Golasule, on display at the Bannister Gallery, Rhode Island College
Having just come off a very acknowledging opening and show, I have been thinking a great deal about that last part of the arc of art making: connecting with others. Like many of my artist friends, I spend most of my time alone in my studio. My process is so private, and the envisioning that brings a body of work into existence isn’t something I can discuss or confer with other people. It happens outside of language, in solitude. It is very similar to my body’s adventure in childbirth where you have a visceral understanding that no one else can help you out. Gestation is your gig and yours alone. As my mother used to say, it’s too bad nine women can’t each be pregnant for a month to bring a baby into life.
But then there is that moment when the work takes on a life of its own. It is that occasion when you first view a piece outside the context of your familiar womb/studio. When it has to stand for you with other work and hold your vision in tact. When it will be experienced and examined by people who may have no idea what your intentions were when you made it, or do not subscribe to any notions that art comes from and speaks to a mysterious place deep inside.
Completing the arc of the whole process—from the first mark you make on a surface through others participating and connecting with your completed work—offers a final chord sense of the journey. And that feeling can be a glorious one. Little in life can compare with the sense of deep gratitude I feel when someone else has an authentic experience with one of my pieces. I can’t and won’t paint for others. But when someone other than me connects, I am euphoric.
What about those times when the connection doesn’t happen? All of us know that feeling too, and mediating the pain of not being seen, understood or acknowledged is a skill set every artist needs to develop. Call it thick skin training, autonomy or willed obliviousness, it comes with the territory and always will.
One of my most thoughtful blogger friends, writer and artist David Marshall, wrote a post recently that addresses the pain from not being seen. From his blog Signals to Attend:
I recently passed the 200th post on this blog and must confess—sometimes my peevishness builds up like the buzz of an amplifier feeding back its own distortion. I begin to feel attention ought to be paid and wish I felt as valued as I ought to be valued…
Try as I might to believe in the intrinsic, the essential, the genuine value of pursuits and their independent, autonomous, anarchic pleasure, it’s not enough. Private accomplishments aren’t real. If no one reads me, I haven’t written…
Which is why Buddhism appeals to me. Striving, experience tells me, is the source of unhappiness, and the person who knows how to put it aside has found enlightenment well beyond most of us. I’m no one’s Buddha, though I affect that stance. My humility and calm hide a riotous soul shouting for notice.
How does one get from here to contentment? I don’t know.
So far, my desire to overcome desire hasn’t worked.
Whatever tools we use to get through those feelings—whether Buddhism, selective neglect, denial or various forms of emotional immunity—it IS part of the creator’s paradox: We have to create/we are too fragile to create. That edge is one of being both obsessive and vulnerable, expressive and withdrawn. David ended his post with this thoughtful question: “And what do you do with a heart that wants and wants and cannot say so?”
Slow Muse 
10 comments
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March 3, 2012 at 2:21 pm
Sally Reed
Being seen, being understood, being valued — not only for artists, but for everyone — this is what we wait for and long for. Perhaps particularly poignant for most artists who must always accept that there is a good chance that what they are doing and making will not be loved or wanted by others. Or by only a very few. And yet, they summon the courage to continue.
So the satisfying and gratifying connections seem huge, healing and soothing a vast canyon of longing.
March 3, 2012 at 2:44 pm
Deborah Barlow
Sally, I love that phrase–healing and soothing a vast canyon of longing. Oh yes it is vast. Thanks for your comment you Pocahontas Brave Girl.
March 3, 2012 at 3:08 pm
tharce
The Bannister Gallery show. We all enjoyed the show. I see your older work everyday in several of our rooms. Really see the art. And, you know, “age cannot wither nor custom stale.” Even so, it was a pleasure to see the new. Here’s a picture, Oops, no picture for you. Jim
March 3, 2012 at 4:37 pm
Adelaide Shalhope
Deborah, I’ve so enjoyed reading your blog over the past few years. You always seem to hit it on the head. As a textile artist who is making a profound inner shift from what has been ‘accessible’ craft to a more personal visual journey, I continually grapple with the razor’s edge of the fear of being not seen/not seen, particularly this very vulnerable creative time. Thank you for providing a space where I know I will be able to bring home intelligently written food for thought.
March 3, 2012 at 4:39 pm
dmarshall58
Sometimes I worry my skin isn’t thick enough, but it never stops me from creating again. The act is just as private as you describe it, but somehow it doesn’t count without that public and, for me, problematic moment.
Thanks for supporting my blog. I have this dream of someday seeing your work in person…
March 3, 2012 at 5:21 pm
Deborah Barlow
Adelaide, thank you for your kind words. I applaud your shift and the willingness to take that journey.
David, you continue to inspire me. And yes yes I hope we can move our ongoing connection to IRL at some point. I would value a chance to see your work in the flesh as well.
March 3, 2012 at 10:00 pm
Altoon
I think we have to allow ourselves that longing to be acknowledged, but then move on. Have a day or two of feeling miserably alone, then get back to the pleasures of art making. I have those crash days; the trick for me is allow them, but then realize how lucky I am in my life, how lucky I am to have my online community, which gives me so much in lieu of the real world.
March 4, 2012 at 9:45 am
Deborah Barlow
Owning that longing–be it for acknowledgement of our art or for those key cards missing from everyone’s deck of life–before letting it go and moving on is in line with my strategy.
Pema Chodron described that process in 3 steps that I have found very useful over the years–precision, gentleness, letting go. Precision here means being very clear and honest about what we feel and what is really at issue; gentleness with both ourselves and with others; followed by a letting go that comes with more authenticity.
As for your online community, yours is probably the most supportive of anyone I know on Facebook. I am amazed by the depth of your community and am honored to be part of it.
March 6, 2012 at 2:04 pm
pegs
Seen/not being seen: what a powerful neurosis we all must weather – it takes us right back to our beginnings, to childhood, to the loses and longings life makes inevitable. Even as I am withdrawn from the world, hidden from friends and family, the longing raises its dragon-head, rife with that power, with anger, hurt, humiliation, and yes, even with joy in the free-form creative moments, moments of seeing the self, ALLOWING the self, simply BEING and finding some sating, in a pencil-mark, a stitch, a word. I feel seen now, simply in this moment of connecting with others here, those that understand the need in themselves, and name it. It takes courage, doesn’t it, to see yourself? And to bare yourself. Such risk. I feel encouraged to discover this space of honest exploration…thank you.
April 12, 2012 at 11:32 am
tomsturch
You and I have a lot to talk about. This reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ definition of sehnsucht – but particularly as we attempt to find our own articulation of it in vocation. True art confounds, angers, creates vulnerability. And just like the truth-tellers across the ages, artists stand accused of blasphemy at best and at worst, are ignored and ridiculed. Hell-of-a profession.