Art and Connection
Somewhere along the way when I’m lucky, a painting that had started out as an inert piece of paper becomes animated and starts conversing with me. I know it has come alive because it suddenly makes me laugh or go, “Wow!” out loud. Then it starts telling me what to do next. The artist Tim Hawkesworth calls it “receiving instructions.”
But sometimes the brain and the hand get separated. The brain (or, as my husband calls it, my “thinker”) starts thinking: having ideas, thoughts about how the artwork should go, what it should be about, what it should look like.
And the hand, cut off from the brain, loses its way. The thinker starts thinking way too much: worrying, obsessing, holding the hand back, censoring. And the connection, the listening is lost. Like a parent trying to control a wayward child through force.
There is a different kind of getting lost, though — when you agree to leave the path. William Stafford, in his poem Cutting Loose, says, "For no reason, you accept the way of being lost, cutting loose from all else and electing a world where you go where you want to. ... Certain twisted monsters always bar the path — but that’s when you get going best, glad to be lost, ..."
When the hand cuts loose, it is no longer cut off. It takes the brain and leads it on an adventure. It leaves behind the concerns of fitting in, doing what is expected.
If you dare to leave the path and go into the weeds, you may come upon a sinkhole at any minute. Be surprised by a snake winding its body around you, or by a pheasant suddenly rising from the grasses.
It’s from the rapid heartbeat that comes after falling into the sinkhole, the startling sound of close by flapping of wings, the panic of feeling the snake against your skin — or, the deliciousness of remembering these things from the safety and warmth of home, — that art comes.