“Ch Ch Ch Ch Changes”

Work in Progress

Today I am painting and thinking about change. 

There was this artist whose work I LOVE.  I discovered her paintings at a Mill Valley gallery years ago.  She worked in mixed media, creating narratives that were carefully rendered.  They had a Latin American feel.  She even painted the frames and incorporated them into the pieces.  I took a couple postcards from her shows and drooled over them.  Today, they are as interesting and beautiful to me as they were then. 

Recently I searched for her on the web.  I found a website bearing her name but the work looked nothing like her.  Could it be her?  It was. I confirmed her identity by her exhibition history.   She had become a minimalist!  There was no trace of the old work on her website.  I was shocked and disappointed.  I really liked the old work, I wanted to see it again, and I’m not attracted to minimalism.  How did her work change so drastically?

I can’t answer for her, but I can answer for myself.  My work has steadily changed over the years.  It’s not like I wake up one day and think, “I’m going to do something completely different”.  No, the art evolves.  I’ll be working in one style while in the back of my mind some ideas are percolating. Some of those ideas may brew for years, others may fizzle out before they are mature enough for me to birth them into the world.  When my work shifts it happens with joy.  I am newly inspired and am off exploring the unknown again.  I don’t mourn for the old.  Everything I do is like a steppingstone leading me deeper into the wilderness.  I savor that journey with excitement and anticipation.

My experience with the artist described above is not a new one.  In the arts we often get attached to a style of expression.  We relate to it, and it inspires us.  When the artist changes, we might be left longing for more of the same.  Some will only listen to David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust, unable to embrace the work that followed (most of his career).  Others only like Picasso’s cubist period, or Kandinsky’s early work.  That’s okay.  We can listen to those albums and look at those paintings over and over.  They will continue to bring us joy.  No one expects us to like everything an artist creates.  All I ask is to be respectful of the mystery of artistic process and accept inevitable change.

“Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.” – Eckhart Tolle

“Without change something sleeps inside us, and never wakens.” – Duke Leo Artides