It’s been a lovely few days of playing with watercolor painting and playing with flowers. Two days ago I picked up a small bouquet of flowers at Trader Joe’s just for fun. I bought the flowers because I wanted to sketch a few of them and see if I could try painting them but they were just so lovely I ended up photographing them first.

Because I’ve been having hip pain that has kept me from doing a lot of walking or working around the house this week I have a lot of time to fill with creative play. I’ve been doing a little bit of still life photography (with apples, an onion, and some flowers), sketching, reading, and painting this week and it’s been wonderful.

This is a turn-around for me, enjoying my time immensely even through some fairly difficult physical challenges.

It feels like interesting times

“Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart.”

My dining room looks like my playroom right now with a photo setup on the buffet, my camera on a tripod in front of it, and my watercolor painting supplies scattered on the end of the dining room table.

I feel so lucky to have the space, time and resources to spend my days this way. It’s been so interesting to combine my love of flowers with my love of photography and then marry that to my new past-time, watercolor painting. I am finding a use for many of my photos as studies for watercolor painting practice. It helps me to print out an image almost the same size as the picture I am painting. While I’m still a beginning painter and have much to learn about color, techniques, and drawing it is so rewarding to see how my skills are improving bit by bit. And it’s also interesting to see how the skills I learned about composition in photography also apply to composition in painting.

“It’s a simple and generous rule of life that whatever you practice, you will improve at.”

Even though my body is not allowing me to do all the physical activities I’d like because of pain issues, my mind is on overdrive coming up with numerous creative project ideas that sound interesting to me. I’m not sure where all the ideas are coming from but it’s great to feel them flowing again. Perhaps the fallow time I experienced in late summer and early fall has borne fruit. In times like this I feel blessed and fortunate.

I had time to listen to a couple of Elizabeth Gilbert podcasts this week also and loved re-visiting many ideas from her brilliant book, Big Magic. We live in such interesting times when insights and wisdom from countless artists are available for free on the internet. While I still like in person classes when possible, online classes, videos, and podcasts are also inspiring and so accessible.

Interesting Times and Art

I did another Maker’s Hands photo shoot this week. It has been months since I worked on this series of images and it was inspiring to work with an artist who was so full of enthusiasm about her artistic life. I will write more about this and share photos from this session later as I still haven’t finished editing the images and distilling the essence of our conversation about her art will take me more time.

For a short time I gave up on this series of photos, thinking that they were not as interesting as I thought and I didn’t think I would do anything with them. I was discouraged because I didn’t think the images really expressed what I had hoped they would when I began the Maker’s Hands series. Then I realized that what interested me most about the series was the stories the artists told me about their creative process while I photographed them working. I’m still not sure how this series will turn out but I’ve decided to go back and interview the creators I photographed before and ask them about their creative process. Then I plan to combine their stories with the Maker’s hands photos somehow.

“I think a lot of people quit pursuing creative lives because they’re scared of the word interesting. My favorite meditation teacher, Pema Chödrön, once said that the biggest problem she sees with people’s meditation practice is that they quit just when things are starting to get interesting. Which is to say, they quit as soon as things aren’t easy anymore, as soon as it gets painful, or boring, or agitating. They quit as soon as they see something in their minds that scares them or hurts them. So they miss the good part, the wild part, the transformative part—the part when you push past the difficulty and enter into some raw new unexplored universe within yourself. And maybe it’s like that with every important aspect of your life. Whatever it is you are pursuing, whatever it is you are seeking, whatever it is you are creating, be careful not to quit too soon. As my friend Pastor Rob Bell warns: “Don’t rush through the experiences and circumstances that have the most capacity to transform you.” Don’t let go of your courage the moment things stop being easy or rewarding. Because that moment? That’s the moment when interesting begins.”

When things are no longer easy anymore are you tempted to quit? I am often tempted to quit when things do not turn out as I had hoped. It would thrill me to say that I’ve overcome my desire for things to be easy and now embrace interesting times. But that is not the case. However, I’m learning to stop when I feel like quitting and not do anything. Instead I wait and focus on getting open and curious. Sometimes I still quit but other times I embrace the interesting times. And I’m learning that some of the best times come on the other side of interesting times.

What do you do during interesting times?

May you walk in beauty.


Marilyn

Photographer sharing beauty, grace & joy in photographs and blog posts. I live in the Twin Cites in Minnesota, the land of lakes, trees, and wonderful nature.

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