Crescendo– Coming to Principle Gallery, Alexandria, VA
Sometimes I sit, sometimes I stareSometimes they look and I don’t careRarely I weep, sometimes I mustI’m wounded by dust
–Laura Marling, Sophia
My annual solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery opens four weeks from today on June 9th. This means I have about three weeks to finish and prepare the remaining paintings for the show. As the experience of doing this show for the past 24 years have shown me, the coming weeks is filled with a wide variety of emotions for me.
There is the excitement of the work itself as it builds toward the show. Inevitably, it is in these final weeks and the final pieces that the direction of the work hones itself to a fine point. A rhythm (there’s that word again) develops in the months leading up to now and in the final weeks, it is racing fully forward. Everything comes easily and the momentum of one piece carries into the next with full force.
The work seems self-propelling at these times, and I just need to make myself available as the tool which creates the work. It is the excitement of a performer who has rehearsed for months and months and at some point, the work they are rehearsing becomes built-in and natural. It becomes part of them in that moment.
I think that’s what you hope for whatever creative field you might be in.
It might also be like an athlete training for many months for an event. Ideally, their training builds and builds so that at the moment of the event every motion, every stride, is at full effort and in full rhythm.
But there are also moments of despair and doubt, as I have pointed out here before. You worry if you’ve done enough or made the right creative choices when they have appeared. You wonder if you are good enough or if this will be the time when your inadequacies are fully revealed.
Do I have what it takes to finish this race, to reach the crescendo?
Sounds neurotic, I know. And that might be correct. It might also be integral to the process. I don’t know.
It makes for a roller coaster ride of emotions each day.
It’s the best and it’s the worst.
I’ve had quite a few jobs that were far too imbalanced with worst moments so this is a relative picnic, neurotic as it might seem. At least it has those best moments to counter the worst ones.
Thanks for listening to me babble for a few minutes. It serves a purpose for me–I think. Here’s a favorite song that I haven’t heard in a while. I chose it because of the manner in which it builds to a crescendo. Seems fitting. This is Sophia from Laura Marling.
Redtree Times 