by Heather Plett | Feb 2, 2010 | art, Creativity
The first exercise at last night’s class was easy. Draw a face. I’d had a little practice with faces while playing with watercolours and clay, and I knew enough about the basic structure (eyes in the middle, bottom of the nose in the middle of the bottom half, etc.) that I was pretty confident I could produce a face that resembled a face.
But then she pulled out mirrors for the second exercise. “Time to draw your OWN face.” Ugh. Really?
That’s where I’d given up drawing in my long ago (feeble) attempt to work my way through the book “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”. Attempts at drawing my face had resulted in dismal failure.
With a mirror clipped to my easel, I stared at the blank page, at the mirror, back at the blank page, at the mirror, again – not sure where to begin. That’s when it started – the wise-cracks to my neighbour. “Do we really have to be HONEST, or can we just draw what we WISHED we looked like?” “Maybe if I put in a few less shadows under the eyes, I won’t look as tired – or as old – as that face in the mirror.”
The truth is, though, I don’t really hate my face. There are other features of my body about which I could write long lists of flaws and weaknesses, but my face is… well, it’s not horrible. I rather like my eyes, and my smile is pleasant. Members of my family like to chide me about the fact that there are very few horrible pictures of me. They’re right – if I can say so without sounding arrogant – I’m fairly photogenic. (No, I didn’t say I was beautiful – just pleasant-looking in photos.)
But start looking closely in a mirror, start drawing every little line that appears, every shadow, every imperfection, and suddenly the truth seems a little different then you’d always thought. Suddenly you’re aware of the way your eye lids are beginning to droop, the way the frown line between your eyebrows has deepened,
In drawing, though, it’s best not to think of your subject as a face (or a box or a tree). It’s best just to see it as a series of shadows and highlights. Forget what you’re drawing and just pay attention to the way it picks up the light.
And so, once again, I got lost in the moment. I drew, and I was happy. The imperfections didn’t matter. The shadows were just that – shadows. The lines added character and personality.
In the end, it at least looked human and somewhat resembled my face. I like the top half best. The mouth and nose are a little pinched and cat-like and the neck should be a little thicker and shorter. But those aren’t flaws in the way I look, they’re just the mistakes one makes in the learning process.
But maybe there’s a deeper lesson in all this. Maybe the reason so many people are having plastic surgery is because we’re staring in the mirror too much, focusing on the imperfections, and not turning our gaze to the easel. Maybe we’re forgetting the values of shadows and highlights – of character and personality – and trying too hard to make things look smooth and flawless.
Maybe we need to spend more time focusing on the way that we reflect light.
Self portrait, drawing class #4
by Heather Plett | Jan 28, 2010 | art, Beauty, Creativity, journey, women
How does one prepare for the day when a surgeon will cut off a piece of what makes one a woman?
I’ve been thinking a lot about bodies lately. Christine intrigued me with her choice of “embody” as her word for the year. And then Leah invited us to focus on the body as our creative muse this month. So since the beginning of the month I’ve been contemplating how I wanted to incorporate “body” into my creativity. I was full of ideas and just needed the time to play with them.
Then the envelope came in the mail. The envelope that held the letter that says in simple Times New Roman font, as though it were no more important than my daughter’s next soccer practice, that my breast reduction surgery has been booked for March. Gulp. Suddenly all creative ideas were blocked and all I could think of was “I’m going to lose a piece of what makes me a woman.”
Don’t get me wrong – I really want this surgery. I chose it. I’m so tired of the aching back, the carvings in my shoulders, the sore ribs from impossible under-wires, the impossibility of finding double H bras for less than my mortgage payment, the shirts that never fit, the near earthquake that’s caused when I try to jog – all of it. I want it to be over.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not complicated. It took me a long, long time to come to this decision, and I won’t back down now, but there are so many mixed emotions that play tricks with one’s mind. All of those memories of the babies I’ve nursed, the pleasure I’ve shared with my husband, the aching fullness of unused milk when the baby who was meant to nurse has left this earth – they’re all wrapped up in my identity, my shape as a woman.
And then there is the message I’m sending to my daughters. Is it okay for me to have plastic surgery, when I want to encourage them to value their bodies and not let media images dictate how they view what they see in the mirror? I would be lying if I didn’t admit to myself that at least part of the reason for this decision is about my own complicated body image.
Tonight I finally had time to disappear into my studio for awhile to play with paint, ideas, memories, heartache… and breasts.
I started with a few of those images that surround us – the perfect bodies with the perfect breasts. No, those aren’t the only reasons for this choice, but I have to at least acknowledge them and let them be a part of the picture. And the truth is, not even those women in the magazine ads are completely content when they look in the mirror.
As I prepare for this journey, I will try to acknowledge the hope and the hurt, the beauty and the ugly, the truth and the lies I tell myself. I know that I will be changed in more ways than one.
P.S. I had thought I’d be a little more private about this journey, but for some reason, I feel compelled to share it here. I know that you, my kind readers, will hold these words gently in your hearts as you have so often done when I’ve been vulnerable. If you’re interested, I first wrote about it here, when I went for my original consultation with the surgeon.
by Heather Plett | Jan 27, 2010 | art, Creativity
Week #2 – perspective…
Week #3 – still life with charcoal…
And I am a happy, happy girl!
by Heather Plett | Jan 25, 2010 | art, Creativity
First it was the weariness from five days away (some of which included a fairly intense staff retreat). Then it was the scrambling energy it took to start filling a small role in response to the Haiti disaster (communicating, responding to donors & media, issuing appeals, looking for appropriate images, writing web text and ad copy, etc., etc.). Add the ups and downs of the ongoing drama of motherhood and management. Throw in two very different (mostly good) pieces of news that are potentially life-changing and that carried me into an odd introspective space. (No, I’m not prepared to talk about them here yet – maybe later.) Add a few complicated relationships. Top it all off with a major screw-up in which I totally overlooked a presentation I was supposed to give (ugh). And there you have it – the week that was.
Now you know why I was mostly silent last week and will probably continue to be much of this week. There are only so many balls a woman can keep in the air without dropping a few of the rubber ones.
But then there was last night. Last night, for a few precious moments, I managed to put all the balls away on a shelf and walk away. The house was fairly quiet, and other than the laundry that needed to be shifted from washer to dryer to folding table, and a mostly-content seven-year-old who flitted in and out for a little mommy-love now and then, I didn’t have a lot of demands on my time. So I disappeared into my little studio and soon I was lost in a drawing that had begun to emerge at last week’s class.
It’s a row of small fishing sheds lined up on a dock with a couple of fishing boats in the foreground – meant to teach about perspective. Follow the lines to the vanishing point to determine the angle of rooflines, dock edges, etc. Lots of little details and extensive use of a ruler for all those doors, roofs, windows, and wooden siding. It’s not the kind of art work I would normally be drawn into (I get a little bored with symmetry), but oh my, was it zen-like! Soon those heavy thoughts were disappearing right along with those lines on the way to the vanishing point.
Though I recognize the value of meditation, and I’ve tried it several times in various iterations, it just hasn’t been something I’ve been able to fully adopt into my life. Too many monkeys playing around in my mind, I suppose.
That was before I discovered the meditative quality of art. A paintbrush or pencil in my hand, and suddenly I’m a zen master!
by Heather Plett | Jan 12, 2010 | art, Creativity
Last night I started my drawing class. At the Winnipeg Art Gallery, no less – a place for SERIOUS artists. (My last class was through the local community centre, so this is me “kickin’ it up a notch!”) I’m so excited. My teacher is just the right mix of down-to-earth, approachable, relaxed, wise, and seriously talented. I know I’m going to enjoy soaking in her wisdom. We spent last night learning about shading with cross-hatching and smudged charcoal – playing with light.
This is what I wrote in my journal on the bus ride home. “My first drawing class is over. Loved it! Oh yes I did! Teacher, looking over my shoulder, said ‘you have a great sense of light!’ Woohoo! Light! I am elated! Let the light shine on me! And may I recognize the value of the shadows for the way they bring out the light.”
Yup, I was just like Maddie coming home from her art class – silly and imaginative and just plain giddy. I didn’t tell goofy stories like she does (not sure my bus-mates would have appreciated it), but I’m sure I was grinning all the way home.
This morning, in honour of my desire to “bask in pleasure” just like a kid, I want to share a blessing from one of my favourite books:
For the Artist at the Start of Day
May morning be astir with the harvest of night;
Your mind quickening to the eros of a new question,
Your eyes seduced by some unintended glimpse
That cut right through the surface to a source.
May this be a morning of innocent beginning,
When the gift within you slips clear
Of the sticky web of the personal
With its hurt and its hauntings,
And fixed fortress corners,
A Morning when you become a pure vessel
For what wants to ascend from silence,
May your imagination know
The grace of perfect danger,
To reach beyond imitation,
And the wheel of repetition,
Deep into the call of all
The unfinished and unsolved
Until the veil of the unknown yields
And something original begins
To stir toward your senses
And grow stronger in your heart
In order to come to birth
In a clean line of form,
That claims from time
A rhythm not yet heard,
That calls space to
A different shape.
May it be its own force field
And dwell uniquely
Between the heart and the light
To surprise the hungry eye
By how deftly it fits
About its secret loss.
~ John O’Donohue ~
by Heather Plett | Jan 8, 2010 | Creativity, hope, Passion
A few days ago, I let Maddie drag me out of the house to see the Olympic flame as it passed through our city. It was my first day back to work and I really didn’t relish the thought of leaving my warm cocoon again in the evening, but I just didn’t think it was right to extinquish the enthusiasm of a 7 year old child who’ll probably only have one chance to see the flame in her lifetime.
In the end, I was glad we went. We didn’t get there in time to see it arrive at the Forks, but it was burning brightly in a fairly large torch on the stage where performers were putting on a concert.
At the end of the festivities, the flame was passed from the large torch to a very small enclosed lantern where they keep it burning through the night. It was just a tiny flame, but it was still THE Olympic flame. The next day, it would burn brightly again as it continued its journey toward the coast.
As I stood there watching them shrink the flame and then extinquish the large torch, a sudden epiphany visited me. That flame is just like me. Sometimes I’m burning brightly for everyone around to see, and then sometimes I have just a tiny flame burning inside me, nearly invisible to the naked eye. The beauty of the moment was the recognition that that small flame still holds within it the capacity to burn fiercely and powerfully.
Lately I’ve been going through one of those “tiny flame” periods. There are moments when there seems to be no more passion, no more inspiration, and no more energy. No more fuel for my fire. It’s not just a “January blahs” thing this time around. It’s a “something happened that makes the future seem dark again” kind of thing.
But seeing that flame reminded me that it’s still burning deep inside me. I just have to wait for it to be refueled and then it will shine again.
This morning, after having a conversation with a good friend over a chai latte, and then reading the article that my friend Darrah passed on, I had another epiphany. I am letting the shadow of this difficult situation cloud the future and I am forgetting to focus on that tiny speck of light that still burns within me (and within the people around me). I am also forgetthing that I have some control over what fuels my flame and do not have to wait for external forces to fuel it for me. But at the same time… I don’t NEED to burn brightly all the time – some times low flame times are crucial for helping me refuel and prepare for the times when I am called on to burn brightly.
As Pema Chodron says in the article linked above, sometimes we take the shifts of our emotional weather too personally. Sometimes we let ourselves believe that our current experience is how it IS instead of remembering that things are always shifting and changing.
A few days ago, I wrote this on Twitter: “I’m in one of those moods where I can flip-flop between ‘life is beautiful’ and ‘life sucks’ in mere seconds.”
Today I wrote: “Every day gives us another opportunity to rise above the things that dragged us down the day before.”
What about you? Where is YOUR olympic flame these days?
