Last Thursday evening, I was invited by my friend Cheryl Perrault to attend the monthly “Women’s Art Forum” hosted by the Cultural Arts Alliance in Hopkinton. This month’s speaker was Zen teacher Ji Hyang Padma, who gave a talk about spirituality and creativity, as well as meditation and spiritual practice.
One of the themes Ji Hyang touched upon was “fear.” She prepared a group activity that explores this topic using the phrase “If I was not afraid I would…” To my surprise, this exercise became a bit intense for me as I spoke quite nervously and awkwardly about my own fears, not just relating to art practice but to life itself.
After Ji Hyang’s talk, I thought of an exercise to give to myself: to create a visual image representing “fear”. Rather vague, yes, but an exercise to get myself drawing! This is where “the pressure of the blog” comes in to play. Since committing myself to blog every day, I have provided myself a bit of extra motivation to FINISH what I start. And the first weekend since the debut of my blog has proven to be quite a distraction, as I was away (in Maine) visiting family and had no time to myself to work on my image! Lesson learned. Set aside time, every day, no matter what!
So, three days late, here is the sketch. It has gone through many changes since my first ideas and I unfortunately have no idea what it has to do with facing and fighting fear anymore! But it’s 10 pm and I said I’d put sumthin’ up everyday, so here is “Fear1.0.” Sort-of. (ick, yuck, ick)
And thank you, Cheryl, for inviting me to the talk. It was a good experience and I was happy to meet so many talented and accomplished local artists. I hope to attend many more future events. J
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