When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.

—Jackson Pollock, My Painting

Are you feeling restful these days? Or restless?

I find myself waking very early, unable to fall back to sleep right away if at all. So much movement in my mind, I wonder how I stop it. Then it occurred to me that I don’t and shouldn’t. The movement, the restlessness is what Jackson Pollock calls the “getting acquainted” period.

His quote speaks to me deeply, on levels of being, creating, illuminating, discovering - who it is to be an artist and how it is to be a human being - so I wanted to share it here.

Perhaps allowing that restlessness to re-acquaint us with our being, gives a sense of re-framing self, context, purpose, and in the process of re-framing, allows what we need to focus on, to see, to spend time with, come to the foreground vividly.

I feel restlessness when the weather changes; when the seasons release into the next. Fall is perhaps my favorite. It is a “beginning” of sorts, and a release, a letting go, a gentle movement into slumber.

As VP Boyle says, we are taking a gap year. How we use this time, how we re-frame it, how we get acquainted with the time, the space, the human being, the artist we call “self”, will find its way through and be whole on the other side.

There is room to be messy, without being a mess. There is room and invitation to experiment. There is permission to have no fear and simply be.

This is the time to re-acquaint, to be restless and to release; to be gentle with ourselves as we re-frame what may seem like chaos, but, as we look more deeply, may have a clarity we had not expected.

The ghost light remains lit.

The intermission is long.

You are not canceled.

with fondness & fierceness,

Susan