I am returning filled with both grief and joy

 

I've just finished a painting. 

This is no ordinary painting. 

This is the first painting that I have done just for myself, not a commission, not a trade, just because I wanted to since I have returned to southern Appalachia from New Mexico. It's the first painting I've made since I felt my artistic creative flow coming back to me. It took me a while to get that flow back. It has been a rough journey, in some ways, to be honest. I remember almost exactly 10 years ago now going to Penland School of Crafts for a concentration in encaustic painting. It's a 2 month class, where the students live on campus, eat on campus, sleep in the dorms and are basically immersed in their creative practice. I quit my job in order to do it. I switched to a part-time, PRN (on call) position. It was a major life transition for me. I also became estranged from my mother and subsequently, my entire family during this time. This turned out to be the most loving thing I had ever done for myself up to that point. It was monumental. I don't even know how to put into words how much of a change my life took during this time. It was just absolutely epic. I felt like a hot air balloon that was finally untethered and was rising up into the sky. 

After Penland, I went to The Burren College of Art on the west coast of Ireland. While I was there, I lived right on the ocean. The front windows of my apartment faced Galway Bay and I would look out every morning while I drank my tea and watch the diving birds and the egrets splash and swim. It was so beautiful. 

I had a recurring dream almost every single night. It was very obviously a message. I would wake up right in the middle of it and realize that I was living on the west coast of Ireland and was in art school. It was about as different a situation from the dream as is possible. 

This was the dream; I was in my home town of Wheaton, IL. Sometimes I was wondering around on the sidewalks of my old neighborhood. Sometimes I was in my old house. Always, I felt trapped. I didn't know why I was there and I wanted to leave. I wondered to myself, "Don't I have a life back in Asheville that I need to get back to?" Sometimes my mother was there. She felt trapped too. There was a wall around us. Then I would wake up. Right in the middle of the dream, while it was fresh in my mind, bright and glazing, alive in my consciousness. I would come to and realize how far my reality was from the context of that dream and I would feel in awe of my circumstances. This happened literally almost every single night/morning. The feeling, events and energy of this dream was familiar. This was my life at the heart of my breakdown in 2009. It was the hardest time in my life. I was at rock bottom. It was a time when all the childhood trauma I had experienced and subsequently suppressed was coming to the surface. I couldn't stop crying. I cried for months. I couldn't control it. I really believe this dream was a message for me saying: This is what happens when you follow your heart. This is what happens when you listen to your body and let it guide you. This is how you are meant to live. This is how far you've come since that time.

It's been a long time since those beautiful magical moments in my life. The journey has had many twists and turns and winding roads. Going to New Mexico was a necessary part of my life. I am grateful for it and the healing I received during that time was so invaluable. And yet, at the same time, I realize how many years have passed that I haven't been pursuing my art and painting like I was doing before I left. There is grief there. I wonder where I would be now if I had been working towards my art career all this time. 

I am finally back in my flow. I feel it. I feel so determined. I love my life situation. I have a studio that I love that feels like heaven. I like my little house out in the countryside. I am loving the art that I'm making and I'm eager to get a new body of work underway. I know it will take time and lots of hard work, but I'm doing it. I'm excited. I have a lot to share and a lot to say and a lot of ideas. I'll get there.

For anyone who reads this, I love you. I hope that you are finding those whispers of inner guidance as well. We need people in the world who are following their heart, who are ignoring the social pressures of the status quo and are doing what their heart yearns for instead. This is the way of the future. This is the way of the transformation of consciousness. This is the way we heal the world. 

I hope you go for it, whatever it is. As my dear friend and fellow artist, Kelcey Loomer says, "It's important that we follow our dreams."

Love,

Suzanne.