"The Artist's Journey: Embracing the Power of Letting Go"

...“If you know how to let go and be at peace, you know everything you need to know about living in the world” – Ajahn Brahm

Why is death and rebirth an essential part of being a creative person?

As I type this, I have the joy of being able to look up and see the gorgeousness of spring blossom on the mirabelle cherry-plum tree in my garden. Its delicate and fragrant flowers are fluttering away in the breeze before they have all opened up. The fleeting nature of this process is what makes it beautiful. It is precious because it is momentary. There is movement all the time; each moment passing as soon as it has begun.

As an artist, movement is deeply imbedded in everything I do. We move our bodies in order to create. We move through different phases of style and creation to discover our niche. When we begin a new stage, take a new step, death of the past is inevitable. Death of the old is a positive part of life. We must let go of what we once were, in order to embrace the birth of what we can become.

When I set up a fresh canvas on my easel, it is the act of transforming it that excites me. The final result is of course what I am striving towards, but it is the process that I revel in the most. My process lays down groundwork often in the form of an underpainting or as an intuitive flourish of playful colour, only for these first layers to be mostly covered as I work. If I held onto these beginning stages, not only would the painting be incomplete, but I would miss out on the enjoyment of adding more layers, building structure, finishing with soft highlights and gently applying detail.

What can letting go achieve?

The act of letting go is liberating. Let go of your painful past, and you open yourself up to a beautiful future, and a peaceful present. Hold onto it, however, and you build resentment, nurture depression, and even encourage sickness in the body. Letting go of inhibitions when we create is such a beautifully therapeutic experience. It was only when I did so that my work began to flourish. When I first decided that art was going to be my life and career, I felt such a great resistance that I could barely look at my work. I was embarrassed by my lack of skill and the fact I was nowhere near the standard of the artists I admired. Holding onto fear was stagnating me. Then one day I stumbled across a video of intuitive artist Flora Bowley. A joyous smile stretched across her face, moving like a dancer around a huge canvas, she added flourishes of bold colour with no planning stage involved and what’s more – no self-judgement. I felt tears welling in my eyes, witnessing for the first time a truly freeing way to create. The only thing holding me back was myself. This was the sign I didn’t know I needed. When we let go of the negativity directed at ourselves we can open up our hearts to new possibilities. Let that harsh voice that wicks away at your heart wither away, just as autumn gives way to winter.

Letting go & the uncomfortable lobster

Discomfort is mostly viewed as a negative sensation; one that should be avoided and prevented. I say it is important, significant and useful. Our society in the west encourages us to avoid uncomfortable or painful emotions, through dopamine hits, striving for perfection, the constant accumulation of more physical objects and wealth. We think we must feel happy all the time; a perfect home, hordes of perfect friends, never bored, never anxious. It is in the painful, difficult moments of life however that the opportunity for growth and enlightenment is most abundant. The Lobster knows this very well. Lobsters’ shells do not grow, once they are formed. The lobster inside, however, continues to grow. When it is too big for its shell, it feels discomfort. It is the sign the lobster needs in order to shed its shell, to let go of its current protection, and grow a new one. Without experiencing discomfort, the lobster would stagnate, and never grow. Those of us who have dabbled in Eastern Mysticism, meditation or Dialectical Behavioural Therapy will know that it is important to learn to sit with emotions we perceive to be painful. It is important to find the meaning in them, take from them what we can in order to move forward.

In a past life, I worked in a variety of office settings. I was deeply uncomfortable. The more I tried to fit in, the more I seemed and felt like an alien from the planet Glaknar wearing a people suit and trying and failing miserably to do human stuff. Imitating (badly) the patterns of behaviour I quietly observed in others in an attempted to integrate socially. For years I tried to convince myself that this was a normal, acceptable way of existing. I ignored the discomfort as long as I possibly could. Then one day, while continuing to coast along at the bare minimum of engagement and failing at being able to enter the correct digits into a dishwater-dull piece of accounting software (thank you undiagnosed neurodivergence) I realised I could not, and should not continue along this path. I felt like a sad, caged animal. A lifeless tiger in a concrete zoo, wishing it was in the jungle. I felt a deep discomfort. It was like I had been wearing someone else’s too-small shoes for too many years. What I really wanted to do, as long as I could remember, was to create. I wanted to paint and write and cook and draw and plant things and sway with trees and whistle back to birds and be weird and odd and stop trying to shove my interdimensional dodecahedron peg into a round hole. Without that desperate pain, that gut wrenching fear of falling through my life on the wrong path, I never would have taken steps to becoming an artist.  

Death of the caterpillar and rebirth of the butterfly

“When death comes, it's just like winter. We don't say, "There ought not to be winter." That the winter season, when the leaves fall and the snow comes, is some kind of defeat, something which we should hold out against. No. Winter is part of the natural course of events. No winter, no summer. No cold, no heat. " – Alan Watts

When the caterpillar builds its pupa and seals itself up for impending transformation, it is preparing to die. Yes, the caterpillar quite literally dies during pupation; its body breaks down and there is no sign of life. And then… And then by some miracle of nature, it is reborn as the butterfly. If the caterpillar did not prepare for death with such vigour, it would never have the chance to unfurl its wings in the balm of the sun. So do not hold onto parts of yourself that you feel are fading and changing. Do not lament them either. Instead celebrate them! It is the beautiful dance of life. You are part of it, it is you. You are change. You are life. But you are also death.

After all that shedding of our old ways, finally it is time to embrace the new. The possibilities of what could be blossom within us. This is the exciting part. It is time to reward ourselves for all that difficult work through our discomfort. Now is the time to be like a child with our creativity. To experience the joy of the tactile nature of mark-making, revel in the richness of colour and marvel at the wonder of world-building. We open our tender new wings for the first time. This new space we find ourselves in is ripe for experimentation and risk. Let your own specific brand of weirdness come out and never be ashamed of it!

Learning is the soup de jour. Take advantage of the fact our modern world has such an abundance of information directly fed into our homes. I’m going to age myself here, but as a youngling, my research was confined to the local library and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Sometimes information on a desired topic was limited to a few sentences. I am certainly glad that stage of life has died. Today we have countless documentaries, tutorials, instructional videos and more for free online. I am to this day in awe of the fact I can search for “techniques of renaissance masters” and be presented with hours of well put together information. Pay attention to what is nourishing for your development as you move on to fresh stages in your life. Let it become a way of being as you embrace the new.

Accepting impermanence

So now we have successfully embraced a new stage, and let go of the past. Wonderful! It is important to keep in mind however that this stage will also one day, be in the past. That we will have to let this go too, as beautiful and exciting as it may be at present, if we hold onto it for too long, it will become stale, and we too will stagnate. The lesson of course is that everything is in a constant state of flux. As we are moving into a new era of our lives, we are simultaneously sowing the seeds for future ones. Just as the seasons blend into one another. Embrace the now, my friend, but always be ready to let it go, because the beauty of life is the fluidity of time, and the preciousness of impermanence.