Between the Easel and the Wall
Daily I go downstairs into the studio, and stand between the easel and the wall.
Rarely does a day pass that I don’t go there.
The studio, my studio, is the most paradoxical place in which I exist.
If our homes reflect who we are, the contradiction between the physical spaces of my home [upstairs] and my studio [downstairs] is a reflection eakin to that in a mirrored chamber of a fun house. The image is distorted, endlessly multiplied, reflection reflecting reflection, until it is no longer possible to clearly differentiate me from my reflection.
At a glance my home is neat, simple and bright; relatively free of the clutter or detritus one expects to find in a middle-class, Euro-American immigrant family home. Decorated in the international style of Ikea post-mid-century modernism, the random Lego block peeks out from among art displayed on the walls and surfaces, books line the shelves, musical instruments and electronic devices feature not too prominently, revealing the identities of the house’s occupants.
Downstairs like upstairs is a shared space. Play rugs, Matchbox cars, crayons, litter box, laundry, shoes, firewood, and swim gear fill the low ceiling basement in which I’ve carved small niches to read, write, think, and make art. It is a cluttered, chaotic, inadequately fluorescent-lit space; it is me, but not just mine.
Still, my studio space physically extends beyond this dank room and into a greenhouse. Also souterrain, the south wall-cum-ceiling extends 20 feet up to meet the side of the house to which it is attached. This glass wall lets in natural sunlight, and heat, and cold, and moisture. When I am inside this space I am aware of how ‘outside’ of myself I can be.
Here stand my easel and my wall.
Studio time, one might think, is a quiet, focused time; a time of solitude. Like the upstairs/downstairs spatial decor, my time in the studio is marked by an extreme paradox, rapidly vacillating states of solitude and chaos. A second of solitude can quickly become hours of chaos, and vice versa. Internal solitude and external chaos, internal chaos and external solitude. I escape into my studio, not for stability or comfort, but to leap into a gap I can freely fall through, perhaps even cross.
Sometimes I go down those stairs prepared to work; the path before me clear in my mind’s eye. Dressed in studio gear, hair pulled back, I begin to mix paint, prepare paper or canvas, add a layer here, scrape or sand away one there...in other words, I physically “get to work”. Painting and drawing is always a physical act for me. Other times this “getting to work” is not a physical act, instead it is a mental act: writing.
Then there are those times I arrive unable to “get to work”. I sit at my tables in the basement, or in a chair in the greenhouse...and I stare. Numb. Or I cry. Frustrated.
How can one feel empty and filled to the brim at the same time?
Either there is nothing to be said, or so much to be said that it will all come sloshing out uncontrollably like hot coffee through an ill-fitting lid.
Books sometimes help. A day on the futon immersed in the words of others can be the tonic to soothe the numbness and the frustration paralyzing the hand and the eye.
But there are times when neither hand nor eye is frozen, instead they’re both itchy and hot, inflamed with the desire to “get to work”.
What then?
Forced distractions can get both moving again: a film on the laptop, singing along to songs long forgotten, drawing dots and lines.
In other words, imposed aimless wandering until I find a way back into the space of my studio.
Waiting for inspiration or waiting due to technical limitations each material and method brings with it, are often identified as periods of inactive waiting, non-engagement, and seen as the hallmarks of studio boredom.
When it is bored the mind wanders off in search of a more exciting and creative place; hoping a novel thought or idea will alleviate the boredom.
It is true, standing in the steamy shower soaping up and those seconds just after waking, often from a lucid dream, are both moments of mental boredom and moments when our creative thought process peaks. The rejuvenating boredom of sleeping, of dreaming, of cleansing, leads the mind to the space where creativity resides.
Aimless wandering is not limited to these times.
I also wander when I’ve already “gotten to work”. During those times when my eyes and hands know the path they are following, regardless of the solitude or chaos which might be filling the space, I still find my mind searching for other places.
My mind wanders as much during times of active engagement as it does during times of boredom. Through wandering my mind moves deeper into the process and into the work.
Peering into the picture my hands and eyes are so actively engaged with forces me to move backwards, forwards, sideways, and up and down; mental as well as physical movements along pathways of exploration.
Each path I follow circuitously leads me back into the picture where I find the work has progressed in the direction it needed to go. Either I arrive at the point where the path in that picture leads no further, or the journey within it begins again. Either way the path does continue. The end of a pathway in one picture is connected by an invisible bridge spanning the gap to the beginnings of another pathway in the next picture when I’m between the easel and the wall.