Balancing My Chakras

My musings this week aren’t about writing or reading. They’re about making images by other means. Above you see a non-representational drawing I made about ten years ago. I made it in a time when I was struggling with various personal upheavals, some minor, some a little more than minor, all weighing on my mind. I paid a visit to a tarot card reader and she was very helpful. At the end of our session, she told me that my chakras were out of balance. Being a someone adept at marketing the services of her business, she said she could help me re-balance my troublesome chakras in a subsequent session, for $150.00. I thanked her for our time together, went home, and started this painting.

For those of you unfamiliar with the word, chakras are circles of energy in our bodies. We have quite a few of them, too many for me to remember them all. But I do know the seven main ones that are centred in various points along our spine. Ten years ago, I took my unbalanced chakras to my easel and spread my paints out on my dining room table. My husband was away. I was home alone. I could sing off key as loud as I wanted.

The medium I used for the above piece is watercolour on yupo, which is not paper. It’s synthetic, made of plastic. Anyone who knows anything about watercolour knows that its most appealing (and frustrating) feature is how it reacts and absorbs into the paper. Well, it doesn’t absorb into plastic at all. On yupo, you have to chase it around the page, mix and re-mix, until you get something you like which, as with most creative endeavours, is never what you started out trying to achieve. It turns out that the chase itself is revelatory and more than satisfying. I worked on that piece for about a week until one day I stood back and saw that it was done. And I felt better. I’d balanced my chakras myself and saved $150.00.

Here’s another, more subdued, piece I made last year, when I self-diagnosed myself as once again out of balance. It took me several days. This is a different medium: charcoal on newsprint. But the result was the same. I felt better.

I don’t have to be in an emotional flux to make a drawing. Sometimes I’m inspired by what I see on my daily paths, like a pile of carrots at a market. Whatever it is that makes me pick up a brush or a pencil or a piece of charcoal, I always feel better afterwards. And these days, with so much anxiety-producing news everywhere we turn, making art is an invaluable outlet.

I have had a long-time interest in art. When I was twelve, the producers of a children’s CBC television show came to my grade seven art class looking for a student to appear on their show. To my great astonishment, they picked me. My parents were more than astonished: they were stunned. They couldn’t understand what the producers were thinking. Why on earth had they picked their daughter? Unlike the me I am now, I was a fairly passive adolescent. For me, twelve was an awkward weird age and weird wasn’t allowed in our house. Often it was much better to acquiesce than argue. For my television appearance, I let my mother curl my hair into strange waves. Her version of stage hair I suppose. She decided that a matching twin sweater set, a birthday present I’d received months earlier that I’d never put on, was what I should wear. As we set out to drive to the television station, I felt uncomfortable and not anything like myself, but then again, I hardly knew who myself was yet.

On set, with the cameras rolling, all I could think of was my mother’s advice that I should be careful what I said during the show. I obeyed that warning so well that I was afraid to say anything at all. Any attempt the host made to get me to talk resulted in me nodding my head. I don’t think I said more than three words. My television debut soon disappeared into the past and family life went on as usual. The only upside was that I got a high grade in art class that semester. But it would be my last art class for a very very long time. You may have thought that being selected for an art show would have sparked an urge in me to explore more artistic activity, even a future in art. But I was too preoccupied with being twelve to think of anything beyond my thirteenth birthday.

Nevertheless, I have made art, all my life. Not capital letter ART, but dabbling and doodles in sketchbooks, with pens and pencils and sometimes watercolours and acrylics. And cameras. I really like cameras. For several years, I took night classes in photography and made my kids model for me while I experimented. Thanks to a very good friend who saw something in me and gave me a chance to show what I could do, I had the wonderful opportunity to work in the Alberta film industry as a stills photographer for several years. This was before digital, in the days of film cameras. This is me back then, wearing white shorts on what would become a very dusty set in a hay field on a hot blustery day. This was early in the morning. My shorts weren’t white when I got home that night.

The days were long. I usually had two cameras hanging around my neck (one for colour film, one for black and white). My job was to take pictures of the actors and the crew and the settings and, well anything that caught my eye. The producers I worked for used only a handful of the photos I made. I still have the rest. My career as a stills photographer lasted only a few years, but they were good years. I may write more about that in the coming months. Besides warm memories, I took away an awakened desire to make images. It didn’t matter whether I used words or brushes or a camera.

These days, in addition to writing, I still take photographs and make the occasional drawing or painting, all in random spurts, just for the pleasure of shaping lines and tones and values into something tangible. I’ve heard some people say that they aren’t creative at all. I disagree. Everyone is creative in some way. Children are especially creative. It’s just that far too many of us have that creative urge doused as we lurch towards adulthood. That’s a shame. In a turbulent world like the one we’re dealing with right now, turning to our creative outlets is the lifeline we will all need. The ability to create is a quality of being human, something each one of us has, no matter how deep it may be buried. The creative parts of my life allow me to manage the realities of a difficult threatening world. Instead of burying our creativity under our collectively unbalanced chakras, we should be using our creativity for good, to help us connect with each other and try to make sense of the absurd world we humans have created.

One quick reading recommendation: last year, I spent a few months wending my way through a new art book, Katy Hessl’s recently published, The Story of Art Without Men. This is not a book to read at one go. It’s a book to pick up often, absorbing one chapter at a sitting, letting Hessl’s history of women in art sink in. For anyone who has ever wondered why there have been so few great women artists over the centuries (that’s wrong, there have been many, but not enough), this is a book for you.

You may have noticed that I’ve made a few subtle changes to this newsletter. This is a fresh start, so it was time for an update - a new name, a new photo. I may be making a few more adjustments in issues to come. Until next time, stay well everyone.

My novel, She Who Burns, and my three previous books are all available through the usual online sources and my website: myrlcoulter.com