We just need to remember to look for it!
There’s Always A Silver Lining…
On Perfection…
I’ve always loved making things, especially without rules. If it’s been done one way before, why try to replicate it exactly when we have machines to do that. I am a ‘change it up’ advocate. I find doing the same thing over and over life sucking. Yes, I steal what is special or important and I work on boosting my tool belt by adding to my supplies and knowledge, but then, I make something new. It’s a great way to avoid comparisons and competition. Both are seriously effective ways to entirely squelch my creative juices.
Perfectionism is born of comparisons and competition, and it is a wasting disease. It creates feelings of lack and dissatisfaction. It stops up pleasure and joy and replaces it with suffering. It disguises beauty as ugliness. It tarnishes this amazing journey.
Wonder and awe, gratitude, play, love, those are the tools I consider most necessary for a good life and creative flow. Giving those tools more importance than competition and comparison shifts the light from fear and suffering and can’t, to the magic of endless possibility and do!
Think about it. Any healthy ecosystem is diverse. An ecosystem full of the same thing, fails. In nature perfection just isn’t necessary. A hermit crab needs a shell with room but the barnacles on the outside don’t matter. An annoying grain of sand making its way into an oyster can be changed into a smooth pearl and pearls aren’t all one shape or size or colour. A chipped tooth on a lion won’t stop it from growling when it needs more personal space. And, a limbed grand fir still stands tall next to the non-trimmed tree.
And speaking of nature, nurture is what I’ve been doing lately. I’m a grandmother for the first time. I have a new job description, more to love, and appetites to tend to. The baby is perfection just because she’s arrived. She doesn’t have to do anything or be anything more than herself.
Even during pandemics, beauty surrounds me. And one thing I know for sure is that:
“Beauty will change the world”https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1525117216
The ‘art’ of raising a child is perhaps, one not spoken of in the halls of the Louvre, and yet I can most definitely view it as an act of creativity. There is no perfect one way to do it, but do it with wonder and awe, gratitude, playfulness and love after meeting the child’s basic needs and I’m sure you’ll be near the mark most of the time.
Until next time, may all of your coming days be sweetened with spring’s unfurlings. May you celebrate your many gifts or at least, introduce yourself to them.
Everything is going to work out!
Xoxo Sherri
An Art Residency in France
Today I’ve been working on what will likely be the last painting I create at my Art Residency at Chateau Orquevaux. As I painted, the last in what has become a connected series, I began to examine why it was important for me to do such a thing. Here they are, in order of importance for me.
1. Connection
I’ve been painting in relative isolation for the past years, in my home studio, and loving it. I realize now that I applied for the residency not just for the place to paint but for connection with like minded people. I love the artists I’ve met; they are my extended family. We share ideas, philosophies, dreams, and aspirations easily and without judgement. We see the world as possibility in colour, shape, line, texture and design. Picasso’s wordless book of bridesmaids has a storyline we can interpret easily together. Between us, there is only support and sharing, competition just isn’t a thing here. We laugh together when we could be crying and we cry together when we could be laughing. Everyone here is whole and rich and perfect because that’s what we notice about each other first and foremost. We just generally get each other.
Having a tribe, a tribe that I’ve lived communally with for a month, that I’ve shared meals and wine with and created with, who come from all over the world, who are a variety of ages, who have distinctly different styles and experiences, who came with the same awe and excitement I came with, who have the same reverence for art and creating, well, that’s as golden as it gets in the work world. And yes, making art, creating, is work. Important work. Valuable work. The French get that. Connection is belonging.
2. Learning
I’ve loved the studio spaces just above the bedrooms, the rhythm of each artist’s working days, and the chats about creations and processes when studio doors are open. Learning is one of my drivers. When I’m learning, I feel alive. Yesterday, I found out about the brute art movement in broken English. My heart was filling up as I listened. I’d already viewed the exhibit. I knew how it made me feel. Yes, I feel art. At lunch today, while articulating how my painting morning was going, I generally like to paint uninterrupted from 9:00-2:00, I understood how much more exhausting it is for me to paint a series than it is to paint completely intuitively. Intentional painting, for me is less enjoyable. My bucket gets filled when I feel free. April, a writer in residence, understood this feeling and expressed how she noticed it come up for her in her practice as well. Having an opportunity to discuss our inner observations really helped me to consider freedom as one of my basic human needs even beyond art.
3. Change
I have new rituals that I will integrate into my home practice. Eating breakfast, slowly, as well as drinking coffee every morning, is going to happen everyday even without the croissants. I will put more attention into line and into learning about the New York art scene and emerging artists. Opening my home to artist gatherings and work stays will be on my radar. A residency or two every year will become a regular part of who I am and what I do.
4. Joy
I always say, gratitude paves the road to joy. I feel it here x’s 10. This place, Orquevaux, is beautiful. Discovering it and each other; I am so grateful. This is magic and coincidence at its very best! Thank you Ziggy Attias, for your vision and your invitation.
Celebration Needs Music
July has been an exciting month. My daughter, the first of my three to wed, created her fairytale woodland wedding on the bank of the Koksilah River at the rustically beautiful Eagle’s Nest Sanctuary. It was a misty day, perfect for pictures, perfect for fairy’s and their magic, perfect for sharing love. It was nothing short of beautiful. We laughed and we cried, we listened and spoke, we ate and we drank, we danced and we reminisced, and we remembered what romantic love for another can do.
My daughter, an ornithologist, is also an artist. She sings and plays guitar, banjo and uke. She is at her most joyous when she is creative. And so, her band, Holy Crow, played at the wedding, her new husband standing or dancing nearby. It was a joyful, super fun celebration.
In my thesis on learning communities that I wrote in 2005, I spoke about the power of music and how it brings people together and fills their soul. I stick by it.
Yesterday I saw Tony Robbins in person for the first time at Vancouver’s Power of Success conference with my husband. I’d bought him the tickets for his birthday present this year. Tony provided three hours of peak performance training. For me, it was as much fun as a rock concert, and I love a good rock concert. Hello Tom Petty in Vancouver, August 17th! Thank-you children! Here’s why, music fills my soul up and makes it flower. Tony has a great, loud, soundtrack that everyone jumps to the beat. No, I am not too old, even at 56 soon to be 57 to jump around to great music. No such thing as too old. It was another joyful super fun celebration.
And then today. Today at the Vancouver Art Gallery I breathed in Monet‘s process; his colours, his strokes, his layers, the fragrance of his garden. Amazing. An then more came…Emily Carr‘s forest paintings…their rhythm, each of them a unique symphony, an opus, of temperate rain forest green’s. I was completely immersed in celebration for the rainforest. And then, I was ready to go home. Away from the city. To my quiet corner in the forest for which I am so very grateful.
While I write this, I am again filled with gratitude for my amazing month and if you follow me here or on instagram, you know that I know gratitude is the way to joy. Here’s the next tidbit.
Joy + Creative Exploration create the conditions for Interior Light; the light that wakes us up and opens us to love for self and love for others. This deep, knowing love allows me (and you) to walk in beauty and “beauty will save the world”.
I am a creativity coach.
I help people to reconnect with joy…and begin the next leg of this wonderful journey.
And, I am an artist.
I will always dive into my colours and begin new canvases, boards, paper, whatever. As I paint, I welcome the music I listen to and I allow it to fill my soul until it is my soul that is creating. Celebration needs music. Creating is soul celebration.
Sherri Jean McCulloch 