I was thinking recently about all the time we spend waiting — waiting in traffic, waiting to check out our groceries, waiting at the airport, the doctor's office, the license bureau. Compounded, it is said we spend the equivalent of years of our lives waiting. This begs the question: why, then, do we rush everything else?
Looking at my ever-growing to-do list, I anticipate the day I will have my new studio — a space with ample lighting, wall space, and room to create. For now, I work in a rather tiny area and make it work the best I can. My space does severely limit the size of canvas I can work on, and while I love creating larger, show-stopping pieces, they are a challenge to transport and often quite expensive to get to the collector.
It fascinates me how some things seem to take forever — like paying down a mortgage — while others, like watching our kids grow up, go by in the blink of an eye. My son, soon to be an "official" teenager, is going through many changes, both physically and in his personality. No longer does he "need" his mom the way he once did. No longer am I "Mommy." I am "Mom" — and on other days, "brah." The admiration, and sometimes the respect, is all but gone. Sadly.
As I create in my studio, imagining the finished piece and the collector who will adorn their wall with my work, I pause to think about the actual creation process — how each brushstroke tells a story and each colour is carefully selected. I think about how each lift of the arm and stroke of the brush brings the piece together....slowly. It is in those moments that I realize art, like so many things, is not meant to be rushed.
Although finding the perfect partner on the first date sounds ideal, or earning a degree without years of hard study may sound appealing, it is in the process of anything that we come to understand its true importance — and we are ultimately rewarded for it. This is why nepo-babies and lottery winners so often fail to appreciate what they have and squander what they've been given.
I've seen the horrible reels of factories — often in China — where "artists" (I use that term loosely) reproduce hundreds of the same "art" (again, loosely) over and over again. It physically sickens me. Who is buying this slop? Seriously? I would love to knock out a dozen or more paintings a week. I know that is something neither I nor my collectors would truly want. That's akin to calling Kraft Dinner gourmet pasta. Gross. The appeal of owning a one-of-one simply cannot exist in a factory setting. Sharing the creation process and getting to know the artist is therefore of great importance.
Beauty is sometimes found in a cramped little studio in the countryside of Ottawa, where ideas are imagined and beautiful things are born — born from the small imperfections that could never be mass-produced in a factory or generated by AI. It is in this that we are reminded we are human, and it is through our humanness that we are connected in ways only the universe understands. Now more than ever, we need to remember this, treasure it, and magnify it in ways AI never could.
-Julie
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