Learning Not to Fear

Today I was trying to drive to work and fear got the best of me as it often does if the roads are bad.  They especially were today due to the snow blowing back into the plowed roads and I finally said this is nuts and came back home.  So I have a day to play in all my stuff and I find fear can win the day here too but that's what I'm hoping to beat by doing this challenge.  Now is the time to defeat my own fear of the materials I have so happily collected with which to make "Art."

What am I really afraid of here in my own little house, when I get out the raw materials, the half-begun but not done things I've made, that go into the Parts Department and then stay there?  I look at the work of other people and I can see the elements they've assembled and I can make all those elements but I can't seem to assemble them into "Art."  As I began pulling out my stuff, I could feel the intimidation beginning, the fear of the materials creeping in and I said aha!  I can blog about this!

Words are my medium.  I hold a Master's in Wordsmithy.  Words are not fearful to me (until I sit down to work on the novel and then I blank out but I can usually get around that by reading what's already written and go forward from there).  Language works for me.  Paints? Not so much.  I don't know what to paint but I am driven to do it until the paints are in front of me. I bring all my pieces of Something together but they remain detached from one another.  How to get them to play nicely, to connect the dots that surely must exist between them?  I find it much more difficult to work with an image, to bring an image to mind, than it is write an entire essay on almost any topic.

It's not like being blocked because I've been there with writing and that's not the same as this anxiety about doing something new and foreign.  I'm not a bold adventurer in life but I admire the people who are, who say society be damned, this is Who I Am, this is What I think, and this is My Art.  Wow, I think.  I wish I were that certain of myself and could show up as the Real Me that confidently.  I wish I knew what the Real Me would even look like, let alone My Art.

So it is really helpful to see the process of other artists and see how they pull their pieces together, how their parts become the whole.  And I watch my grand-daughter who is seven and fearless in her art.  She may also be a harsh critic of what she's made, but there is never a moment when I see her hesitate to begin.  I remember being that way as a child and even as a young adult.  I am calling that person back to myself when I watch Zoe, ever eager, never without an idea about what she wants to make on any blank thing available.

It might require a daily casting out of demons for a while to get going, to be doing what my heart wants so much to be doing, but I will banish fear and intimidation from the house, at least where creativity is concerned. I know part of it has to do with relearning how to play; where did the playful girl go who, like Zoe, drew, painted, made Art for hours without a second thought about it?  I have a thing about keys, collecting keys, I have a key rubber stamp that I use a lot, adding keys to lots of things, but I had a revelation recently that it isn't about the keys, it's about the locks.  In unlocking the locks I think I can find the opening and get back to the Girl Who Used To Be, me in my deepest heart where all the art lives.