What If a Lull Was Just a Lull?

Another bird painting I worked on last month taking one of my gouache on paper birds and adhering it to a canvas and then adding acrylic paint, fabric, paper, etc. etc.

I had recently finished a wonderful book called Birds Art life: A Year of Observation by Kyo Maclear that I highly recommend for creatives and especially for creatives who love birds and nature writing. But this wan’t a typical naturalist type book as it wove in and out with musings on the creative process and life’s demands, especially when you’re not particularly inspired. There was one part where she thinks about lulls in the creastive process and how some people interpret it as a gestation period, full of creative potential. But then others, feel like lulls are death sentences that pull us deeper and deeper into the funk. She asks- well, what if a lull is neither and a lull is just a lull?

That struck a chord in me then when I read it, as I was definitely in a lull…hence the title of the painting. And now as we are all staying at home, if our work allows, it’s something I keep thinking about. I haven’t been able to get in the studio, although I’m thinking that it will be soon. But then there’s that fear, that if I get in there…will I just flail around, not knowing what to focus on because the world is so overwhelming right now and really, does it even matter?

I have already had an upcoming exhibit that was supposed to open in May, postponed indefinitely. And I can only assume the other shows will be as well. And then, there’s the economy….

And then I think, people are getting so sick everywhere and I should have become the doctor that my father always wanted me to become.

Sigh….

Well, I’m not a doctor. So I will have to focus on taking care of my family and my art and staying healthy.

Kyo Maclear writes: “When I am felling too squeezed on the ground, exhausted by everything in my care, I look for a little sky. There are always birds flying back and forth, city birds flitting around our human edges, singing their songs…If the wind is going the right way, some birds like to spread their wings and hang in the air, appearing not to move a bit. It is a subtle skill, to remain appreciably steady amid the forces of drift and gravity, to be neither rising nor falling.”