~ God told me to be an artist, week 25
Friday 26th May, 2023.
It's week 25! Can you believe how quickly the time can go? I'm not complaining, I love this time of year, warm but not too hot. Everything feels better in the early summer sunshine doesn't it?
I've had a pretty exciting week it must be said. No cymbal crashing breakthrough but some rather wonderful moments were I've been excited about all the new stuff that's coming and already happening in this season. That in itself is kind of a miracle - I'm starting to appreciate the changes and the new, even the bits that still scare me.
Towards the end of last week I got some pretty big news - unfortunately not great big news, my prison work despite all the collaborators hope did not have the funding to continue. In 2 months or so the project would finally draw to a close after 3 years. We had been so sure that the funding would come through, it always had before, but in a time a extreme cut backs and a desire for things to be run in house without the expense of external facilitators - what's the first thing to go? Freelancers.
I read the email a ton of times. My eyes moved across the page, circling the sad emoji faces my collaborator had sent me, she's an amazing person and was really sad our work together would be coming to a close. I anticipated a freak out - for my breath to shorten and my forehead to sweat, but it didn't come. I sat there patiently waiting for my mind and body to collide and to have an anxiety rush, but again, nothing.
It was so weird.
I know myself pretty well, when stability reduces or disappears I freak out. When concerns around money intensify, I freak out.
Well I used to anyway, what as happening, I was ok.
I read the email again as if to goad myself into loosing it, but I didn't, I remained calm and rational about it, only really focusing on the men that I wouldn't see again and how sad that was. I spoke aloud and said Catherine, why aren't you freaking out?
I didn't have an answer.
I texted one of my best friends who has known me since I was 19 and explained the situation and she replied, Yay, growth, and it hit me.
Of course the news of a huge project not being renewed is challenging. Of course I remain concerned about my finances and the lack of stability I feel right now. It's natural that I will miss this work and how much it defines who I am as a professional, but I'm just able to hold myself together better bad news comes, not because I am strong, but because God is.
His peace surrounded me as I read that email, it bolstered me and centred me. It even caused me to reflect on how much being an artist that works in prisons defines me, how much of my identity it holds. It begs the question - who am I without that kind of work? Something I've never had much time to explore since I started working in such institutions many years ago.
I guess now I have the opportunity to see what else God has for me. I'm grateful for the work he gave me inside, but perhaps now it's time to allow him to lead me elsewhere. It's so weird to even be saying this, this work has been all I am for so long.
Who are you Catherine?
What is God calling you to do in this new season?
Another best friend of mine texted me that things often end when there is no growth left to be had in them, and as much as I think people in prison will always benefit from being able to attend art space, perhaps this isn't mine to lead anymore.
Perhaps this season is over and now I can be so grateful for all the wonderful people I met and was inspired by as I walk into the new thing.
I wondered quietly to myself if I was just having a delayed reaction. That perhaps I would lose it this week after the dust had settled, but I haven't. My fears about the future and all it holds remain present but my trust in who holds me is increasing.
I feel like I've been in an intense bootcamp for several years now and I'm just starting to see some of the results of the training. Not perfection but definitely progression.
After years and years of always having a very strict clear plan with goals and development targets I am now in a season of the complete opposite. I believe I am being taught that it's not that being organised or ambitious is bad, only if it builds my identity in my own strength and abilities, if I shut out God and try to things my way, then those traits I have in me can be pretty destructive and intensely limiting.
However, if I lean into this season of being slightly less planned I can experience it as a time of discovery and drawing closer to God. It's a realigning of my focus, I will still achieve, plan and manage certain things but my identity will not be in them - that's the goal anyhow. I think it may be my hardest project yet, to keep coming back to focusing on Jesus and going after the things he is calling me into.
All of this thinking started to solidify in my head as I sat in two full days of art making this past weekend. In all his goodness I believe God organised it so that just days after I received the bad news that my prison project was ending I would have 2 days of art ahead of me to enjoy and process things in.
One day was a craft session with my mum and our friend and the second was a pastels workshop with a great teacher. I learned so much during these days, it's great as an artist to be reminded that outside and even within your own specialism there is so much you don't know. I think life with God is a bit like this, the longer you walk with him the more he teaches you and more you realise you do not know.
The pastel workshop was actually pretty challenging. I had to be messy, although I did manage to stay fairly 'neat messy' if that's even a thing. But I'm not super confident with pastels, I can follow instruction but still find I have to pay close attention, it's not free and wild like my collage work. The teacher was amazingly patient with me and taught me a whole lot about letting go and trusting that the techniques she was teaching me would yield results, that if I listened to her and followed my instincts a great image would emerge. Not all my pieces were masterpieces, but the one were I paid the most attention turned out pretty lovely actually. I was really surprised and pleased!
I like experiences like this, where I'm not naturally confident or gifted in this area so I need to listen to the guidance of someone who knows what they're doing. It reminds me how to be the student, not always trying to be the teacher or the best. That it's ok to kind of suck at something and have the patience to see your skills grow over time.
This week I also started an artist residency with a local children's hospital, which I am extremely excited to be a part of. It's a project that found me through a connection at TATE, and it has arrived at just the right moment. Such beautiful timing.
So here I am, some things finishing, some things beginning, all at once. It's scary in a way but I'm starting to see the wonder in it all. This current season is just like the pastel workshop pushed me outside of my creative comfort zone, and taught me new things when I paid attention. It's uncomfy and it's not all that fun being one of the least equipped in the class, but I'm noticing my capacity for tolerating this is expanding all the time. It's super exciting and terrifying all at once, but in the words of my friend, Yay growth!
Trust God to show me a principle for living in this current season in a pastel workshop, he's so king how he teaches me in a language that I can understand.
He is so good.
That reminds me, I saw a snippet from a talk by Brooke Ligertwood this week where she spoke about how finite we can make the labels we put on our callings. That we can put things in so much of a box that when God calls us into a new season we can sometimes believe or feel as if our callings are over.
I've had such a picture in my mind for as long as I can remember of who I'm supposed to be. What if this image is nothing to do with what God has purposed me to do? Or what if I'm missing a whole chunk of the puzzle?
What if God is calling me into other things?
What if creativity is only one part of it?
Who am I...really?
Who are you Catherine?
Where is God taking me?
Is creativity a portion of a much larger picture?
Questions like these once seemed so threatening, but now I'm wondering if they are an integral part of my freedom and life with Jesus.
So maybe, just maybe, I allow it. I'll allow these questions to float around my life in the coming weeks and months, who are you Catherine and where is God calling me to next?
I guess I'll keep asking him, do what he commands in the mean time and wait for his response.
See you next week, Cath x
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