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Category: cancer

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Paralysis

Me, working again. What a relief.

Any artist who tells you they have never suffered from creative paralysis is a liar. In my case, this is often the first step of a major series of work. It takes the form of extreme anxiety, where I canā€™t even walk through my studio doors. My solution is usually to approach the project sideways. I do little studies until I regain my nerve.

That would have been my normal approach last month, as I cleared the decks to work on a major show next spring. But what would have been a temporary state has been outrun by the events in my personal life.
This morning, I enter the maw of modern medicine again in the form of a pre-surgical meeting for a recently-diagnosed cancer. Iā€™m not overly worried about the long-term outcome, but recovering from my last surgery has been awful for my work habits.
Why do people seek out psychics? Actually watching fate bearing down on us is an awe-inspiring and terrible thing. This month, two people dear to me moved through the final stages of death. I was useless for anything other than the most habitual tasks. I felt as if the circuits of the heavens were opened up, and I could do nothing except stare.
One built, eight more to go. But that’s progress.
I suppose I could have handled my physical recovery, my loved onesā€™ deaths, or the anxiety of a new project separately, but the combination of the three was too much.
Ultimately, I used othersā€”most notably, my husband and my assistant Sandyā€”as emotional battering rams. With their support, I was able to get back to work. Itā€™s a funny thing about painting: itā€™s essentially a solitary act that is also a form of communication to the world. And death is a solitary act that is also universal; nobody escapes it.
Each time we artists stumble and fall, we think, ā€œItā€™s all over now. Iā€™m ruined; I canā€™t meet my commitments.ā€ I was well into that mantra of self-condemnation until I recollected that Iā€™ve banked a lot of hard work over the prior year. If I donā€™t sell another thing in 2013 (and since Iā€™m about to have another surgery, I doubt I will) itā€™s still the best year Iā€™ve had since 2008.
Let me know if youā€™re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Working under duress

Annunciation to Joseph, c. 2000, by little ol’ me. Who likes hearing upsetting news?
I was recently diagnosed with cancer. Itā€™s kept me from doing much of anything these past few weeks, as I’m in a sort of paralysis of awe and anxiety. This is why Iā€™ve been writing about art theory and history and not so much about practical painting.
Yesterday my doctor was reviewing the charts from my 1999 bout with a different cancer. ā€œAnd you were running 900 miles a week,ā€ he finished up.
I laughed. ā€œI was actually running 30 to 36 miles a week then,ā€ I said. ā€œAnd the odd thing is, Iā€™ve been ramping up my mileage all summer, and now Iā€™m doing 25 miles a week.ā€  Last winter I realized that scrambling around rocks while teaching plein air painting in Maine would require a lot of endurance, so I started training harder.
Carnations and Clematis in a Crystal Vase, Ć‰douard Manet, 1883. Manet dealt with illness by painting some exquisite small florals; you just know they are flowers from his bedside table. I donā€™t think I have this kind of ā€˜sweetā€™ in my character, but, then again, Manet probably didnā€™t think he did either.
When I had cancer in 1999, I made exercise my top priority. If I wasnā€™t hooked up to an IV, I walked or ran. It was how I kept sane. And my first resolution with this round of cancer is to do the same, even if it uses up all my limited energy. In retrospect, running is probably why Iā€™m still here.
Twice now Iā€™ve ramped up my workout the year before I learned I had cancer. No, exercise doesnā€™t cause cancer. Rather, sometimes God tells us to do something that we donā€™t understand at the time. Listening to the voice of God is pretty hard for people who have been trained to think rationally rather than intuitively. But when we succeed at it, we rapidly realize God has his hand firmly on our shoulders.
Carrying the Cross, from A Child Walks With Jesus, 1999-2000, St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Rochester.
Right before my last diagnosis, I agreed to do Stations of the Cross for St. Thomasā€™ Episcopal Church in Rochester. It took me ten months to do 26 sketches, but in retrospect, I think the cancer shaped the work in ways I couldnā€™t have foreseen. The work also shaped my faith, because it addresses the fundamental question of the Christian experience: did Jesus really give us an end run around the inevitability of sin and death?
Oddly enough, I recently made a commitment to do seven large paintings on the subject of God and man in the environment. I have no idea how being sick can affect this work; I wonā€™t know until I break this paralysis. But I will, and it will. That I know.

Let me know if youā€™re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!