When I meet an artist for breakfast in a quirky cafe, she looks like she walked right off a storybook canvas and I’m hungry to know the whole story.
We find this table that fits quiet in a bit of a corner. She’s a palette of color slipping into her chair, and I can’t stop smiling how just her presence is art: Quit trying to fit. Why try to squeeze all your extraordinary into ordinary?
When we stop fearing failure, we start being artists.
And while lovely Amy’s savoring her warm biscuit slathered in piled peach preserves, she says these three words that are kinda like a sweet life-preserver themselves, that I’ve been returning to feast on again and again:
“Honestly, Ann? It’s just hours,” she says, her voice warmer than the biscuits.
“All art is just hours. When I start to feel anxious about creating or making or painting, when I think I might somehow fail in someway, fail someone’s expectations, fail my own, that’s what I tell myself: It’s just hours.”
I nod and smile and I can feel a bit of a emancipation in what Amy’s saying:
If you put in the hours, the hours will give you art. Trust the process. Put real time in, and watch real art come out.
Why? God made woman to be a maker, to open her empty places and let art come from within her.
Creativity, it’s good theology; it’s what God did in the beginning.
And that word “art”? As in Thou art? Art, it’s the second person present indicative of the verb to be. Art is a way of being — and when you make your life art — thou art.
You are — as you make your life your own kind of art.
And somehow that sounds terrifying, like the making of art is more than just time invested, and more like all of our fears manifested.
You either bury all your fears in real faith. Or you’re burying all your real talents.
True: The essence of creativity is essentially risk, believing enough to leap into the yet unseen. The theological terms for this is faith.
But have faith in the Maker who made you in His image to make. “It’s only hours.“ Trust that your time in the hands of the Maker will be made into beauty and art.
When you sit down to the blank canvas, the blank screen, the blank page, the blank space — you’re not looking into the face of the critic, you’re not staring into an abyss of fear, or at some crowd ready to mock, scorn and howl with laughter, or worse, straight up tar and feather you — what you’re looking at is that it’s all just hours. That’s all.
When we stop fearing failure, we start being artists.
When we put in the hours — the joy of art will be ours.
Because this is the thing:
You either bury all your fears in real faith. Or you’re burying all your real talents.
Amy’s paintings are the illustrations of our book together: Your Brave Song
Amy sips her coffee slow.
She tells me about her steady and sure creative rhythms, and how she faithfully orders her day so she can put the hours in, and I’m leaning in, mesmerized by this artistic wonder of a woman who captured with the tip of a paintbrush the essence of our littlest daughter who we call couldn’t love more.
And maybe that is always the creative process:
Every person is made by love and we are love and we can’t stop making. Love makes.
What you make is miraculous because it’s never existed before. What you create is miraculous because it was impossible to exist before you.
God is Word because He must express, and we are made in His image, His poiemas and we must express. Our Shiloh at home, she daily draws, and I scratch down a word now and then, and Amy magnificently paints. There are no two identical persons on the whole of the planet. Anything created, that expresses the essence of a person, is wholly and entirely original. And whenever we look at a creative work, what we are looking at is the impossible created. Because before those hands created it, it was impossible to have ever have been created before!
What you make is miraculous because it’s never existed before you. What you create is miraculous because it was impossible to exist before you. Your art is its own kind of masterpiece because you are one of a kind wonder made by the Master. Make without fear!
This is not just true of oil and watercolors and manuscripts: All of life becomes art when we attend to it. When we put the time in — what comes out is art.
But how do you make your life art, how to be an artist, a person of faith, a creative?
Grab a lifeline by stepping offline. Be okay with not being seen or heard. It will let you hear and see better.
I don’t know much, but maybe it’s a bit of how Mary Oliver put it: “Instructions for living your story for His glory: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell About It.”
Turn off screens. Be still. Grab a lifeline by stepping offline. Put in the hours; it’s just hours. Be okay with not being seen or heard. It will let you hear and see better.
Live everyday like you’re terminal. Because you are.
Live everyday like your soul’s eternal. Because it is.
Pay attention — and let go of perfection.
Perfectionism is slow death by self. It will kill your skill, your spark, your art, your soul.
Pay attention, Be astonished, Tell others About It — about Him —- and don’t waste a moment because these are your startling gifts. Start now. Not when your schedule opens up a bit, because it won’t, not two weeks from now when it gets easier, because it may not. Simply begin: It’s only hours.
You get to pay attention and be astonished and you get tell it to all — how story whispers our truest name: Beloved.
Live everyday like you’re terminal. Because you are. Live everyday like your soul’s eternal. Because it is.
“You know? One of the most comforting things to rest in, Ann?” Amy gently rests her hand on my shoulder. “When I feel overwhelmed about creating, when I think I might get it wrong? I just smile and think: I am really just very small.”
And I close my eyes and smile…
When you know you’re small like a child, you can create largely uninhibited. It’s when we think we have to impress, be larger than we are, that our fears of creating grow large.…
When you right-size you and your art, your joy becomes the largest.
“When you know you’re small, you think: My mistakes aren’t really that large in the grand scheme of things, and our God is certainly big enough for any of my small wrongs,” Amy’s eyes are gently smiling, holding mine.
When you know you’re small like a child, you can create largely uninhibited. It’s when we think we have to impress, be larger than we are, that our fears of creating grow large.…
It’s maybe one of the most beautiful way to live a creative life — the most powerful way to make the whole of your life into art… to simply frame you life with the words:
“I am completely small, and God is completely not — and His great love completely covers everything.”
And we can all be the artists, the friends, the parents, the creatives who can be small and child-like, and make art out of love, for Love, that point to Love and how, in a thousand ways, God’s singing a love song over the whole world.
Because every person, large or small, made in the image of their Maker, is a maker who needs their own brave love song to keep making and creating love in countless, fearless ways.
When you deeply know “thou art loved” — fear finally flees, and you make art.
And your very life becomes a masterpiece in the eyes of the Artist who who never stops singing His love song over you.
How to know if you’re really an artist?
Thou art loved — so you are called to make art
The wondrous artist, Amy Grimes, and I together, created this little book, “Your Brave Song” for
- the uncertain and not sure
- for the outsiders and all who aren’t sure where and how they belong
- for the all the littles and bigs — who all need the freedom of being child-like
- for everyone who is a maker – all of us! – who need to know a love so large it pushes out all their fears!
"artist" - Google News
February 16, 2023 at 10:15PM
https://ift.tt/UdyG1gC
How You're Actually An Artist: 10 Keys to Create What You've Always Dreamed Of & Stop Making Excuses - Ann Voskamp
"artist" - Google News
https://ift.tt/BmLtzSV
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "How You're Actually An Artist: 10 Keys to Create What You've Always Dreamed Of & Stop Making Excuses - Ann Voskamp"
Post a Comment