blue ~

~ God told me to be an artist, week 15.

Friday 17th March 2023.

This week marked an exciting return to a creative part of me I thought was lost. It kinda crept up on me I'm not going to lie. Everytime I think I know what God is up to or what is coming next, I get surprised.

This week was pretty great. I felt a step further into alignment, an intensified sense of peace amidst a raging sea. It's the most hopeful and positive I've felt in a long time, a welcome experience.

There are still many unknowns, and a lingering fear about paying the mortgage, *gulp* but the overarching sense in my spirit is that it is all in hand and if I focus on what I feel positioned towards, breakthrough will come. And hey, I think that's just the early career artist experience, it can be tough as you start building, but you know within you that you must press on.

It's a wild experience feeling peaceful in the face of an unpredictable storm, it can only be the power of God that gets you through. There's no way I would still be standing if he wasn't holding me up right now. Not only is he kind enough to teach me in this uncertain season and promise he will see me through, but as I mentioned right at the beginning of this post, he has also been reawakening artistic parts of me I'd long sidelined. What an unexpected pleasure and profoundly moving gift.

Before I launch into the creative renaissance I've been having, let me give you a little backstory.

You may have seen my instagram stories in January when I entered an art competition. I was happy with the piece I created, I was even selected as one of the finalists. Although I did not win a prize, it felt amazing to be recognised in the top 12. All in all a decent experience I thought and I began to move onto the next thing.

A few weeks passed following this competition and I felt a nudge to apply again to the next prompt from the same organisation. I read through the new brief and thought about it for a moment. I wasn't sure. Should I really do this again? I thought. It's a lot of work when I don't know how it will turn out. I tossed and turned about it in bed each night.

Should I?

No, I shouldn't.

But should I?

No, maybe another time?

But maybe?

It was infuriating, I felt so double minded about it till eventually I thought, why not give it another go. It's obviously playing on my mind and won't leave my thoughts for a reason.

The only problem now, was what the heck was I going to make?

A couple of days later I read through the competition brief several times, it was a call to ponder and a call to action. It was inspired by this quote by Martin Luther King Jr, “Everybody can be great… because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

Now, the statement I'm sure we can all agree on, but how was I going to make artwork in line with this? The enormity of the brief really overwhelmed me.

I knew this had to be a special piece of work.

As the brief called for pondering and action I thought to myself, if I spend some time intentionally noticing the experience of serving and reflecting on it afterwards the art work will come. So I decided to place my focus on serving in my local church, somewhere I had been helping out for a little while.

I tried my hardest to notice and note down the small moments and exchanges that happen in the flurry of activity that comes with serving alongside multiple teams in a bustling church environment.

I noticed the sharing of tasks, the kindness of strangers, the rush to support others without need for applause or renown. I realised that when I really paid attention to what was going on around me I was deeply moved and encouraged to find ways to quietly contribute and help other people too.

Now, it's not to say that such beautiful experiences of human kindness are only found in the church, of course they are in a multitude of secular spaces too. I thought deeply about the amount of people in my city alone that give their time to help build something bigger than themselves and I was moved once more.

I began to find a deeper connection to my own experience of serving, a renewed joy in being a part of what God is doing on the earth. It's amazing how differently you can experience life when you purposefully pay attention to it.

So there I was with a reinvigorated energy for serving but still without an art piece to submit to the competition. The more I thought about how to create something that could capture all this, the more intimidated I felt.

I left it a little while longer, hoping my brain would figure this out.

A couple of days later I was stood in Grandma's house and she showed me an old bedside table she had asking, "Can you do something with this?" I wasn't sure how but something in my jolted.

"Yes, I think I can", I replied.

After the piece sat in my office for several days a sudden flood of ideas and images came rushing through me. I knew in an instant I had to transform this piece of furniture into something brand new, something that could house a series of collages that brought to life the notes and reflections I had made during my serving sessions at church.

So I got to work, I sanded the piece, primed it, and painted it. I collected a plethora of images and textures and began to start arranging them in the space, imagining how they could all work together.

Over time, the piece became a collage world, a bizarre blue cabinet with a whole community and life inside of it. The more I added, lights, layers, colours, the more it began to feel closer to representing the love, inclusivity, and humanity that I had experienced and witnessed whilst serving.

I was pleased with the visuals of the piece but much more than that I noticed my joy in creating in this way again, something I had done less and less since I was in my final year of my undergraduate degree. This was assemblage and collage, the 2-D and the 3-D interacting to bring to life a story. A collage narrative if you will. I titled the piece blue [because love understands everyone].

This is where the reawakening came in. I realised that creating this piece had brought joy but much more than that, it had brought energy and the process of bringing the piece to life was so organic.

It reminded me of who I am as a creative when I'm free. When I'm not limited or thinking about the marketability of things.

The interesting thing is, this has been within me all along.

Now, this piece won't go down as one of the world's masterpieces, and may not impress the judges of the competition it was supposed to be for, but it marks a turning point for me as an artist. It begins an unleashing of fresh creativity, a new wind, a new inspiration.

Perhaps the voice inside, nudging me to reenter this competition wasn't concerned with the acceptance or potential financial gain I could receive, perhaps it knew that this brief was exactly what I needed in order to come home.

To return to a way of making art that has been waiting for it's opportunity to play. What comes next as I continue to explore this will be exciting I'm sure.

I am so in awe of the goodness of God, he never ceases to surprise and amaze me.

See you next week, Cath x