As artists we invoke the muse, a force that seems to come from without in order to create something from within. As people we invoke motivation, the strength to carry on, and help from a force greater than us. To some this is god, to others one or more of the gods, spirits, and ancestors that tend to the affairs of mankind.
How do we persevere each day? We do so because we must, because others depend on us, for our families and for our communities. Yet sometimes it feels as though the hardest thing in the world is to sit down at the drawing board and create. To put brush, ink, pen, pencil, or paint down on the canvas.
Sometimes we must acknowledge our own limitations, we are but mortal. We are weak, our bodies and minds fail us, and we suffer… and yet with but a simple invocation we can be strong, we can find mental fortitude, and we can know joy. We are all of these things and we are none.
“O, Divine Poesy,
Goddess, daughter of Zeus,
Sustain for me this song…”
-Homer’s Odyssey, translation by T.E. Lawrence
Invocation
a series of ink and acrylic paintings used to invoke the muse and find the way back to art, inspiration, and motivation.
nine steps back onto the artistic path,
nine beacons of light in the darkness,
nine whispers from friends who had gone, but were never all that far away.
Each of these paintings started as blank sheets of paper. Using watered down ink to make marks, there was no goal other than to work each day and to finish a piece of art. In time the marks took form and became something.
The outcome is nine small paintings, but they are more than that. They are nine steps back onto the artistic path, they are nine beacons of light in the darkness, they are nine whispers from friends who had gone, but were never all that far away.
Life is a journey and so is art, we spend far more time in the process of making then we do with being finished. And yet the act of making and the expectations that come with it can be overwhelming, and in such times we must look outside ourselves, to the great elusive muse that as Picasso once said, “finds us working.”
Hopefully she will find you, for nine with nine, a lifetime and a journey!