Tag: Creativity

Head in the Clouds


I love to stop and ponder the headless statue whenever I go over to Bedlam Farm, the home of bestselling author John Katz and artist Maria Wulf.
This weekend I was there to participate in their semi-annual Open House, celebrating Rural Art and the creative spark that lives in all of us. I love the Open House because you can’t get up the driveway without running into an old friend and fellow art junkie, but this year there was something deeper to love, and it gave me a clue as to what might have happened to the pilgrim’s head.

As happens with every Open House, people from all walks of life and points of view came together to enjoy the art. Throughout the day I overheard people praising the work of others. Sitting under the apple tree on a wicker love-seat, I heard one visitor contemplating reviving her creative life as another enthusiastically encouraged her. We watched sheep herding and listened to kids relatively new to this country sharing their musical talents with a damp-eyes audience.

This weekend ended up being, for me, about nurturing the idea that the things we have in common–the things that bind us–are more beautiful and powerful and than those that divide us. There seemed to be a mass mutual recognition that our creative sparks are worth fanning and when we come together to encourage people’s gifts, we are all better.

That thought kind of carried my head into the clouds as I sat on that love-seat on Sunday, and I realize that’s probably what happened to the little pilgrim statue at Bedlam Farm too. I think he found himself at the altar of creativity (featuring a recycled art sculpture by Ed Gulley) and, keeping his feet on the ground, let his head get lost in the clouds as he chased his own creative spark. 

It’s a worthy pursuit, and I think all of us who had a chance to sit near the altar this weekend went home full of sparks to nurture and share.

Fly

Wave Runner, Watercolor 12x16, Matted to 16x20
Wave Runner, Watercolor 12×16, Matted to 16×20

A few weeks ago an aunt who had been a huge influence in my creative life passed away. Her encouragement was felt even when we didn’t see each other for years.  She and her sister were (and are) not willing to listen to their nieces and daughters downgrade their work or trash their talent, and her words of encouragement are with me every time I pick up a brush.

I found an old black and white picture of her running on the beach where our family has spent the last 80+ summers.  She was so full of joy she looked like she could fly.  Officially I’ve heard that people can’t fly, but my theory is that, instead of keeping the secret of flying all to herself, she shared her joy of life with everyone in her life else so they could soar.

I’m just figuring that out now, and it’s helping me get closer to the secret of flying, of joy and the sharing of it..

$80 Matted Ready to Frame. To purchase the Original, contact me at rachel@rachelbarlow.

Card and Prints of this painting are available here.

Well-behaved Women

  
Somewhere along the way I picked up an ancient doctrine that well-behaved women don’t brag about their work. 

I’ve seen it play out in various ways my own family–there’s a long-held tradition of apologizing for our cooking before we serve any meal, and I know I do it with my work before sharing it. I will mentally tear it down, quelling any satisfaction with the results that may lead to arrogance or delusion.

There seems to be this fear that being proud of something you’ve done makes you boastful, and by extension, unladylike.

 I don’t know why I still observe this one custom– aside from birthing and breast-feeding two kids I haven’t clung to too many other “lady like” customs. I don’t own a dress that fits, I haul firewood, and I work a full day for a full paycheck.

So tonight, instead of trying to figure out tradition, I just broke with it.

I have a show starting at EquinoxVillage gallery in Manchester, Vermont on Thursday, and the big guy and I have spent the better part of the last two hours matting and framing my efforts for the last few months. The big guy has gone to bed–he has to get up earlier than I do. So I took a little break to lean the fruits of our labor is against the wall of my studio, and, for the first time in my life, I let myself feel proud of the work I’ve done for the last few weeks.

It’s not very lady-like, but is the old saying goes, well behaved women seldom make history, and I’m not sure if they make much art either.

The exhibit opening is at 49 Maple St. in Manchester Vermont and is scheduled for Thursday at 5:30 PM, is a free event and will include music and refreshments. my work will be showing there from the 18th of this month until 17 March.

Happy Accidenting


The thing I love about watercolor is that paper is relatively cheap. that means you can kiss a lot of frogs is in the hope of getting a handsome print. This one is more of a tadpole, but it wasn’t a wasted effort. It’ll be chopped into bookmarks but not before that serves as a study for a much bigger piece it has now inspired.

Postcard from Pompanuck

postcard-from-pompanuckweb

Saturday & Sunday I went over the mountain to help with and participate in a blog workshop at Pompanuck Farm in Cambridge, NY.

Sunday I got there early to have a little time to paint, but I had been up till 5 in the morning nursing Thing2 through a fever, and I kept nodding off as I sat in the sun-warmed car.  The other members got there just as I was adding the first green wash for the lawn.

I went in thinking I would paint and listen – I always think it helps me concentrate. Instead I had to work to keep focused on the painting, as each member of the group voiced their reasons for wanting a blog, recognized that those reasons were partly about wanting to stand in their truth.

I felt like I found mine over the summer when I took just a travel sketchbook and a pen on vacation. We went to the Palouse in Washington state, and the rhythm of the wind bending the yet-unharvested wheat fields was hypnotic, spurring meditations and frenzied drawing sessions. Drawing, and later painting, was an act that pulled me closer to my truth – that the only work that would ultimately fulfill me is creative work.

It was a truth I began to sense and acknowledge with my decision to illustrate my first blog ‘Picking My Battles’. What began as a spur-of-the-moment strategy to cut the cost of royalty-free photos and the kids’ sleep schedules evolved into a reawakening of an artistic drive I had tried to smother for years.

The revival led to doodles and sketches, scribbles and watercolor cartoons.  The blog became a cartoon, Picking My Battles (it’s have a little vacation as I reorganize my schedule around school and projects) and added another (HOGA), and I began feeling like I was on a multi-line tightrope between painting and cartooning and writing.

Diving into drawing with abandon, I found my truth and something that I had only felt a few times – pure joy.  Interesting that the joy and truth are so closely linked.  Embracing my truth – feeding a need to draw and paint – saw words  re-emerge, supporting the blog’s art the way  art had once played a supporting role for the words.

Joy also let me see the silly situations that had made blogging so fun in the first place, and a few weeks ago I took a flying leap and embarked on an Alphabet book for parents.  As we talked about blogging and truth over the weekend workshop, I realized that each new post and page of my book is proof that there’s room for more than one truth in a life.

My new blog (My Sketchy Life) – with the serious painting and the silly cartoons isn’t a tight rope I walk between two sides of my creative life I need to choose between. It’s a collage of my life and, like my life, it’s a more than a little sketchy.

I went home thinking there’s nothing like a good workshop in a sunny farmhouse living room to open your eyes to the world right in front of you. Wish you’d all been here.

Leave the Cape, Pack the Pretzels

I saw the homework folder neatly tucked in the backpack and decided it was safe to zip the big pocket. The sound of merging metal teeth brought seven-year-old Thing2 flying out of his room and into the living room.

“Wait!” he shrieked. “I left something in there!”

“What is it?” I ducked, trying to avoid his flapping arms.

“It’s going to snow today!” Thing2 unzipped the big pocket an pulled out his red satin cape.

“You’re not taking that?” I scratched my head, not even remembering seeing it a few minutes earlier.

“No.” Thing2 now unfurled the cape on the couch and then extracted his army green third-hand snow pants from the same pocket.

“Of course I don’t need it now.” Realizing I still have a lot to learn about the fashion rituals of the average rainbow-wigged superhero in the country, I popped the lunchbox into the front pocket and zipped entire the pack closed again.

“Well then,” I said, “leave the cape, but pack the cannoli.”

“Huh?”

“The pretzels,” I said, “pack the pretzels.”

“Obviously I was taking the pretzels,” he said trotting out his favorite new adult buzzword and demonstrating once again that I have am achieving true wisdom because when it come to the inner working of my youngest child’s mind, I know nothing.

 

Snowshoes and Sociability

Snow Shoe Blog

A few mornings ago my running path was buried under 18″ of new powder, so I broke out the snowshoes I keep in my trunk during winter. I headed to the park, equipped – as usual – with my ID (in case there’s a rash of muggings in rural Vermont) and my phone.

Running days I use the phone for music and tracking time and distance. Today, however, I’d left my earbuds at home, taking the phone with the sole intention of taking pictures, should the mood hit me.

And it did hit me.

As I trudged from the car across the snowy golf course, the sound of traffic diminshed, and only the roar of the nearby Battenkill serenaded my walk. My legs were soon on fire, but the exhaution became like a drug. I giggled and pushed on, and before I knew it, I’d stomped the word “peace” in the snow in letters big enough to be seen from a plane.

It was the most creative thing I’d done in a week. It was also, with the exception of the daily “don’t-forget-your-lunch” and “how-was your-day-honey” utterances, the only personal encounter I’d had with another human being – however brief it would be when that theoretical plane passed over – all week. I interact with dozens of customers and my corworkers all day in our company’s online chat rooms. I may ‘like’ a status or two on Facebook, but even when I run at a community park, my primary interaction with humanity is through the intermediary of my phone or some other digital device.

The other morning, completely alone in the park, surrounded by snowy mountains and disconnected from digitas, stomping out my piece wasn’t about politics. It was the peace of reconnecting with something real.

 

How a Bad Cat and Stinky Feet got Me Back to my Beat

Drummer boy

I was still embroiled with work the other night when grandfather clock counted a single chime, reminding me that it was 5:30 and time to quit. The soft din of homework-related questions had waxed into a blurred chorus of “Moms”, so when the words “stinky feet” permeated my brain, I didn’t know if seven-year-old Thing2’s smelly socks had prompted the thought or if someone was actually singing the words.

I looked up from my computer and glanced toward the den. There was Thing2, wearing the smelly socks and singing as he hunched over his sketchbook and writing.  

“He wanted to write a song,” explained the Big Guy. Seeing Dad’s guitar emerge from storage, Thing2 had been inspired.  No one had ever told that only he could not write a song, so he decided to try it.

At dinner, the Big Guy extolled our offspring’s achievement. “He wrote a song,” he said over and over again. I was proud, but, still frazzled from the day, I didn’t offer the encouragement I normally do.

Thing2 is creativity personified.  He sings and dances.  He has littered his desk books he has written, illustrated and assembled.  He lives for art, and this song was just his latest expression.  

I grew up hearing the phrase, “Do what you love.”   I repeat it every time I see him fly through the air or ‘publish’ a new book. That night, however, I wondered how I tell my youngest child, to chase artistic dreams when, lately, I have increasingly surrendered mine, partly to depression but mostly to work?

“Dad, I want to write another song,” he said the next night after homework.  This single was called Bad Cat. The Big Guy played back up on guitar while Thing2 drummed on a book and sang lead.

“Bad Cat, Bad Cat, sitting on the counter,” it started. There were three more verses on the sins of our chubby black cat.

I started the video camera on the iPhone, and Thing 2, sensing a hit, launched into another chorus.  My feet began to tap.  My youngest was inspiring me in spite of myself.  Most of my best posts start with antics authored by Thing1 or Thing2, and, last night every beat of his drumsticks generated a new idea.

Thing2 was reminding me of what he knows instinctively.  Art isn’t a dream, and it’s not a living.  It’s life.  When the song was over, I gave his newest opus the reception it deserved.  

“You keep doing what you love,” I said with a tight hug free of doubt.  

Last night I set the alarm for 4 AM again, and this morning, for the first time in ages, I didn’t hit the snooze button.  I had homework – to practice what I preach.  Completing the assignment quickly reminded me how much art, for me also, is life.  

Thing2 may be a bit unorthodox, but he’s turned out to be quite the teacher.