Creativity-Letting go

This morning I awoke to the sale of "Bless Others" one of my Tack Down Tuesday's.   I delighted to know it will find a home but also a tiny bit sad that it is leaving so soon. Some pieces of my art detach quickly while others have a connection that runs deeper and with greater meaning.  Like I said I'm happy to know it will have a good home. 

Yesterday I rambled on about quality and quantity which I learned about in Julia Cameron's Artist Way along time ago.   After saying that I was pinged with curiosity about the artist way...and I questioned is it time to revisit her words and move on to the next book which would be "Finding Water?"

So this morning after my morning pages....the thoughts override my actions and I now have the book in front of me.  Wondering if I can also get it on Kindle...but no such luck. So I have my hard cover and open to the beginning.  Started ready and feel quite comforted by her words.  I know not all feel the same but for me there always what I need to read and hear. I think mostly it's the repeated information coming in at different angles of understand. More like I need it drilled in. Like the spelling words all week long when I was little. 

So as I begin reading there it is.  She talks about the flow of ideas that we as artists can tap into. The flow of creativity is a constant.  (I heard that also said in Elizabeth Gilbert's book Big Magic) We are the ones who are fickle or fearful. I have learned that my creative condition and my spiritual condition are one and the same. Making art is and act of faith, a movement towards expansion. (my personal questions right way when I read this is....Expansion of what...spirituality? I would thinking so but it will be one of long thoughts that I put out there and see what comes back.)  When I am stymied in my work, I am stymied in my spiritual condition.  When I am self-conscious as an artist, I am spiritually constricted. I need to pray to lose my self-centered fears.  I need to ask for selflessness to be conduit, a channel for ideas to move through. At a time like this, I again post a sign at my writing station, "Okay, God, You take care of the quality. I will take care of the quantity." In other words, it is time to resign as self conscious author. It is time to let something or somebody write through me. How the ego hates this humbling propostion !  And yet, great art is born of great humility. 


Then I read in the new Professional Artist Magazine about Georgia O'Keeffe...great article...and this morning I open my emails and here is a quote from Lisa Call...Textile artist. 

"I'm now home and preparing for my next adventure.  I don't know what lies ahead and while I love the unknown of an adventure - the uncertainty is also challenging to my love of control. 

Finding the magic in the paradox between and adventure and control is my intention."

Good things to think about...instead of doubt and worry...and not that I was going there.  So what is this all about?   The need to connect creatively and spiritual in and out of my work, the expansion of that combination through self expression that has the ego jumping ship and the selfless soul seeking individual being guided in the unknown adventure.  I would like to be in control but as things go I get the challenge Lisa is talking about ...well I'm not sure I get it totally but I'm open to try to understand it better too.  

So my days are numbered before I leave for Arizona and my trust that there's this plan of  filling the uncertainty and helping me let go of the love of control.  As a dear friend said, "Laura, Life is about Letting Go..."