your fears?

Think of a moment (disconnected from a screen) when you found time passing by smoothly, your mind free without life’s worries and to-to lists. What were you doing AND not doing during that moment?

As you imagine that moment, ask yourself how you could make moments like that possible more often. What habits would you set aside to make this happen?

On July 4th, 2024, I decided to part ways with social media and share updates and news more freely in my newsletters and here on my own blog. For the past two weeks of summer, I have been spending time with my family, delivering 8 large scale paintings to Portland Art Gallery in Portland, Maine, updating travel plans, climbing my bike 5,000 feet through the scenic Pioneer Valley in Western Massachusetts and experimenting with substrates and cyanotype in my studio.

Watch the video below for a view of these experiences. Music extracted from a performance by Lexington High School chorale.