Impatience, The Wall, and What Lies Beyond it

My paintings of Impatience, The Wall, and What Lies Beyond The Wall evolved into an expression of meditating on the passion of creation and dealing with the creative gap.

Infusing the changes I’m trying to apply to my daily life into my work, these paintings helped guide me.

Beginning with Impatience. I sat down with a vague idea of something, I wanted to create but I felt worn out in the routines that I set myself in. Sitting with a deep sigh and a blank canvas before me, I went to work. A bubbling of ideas came to me, with no singular focus. I wanted to be done quick, but also try get some accurate shape of what was coming up.
Rushing with no singular focus. My mind in other places. The final product is unprocessed, a faint glow of what could’ve been.

This same rush for the end was seen in my daily actions too. I felt myself being more impulsive with my choices. I was spending more, sleeping in a little more, scrolling just a tad more, I just felt like I needed a bit more and more and more of everything. I couldn’t just sit still and let something develop. I wanted to experience the buffet of pleasure that every day life had to offer me.

I always know that it cant last but taking that first moment to just stop is always the hardest. I drove without music to make myself sit in silence. The slurry of thoughts I just hadn’t given the time of day rushed me. And I sat there, thinking over each of them, until I was just sat there.

Going over my thoughts I came to recognize something with my own expression. My behavior stemmed from avoidance. The avoidance to sit with myself. What better way to escape ourselves through maximizing our sensory experience.

But we all know where it goes. A self destructive path in which we can never develop. I had hit a wall, realizing I need to get over myself and slow down and in work too.

My client had been exhibiting a lot of behaviors and I was unsure what to change about our sessions. We had been working on increasing using 2 word phrases verbally. I had introduced reading as an activity that we can do on top of the new activities my manager had given me to use. Things went well at first but we had hit a wall too.

He was doing more and more to escape the work and the normal items and activities of motivation weren’t worth it to him. Another wall.

I was frustrated. And painted

The wall was born. Over the course of the week, I just poured all of the frustration of not knowing how to handle a problem into that painting. Over the course of that week I sat down with my frustrations and worked through it. Slowly, annoyed, sometimes angered, I combed through myself and listened to what my client was telling me that I may not have seen before.

The turbulence of working with this child had me second guessing myself. I know that with my field of work, I help these kids and do not get to see how I help them. They face me, we do challenges, we face hurdles, I become a wall for them to get over, and they develop in new ways. I put my time and care into them and we move on.

The weeks of handling these behaviors had me questioning everything I knew. When I sat down to paint, poems of the wall had already danced around my head. Different strings of words to examine this space I’m in and the role I have with it.

My role as ‘The Wall’: An obstacle, a challenge, something to be overtaken for accomplishment, overall just a step in the journey of life, something to help foster growth in another.
My experience with ‘The Wall’: Repeated patterns of behaviors I want to change walled me from viewing other perspectives, crashing into a wall every time I would commit to a more self destructive behavior, the wall was my threshold to extract pleasure from experiences.

Making the painting was different and filed with uncertainty. Every stroke I took came laced with a lack of confidence. Moving beyond that inner voice that told me every next step was an error, I held. I made the painting and followed through.

What came on the other side was a standstill of that point. Boundaries clearly set between some forms, a wild array of colors and patterns, almost like a map.

I had taken the time needed to see the wall and now it was my choice to act.

What lies beyond the wall? I still don’t know.

I meditated and acted with the new realizations from seeing the wall. I made adjustments to all that I needed to do and continued.

When working with my client, there was one change we made that led to our sessions flowing with less turbulence. The cessation of using alarms to section out activities. At first it was odd but it allowed the environment to retain a peaceful and comfortable air for him that wasn’t tainted by a harsh noise like a timer. Especially since he is someone who is sensitive to all sensory things, this change made me realize how ignorant I was to his own needs and how I need to practice something to be more aware of how our senses influence our behavior.

With all these paintings being a meditation around my avoidance and the usage of sensory experience to escape. I reflected on them, before I had made what lies beyond the wall.

The stringent boundaries I had set for myself where my very undoing. Letting them unravel just a bit I continued my expression, the form for why the boundary was set slowly being washed away and mixed into the totality the scene of what ‘is’.

A slower softer pattern was brought forth. Not completely dissolving its purpose but letting it fade between. An certain ease came to chase my breaths. Things felt easier somehow? I didn’t know how to properly express it, I could continue with everything I want as I’ve wanted and there were no walls in my way. I had sunken through it.

Each painting has an associated poem which you can read below