I was inspired to create a painting called Angel Wing and pulled out a big canvas. I saw what I wanted the painting to be in my mind’s eye and went straight to work bringing it to life. As I was doing so, I heard all these beliefs in my head around not being an artist, not being good enough to be an artist, not being formally trained or taking classes that would qualify me as an artist, not having someone else who is an artist validate my work, etc. I threw all that away and decided I can be an artist if I want to be and an artist is simply someone who creates art. I create art through my knitting, quilting, painting, photography, and various other crafts. I recently started signing my work and taking credit for the work I’m doing.
As I added another layer to the Angel Wing painting, I decided that it needed a full coat of white paint in order to smooth it out and make it feel more polished. As soon as I completed the layer of white, I felt a sense of dread. I really loved the previous layer of the painting. I even took it to my bedroom and held it against the wall to see if it felt finished. It didn’t feel complete so I took it back to the painting table and added the layer of white, all the while wishing I could somehow undo the most recent layer and go back to what was.
I noticed the discomfort I was feeling with the new layer of white on the canvas. I added color to it and felt that it just wasn’t as good as the previous layer. I found myself resisting the next layer and in that resistance I heard a clear message: Trust the process. What if the next layer you paint is ever better than the first layer you did?
I trusted the process and kept painting. After two additional layers of paint, the project was complete. I signed my name and hung it on the wall.
The lesson I uncovered from the discomfort in painting over something that was pretty good but didn’t feel complete was that sometimes, we get comfortable. That doesn’t mean that we need to stop. We can move through the layers of discomfort and explore what else is available and ahead of us. For me, that meant trusting the process, adding a few more layers of paint to the canvas, and getting it to a place that felt even better than it was before.
The same can be said for life. We are complex beings with multi-layered lives. When life gets challenging, we can shrink and want to go back to what we know is safe, or we can continue on the path, trusting that where we are headed will be even more amazing than where we came from.
I like to think that, instead of feeling like life is repeatedly pushing a large rock up the side of a mountain, as in the story of Sisyphus, there is a nook on the path that we can step into to safely protect us as the rock rolls down the mountain without harming us. We can trust in the process and not feel like everything is so big and hard to manage.
When we trust in the process and continue to move into the next layers of our lives, we can create real lasting beauty and magic. Instead of fearing the blank canvas, be willing to cover it over and start again knowing that the new layers will be influenced by the previous ones while taking all that is good and incorporating it into what’s next.