Lessons in the Garden
What Dirt Can Teach Us
I never really thought about Art as a form of healing. It is amazing what solace you can find in being creative. I thought I could only find that in the world of nature: hiking through trees, jumping over streams, climbing a cliff, or snowshoeing down a white trail.
Beauty is still created through solace. Beauty is attained through peace of space.
I think you can also find it just being in your yard, digging in the dirt. Plants have an amazing quality about them. Even the ones you call weeds. There is a creative process to planting a garden. When we first moved back from Alaska, I made all these maps of how I wanted my flower and vegetable garden to look. I made detailed drawings and notes to show where I would plant my many veggie seeds. So a funny thing happened.. nothing grew! We hardly harvested anything in those first three years. In the fourth year of my MS adventure, I was so fed up with the vegetable garden not producing, no matter how much I amended the soil. This sort of went along with my MS process. I finally said the hell with that and just threw seeds out. No map and no notes discussing what plants need to be next to each other. Lo and behold, we had plants! We had squash. We had beans. We had tomatoes. We had kale. I even grew a melon, which by the way tasted OK.
So the lesson I learned from my garden is that nature will tell you where to go, how to be, and how to live. Nature is not perfect. Nature is not orderly. And there is not always a right or wrong way. Nature just IS.
Learning is Letting Go
What does this have to do with ART?? In the creative process (at least in mine) there is no right or wrong way to paint. I am sure that the experts will tell me that I am talking blasphemy. Which is fine. I never did go towards the norm but I can tell you this. My most exuberant pieces and my most healing pieces of art have been the product of just letting go. Sorry old white dudes, you do not own creativity.
Perhaps the concept of “letting go” is what the garden and my paintings have been trying to teach me for the past 10 or so years. To yield to the flow of my body because nature is not perfect. My body, myself …. not perfect. That imperfection is what has created beauty around me. Even though I may be in bed for days in pain or cannot use my legs, beauty is still with me. Beauty is still created through solace. Beauty is attained through peace of space. It is still viable within the confines of my brain. My experiences of learning to “let go” due to my MS, my daughter knows compassion and has learned patience. So when you yield and you learn to accept, yet still push forward to find some sort of meaning, specifically through something creative, there is HOPE. There is light even when the plant may die. It remains nourished and provides the sustenance for new growth and that is true inspiration.
