Yesterday’s artmaking happened at the house of someone I don’t know, and who wasn’t currently there. My friend is housesitting, and I went to spend some time with her. It’s been a busy week for both of us, and we needed some time just to sit. It was good fun to visit the pristine home of a stranger I’ve never met, and imagine what kind of a composed and thought-filled person she must be, based on her belongings carefully arranged in the living room.
We played some Bach to fill the silence that sat comfortably between us, friends of twenty years. For friends like us, silence can be a deep comfort; when no words need to be mentioned, why bother talking?
I was happy to introduce my friend to my Wednesday practice, What to Make of This. It’s a simple thing, really. I just take out something I can hold in my hands, on my lap. Something that isn’t painting. I shift the attention away from the mental gymnastics of abstract painting, seeking out a more methodical, relaxing form of making, and then I listen, usually to a podcast. I’ve been exploring the idea of listening as activism- or maybe the precursor to it. I’ve been focusing on three elements of my life that I’d like to grow in: Cultural humility, ecological justice, and poverty awareness.
So as I usually do, I chose a random episode, this one being An Unbroken Grace from the Emergence Magazine Podcast, read by Fred Bahnson. It was a tribute to the nature writer, Barry Lopez, who passed away from cancer in 2020. A beautiful tribute to one who was undoubtedly a beautiful human. A question he often asked was “how can I be of service?”
At one point in his life, he considered becoming a monk, but then he chose the path of a writer. It was apparent he believed that the art of story, not just any story, but good, soul nurturing story, was a deeply necessary act of service to the world.
The question “how can I be of service” at both resonated and pained me. I have been asked in a myriad of ways to “be of service” for the length of my life. Many phrases I remember from my upbringing relate to usefulness, consciously and unconsciously tied to my value. Performing acts of service to increase my value and my self worth as a human has been something I have been attempting to undo for several years now. It’s hard—because as a parent especially, service is just par for the course. With my career in Nursing, service is central. Having family members with a physical, developmental, and mental health issues, life seems to continually call for service.
Growing up in a very practical, pragmatic family, for years I had a hard time rationalizing my art practice. When I was nineteen, I worked for six months on a photorealistic image of a man. It was a black and white 12 x 16 pointillistic drawing, when I finished it, few people could tell the difference between the photo and the drawing. Proudly I showed it to my Grandma, who responded with, “Well, if that is what you want to spend all your time doing, I guess it’s ok.” This speaks directly to the ways that the practicality of life was weighed up against the seemingly frivolous nature of artmaking. This is only one of many comments that rang out in my childhood about the uselessness of art. Among others was the sentiment that public art is a waste of money. The rationale was, most people don’t understand contemporary art, and so it can be of no relevance to the public. I internalized many of these perspectives, and navigated many conversations where family or friends would highlight the validity of, at the very least, making realistic art. When I was inclined to make abstract art, I heard a lot of comments like “why don’t you paint more flowers?” “You know, people like flowers, you could make more money doing that.” Of course, the underlying meaning, or the meaning I interpreted, was that abstract art is really of no service to anyone.
It was my love for classical music that helped me navigate this. While I enjoy so many different genres of music, I have an inexplicable admiration for classical music. The wordless sounds that seem to traverse every nuance of human emotion, reaching to the core of my soul and spirit. I cannot imagine a world without classical music; if there was one, I wouldn’t want to be in it. I would never in a million years say that it’s of no use to anyone. I cannot imagine someone saying to Beethoven “You know, you should make more music with words. People would like that. You could make more money doing that.” I cannot imagine the greatest composers bending and working to make their music more relatable, more useful in the most practical sense of the word. I’m so glad they don’t.
My ultimate goal as a painter is to create works that speak to viewers like music does at its best—it wordlessly transcends the rational, and flows right to the heart. Sometimes my work involves images that are understandable, sometimes it doesn’t. But I feel things- and for me, to be human is to feel. These feelings don’t always fit neatly into the confines of accurately rendered objects or well intentioned words.
To get back to the question that Lopez asked, “How can I be of service?” I’ve found that in my life, almost anything I do with great love and care can be an act of service. I’ve also found that almost anything I do with great love and care can be considered a work of art, at least to me. I can tell when I put myself into what I am doing, and I have learned to love and celebrate these traces of my intention being materialized. Sometimes that means making a meal, sometimes that means planting a seed. Sometimes that means working on a multilayered, abstract painting. But it always involves being present, aware, and intentional. I can’t be fully present, or of service, if I am exhausted or burned out. Asking the question “how can I be of service” also means that there is a caveat—I am simultaneously reminding myself that the degree of service I contribute has no bearing on my eternal worth.
What Barry Lopez often touched on and thought about was the service of story. Being of service, for him, meant being the receiver, and giver of stories that nurtured others in their souls. I’d like to think that way about my painting practice. To be a receiver of inspiration, joy, light, love, and all the transcendent, powerful, soul nourishing-qualities that resonate, heal, and bring meaning to life. Barry spoke of stories, “the way story reconstitutes, reorients, and elevates human beings.” He saw storytelling as a kind of stewardship. He spoke of the kind of stories that he wrote, as an anecdote, or medicine for a culture that is “chronically, pathologically distracted.”
These nutrients for the spirit are entirely invisible, and yet essential for meaning and health in this life. I’d like to be of service by soaking up, and pouring out these soul nutrients through all aspects of my life, including my art practice.