Nurture — Day 4
Day 4 Prompt : “Tell the story of how you got started as an artist. What inspired you to pursue this path and what obstacles did you overcome?
There have been three times in my life when I “started as an artist “: childhood, my late 20s, and three years ago. Each period had specific motivations, obstacles and outcomes. You would be forgiven for thinking that artists just “want to create art”. While that is generally true, each artist—me during these three periods in my life—is responding to their environment, life(style), and emotional / mental state when they create art. In my own case, I was / am three very different persons at those stages in my life.
Let’s take a trip back to when Gryph was a child…
Goddess above!!! I was such an innocent before my teen years. I don’t just mean “innocent” in the way that we hope, pray, and protect the innocence of children—something that we absolutely protect with all of our being(s). I was…innocent…to the family history I would uncover as an adult and the harms that were constructed (because they involved planning and purpose) on a daily basis. As a child, I learned to “protect” the core innocence by fracturing my very identity. The world, my FOO, and outside persons were shown a public face that very much treated them as spectators for some grand show. They saw what they expected to see: a perfect son, in a perfect family, that overcame the struggles common to immigrants to Canada. Nobody, at any point in my childhood, saw / knew “Gryph”. They only saw what I allowed them (by instinct) to see—the male child that carried my birthname.
When I was this child, I created art in order to create my own worlds. Although I enjoyed reading, I sometimes found it difficult to place myself in the books that were common for children. Creating art gave me the freedom to actually place myself in those stories. Suddenly, I could see myself as Aladdin or Yosemite Sam because I had drawn myself in their worlds. My Marm, like every Mother, saved the “best” of those pieces—which I now have to look at whenever I feel the need to recapture some of the innocence I had as a child.
Crossroads in my late twenties…
A few days ago, I alluded to difficulties that I was experiencing in 1993. A huge part of my healing happened when I discovered Art Therapy. For the first time, since I was a young child, I was encouraged to paint my “internal landscape”; nothing was off limits. I painted my fears, my harms, my joys, my discoveries…all of it…translated by my hands an communicated to others through the gift of art.
Imagine the power in that…
It should come as no surprise that I decided I was going to be an Art Therapist. I knew I had been healed through it; sharing this gift with the world seemed a natural next step. So…in Autumn 1995, I enrolled in the University of Toronto, declaring majors in Fine Arts and Psychology. I was determined to learn all I could about Psychology, hone my art skills, and expand my general knowledge of the “human condition” through my elective choices—included in the last set were Anthropology, Russian (I had taken it as a teen), and Comparative Religions. I attended school as a part-time student due to my overall health, continuing work on healing my emotions, and limited finances (some day I’ll have to write that long-form essay about the punitive design of “student loans” in Canada). In any case, I knew that my studies would likely take me eight years to complete—as compared to the standard four years for a B.A.. Becoming an Art Therapist would be worth it!!
Much of my…education…was both useful and enjoyable. I devoured the content in my electives, I soaked up psych terms like a hungry sponge, and I learned many valuable techniques / structures / rules for art creation that I continue to apply in my practice to this day. But, there were also major obstacles that I faced in university: the disconnect in teaching styles between my academic v studio courses, the very different motivations underlying how those disciplines were packaged to students, and the physical distance between the two campuses I attended.
“Tornado”
By the time I moved from Ontario to the Maritimes (1998), I felt like I had been living in a constant state of storm readiness. Even though I only had three courses per semester (compared to the standard five), I seemed to be constantly traveling, reading, writing, or (trying to) creating art. It didn’t help that studio classes were twice as long as academic ones.
I thought I was being smart by concentrating on my studio courses from the second year onward. On paper it looked like a good idea; the reality was far different. My energy requirements in type, time, and resources are completely different for creative v academic pursuits. I didn’t realize, at the time, that I needed the balance between the two in order to give myself a chance to rest and recharge. My artistic skills improved dramatically between ‘95 and ‘98; I even managed to produce some pieces that I continue to cherish. However, this happened at the expense of having to reacquaint myself with much of the academic content I’d been missing. [As a complete aside: if I never have to take another “Art History” university level course again, it will be too soon. I developed an utter distaste for celebrating the bodies of work of mostly white, European, generally privileged men…at the expense of ignoring the stunning work of those artists that aren’t celebrated in Academia.]
Moving to the Maritimes in 1998, while the best move of my life, presented further challenges. It was only after I had transferred studies to the University of New Brunswick that I realized I had already fulfilled all the studio courses that were offered (at my new campus). I decided to “fill out” my academic studies by changing to a dual-degree, BA / BEd, with an honours in Psych, and dual majors in Fine Art and Adult Education (I’ve never been accused of being an under-achiever). Remember…I was determined to become an Art Therapist!! I don’t know how I thought I’d be able to effectively handle a purely academic course-load—allowing for art creation during my free-time. I didn’t have “free-time”. Ever. I spent the first three semesters on my new campus taking their core requirements for any program, upgrading courses I had done poorly in at U of T, and getting used to a more…overall Conservative…mindset of my new home province. I had been creating art as both an outlet (art therapy) & something that I could hone as a craft. Sadly, my lack of time and resources (in addition to new demands) made it impossible for me to continue creating art…which had been a primary driver for attending university in the first place!
That phase of my life ended in Spring 2000, when the faculties for both Psychology and Education (separately) informed me that they wouldn’t be able to accommodate my proposed undergraduate thesis proposals. I intended to present argument(s) in favour of Art Therapy as a beneficial adjunct to the prevailing treatment models at the time. I was devastated. I had spent my “free-time” in my last semester researching my best path forward in graduate studies, which all advised me that and undergraduate thesis would greatly benefit pursuing a PhD or PsyD (Doctorate in Psychology) in Art Therapy. In fact, I had taken the extra steps to identify a university in Canada that offered a PsyD program for that specific career path. I can’t express how completely defeated, demoralized, and…lied to…I felt. At the time, all I could see was that I had wasted the past six years of my life completing the education that I had thought would prepare me for becoming an Art Therapist.
I didn’t see the insights I gained into myself or the human condition, I didn’t recognize my own growth as an artist, I definitely didn’t celebrate any of the accomplishments I’d experienced in that time. I ended up punishing myself by completely withdrawing from creating art.
“I knowingly punished myself for being “stupid”, for trusting others, and for believing I could make a difference.”
2020 — The last year of the “Before Times”
We all remember 2020, yes? It will, for the foreseeable future, be the year when the World turned upside down due to the…chaotic…response to Covid19. I used to lightly laugh off the description of “before-times” for our modern civilization prior to 2020. I don’t think any of us could imagine that we’d still be fighting the various battles around this pandemic: treatments, communication, reactions, theories, conspiracy theories, economic “collapses”, etc. I suspect whatever lessons we learn from this will reshape our global society at the most minute levels. We will never return to, what had been, “normal”.
On some levels, my responses in early 2020 were no different to how I already lived my life. I had returned from an extended visit to my Marm the previous Summer and was still adjusting to her decision to follow her husband into a seniors’ long-term-care facility in Ontario. We had planned, the previous Summer, to have her move to the Maritimes with my family out here; in the end, she found that she couldn’t escape what she saw as her “duty” to her husband, regardless of the very important reasons she had believed for distancing herself from him. She had suffered a heart attack in early 2019 (the purpose of my visit); the after-effects included a speedy decline into advanced dementia. She didn’t clearly remember the horridness of her marriage; therefore, she had only her “duties” to inform her. Early 2020 found me adjusting to this, reconciling my very real worry about her with my desire to respect her decisions, and re-evaluating my own home life (as we’d no longer have her living with us).
Covid19 was absolutely the last fly in the ointment that I needed. I don’t mean the infection, itself, as our home was spared any serious infection as we immediately adopted the protocols that were advised. I mean the added irritant of dealing with the “new normal” in addition to everything else that had been changing. I don’t enjoy change just for the sake of change; I despise not being in control of what I feel I should be able to change.
I decided to return to creating art as a means to address my many conflicting emotions. It was time to break out the art supplies I had been moving from home to home over the past two decades! It was, more importantly, long past time that I returned to practices that had rescued me as a child. I soon realized that “picking up where I left off” was a lot easier said than done. In my university days, I had painted almost exclusively in acrylics, while I tended towards charcoal sticks (of various types) for my sketching work. These mediums allowed me a greater freedom of movement. The corollary to that is that all that movement requires an equal amount of space. I hadn’t had access to—and still don’t—a studio since my university days, so…what to do. I had to paint!! I was damned if I was going to let a third opportunity to create what I truly loved to pass me by because of “space”. Thankfully, Marm didn’t only not raise a fool, she raised a resourceful person.
The first thing I did was take this opportunity to challenge myself with a medium I had dreaded using before: watercolour. I had dabbled in it over the years, but was never satisfied with the results. I had always found it to be difficult to manage…to control. Well, no time like the present to test what losing control of my art would be like. Watercolour painting would also require much less space, was very easy to keep tidy, and far more portable should I ever fee the desire to paint on our front porch (we live in a rural area—surrounded by acreages of trees). Finances were / are also an issue, but I managed to find enough in our budget to buy a set of gansai tambi (Japanese) watercolours, inexpensive heavy-weight paper, and some brushes. Although the linked set is one I eventually upgraded to, the set I purchased was about 1/3 the price, but had similar qualities—as “student” v “professional” grade paint. I’ve always believed that I should buy the best quality of anything that I can afford so that it lasts longer—and gives better results—than a cheaper alternative would. I soon followed that with a started set of water-based brush markers, some pencil crayons, and other sketching materials. Did I go overboard? Not really. We were in the middle of a pandemic, my hubsand (it’s a word!) was working from home, and we hadn’t had any sort of social life in some time so he supported me following this passion…need…drive for as long as I needed. My first “studio space” was a 2x3’ sheet of mdf on our kitchen table—as both protection and something that I could elevate slightly if I needed a shallow angle to work on.
The balance of 2020 was spent just creating art. I didn’t set myself a schedule, I didn’t have a plan, I didn’t even really have a theme in mind. I created as a response to everything that had happened over the years. I didn’t realize until that summer that I felt…lighter, somehow. I had put to bed the disappointments since leaving university, I managed to reacquaint myself with tools I had learned in therapy, I even gained a sense of acceptance regarding Marm’s decisions in her own life. I wasn’t fully healed (I don’t think we ever really are), but I felt more…at peace than I had in years.
I spent much of 2020 honouring the child I had been, supporting and assuring the man I had been in my late 20s, and forgiving the man I had become for not meeting the expectations I had allowed others to place on my shoulders.
2020 helped me to prepare for later events—deciding to make a career of art, my advocacy for PWD concerns, and Marm’s passing earlier this year. It’s only recently that I realized that I did, in fact, become the Art Therapist I had dreamt of becoming; I was my first “client”.
So…Gentle Reader, now you know some of why I create art. I hope I’ve managed to convey that motivations are not necessarily as evident as they first appear to an outsider. Each of us has…secret…perhaps “private” is a better word…reasons for why we endure, why we act, why we seem to be at the whims of other forces. At our very best, we act because we must…even when we would choose otherwise.
As always, be well.
Gryph
