Patterns

A message from Nada Clyne:

I've been going through a fallow period.  

It's a kind of hibernation with no

interest in creating anything at all - 

a time to simply be and do what is 

before me without initiating new ideas and projects. I work on tasks I ordinarily shirk, completing a framing job, putting together an inventory, cleaning my studio.  And when I'm not doing, I sit and look out the window, go for walks, be quiet and at ease with myself.     

It used to be that I feared these times or felt guilty that I didn't embrace the artist's work ethic.  After all, don't books say that we should show up and do something in the studio every day? But I've discovered the artistic process doesn't work that way, not for me at least. Now I embrace these times of simply being and absorbing, knowing that one day soon, I'll be at the behest of the creative energy, working and working to manifest the impulses and ideas that come so thick and fast I can hardly keep up with them.  And I love those times too! 

Over time and (and with much struggle!) I have come to honor the patterns. These energetic ebbs and flows that impel me to create have a life of their own.  If I stay attuned to their rhythms, I can fully enjoy both riding the creative wave and floating in the shallows that engender new work.  It's a way of being fully in my own life as it is. It requires trust and not defining my worth by my output or by my role as an artist. It's embracing myself as I am moment to moment.

  

These words came to me this morning just as I woke up:

….I wrap the world around me

     like a blanket

     and snuggle into my life

     as it is