" It is very easy to create, but it is even easier to consume. I worry about people consuming and consuming and not learning the joy of creating." ~Amber Case
Some people believe that we are all born with some sort of hole or emptiness inside of us and that we find our purpose for life by trying to fill that space. I believe that we are organic creatures filled with water born with a porousness that soaks up and soaks in everything around us. I believe that being born into a techno, electric, brick and mortar world has caused our souls to recoil. We no longer bring our children into a world where they are met by mossy blankets and the smell of rosemary. Their first breaths are often filled with cigarette smoke while their brains try to understand the sounds of television. We are introducing our children to things that are not organic, although quite human, still not natural and our souls are still reeling from the want of safe and pleasant and cool and comfortable.
I grew up around people who shopped. It was normal to go to the mall or the store each weekend. Money would be spent and shoes would be bought. Each week would net us sweaters, coats, shoes, magazines, throw away items that were not needed. Money and consumerism were the things that filled that emptiness. For some people it is alcohol. For others it is an insatiable need to read books. Some people have gardens or collections, and some have religion.
I was in my mid twenties when I finally learned what it was my soul needed. I was so full of ...what's a nice word?.... crazy (?) ...confusion(?) bile (?)...that I needed to purge everything, absolutely everything fake needed to come out. I started painting then. I would paint anything. I learned that rather than filling this void within me, rather than feeding it what the world said was good for me, rather than consuming until I exploded, I needed to purge. Whatever was in me needed out. The canvas became a place of great horror and great comfort. Some nights I could only sleep after I put all the nastiness of the day on a canvas. I also learned how to paint the things I loved. The places I needed to be, the voices I needed to hear. I would feel the void rather than fill the void because I know everything I am and everything I need to be is already in here. I just need to scoop away the junk, the evil, the blandness that life lays out for us to breathe in.
I also learned that I need to pay homage to the beauty that I see, the love that I feel. In those moments when I cannot tell you how much I love or need, it is easy for me to create. There has been a balance created within me. I have to become a part of the world that creates for the sake of beauty also.
I am porous. I soak up color, sound, light, smells and ideas. I respond not by trying to gather more of those things, but by trying to identify what I need and what is helpful to me and purging what I don't need. I also take these colors and lights ad smells and turn them into beautiful works of art, whether they be on a canvas, on a typewriter,or on a dress form, my vision, that view of moment is honest and original and organic. The clothes I create I often describe as romantically ugly. Everything I do shows a delicacy, but there is something there too that is worldly and ugly. Maybe numb and or happy are places I would like to be, but they are places that I am not comfortable being. Maybe because my brain never stops. I just know that I have to create to find a little harmony in myself. It is in that moment of creating that I am allowed to understand the heaviness of all things and respect the beauty and the bile.
