But What Goes Here?

I have included here a very raw and somewhat messy diagrahm I drew for Audrey during our December art retreat. We had piggy backed a day working on Cambium Gallery to a residency that I was completely out at Sou’wester. Cambium is six months old and it felt time to really focus on what Cambium can build and will build. Our businesses are separate yet intimately intertwined and I felt compelled to illustrate how this worked. At this time this illustration was made the green part was not there. We used it in our planning and moved on.

Until last week. I looked down at the drawing, a part of a planning sketchbook I have, and saw a big ol empty space. I paused and promptly wrote But what goes here? My life is very full. Cambium takes so much and my work guiding Portland Open Studios through this incredible development from a single event based organization into a full service professional development organization for artists is no small task. But it standing over that paper I realize that I had missed the most important question in that book. And every day since then I have been asking myself but what goes here. And about every other day I ask my tarot cards and they answer with the High Priestess, the guardian of sacred knowledge and hidden mysteries.

I am seven years into this professional realm of showing artwork and my soul is letting me know. I have spent every year working towards a variety of yearly goals pointed toward developing my CV in some attempt to validate my art career. What I did not know is that these things would not validate my career only I could do that. Going through a divorce in 2019 opened my life and my self up this realization. In reclaiming myself I found my truest form.

And yet I still have not answered the question of what goes here for my personal artwork in 2021. I see that open spot on my venn diagram and wonder if perhaps what it needs is to just be left open. My intuition tells me this is the right direction and so I have begun to clear my emotional landscape for the next month. I am letting go of expectation around productivity, sales and creativity. I am scheduling out the social media and I am going to seek some space to answer this question. I am putting away the painting supplies, clearing off the desk and going out into the world. And it’s really scary. An attempt to spend more time on creativity and less time staying visible.