Creativity and The Liminal Space

What an incredibly profound time to be living through.

Goodbye, 2020. Hello, 2021!

So much of our lives have been in a pause. So many of our hearts are aching. Many of us feel adrift and wonder what is next for us. Some of us are able to lift up hearts with a smile. For all of us, this last year has been a wild ride and it’s not over yet. How do we find our ground? How can we create?

While spending this last year in the liminal space, the space between no longer and not yet, I have found some comfort in the idea that the liminal provides us very fertile ground for creativity to emerge and move through us. By remembering to relax into what Is instead of resisting, we can allow ourselves some latitude to leave behind that which is no longer. Only then can we begin to soften and settle into the liminal and creative space. Only then can we begin to move towards what’s next.

The Creative is born in the Great Nothing. By very definition, to create is to make something from nothing. How can we just show up for it?

Some days, when I’m out of my mind with feelings of isolation, I go to the ocean. Nature and Silence have been good companions during this time. Exploring the qualities of emptiness and pause, breath and ground continue to be wise teachers. Noticing when I contract, applying kindness. Getting lost in the early morning birdsong and beauty; having trouble concentrating on small choices and hard decisions. Delighting in the winter light. Hopeful for the arrival of spring flowers. Finding music to move to and to be moved by. Offering tenderness for the range of this human experience.

As an artist, I bring all of this into the studio when I paint and it is the basis for my non-objective expressive paintings. Different from abstracting something tangible like a landscape or a figure, it offers more of a question than an answer or representation.

Expression becomes the conduit for the synthesis of the experience of life itself.

From the Liminal Space Series - 12x9 acrylic and drawing media on canvas paper -Works In Progress