Welcome to Day 30, the final day of the 30 day challenge to be inspired by creativity to more fully step into your life. This challenge stems from the Love Glasses Revolution and their movement to help all people find the good and hopeful in life, in themselves and to create a belief system where each of us has the power to change the world. You will notice there was a huge delay from day 29 to day 30. I intentionally waited to post day 30 until New Year Day – a kick off to 2017. This final challenge post addresses the transformational process of a metamorphosis.
Creating art is very similar to living life. It can be very messy. It goes through ugly stages. There are moments when you know exactly what to do next and moments when you have no idea what to do. There are times you try something new and it fails miserably and other times when you try something new and it is a raging success.
When art goes through an ugly stage, it can ignite insecurities. What if I can’t fix it? Was I lucky when creating the other pieces? Did I lose my creative mojo? Am I a failure? It’s very similar to an ugly, messy stage in our lives. We judge it from sitting in it and allow the insecurities to rise up. We have some of the same questions and more – what will people think? Am I a fraud? How did I get here? What if I fail? Do I have what it takes? The fear can be consuming as you are tempted to quit, run away and hide.
I’m here to let you in on a little secret – the messy stage is an important part of the creative process and, what’s more, the messy stage is where life truly happens! This is the time and place to do things you would never do if life was humming along with ease. This is the time to be daring and do something new and different that you never would have done if you were not in a messy situation. It’s a time to be courageous. To be bold, and different. To take life on at a new level. To see what you are truly made of. To do the thing you previously thought was impossible. To channel your inner bad ass and let her roar. To show the world it will take more than this mess to take you out of the game. To scream in fearlessness, “Is THIS all you got?!?”
Embrace the mess. Embrace the mystery and the unknown. See it for what it is – an opportunity to accelerate your life and create something you never could have fathomed before the ugliness.
Play on the edge of discomfort and change what previously looked like “unraveling” to a blissful “unfolding.”
I was excited to start this collage and add a face. I liked the initial components I selected.
I started to fill in her face.
I added some additional facial details
And then disaster struck – I added hair that looked awful. Rather than try to fix her hair, I took drastic action…
So I grabbed a brayer and painted over the entire canvas, just leaving the eyes, nose and mouth exposed. While this may seem like no big deal to someone else, my goal for this painting was to create a beautiful face. The idea of covering the entire canvas in paint was so far outside my comfort zone, completely contrary to my intention and caused more concern that I was further “ruining” the canvas, but it also allowed me to stretch, try something new and come at it from another angle. I chose to let go and not hold on so tightly to an initial concept so I could allow a better one to emerge.
I added some more papers before arriving at the finished canvas, aptly named: Metamorphosis
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