#dearyoungartists

I’m thinking about ACTION. About all the excuses we have for not getting projects done or pursuing our aspirations and desires. Such good excuses we have. For me, the projects that get done are two kinds: The ones that pay the bills, and the ones that save my soul. But I’d like to change that, broaden it if I can. How else will I have fun, learn a new language, create when I’m happy, collaborate properly and more? I think it’s worth figuring out. ACTION. Movement. I want that. 

I want to be decisive. Nimble. Quick. Flexible. Energetic. Like a child and a superhero combined. (I’ll confess, I’m currently wrestling with some emotions that have the potential to depress me. I said different words here when I first posted, then thought to edit it.... alas, I know thinking and wishing is sometimes futile. And if I give in I will be dragged down to oceanic depths of longing for what is not. So I may as well be buoyant. On the surface where I can breathe, create, cultivate new neural pathways. The slow long forgetting of severed limbs and sunken ships. Amnesia Diaries.) I mention this parenthetical tidbit to illustrate the compulsion for action. The invitation for inaction arrives in our mailbox everyday if we let it. Depression often arrives in tandem with inaction. 

I know a better use of my heart is to paint, write songs, read, write, act. Create. Pure and simple. And anything that impedes that kind of pure creation and expression is the devil. Anything that keeps me horizontal in my bed, beneath an invisible boulder is the black magic of disease and apathy. It is population control and I’m letting it get me. I’m being a statistic by letting the devil ruin me into mediocrity. I want to cry out... Don’t let the devil ruin you! 

Fight for your right to live, create, thrive and be alive in a moving body and abundant mind. Let every day of your life be a reflection of the fecundity of your internal landscape. Tend to seeds planted and grotesque flowering beasts of intellect. Walk out into your garden each day and cut the largest poppy you can find. Carry it with you until it wilts. Wave it wildly at your opponents. Your enemy is apathy and lethargy and inertia. Show it to it’s death with your rebellion - like a swordsman in the arena. Go into the forest of your mind each night, and emerge each morning with a beast of an idea. Slay it quick. Make it bigger and faster than you ever dreamed possible. Hoist it up like Hemingway’s swordfish - to intimidate all others on deck. All those waiting on shore for “inspiration”, the devil got them already. You’re on the run. You’re making good time every sunrise when you emerge in the armor of your desires, and declare the hunt is on!

No beasts in your forest? Count your blessings to be so pure of thought. You’ve got beasts. We all do. Some of us are just better acquainted with them. Some beasts won’t let us sleep. Some drag us into the past kicking and screaming, while others hurl us into a future unreachable, of invention. Get to know your beasts. Cultivate an edible garden of root vegetables and leafy greens. And wait. First will come little rabbits of insight. Slay your rabbits! (I hope you are following the metaphor.) Get good at rabbit stew, and you’ll be ready when the dragon comes. The dragon is your call to adventure. But if you’re not in the practice of slaying beasts big or small, you’ll snooze on the call. The devil wins again. It’s fine because the world doesn’t need you. You will perish with mountains of regret, and this world we know will not bat an eye. It goes on turning. But I’ll let you in on the secret... You need the world. 

You need the world as your stage, as your teacher and your friend. I can think of no one so evil as not to marvel at a murmuration of starlings or a stampede of wild horses. And just think, this kind of miracle of living theater is happening out there everyday while we sit on our couches plugged in to the IV drip of news and social networks and endless avalanches of emails. Most days we are missing the show, and missing our chance! Practice the splendid rebellion against inertia. Create something today. Then, by all means, wave it wildly - online or otherwise. Your opponent is apathy. And it will know you’ve come to win. 

I have not posted to my blog in some time. The everydayness of life has gotten me. I’ve lost my blogging momentum. But I do miss the days of more active sharing, publishing thoughts like this, and not just in blips on instagram. If this blog brings you any pleasure or insight that you feel is valuable, would you drop me a line and let me know your thoughts? If you receive this blog via email, please reply and say hello if you’ve read this far. I have to pay monthly for a service that sends this blog to your inbox and sometimes I think of canceling that service. If you wish that I wouldn’t, would you let me know? This is an ever-changing digital landscape and I, like everyone, am navigating the unknown as each day passes. I want to speak to you in a language that you can love. Thank you for reading, for cultivating tenderness for the artist’s temperament, and for making your own art, love and life out there in the living theater of the world. 

Sincerely, Rebecca

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Images: 

This Love, Rebecca Rebouche

Memory, Rebecca Rebouche 

Bear and Ballerina, artist unknown

Girl with Poppy, Tim Walker

Hemingway with swordfish

Rebouche with The Reeling, painting by Rebecca Rebouche, photo by Zack Smith, New Orleans

This morning I sat looking around my studio and noticed this piece of paper crumpled up on the floor, and I realized how very long it has been since I had crumpled paper on the floor. It's a simple thing, but for me it represents uncertainty, trial and error, and the willingness to throw something out and start over.  For a while now my art-making has been about execution, not exploration. I've embraced the lack of time with a blazing certainty of what I must do and how to do it. But along the way, it has narrowed my possibilities.  This collection is very different from all the rest because of its celebration of uncertainty and the room for possibility, which I So Need right now.  As my life, art and business continue to work in parallel, it's high time for the unknown to be welcome at the table.  With all my other collections, I know exactly what it will be. I have a flash of vision, where I see the entire body of work in my head before I even begin. Then it sits there like a cloud filled with paintings, over my head, and the only way to eliminate the cloud is to create the paintings and that plucks them from the cloud and into the world. I then save the entire collection in order to release them all at once, like one big story. That is the way I have worked ever since my first solo show "Unearthed" in Fall 2010. And each year I have made two collections in that way without fail. Of those 6 collections, comprising over 200 paintings, roughly 6 or 7 of them remain in my possession. The rest are in the hands of collectors... the homes of the world.  As I have gotten to work on this collection titled "Piece of Work", I have surveyed the possibilities that lie before me in my studio and I confess that I have felt overwhelmed by them at times. As I have said before, options are the enemy of happiness. And so it goes with being creative... we often think that more options will give us greater success, and we find the opposite to be true. But this morning, in the shower, I realized that I only need one good idea each day. And after all, I usually have that before noon. The rest is FAITH that the work will follow. I've built enough skill, experience and knowledge to stand on for a season. Now I stand at the foot of the unknown. And though it's uncomfortable, it's where I know I need to be.  This collection is as much a mystery to me as it is to you. So, I hope you will join me in the discovery. And cheer me on through my doubts. And allow for a range of possibility. I know I talk about a lot of different things here on my blog, from Anthropologie to travel to broken hearts and entrepreneurship. But the thing that remains true is that I am an artist at work. And it is so many things. A complicated quilt made of bits and pieces of a life, with no clean lines separating any of it. Thank you for letting me spread them out before us, for sharing in my journey, and for taking the bits and pieces that you need. I hope it is a long time from now, but I hope I die empty... having given each piece of me to someone who needed it.