No Idea

After looking over my posts from the last few months, I wondered why am I writing all these blogs? How could writing about my thoughts, creative process, garden, kids, grandkid, and dog, mistakes and all, be at all interesting to anyone but me? 

And if it is, interesting that is, what would be new and interesting to write about this week? I had no idea.

Then, I realized. That’s it. That is exactly why I started writing my blog. And why I’ve kept writing it for over a decade.

Notes from the road. 

As a writer, I have a kind of compulsive need to put my thoughts and ideas down somewhere. I used to doodle on the side of my notebooks in school.  Then the scribble in my teenage diary which led to a lifetime of journaling. It was a way to go from lost in the world to found. 

When I started making art, I just transferred some of my writing into pastels, watercolors, oil paintings, clay animals, and window-screening masks. My story boxes really started out with the characters popping to life on my studio shelves where they told me their stories. 

I had no idea what I was going to do with my first blog, Susan’s Art & Words. First, I let my story boxes tell their stories and it evolved from there.

Sharing thoughts from my art, turned into sharing my life. 

Creating isn’t really that mysterious. It’s just life. You get up, look around and try to figure it all out. I had jobs where coming up with ideas was what I got paid for, so the idea of having no idea was terrifying. So I made a lot of stuff up. Turned out I was good at it, at least others thought so, and I kept my job. 

Making art wasn’t what I started out to do. I started out just making and learning and trying and failing. Sometimes something would turn out nice. Or I’d hate it and put it in my studio closet, which by the way, is where there are shelves of abandoned pieces. Poor things. Because, once again, I had no idea what to do with them. 

Then I realized that life is all about living with no idea.

I liked lilies, no idea why. And over the years, I’ve made many lilies. In copper, in window screening and now in clay. 

Faces seem to appear to me. They pop up on the linoleum floor, trees, clouds, and the sides of cliffs at the beach. No, I’m not stoned. (Ok, sorry about the pun) They’ve turned into masks, sculptures, paintings and now ‘Party Animals’. No idea why. 

So why, is having no idea a problem? Because our society wants us to be able to explain, discuss, outline our reasons with logic and have a marketing strategy. 

Well, I want to laugh. Smell. Taste. See all the faces in the clouds. And dance in the cool grass until I get dizzy. Want to join me?

Why? No idea.

Let’s dance anyway.