The Living Artist

“Source of Light” by Heather Keith Freeman
7″x8″, pen and ink on paper

Image description: A cloaked woman holds a globe of light, from which emanate a galaxy of stars.

So many things going on. Posts stream through my head, coalescing and dissipating in shimmering torrents. When I’m out driving, a thesis may rise above the rest, building upon itself until I begin to hope that I will hang onto it long enough to write it down… and then I get home, and it evaporates into twinkling motes of faery laughter.

In therapy this week I bemoaned the lack of energy I have had to put into writing and business-y things for the last several months. Even my sparkling new newsletter sent out two issues and then went on hiatus. I’m overflowing with painting ideas but have so little time to put them into practice. I was even considering shutting down Fire Sea Studios for good. My therapist wisely pointed out, though, that it’s not that I’m not doing anything; even with all the demands on my time I am still painting, still thinking and plotting and absorbing inspiration. My muse follows its own cycles, and I have learned many times that attempts to force it to follow my conscious agenda will only result in frustration. Rather than wasting energy fretting about what I’m not doing, I will simply do what I am doing and see where it takes me.

So yes. I have been quiet here and don’t know when that will change. But I am still working, painting, reading, plotting, dreaming. Marinating, as the subject line says.

As long as I’m here, however, I will finish this off with the barest of nods to the winter holiday season, pointing out that my “Source of Light” greeting cards over at RedBubble make lovely Yule or Solstice cards :)

I’ve been going through a bad time.

So many days confined to bed, frantically resting so as to have enough spoons to do the meager amount of parenting left to me. Despairing over my son’s behavioral issues, wondering if they stemmed from anxiety over my erratic ability to be there for him and knowing that I was not helping him in the way that I could if I was not in constant pain. Feeling so guilty for leaving my son to the care of others, struggling not to weep every time I tell him “No, I can’t play with you right now. Please don’t give me a hug. I can’t. I want to, so, so much, but I can’t.”

But then I read this amazing story from Goddess Leonie about struggling with post-natal depression. How even through the worst of it, she knew her daughter was meant to be hers, and how she could smile with utter sincerity through the tears when she met her daughter’s eyes.

And I started to wonder. Maybe, even with this pain and disability that was forced on me when my son was not even two, I’m still the right mother for him, and he the right child for me.

He is so affectionate and cuddly, and it breaks my heart when I can’t snuggle him endlessly as he craves, but that same affectionate nature gives him the empathy to happily bring me things when I need them, and ask if I want a blanket, and to spend an hour in bed with me one morning as our hands pretended to be a family of spiders playing hide-and-seek in haunted houses.

This wonderful, amazing child found a way to involve me in his play even with me flat on my back, unable to do more than move my hands.

Just as a couple of months ago he came up with the idea of “spider hugs” when my body hurt too much to take a full embrace from his bony, wiggly body – just his hand holding mine, but through the power of his imagination transformed into a full embrace with all the love in the world.

And armed with empathy and imagination, I can hope that he will grow up able to use his privilege to help and not to harm. That he will always know, supported with the experience of his childhood with a disabled mother, that bodies with different appearances and abilities from his are still valuable, that their lives are no less worth living, no less worthy of respect and care, than his own.

(Talk of fatalism and destiny usually makes my skin crawl. I believe wholeheartedly that we create our world moment by moment, pushing against the skin of the world to define our own spaces. But there is comfort in the idea that maybe some aspects underneath all this chaos and misery were meant to be. I can adjust my beliefs to better support me, while still allowing others to have their own.)

So you know how last week I posted about my meds not working?

Since then I’ve been enmeshed in legal hell (can’t talk about that), my child care vanished into thin air, and I got new meds but my insurance is refusing to cover them.

So…. yeah. Amnesty (or is bankruptcy a better word? I don’t have the spoons to fine-tune this) on everything under the sun, until further notice. I’m only painting what I have to in order to stay sane, I’m not reading blogs or twitter, I’m only responding to the most important emails, until I get Aiden back in school, myself back on decent painkillers, and the other unmentionable stuff sorted out.

My only comfort is that frequently everything goes to hell right before it all clicks together again at a higher, better level. So I can hope, and just try to hang on, day by day.

My thanks go out again to the amazing sisters of the Goddess Circle, who have held me in their virtual arms through many long dark nights when I was convinced all was lost.

Basically, the medication I’m on for my chronic pain issues – syringomyelia and fibromyalgia from a car accident 3 years go – is no longer working. My doctor and I will be working to find a solution, but in the meantime my ability to write cogent and interesting blog posts is practically nil. I rant occasionally on Tumblr, post the occasional link to Facebook and Twitter, because those outlets take fewer spoons; and of course I do as much art as I can, but even that is barely enough to keep me from sinking.

I’ve got so many plans, so many ideas. But most days, these days, I am in too much pain to be able to form complete sentences.

So yeah. Having a bit of a rough patch. But please, stick around; I will be back.

“Love” by Heather Keith Freeman
8.85″”x11.75″, pen and ink on watercolor paper

Image description: Two women embrace against a rainbow background.

On June 24th, 2011, along with thousands of other people all over the United States, I sat glued to the live video feed of the New York State Senate as they finally voted to pass marriage equality for same-sex couples. The sixth and largest state to do so, New York joins the ranks of those who recognize that marriage has its basis in love, not a magic combination of genitalia.

I tried in this image to communicate that love, steering clear of the common representation of woman-to-woman affection as something performed for the male gaze. These are two women deeply in love, and if they live in New York, one small step closer to having their relationship recognized as equal to any heterosexual one.

I am a woman married to a man, and I declare that my marriage shall be worth more on the day that marriage rights are extended to everyone, not less.

There’s a long, long way to go yet. Not just marriage rights, but employment and housing non-discrimination, proper support and assistance for GLBT youth who have been kicked out of their homes, and the elimination of the shocking murder rate of trans people, just for a start.

My right to live as myself does not take away from your right to be a bigoted asshole. Hmm – that could make a good bumper sticker for my Zazzle store.

“The Sun and Saturn Conjoined” by Heather Keith Freeman
18″x24″, acrylic on masonite

Regardless of one’s personal view of astrology – ancient science or souped-up quackery – I often feel drawn to its compellingly nuanced language for describing personality and the rhythm of life. With the language of astrology you can take something as complex as a person whose ambition is repeatedly stunted by perfectionism and a need for control, and sum it up in the phrase “Sun and Saturn conjunct.” I even did a painting, years ago, based on the concept (pictured at right), which is one with which many people strongly identify, regardless of whether the sun was actually conjunct with Saturn at the time of their birth.

Aaaaanyway, right now is that astrological event, occurring for a few weeks at a time, three times a year, known as “Mercury retrograde,” namely that period where, thanks to our relative trajectories around the sun, Mercury appears to be moving backwards in the night sky. Astrologically speaking, this is a time when communication and travel get snarled up like nobody’s business, and is generally not considered a good time to start new projects or to cut corners. Rather, it is a good time to go back over things, tie up loose ends, make those final adjustments that you didn’t even know you needed until some time gave you fresh perspective.

All that is an absurdly beat-round-the-bush way of saying that I’m not going to have any new art for you this week. I’m this close to done on a whole bunch of stuff. One painting got signed, sprayed, and scanned before I realized I’d managed to forget to paint in one of the subjects’ nipples! Another which you have seen, NOT YOURS II, did get posted, but I then realized I needed to entirely re-do the text, as it was the wrong scale for the piece. Still a third is on ice until I get the proper patience level for finishing up some rather tedious text work. And a fourth is knocking at my brain, begging me to get it out while the inspiration is fresh.

So, uh, yeah. No new stuff just yet. Blame it on Mercury retrograde if you will.

“NOT YOURS II” by Heather Keith Freeman
11″x14″, pen and ink on watercolor paper

Image description: A woman seen from front and below in black and white. Behind her float the words in white ‘NOT YOUR BODY / NOT YOUR LIFE / NOT YOUR BUSINESS’ . In her right hand she holds a paintbrush against her abdomen, where written in white is ‘NOT YOURS’.

As the political attacks against women’s humanity continue, so does this series.

(See also: NOT YOURS)

Technical notes:
I’m in the midst of some extensive digital edits to this before I make prints available. I’m having issues with my scanner (a Canon MP860) blurring everything but whatever is in the very middle of the platen. What I end up with is good enough for web, but I’m reluctant to put it up for sale in larger formats as is. Any artists out there have recommendations for scanners that don’t do this, or ways to make it stop doing this? I am Most Aggravated.

“Hope” by Heather Keith Freeman
8″x10″, pen and ink on watercolor paper

Image description: A young white girl with long, straight blue hair extends a hand holding a small sphere of light towards the viewer. Behind her, a bifurcated background; dark green and brown on the right, gold and yellow on the left.

Hope.

When all the world is turmoil and doubt, when the despair taints everything we touch and chance thoughts release tears and collapse the fragile scaffolding shielding our bruised souls from a brutal world -

Even then, we can choose. We can choose to turn back to the darkness, stifling in its weight but comforting in its familiarity, or we can choose to take the light offered to us by Hope.

Sometimes the light is too much, it burns our tender skin and rips scabs off of wounds not healed enough to bear the open air – but even then, just to know it is there may be enough to keep the dark from swallowing us whole.

The myth of Pandora has two versions. In one, she opens the box and all the monsters escape to plague humanity, but the bright butterfly of Hope follows them to keep humanity from utter despair. In another, she closes the box just in time to trap Hope inside.

The two versions illustrate our choice, even in the blackest moments. This is not the “just snap out of it” choice offered to us by disinterested professionals and well-meaning but clueless friends. This is the choice that is the fundamental essence of free will, holding the awareness of a different path even if we are not yet ready to set foot upon it. Maybe the spark of Hope is too blinding to reach for, too strange to comprehend, but even now we can remember she exists. And she will always, always be there, to offer us the light and take our hands, as gently as we need, and to tell us it’s going to be okay.

It’s going to be okay.

I have a confession to make.

For as long as I have been doing art professionally, people have been telling me to start a mailing list. And for just as long, I have resisted the idea. It will make all the difference, they insisted. There’s no other way to grow your audience.

But this was in the days of exploding social media, and I thought I could get around it by having this blog, Twitter, Facebook; surely all of these other vectors would be sufficient without me having to come up with still more regular and engaging content to stuff into people’s email boxes?

But no. It’s finally gotten through my thick head: I need to do this. And I can do it, and I can make it awesome.

My promise to you is this: I will send you one email a month. I’ll never sell or give your address to anyone. You can unsubscribe at any time and I won’t take it personally. I will do my best to make the newsletters full of interesting links and information for those who, like me, are interested in that crossover between art and social justice.

There’s a little sign-up box below, and in several places on the blog; or you can send me email.

Come join me! The first issue goes out on Thursday, July 21st. (Why Thursday? Because I had to pick a date; and I like Thursdays.)

Movements #4 by Heather Keith Freeman
4″x6″, pen and ink on watercolor paper

Image description: A nude woman throws her head back in graceful movement against a background of mellifluous green.

Here’s the fourth in my Movements series, a set of small-scale portraits of women experiencing the joy of dynamic embodiment.

I began this as an experiment with pen color, to see what effects I could get with a brown pen instead of a black one. Matching shades for the shadows was so difficult, though, that almost all of it ended up black again. There might be a bit here and there that’s still brown, but you’d have to look pretty close to tell.

Any frustration from that, though, is mitigated by that background. Oh, that green just turned out so, so beautifully! It gives me happy artist shivers :)