On Distractions and Finding Your Space

My making was listless today, both in mind and in physical representation. I have some suspicions as to why, but also a lot of questions.  When I was in college I had a studio for painting.  It was a glorious space and once you got in the building and up into the big room with partitioned cubicles of drywall, no one knew you were there, besides the occasional janitor that tucked his head past the door to pick up a trash can.  Those were good nights where often I would stay until I could see the morning light peeking over Timpanogos. I played Sigur Ros and Belle and Sebastian loud into my headphones and painted, drew, stood back to look, sat on my metal stool and thought and got to painting again.  I knew it was a luxury then because I loved nearly every minute of my hidden maker's space, but boy, I did not quite understand what a luxury until I moved into a small apartment and had two kids.  I love my kids and I would not trade them for art making.  I am not an oppressed stay at home mom.  (I sometimes feel like I need to wear a sign around my neck here in Palo Alto that assures people of this fact,) but man, what I wouldn't do for a space that was all mine to create.

A very small space would do, but just one that didn't involve fingerprints in my painting by the next morning.  But, I need more than a literal space, I need a mental space that is quiet.  My life now sometimes feels like I am in an echoey room with a thousand bouncy balls pinging off walls and jumping in corners and there is not enough time between rumblings of the room to put them all at ease, rolling quietly around the floor.  Sometimes the rumblings are cause of my children, sometimes my husband, sometimes other work, sometimes neighbors and their kids, life in general, time, sometimes a house that needs to be cleaned, and sometimes, it is simply me.  Have I become afraid of the quietness and what I might create, or fail to create there.  Sometimes I do find myself with a chunk of time during naps or after the kids go to bed, and like a little squirrel, instead of sitting and ruminating with the thoughts in my brain, I scamper around.  I go to instagram, Facebook, news articles, a tv show, a podcast, a phone call with a friend... anything but the refuge of my own body and mind.  Sometimes I even work, write and paint in the midst of these interruptions, but I'm never fully present in my making when this happens.  It's like I start down a good path in a cozy little woods, but I keep walking back to check that it's still light out, until it finally does get dark and I find that I've piddled too much time wondered what might be, or who might be doing what, and now it is dark and I have to be done.

Why?!  I'm serious.  Why?!  I can't be the only one that this happens to, right?  What do you do?

It does take a concerted effort to get into the space of real and sincere creation for me.  It is a learned and practiced skill that demands the attention of all of me, and I want to be in the place because I want and need to create with sincerity, but yet, I find myself syphoning off pieces of my thoughts, energy, speech to places that cannot pay off a decent return.

I think of my best space of creation like a softly lit, white room that is immune to criticism, comparison, self-doubt and fear of failure.  Oh, it's a good place to be, where I feel quite myself, but right now, my biggest challenge is finding the courage to step in and shut the door tight, turn the music loud and paint those white walls until they say something.

Below are three pieces that I made in my studio.  I love these pieces because I can still remember just what I was thinking about as I made them.  They are each about a person I loved, and I felt like I wove our story right, even for just a few moments because I allowed myself to feel some very real things, both hard and wonderful, and then I made from that place.