Preparing the Page

Following my declaration of claiming creative space in my last post on Sankalpa and My 21:5:800 Experience, I promptly signed up for Connie Hozvicka‘s Art Journal Love Letters online workshop.  I figured that if I’m truly going to allow myself to create, then I need to take the opportunities to embrace new skills and open up to inspirational experience.  Creating love letters to my art journal is just such an opportunity – an invitation to come out and play.

After signing up and logging on, I began learning about materials, supplies, journals etc. but the element that has most captured my imagination at this very early stage is the preparing of the pages.  I can honestly say it had never occurred to me that I would need to prepare the journal pages before creating my art, but I find the idea completely intoxicating.  I watch video clips of Connie spreading the gel medium across a double page spread – blank, but now with a thin, glistening film covering the entire surface – and find that I am transfixed.

Upon this prepared page, magic happens.  Colour bursts from paintbrush bristles. Long meandering lines doodle from one end to another.  Texture is formed, bumpy-rough and lumpy-smooth.  And in amongst these fireworks of brightest hue and mellow shade, there lies the spirit of an imagination at play.

And yet, before all this, comes the preparation of the page.  In times gone by, I would have been impatient to jump straight into the colour, into the texture, into the drama of artistic expression.  But something has changed.  Something since I began the 21:5:800 challenge.  Now, taking the time to do the work that needs to be done to prepare the blank page, seems completely natural and exquisitely fulfilling as an action in and of itself.  I see now that the act of preparation is one that can be practiced mindfully – a journey and a destination all rolled into one.

Because the preparatory movements to be applied to the page are akin to those I now practice every day in my yoga practice.  I lay down my mat in the middle of the lounge floor, the morning sun flooding the space with fresh summer light.  I seat myself down upon the mat, cross-legged, straight-backed, and close my eyes.  I draw my attention to my breath.  In and out.  In and out. Inhale follows exhale follows inhale.  The breath my only point of focus, as I turn inwards.  I consciously begin to lengthen my breath; breathing deep into my tummy, I feel my chest and abdomen expand, and then exhaling long and low, as the slow rush of air leaves my body.

Over and over again, I breath… consciously, mindfully.  In this moment of calm, I set my sankalpa, my intention, and this now becomes my touchstone.  On my next breath, I inhale and as I exhale I speak the word that has been spoken for centuries.  A word ancient and powerful.  A word that resonates deep within my core, before filling the room and travelling out of the open windows and into the world outside.  Om.  Om.  Om.

And now, there are no words.  There are no thoughts.  There are no fears, reminders, longings, worries, distractions.  Instead there is release.  The kind of release one only ever finds once they have prepared the blank page of their mind.  A double-page spread pristine, sealed and ready for the following stage.  The flowing asanas tracing their way through the white space, their lines thinning and thickening, contracting and relaxing, holding and releasing.  The breath remaining steady, staying constant.

In preparing the pages of my art journal, readying it for the colour, the texture, the words, I can find a quiet peace.  A peace that begins at the tip of the medium laden brush and ends somewhere in the centre of my chest.  I never would have guessed this kind of serenity would ever have been available to me.  The shift from rush-rush-rush to be-here-now has been profound, all-encompassing.  A tide of calm placidity spreads out over my mind and body, and I am prepared.

Prepared to move.  Prepared to create.  Prepared to set sail upon the seas of my imagination, with the winds of liberation speeding my progress.  Never before have I felt such deep-seated assurance in my ability to build upon the blank surface, to make my mark, to inscribe the secrets that the soul whispered into the deepening blue of a dusk fast approaching.  And I thought I’d feel giddy.  I thought I’d feel nervous, filled with anticipatory flutterings.

But instead, I feel something so much better.  So much more satisfying.  What I feel is sustainable.  My usual energy pattern of pyrotechnic explosion, followed by an exhausted shower of vanishing sparkles, appears arrested.  Replaced by a creative sovreignty that carries with it longevity, a sense of jubilant productivity that flows from an eternal spring: glittering, pure, constant.

I fill my brush with the medium and apply it in the act of preparing the page.