Outside of Capitalism

on calling in places for creation

Cloud Bed, 2005, oil on collaged paper

It was 2006, my first year out of college at UNC-Chapel Hill. I was living with a view of loblolly pines from a dreamroom in the first of many homes I would curate for visual bliss. My eyes feasted on subtle then broad contrast, on color relationships, the lines of everyday objects and the function of rooms.

I fell in love with the patterns on this bedspread, living in a painting well before I painted it. I’d graduated in Latin American Studies and bypassed the art degree since I already knew the subject and style of my work: simply homages to the places that enchanted and housed me. Or making home a site of enchantment. There wasn’t an intention to craft an artist’s life, just a continual turning to the pleasure of putting inspiration into paint, reducing and expanding three-dimensional content into a picture. Culture remixes and worldview encounters kept my intellect mulling over contrasts in values and perspectives found around me. This study was ongoing. This interest was self-generating.

White Kitchen, 2006, oil on paper

While teaching Los Artistas youth art club at the ArtsCenter I met a couple who owned an old Millhouse and cabin a little ways out of town. They mentioned wanting to offer an artist residency of sorts on their property. It would involve free housing, a stipend, and working toward the goal of an exhibition.

This would become the first of continual unique housing / DIY residencies that allow me to follow the trail of inspiration rather than money.

These liminal places come from relationships and the calling in of dreamvisions. Named desires: “I want to live in a cabin and paint,” “I want to live in nature, not an apartment, in LA” “I want to live in a multi-family home in the forest in the Bay” are spoken as spells and find their form in opportunities.

The relationships are a necessary ingredient, in that you must not only speak the dreamvision to yourself, but name it to your loved ones, your trusted confidantes, your broader circles, who can catch the seed and pass it to where it might germinate.

If the clarity of vision feels challenging, don’t worry. Maybe it’s not quite time yet. Or if it feels present but hard to fully see ~ consult your spirit during an epic nature adventure, on a day-off devices, or through guided meditation (something I love to support folks with). In the quieting of the mind we can listen in to what our soul is longing without worrying about the details.

Whispering the vision summons surrender to a myriad of ways it might land that you never could have imagined.

I think of it different than manifestation. Because in prayer these tendrils of desire are given to the caretakers of us in the spirit realm; who will work them into a benevolent path, rather than destructive one. A manifestation can be the force of will against nature, an incantation or spell or prayer isn’t so specific but holds qualities we want to call in.

Part of the process of summoning is a necessary shedding. Allowing what’s not working to release its hold on our lives.

The shedding can be emotional, physical, relational, spiritual, mental. It can be a practical deep-clean or a therapy-supported relationship transition.

Late Glow, 2006, oil on paper

Purple Fall, 2006, oil on paper

Morrow Mill in the early Spring, 2006

When I moved to Morrow Mill the landscape, the cabin, and self were my muses.

A shotgun ship, the cabin had a wooden panel bedroom on one end and a glass atrium living room on the other. The kitchen and bathroom were passages on a boat that tilted with green and red carpets and creaked with wall furnaces.

Boat Bedroom, 2006, oil on paper

Lantern Room, 2006

Living alone for the first time in my life brought emotional turmoil to the surface. Mental quagmires gripped me with distortion and horror. I could only paint my way out of them. I painted views, each room, all angles, and seasons. At the edge of my psyche I burned through anxiety by portraiting images in the mirror. (Oh the stress on my brow!) Again the pattern and color brought calm. I needed to work through the ability to be alone, and see what could come out on the other side.

Self Portrait 1, 2006, oil on paper

Self Portrait 2, 2006

To make this much work while teaching part-time was a privilege. It would have been impossible without the artist residency that the family provided for me with very few strings attached. One opportunity allows a body of work to pour fourth that informs and opens the next.

There is a certain insecurity to these life choices, as they don’t make sense under capitalism. They’re financially irrational. Yet they are creatively stimulating. My home is my studio. To paint and teach where and when inspiration calls is a gift. The habitats build me, reshape me, break me, release me from a mundane existence.

I crave the wisdom and mystery held in landscapes, structures, and gardens. For fifteen years the generosity of relations, teaching, and intermittent painting sales have kept me housed and fed. What looks unstable to some has been generative enough to support my daughter and community. There is enough, there is abundance.

Floor Space, 2006, oil on paper

Following projects that call rather than waiting for paid gigs to arrive is betting on the integrity of the work to find a way.

The places have greater plans, telling me what and how and why I must paint. I don’t have to sacrifice content to markets that want to flip the work. I don’t have to fit the desire to paint storymaps of place into someone else’s definition of art.

Today my painting pace is slower. Life is still brimming with visual pleasure.

Everyday beauty + unexpected magic soothe a hurting psyche, a broken economy, the deep aching grief of watching violence unfold unilaterally. It’s not going to fix it all, but it’s my contribution to what can keep us going

It pulls us into priorities beyond capital.

Speak the circumstances you desire to inhabit so they can find you.

Nighttime Tulips, 2006, oil on paper