Art as portal
‘Meet You Here’
This is what art does to me: it shatters the matrix.
Do you ever feel like you are sleepwalking in your life? Or wonder if this is it? Do you ever feel like life is ok but it is also kind of disappointing?
Who is the author of the dream we have been sold? It’s hard to know who is responsible, although we put our blame in all sorts of places: culture, society, history, our parents, the patriarchy… yes they are all responsible for the shape we’re in but it doesn’t have to stay that way.
By becoming the authors of our own lives, we can begin to come alive – really consciously alive to each moment we are given. What does this mean in practice?
For me, it began very early in life with finding my personal rip in the matrix: art. Once I had had my eyes opened by encountering a painting, I knew there was more to this life. I somehow knew that life lay beyond the illusions we inhabit. And it does.
Is it enough to savour these occasional moments of lucidity, given to us through paintings or music or poetry or sex? For a while we might feel ok to live on these scraps. But annoyingly, saying yes to the truer reality also means saying no to what has stood for it until that moment. So there is an element of bargaining because we don’t truly want to give up our comfortable misery. Not deep down, not when it is so familiar. The drama, the struggle, the hustle, the pain – it is what we know, and it is some kind of map that delineates an otherwise unknowable and seemingly random existence. One of the biggest obstacles to rejecting an unconscious life, is the fear of losing our interconnectedness. Life as we know it may be a giant sham, but it is our sham and we get through it together. I get that! But is that what we do with our one precious life? Get through it?
I thought I could compromise myself and be satisfied with a life that looks normal by outward appearances. But life had other ideas! I learned an important lesson: when I hoodwink myself into believing I can operate at 50% authenticity, I will always get derailed. Every time. All of the struggle I have faced, and I’m not minimising any of it by saying this, has been a result of seeking to be comfortable with less than. Less than I want, less than I deserve, less than what it means to be honoured, free, original, me!
It is scary walking into the unknown. For me, that meant going inward to find my voice. I am not the only woman who has been indoctrinated in the cult of pleasing. For so many years, I couldn’t hear myself think. Painting was the only place where I could stop the noise of ‘shoulds’, obligations and other people’s needs. It was a blank space, peace, possibility. A place to seek out what is true for me.
Hand in hand with embarking on discovering a truer reality is dismantling the format that has existed until then. This is where the work comes in. I used to think ‘why go back through ancient history and uncover old wounds if you can get by reasonably happily…?’ But I couldn’t get away with it. Until every misdeed, maltreatment, untruth, mistake and false illusion had been brought to light, I was still deluding myself. And the fear of rejection is real! It goes both ways. By rejecting an unconscious life and daring to show up authentically with no filter, no pleasing… I knew I was going to lose people who would rather keep the one-dimensional but lovely Lucianna. She plays the game, she’s predictable, she doesn’t rock the boat. Whatever.
I have good news though! The journey is worth it. I am 41, my heart has broken too many times to count, I have survived things that I thought would slay me and I have never been in better shape. The reason is because I am living according to what is true for me now. Essentially this means hearing my own voice, speaking my truth and saying no to all the temptations that entice me to fall back into a comfortable slumber. There is nowhere to hide.
“To be fully alive, fully human and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”
Pema Chodron
Art may not be everyone’s answer. It is mine. I hope to place my own view of the truth of life as I experience it into paintings that can only be original because they can only ever come from me. The me that is a work in progress, a gradually but consistently awakening woman with a deeply held desire to bring others along on my journey to experiencing the real joy of life.
