Getting Comfortable with the Uncomfortable

An irresistible urge to Paint

Do you ever feel so constrained, and boxed-in by the stifling structure of the day job, that you need to find some way of breaking free and letting loose?  I sure do.

And funny thing is, even working with the textile medium (at least in the way that I do) can be so process-intensive that it’s not necessarily a big break from the day job “structure” (although IT IS a much needed respite for my right brain to actually have a few minutes to function so it doesn’t completely atrophy)!

dye drawing on screen, waiting to be printed out

Oh how I love process, especially the deconstructed screen-printing process (DSP).  I often refer to the DSP as the greatest marriage of painting and printing, combining what I love about both – the freedom of direct mark-making through painting coupled with the unmistakable look, feel, and loss of complete artist-controlled mark-making of printing.

When I’m ready to do some DSP-ing, it’s a big time commitment – I mix up several colors of thickened dye paste and then make dye paste drawings on a bunch of screens, letting them all dry before printing.  It takes several days to prepare all these screens and sometimes weeks later, before I print them all out.

dye drawing on the screen, awaiting printing

Over the past few days, something inside kept whispering (or rather demanding), “just paint”, which I usually do as an add-on while printing, but this time it was a “need to do this NOW” kind of a thing.

So I did.  I stretched a big 4’x6′ piece of prepared fabric on a print board and started painting with the dyes directly on the fabric – what a great release!

a new large textile painting in progress

I’m trying more and more to listen to my inner wisdom and coach myself to take more risks and just “go for it” with my work – leaving it all on the field (so to speak) while at the same time, holding that inner gremlin at bay.  It takes practice getting comfortable with the uncomfortable.  But the results are worth it.

What things do you need practice getting more comfortable with?