6.01.2015

The richness in lulls...

Lulls - those spaces of time when nothing much appears to be going on - are an important part of my creative practice.

I used to fear them.

Now I've lived and worked long enough that my fear of them is gone. I see them as another way of working. Just because I'm not working within the four walls of my studio doesn't mean I'm not working. I just work out of the Studio in My Mind...

Lulls give me important time. To think. To listen. To look. To question. To plan. To simply be...

* * *
                     
The garden has been beckoning to me to spend more time outdoors after the long winter we endured. I've been weeding and planting and cleaning things up. Yesterday I scrubbed down a table that had been sitting out the past few summers, and was delighted to discover the intricate tracks from snails on its underside:

 Snail Paths I
 Snail Paths II

 Snail Paths III

Snail Paths IV

If I had been up in my studio, I would have missed the beautiful lace paths the snails had created. I would not have "heard" this subtle confirmation of how important simple compositions rendered in a subtle palette are to me, or that, "yes", I need to continue to create them.

I spent the rest of the day working happily in the garden and my Mind Studio. Just as I add fertilizer to the plants to help them grow, these lulls help me grow as an artist. I develop ideas, I plan, I compose, I edit...

Eventually I'll climb back up the stairs to my real studio,  ready to get to work on realizing the ideas I've been developing; culled from the richness in these lulls...

: : Karen Anne

1 comment :

  1. I read that to be creative, we must permit ourselves to be (what the uninitiated might call) bored. This is a much lovelier expression of that idea. To the richness of lulls.

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