It’s been stormy and cold for the first two months of 2023 broken up by sunny and very crisp days. I did my first winter evening swim last night since taking up open water swimming in 2021. I swam evenings over the summer, but the sun is out in the evening in summer and its warm! One of the things I love about open water swimming is the infinite ways I can freak myself out. No, not really, but perhaps the infinite ways I can present myself with challenges, do something uncomfortable and new. Last night as I pulled up to park looking at the deep blue water (normally a teal green in the sunlight) I considered driving home. I consider driving home a lot. The urge to abandon myself is strong, forever in the back of my mind. I got out of the car anyway, swam anyway, stayed a little longer in the sauna after anyway.
These challenges that I seek out in my swimming always make me come home and ask myself what challenges I can seek out in my artwork. I firmly believe that it is my job as an artist to be uncomfortable, to seek imbalance, to try to challenge my firmly held habits and boundaries around definitions of what my work is and how I make it. As humans, we seek out routine and safety, so I find I am always telling myself what my work is and making up narratives about how I get to create that work. Long ago I let go of the phrase “I am a watercolor artist.” I found people gravitating to that as a definition of what I do, and I slowly realized it was strangling me. I am constantly trying to create order in the chaos of being an artist. Letting go of this is often hard for me, because, in fact, there does need to be a sense of order and safety in order to be free to be creative. Perhaps, instead of a strict definition of what material I use, or what I tell myself I am interested in, I find a sense of security in knowing that I will show up again today and again tomorrow and the day after that to make this work and engage in this world creatively. Maybe the order is in the fact that I ensure I can pay my rent this month and next so that my mind is free to focus on making strange textures with ink and not whirring in the back of my mind trying to sort out how I will buy groceries or pay this bill.
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