Making, Not Fixing: Exploring the Freedom of Art
When I look at it quickly, the colours remind me a doll I had when I was a kid. It’s bright and fresh and feels alive to me. The yellow that bursts from the centre and anchors the entire piece makes me so happy. That’s how I know I’ve succeeded. The second piece in the Unscaled Collection is called, “Making, Not Fixing” and I set out to create something that flowed not only from my heart, but also on the canvas. It feels like movement to me.
As I began thinking about this piece, I reflected in my journal for a while on the idea of being someone who makes things for a living, instead of fixing them. I woke to a message from a client of mine that a piece of software wasn’t working. I fix things in my business. But I want to make things in my life. So I sat down and started writing about what this piece might be. I wrote down my next 3 steps on a sticky note, like I’ve been doing with all of these projects (blogs, courses, books, art pieces) and got to work writing about what I wanted to make.
This thought came to me: “The desire to create something from nothing, rather than improve upon someone else’s ideas or designs is the goal.”
I asked the question: “How does it feel to create something from nothing?” And then I wrote, playful, joyful, free, open. The idea grows and flows with no real direction. And that’s how I came up with the idea of drawing vines.
So I moved on to sketching out the idea in my head.
After sketching the idea, I wrote in my journal some more. “The curves and lines of the vines represent the inching outward, feeling my way into new spaces. There are no rules, only surfaces to climb and consume.” That feels real to me right now. I feel like I’m stretching myself in several directions, in ways I am capable of doing, but also in ways I’ve never done before.
Change and Growth for the Sake of Making, Not Fixing
Our nature is to change and grow, just like the vines. That is something I am feeling now, maybe more than ever. Even though the canvas ends, especially the hard lines of the golden border I paint to finish the piece, the vine doesn’t have to stop there. Just like we don’t have to stop when we meet a barrier. We can reach out beyond what we see and find something else to latch onto.
I painted several layers of gold and green on the vine and decided to add some floral details. This addition, which I hadn’t planned and wasn’t in my original drafting, found me painting for several hours more than I anticipated and I loved it. I loved painting the flowers. However, I struggled with the vines, feeling that they weren’t perfect, but accepted immediately the imperfections of the flowers. Funny how that happens sometimes. I decided though, that the vines weren’t meant to be perfect, and I didn’t need to fix them. I’m not fixing things right now. I’m making them. And this is what I made.
As the second piece in The Unscaled Collection, it ties continues the story of the first piece. Originally called Tension: Wanting More. Doing Less, and renamed, “The One I Would Want”, the story being weaved here is one of blurred lines. Ironically, I’ve authored a romance trilogy titled, The Blurred Lines Series, so obviously this theme speaks to me. I’ve always struggled to be just one thing. Not just because I consider myself to be a creative, but because my brain just doesn’t turn off. Like ever.
I’m filled with ideas and desires and dreams. I get so excited by new ideas and am so glad I’m one of those people that, more often than not, will jump into action to see how an idea plays out. Most of this has been happening behind the scenes because I’ve been so focused on promoting and talking only about my consulting business for the last number of years. Even talking about my romance novels felt like a chore because I felt like I needed to promote them to sell them. I hated it.
But now, things have shift. Growth has happened. And the motivation to share this work, as well as my novels, and a new course I’m developing for women who want to learn how to travel solo, are things I want to share. I’m not tied to the outcome: a giant audience. I’m tied to the process of making.
More Ideas Than Space: The Beauty of Making, Not Fixing
That feeling of having more ideas than time came out in my painting over the last couple of days as I realized that there is more idea here than canvas, and I could have shifted gears and kept painting floral details. I stepped away for a while and when I came back to the canvas, I realized it was done. Well, almost done. It needed some final touches, as I said.
The exploration of my ideas through this art project means I don’t need to worry about whether or not an idea is good. The point is not to make good art. It’s to give myself space to wonder and try something different. I’ve always been an artist. At one time, I could draw you anything you asked me for, but time and chronic disease has taken my ability to hold a pencil for long periods of time. I’ve lived with arthritis in my hands for over two decades (as well as every other joint in my body) and it’s meant I’ve had to give up things I’ve loved over time.
I can no longer play piano. Not that I was particularly good, but I could have been. I can’t do intricate things with my hands like scrapbook, which is something I’ve loved for a long time. I had to adjust the way I glued paper to paper. But what I’ve found in painting is that I don’t need to worry about detail. I’m not that kind of painter.
I naturally gravitate toward big brush strokes and abstract images. Some of my favourite paintings in my home read as blurry and undefined, including one hanging in my kitchen that may or may not be a body of water surrounded by trees. Could be a garbage heap. Who knows? But I love it and I painted it to compliment my coffee-coloured kitchen since every other room in my house reads of greys and blues.
The point of this project is to continue to explore my love of making, not fussing over whether or not my art is any good. If I love it, I’ve done a good job. So far, so good. I realize that there is more inspiration than doubt here. I have more excitement than fear about my talent. And this process is teaching me that making things can take more time than trying to fix things, which in turn, is teaching me patience. Something I don’t pretend to have in the slightest.
The Business of Making, Not Fixing
My nature is to follow rigid structure and protocols and systems, but the act of painting and letting something emerge on its own time and in its own way is both invigorating and empowering. I made a thing. Many things, actually. But these art pieces are quickly becoming something I love to do.
The plan for Unscale is to paint 12 pieces. So far, there’s a running colour theme, but I suspect as I dig into some of the heavier concepts I’ve committed to exploring in the book itself, now in art form, I may find the blurred lines and colours mixing even more. The book in its original form, which is chaotic, hyper-fixated writing (for now) takes readers on a journey from building a thing, to breaking down a thing, all in the name of peace and quiet.
Business is noisy. It’s busy, pressurized, systematized and frame-worked to death. And while I’ve yet to meet someone who can whip up a system or a framework quite the way I can, I’m tired of marching to the beat of that drum. I want to explore un-tethered ideas without the pressure and find new ways of looking at business that don’t make me want to beat my head against a wall.
Yes, it’s exciting and rewarding to help clients succeed. But it’s also rewarding to look at something you made with your own hands. I don’t think one is better than the other in the grand scheme of things; however, I do think one is better than the other right now. Certainly for me.
Making, Not Fixing is a whole story wrapped up in one 16″x 40″ canvas. It’s not meant to be perfect, but it is pretty great.
If you want to read more about The Unscaled Collection, as well as view the available works in this collection, you can visit my art page.
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