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Finding the Artist Inside
By Cornelia Powell | June 30, 2008
The job of the artist is to deepen the mystery.
-Francis Bacon
I attended the River Arts District Studio Show recently in Asheville, North Carolina. In an old warehouse area on the French Broad River that’s been converted to artists’ studios, and for two weekends a year, the artists display their hearts and souls on shelves and walls and racks.
Not only did I get to meet some wonderful artists for the first time, but I got to be back in touch with an artist friend from Atlanta who now lives in Asheville. It’s been about ten years since I’ve seen Fran Welch and her “ethereal art,” and I noticed a new depth, maturity, and womanliness, an other-worldly quality in her work that had only been suggested before.
Self-Expression
Fran’s main medium is clay, her pieces are mostly small and intimate in their size and nature. I asked Fran about creating her art as a self-expression and she immediately answered, “It’s my exercise in terror.”
I repeated “terror” to be sure I understood her and at the same time, I got what she meant and appreciated the courage of her reply.
“It’s like pulling yourself from the inside; how far you want to expose yourself, how far do you want to connect in to the world’s consciousness,” she continued. “It’s like jumping off a cliff, free-falling …. and if I don’t have passionate energy, if I’m not into it, it doesn’t sell.”
What level of surrender does it take for the artist for her art to tap into such heart-depths in others?
Fran’s delicate clay figures are calming, smile-making, and take my imagination inside. I asked Fran about the nurturing quality in the creative process for her. “Clay is healing, organic, grounding — and it’s methodical,” she shared.
“Therefore it becomes a meditative process for you, like a moving meditation?” I asked.
“Yes, and it’s sensual, it speaks to me, uncurling tight places,” she replied. “I’ll notice myself thinking, ‘Oh, I can’t say that’, but then there’s something left to ‘come out of me’.”
No wonder Fran’s art feels tender and intimate and full of love. I like how I feel when I’m around it, like I’ve been allowed in the private entrance of the Secret Garden just as the fairies and gnomes begin their ritual dance!
Finding the Artist Inside
What is your art? Whether painting or writing or sewing, or playing with your children, or setting a table, or riding a bicycle, or sweeping your porch. Can’t any activity become an artistic expression?
Fran speaks about the inner woman becoming process of creating, not about her “art.” Is it this journeying process, like a rite-of-passage, that is the heart of the matter?
Is creating art like drawing from a well inside you? (Not like artifice, but art as the expression of something intimate and beautiful.) And the more real and intimate its expression, the deeper into the well you’ve gone; the more you’ve let go of artifice and, indeed, found something like spirit or soul or the mystery, as Francis Bacon spoke of. You’ve found something that feels like home — safe and warm; yet perhaps at first, terrifying in its moment of release.
The French writer and film maker Jean Cocteau said, “An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.” Like love, perhaps art is best expressed with how it makes us feel, where it takes us, what we dream about after it’s had its way with us!
Art, love, spirit — just synonyms for life?
Love. Listen. Let go.
… with love from Cornelia
Topics: Women's Notes |