No. 56 - Begin at the Beginning

Whatever you do, just begin

Welcome to the latest issue of Feed the Monster: a monthly art journal for creative, curious, imperfect and sometimes disheveled humans.

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Life threw some curveballs at me this summer, quite hard. In short order I went from feeling like a “real artist” for the first time in my life… someone who regularly went to the studio and produced… someone who had a vision and made a good thing… to a dried-up leaf dying on the vine, buffeted by harsh winds on all sides. Huh. I made that sound a little more dramatic than necessary, but there you have it.

After my show Life’s Work: A Visual Memoir ended, I unsurprisingly had a tough time getting back into the studio—I’d worked toward that show for over two years. My attention was being pulled in a dozen different non-arty directions, I was stressed out, and the routine I’d had was shot. I painted a couple of portraits on maps, yes. But as that proved to be a pain in the ass, my mojo dried up again and I found myself looking out at the studio from the house more often than I was going there. A couple of times, I just went out there and cried.

These things happen. If there’s one thing you can count on in this life, it’s curveballs. Problems. Unexpected occurrences both welcome and unwelcome. Accepting that this is the case will make your life a lot easier. If you think you can create a system or routine that will serve you forevermore, you’re dreaming.

Sez me to myself.

When everything goes to hell, we tend to think it’s fatal and that we’ll never regain what’s been lost. But we can, we will. It might even be better than before. Forgive thyself. Be patient. It happens to everyone.

Now, slowly, I’m beginning again. My big plan has been to start work on Life’s Work as Graphic Memoir—to flesh out the story and tell it from start to finish with all new artwork. For those unfamiliar with the story, it’s the tale of the last five years of my mother’s life, after she’d been diagnosed with Lewy Body dementia. For more information, please look here and here.

That was the plan (God laughs, et cetera). It’s taken me a while to get here.

I’ve had some paper waiting on my drafting table for weeks, but I’ve been scared shitless to start. I used to think there was some formula for approaching new work or a new project… something “real artists” knew about that I had yet to learn. This isn’t true. There are no rules. You just have to start… it doesn’t really matter how. Everyone finds their own way. It’s always baby steps and humble beginnings, no matter how large the thing ends up becoming. Everyone begins at the beginning.

I decided to ease my way into it by experimenting in my sketchbook with the section headings for the graphic memoir. That would at least involve holding a paintbrush, dipping it into water and ink, and making marks on paper. Baby steps, but steps nonetheless. Easy does it… don’t make any sudden moves.

I envisioned the chapter/section headings as being in decorative frames kind of like clumsy illustrations from children’s story books from the 1960’s. If that should make sense to anyone but me.

This is the kind of thing that, in the past, I might have tried to talk myself out of. “That can’t be right.”

Screw that. Clumsy decorative frames it is. An important lesson I learned doing Life’s Work: A Visual Memoir is that what I feel drawn toward can only be right. I have to at least try it. It’s called trusting yourself, fool.

The only way to find out for sure is to mess around. Explore. Take your time.

Working in my sketchbook, I can sit at my writing table and listen to music while I mess around. It’s relaxed—there’s no pressure. You’d think I would rarely feel pressure in my studio, but right now it seems like I rarely don’t.

Just begin.

And when you begin:

Don’t think about who will see it, or what they’ll say, or will it be successful, or will it be good enough to show anyone. Just listen to what your art, or your project, wants. Not what you *think* it should be, but what it’s actually calling for. Even if your brain isn’t sure about it… just trust the art. It knows what it needs. Get out of your own way.

Again, I’m speaking to myself.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Perfectionism is the devil.

Just do it.

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I finally faced the paper on the drafting table, but not without a fight. It was a real ogre battle. Will this in fact be the first section header page for the graphic memoir Life’s Work? I highly doubt it! I’m rusty after five months of not painting, and it shows. I’m only revealing it in the spirit of complete transparency, to show you my, ahem, journey. This has actually filled me with trepidation at how far I am from where I need to be. But that’s okay.

This represents two pages, as in, an open book laying flat

My husband David thinks it’s fine. But I think I need to paint and paint and paint with no goal, to get me past my heebie jeebies.

Stay tuned for further developments, and…

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Ready or not—and I refer to myself here, not you—I’ve decided to finally take the plunge and “go paid”. Maybe no-one will pay, or few will pay, and that’s fine. I just want to give you the opportunity, haha.

Feed the Monster will remain free if that’s the way you want it. But for those who’d like to support what I’m doing, those kind people can choose to pay. What I’m setting the price at is the least I can charge here on Substack, which is $5.00 a month USD, or $50.00 USD if you pay for a whole year (of that, Substack takes 10%, and the company that processes the credit card payments—Stripe—takes 2.9% and $0.30 for each transaction).

You could also buy a subscription for a friend, and I’ve just learned that there is a founding member plan that allows the uber-rich among my readers to make an annual payment of any amount they like. Options.

In January I’ll have been posting monthly for five years (though here on Substack the archive only goes back to March 2021). Let me know if you think it should be more often.

I read lots of newsletters here on Substack, but so far I only pay for three: Austin Kleon, Mason Currey’s Subtle Maneuvers, and Haley Naham’s Maybe Baby, which I wrote about last month. I started paying for Austin Kleon’s newsletter soon after he moved to Substack, because I’d been getting a lot out of his posts for free for years. Mason Currey seems like a really nice fellow, and his Subtle Maneuvers posts about living the creative life are always interesting. He’s written a couple of books, which you can learn more about here.

Going forward my intention is to focus on Life’s Work the graphic memoir, so that readers will get a kind of serialization of the story as it, and the work, unfold. Needless to say, I’m in the beginning stages, and there are sure to be some hiccups. If not full-blown regurgitations. But it’ll keep going. Can’t-stop-won’t-stop.

THANK YOU

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Listen to my interview with Sheryl MacKay on CBC’s NxNW here (starts ten minutes in). It’s all about Life’s Work: A Visual Memoir, an art exhibit about my mother’s Lewy Body dementia and my relationship with her

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