"Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull
of what you really love" ---Rumi
Being a free-spirited person involves a commitment to that philosophy and to apply it to all that you do and in all that you stand for. As an Artist, it involves time devoted to paying attention to life. For I believe it is in our observations of nature and life that we derive our greatest inspiration for art. Nature, being what it is, answers to no one. It just IS. The tree grows or not, because it has to. It is his nature to grow. Just as a flower's nature is to grow and blossom. The bee and butterfly's nature to pollinate, and so on and on. Human's are not always so instinctively driven when it comes to our free nature, or just "being". Sometimes we allow our minds to get in our own way.
When I can allow my mind to relax, through meditation or when working on my art, I always feel as though that is when I do my best work. That state of mind has been called by many names but my term for it is "falling free"....as though we had just fallen from a diving board and are just about to hit the water, or just jumped out of a boat into the depths of the ocean and you are floating, free, into the deep unknown waters of the ocean, waiting to hit the bottom, with no awareness other than your body floating, and the air bubbles from your breathing apparatus surrounding you. There is an excited anticipation about the feeling. What better way to look at life than with curiosity and anticipation every day. Never knowing what one thing or another will lead to next? It is an allowing, of life, and allowing wonderful and exciting things to enter into your realm of nature and thoughts. Its where you derive your greatest ideas for creativity and healing.
When I created the "Lion of Flanders" (see my first post) in 2003, I had that feeling every day for over six months. I would not allow myself to feel discouraged or tired, or for one minute think I would not complete the task. I knew that every day when I went to the studio to work, there would be new challenges to overcome but also new ideas for ways to solve them. And at the end of the six months when the mosaic had been completed I felt an enormous feeling of dis-engagement with the process. The only way to describe it is that I felt as though there was something more I had to do but this job was done, so now what? Again, developing that feeling of anticipation of what now? was very difficult to cultivate at first.
(Detail of Mosaic Self-Immersion)
But soon, my curious nature took over and I decided to try making another mosaic sculpture, since the weather was much too cold to do stone sculpting, I began developing the idea for a series of mosaic pieces based on my thoughts about "the Self" and I called it "Echoes of the Soul". The idea came out of the notion that our Soul is our primal driving force that directs us during our lifetime or lifetimes on Earth. We all have a purpose, or something that we love so much it is in our thoughts at all times, something that we came here to do (or remember)--maybe at the back of our mind but there nevertheless. That driving force, or "what we love" is what we are supposed to pay attention to in life. No matter what...that is what we are here for. That is not to say we should not have jobs, or do other things as well, because many of us came here to do many things, but one or two exceptional things.
The older I get the more I realize that our "Soul" is talking to us and guiding us, but we don't always listen. If we just take time to pay attention to our urgings and inner gut feelings, and not be afraid to follow and see where they lead us, it may surprise you how it turns out.
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