The need to change

when the paints aren't painting like they used to

Yesterday I sat down to make a gouache painting on paper and I just did not enjoy it. I have mentioned this before, the predictability of this medium that I used to practice and love so much a few years ago. I’ve known that its time for now is up, but I’ve given it a shot multiple times over the last year regardless, and it’s just not working.

This has happened before, specifically with painting mediums. There was a time I was churning out acrylic sky paintings. All of a sudden it felt like I was done with acrylics. And skies. I tried to go back and recreate what I was doing then, but it never ‘hit’ the same. So I stopped.

This is making me think about the idea that there comes a point where change has to happen. I’ve tried to force or will my way into making other kinds of change happen, and that hasn’t worked. But I’m now wondering whether everything else has to stop working in order for the change to simply happen on its own. The painting medium is just an example, but an apt one I feel, because create I must, and now my means is failing me, and so I must change course. I don’t know what that course is just yet.

There’s a big sense of unknown at the moment. The full-time job has served its time. I’d like to map out the next steps, but I’m also resisting that, or rather, my mind seems to draw a blank when I try. I know that there’s something else. It’s like this inner knowing of who you are but also knowing you’re not quite there yet. And so while there’s this big picture knowing, there’s a profound not knowing about things on a smaller scale. Is this an oxymoron or just the playfully confusing nature of life on earth?

I’m wondering if I can go back to something I’ve tried in the past, if one can spiral back to a past self. But there can never be a going ‘back’, there has to be a newness. This I’m starting to think is not up to me. I used to be really bogged down by the ever-returning creative slump, and it continues to be frustrating but in a different way. What I make increasingly feels like it’s not actually up to me, but rather that it’s coming through me, and I just need to create the conditions for that to happen. Not force the making of what I think I should be creating - this does nothing for a block. The block releases on its own, but there are some things it is my responsibility to take care of, and I’m figuring those out too as I go. Moving body is one. Sometimes washing dishes is one. Journaling is another, but I’ve been doing that since I was 12, so it’s really just second nature by now. I think finding ways to stay connected to my inner compass is the way, and that can look like different things on different days. I will make something new one day. There’s something rather yin about this that I’m becoming more comfortable embodying. The yang will also come. In the meantime I wait and water my tomato plants.