Unearthing the Demons that Shackle
CREATIVE PROCESS — Part 5
In 2024-25 I participated in a journey to use art to uncover, dislodge and toss away for good the hinderances that had prevented me from living as the woman I deep down suspected that God created and called me to be. For me, through no intent of her own, truly, it was the dynamics of my relationship with my mother, not that she is the demon, but that my own feelings of inferiority were the demons. It is not uncommon, this precarious dynamic between mothers and daughters, after all. My mother loved and loves me, but we all as humans come with a whole set of baggage passed down through many generations.
In the last decade, it has become believed that personalities and emotional predispositions, not just physical traits, can also be written in one's DNA and passed down through generations. It is also believed that such emotional DNA can be rewritten and the new-improved DNA passed down thereafter. My intention was to rewrite that DNA wiring for myself and daughters. First, I had to do serious work to unearth it from deep within. Art, or rather self-art-therapy became my tool. It was a language I could understand.
My mother was and is my greatest inspiration and hero. Our relationship was also my greatest hinderance for many years. Not intentionally, I re-clarify. She's that paragon of motherhood, the Proverbs 31 woman that every woman wants to, or feels she should emulate. She's also an incredibly gifted off-the-charts artist, who currently has more metal sculptures around the world than almost anyone, has painted huge beautiful abstract artwork, as well as delicate realistic bird paintings and wood carvings, designed and built her own Craftsmand style home that was featured on 10 pages in a magazine, mastered violin and then guitar, classical, flamenco, and folk, and accompanied it with a voice from heaven. Her creativity, intellectual and mechanical acumen, and inventiveness know no bounds, both in her performing and visual art as well as in her cooking, landscaping, and well, let's just be honest, EVERYTHING she set her mind to doing. I mean seriously, in the 70's, when others were buying backpacking tents, she designed and made ours! Who does that? Compound that with the fact that she is an absolutely stunning woman, who at 85 still works out daily, looks younger than all of her daughters, has rebuilt the engines of her Harley Davidson 1947 Knucklehead as well as the engine of one of our cars, and can shoot like a master in the field. As her daughter, I felt I didn't have a chance to even come close to her achievements. She was and is a modern day Renaissance Woman with few equals in the world.
She's also always been a perfectionist. (Gee, I wonder where I got that from?!) Needless to say, me wanting to be "an artist like my mom" seemed outright ridiculous to me. Pie in the sky...or when pigs fly. Duh. Obvious. I went into teaching instead. Yep, I was a shining example of "those who can't DO, teach" — the most blatant lie ever perpetuated in our American culture, honestly, as teachers have to know 100 times more than most people, and be good at a vast multitude of things at once. But that's another subject, and I'll climb down from that soapbox for a moment.
The following artwork is a series of drawings, illustrations and paintings I did as I journeyed through this process to discover a courage to claim my own voice as a woman and artist. It's taken me 65 years, so such a journey is not for the faint of heart, but more than worth it.
Although, most of these illustrations I feel can stand alone as self-explanatory, I do want to note here that during this whole journey, there were 2 to 4 owls that took up residence in my yard, where I worked, painting and writing, at my patio table. They moved back and forth from the closest tree branches to the roof above my head as if watching, supporting and lending encouragement, and maybe wisdom? At first, I just thought they were pretty, but when they kept returning in the daylight, I began to wonder if something more was at play. Sometimes, I wonder if God sends to us signs of His presence and guidance in times of questioning, reflection during the refining process.
This last one I've since titled "Cured" in private, although I still keep my original title formally.
In once in a lifetime and the boldest move I've ever made, I did something horrible, terrifying and wondrous in the end. When I retired from teaching, I brought home several of my mom's paintings that I'd had hanging in my art classroom for a decade. They'd inspired hundreds of children over the years, and many "copies" filled their sketchbooks during any "free draw" time. Two of them now grace my home, but I just didn't have the wall space for the third. I'd asked mom if she wanted it back but she told me to just use the stretcher bars and "re-canvas" it for myself. Unable to let go of a piece of my mother's art I'd lived so closely with for 15 years or so, it stood in my garage for a couple of months until I neared the end of my art-therapy course. The final project loomed, when the painting caught my eye.
Dare I?
With trepidation and impending shame, I turned it around and around, an idea forming in my brain. "Bad daughter!" kept a nagging staccato in my thoughts all the while. .....but, what if I could honor my mother for the love and gifts she gave to me, while simultaneously claiming my own voice as an artist? The decision made, I made two turns of the canvas and sketched out my idea in white oil paint, covering the dark areas I wouldn't use, but keeping a good amount of Mom's lines and portions of color. Oh boy, I'd done it now! No turning back. Agh! She may never speak to me again, the words kept railing at me.
I chose to keep a lot of her black lines to show that we all inherit the stories, background beliefs and personalities of our parents and grandparents, and I worked to create an image that conveyed who I was uniquely from her within those lines and colors. What evolved and manifested was a painting that was me, but was also her. It was then that I finally also saw how much I was not only like my mother in many ways, but also looked like my mother. In the end, it is a portrait of each of us, and both of us.
From that day on, I was cured of comparing myself to my phenomenal artist mother. I stopped taking her critiques as personal affronts and thus judging myself wanting. I braved forth confidently in my art-making and began showing my art to the world. My biggest regret is that I lost a painting of my mother's, when not a year later her house and studio burned down in the Eaton Fire of Altadena, California, and we lost all of the artwork that hadn't been sold. Had it happened earlier, I never would have even considered the action I had taken. In the end, however, this piece is a momentous pivotal moment in my growth as an artist. It also gave me the courage and led the way for many more changes in my growth towards becoming the woman I felt I was meant to be all along.
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Note: All artwork, stories and observations posted within should be credited to the author, Linnie Aikens Lindsay (unless cited in the post). Permission is required for any use of my words or artwork. Taken from my work, "My Life As Wallpaper Art".
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