Artists are Made to Fly!

Artist’s Quote: “Your past is not your potential. In any hour you can choose to liberate the future.” Marilyn Ferguson


Artists are made to fly, to soar with new ideas and create in realms that are beyond them. But what if your wings are clipped and your heart is pumping and you are going nowhere? I have been there. I remember a time by my own making and by circumstance I couldn’t control, I felt like a caged bird and thought when the door flies open I’m out of here. Being grounded just brings more frustration, confusion and harsh self-judgment.



In a book by Brenda Ueland called If You Want to Write, she quotes from a letter that Van Gogh wrote to his brother. I understand if an artist continues to grow he must become honest with himself and his work. It seems that he must go backwards before he can go forward.



Impassioned with grief and pain, Van Gogh writes, “There are two kinds of idleness that form a great contrast. There is the man who is idle from laziness and from lack of character, from the baseness of his nature. You may if you like take me for such a one…”



“But there is the other idle man, who is idle in spite of himself, who is inwardly consumed by a great longing for action, who does nothing because he seems to be imprisoned in some cage, because he does not possess what he needs to make him productive, because the fatality of circumstances brings him to that point, such a man does not always know what he could do, but he feels by instinct: yet I am good for something, my life has an aim after all, I know that I might be quite a different man! You may take me for such a one.”



“A caged bird in spring knows quite well that he might serve some end; he feels quite well that there is something for him to do, but he cannot do it. What is it? He does not remember quite well. Then he has some vague ideas and says to himself: ‘The others make their nests and lay their eggs and bring up their little ones,’ and then he knocks his head against the bars of the cage. But the cage stands there and the bird is maddened by anguish.’”



“Look at the lazy animal,’ says another bird that passes by, ‘he seems to be living at his ease.’ Yes, the prisoner lives, his health is good, he is more or less gay when the sun shines. But then comes the season of migration. Attacks of melancholia, - ‘but he has got everything he wants,’ say the children that tend him in his cage. He looks at the overcast sky and he inwardly rebels against his fate. ‘I am caged, I am caged, and you tell me I do not want anything, fools! You think I have everything I need. Oh, I beseech you, liberty, to be a bird like others birds!’…But I should be very glad if it were possible for you to see in me something else than an idle man of the worst type.”



Van Gogh’s life seemed to remain in a state of dilemma. I heard years ago that a dilemma is nothing more than a new place for new understanding for a new horizon. It is a higher place where we haven’t been before. It could be that we are flapping our wings like little sparrows, flying too close to earth and do not know there is more out there.



A couple of years ago, as Van Gogh states, there was a place that I inwardly rebelled and I knew there was a higher place I needed to go with my art. I decided with my oils to change from traditional to impressionist and contemporary. I took a risk and began trying different things.



With my own frustration and self-judgment, I crashed. It felt that I had digressed, and I didn’t know how to regain my footing. It took time experimenting with new unfamiliar ideas and finally I pushed through and I discovered a new and edgy style. Of course, my family and friends thought that I had lost it and wished that I would go back to my old safe way of painting. Safe meaning that everything is identifiable and not far out.



For me it would be asking me to climb back into the cage. I had seen some new horizons in my work and I couldn’t go back. I learned that when we make a change, it is not popular. We have come to a new horizon by persevering, but others haven’t and can not understand.



I’m not telling anything out of school, yes, all artists have been there if they have tried to go higher. And yes, they feel they have digressed and can easily go back into the cage and many do. But, oh me, when you have soared with the eagles and you are looking from a new vantage point, you want everyone to come up and see what you see.



Final Brushstroke! Being grounded is necessary. It is a place to get new wind under your wings and re-think how your art is affecting you. It will affect others with the same intensity or lack there of as it affects you. Take assurance, the artist in you will see new horizons if you refuse to play it safe.



Reader’s Comment: Write to bettyslade@centurytel.net and voice your thoughts.

Wow, the article, “A Woman of Profound Contradictions” is great-super great! But the comments on the Candy and Lies Article is amazing – so many people were moved by those words. Julie, MN