Journey to the Center

The Grant Writing Workshop with Gigi Rosenberg was wonderful in ways I could not have anticipated. Aside from learning about the grant writing process itself and hearing that the odds of getting a grant are encouraging, there is the mapping of goals that clarifies who we are and what we hope to accomplish as artists. Gigi led us through a series of exercises that were designed to help us get in touch with our own work. Part of the process involves understanding where we are in the trajectory of our careers and writing out a very detailed personal mission statement. Just the process of writing out a mission statement is of great value to anyone who wishes to focus on the next step in their artistic journey. And there is always a next step.

One exercise we did as a group was a timed writing on a work of poetry or a photograph she passed out. The exercise was revelatory for me.

I came home very stimulated and had a vivid dream in the night which I woke up and painted today. The first image shows the bright underpainting on plaster. I liked the transparent washes with brush strokes that looked so much like my reverse paintings used to look but I wanted something darker and nuanced so I kept going.

For the last year I've been working on a body of work that included blind swimmers, women seeking internal guidance, connecting with our intuition, etc. Along this line, my dream was of a woman in a blindfold carefully navigating through the dark. I wanted an element of psychological tension.

This is the finished piece. It holds a powerful message that I now understand. It has to do with my search and the fact that I am not finished. My spirit in a state of darkness about all that is unknown to me and how I advance none the less in trust and alertness hoping that the answer will be revealed in time. I am searching and advancing and I feel like that figure with the blindfold. And that is all I know at this time. I don't have the answer. I only know how it feels to be in a state of not knowing.