confession

Embarrassed by some money-future-down to earth issues i stopped painting for a whole month. Then suddenly, following the advice of a friend , i just overcame it and decided to try and paint, anyway. Here is what happened...
Preparing my stuff-throwing away the paint that had mouldered, mixing new colours...etc-i started thinking.
on how the good easy time was now over that i had had the last years with painting, not having to care at all about money thanks to french subsidies first and the gallery then. that this had been a time that had been offered to me to make up for the childhood freedom and innocence i had never really had-growing up in the anguish of having no father to protect me and the anguish of my mother expecting from me to be serious and hardworking and mature and intellignet and ambitious...which i did, enthusiastically, not to lose her love and because she knew best. and in the process I lost myself, a little bit of myself and of my childhood.I gained a lot too...I became mature, intelligent, brillant-thank you mum- but i also lost something...

so, many years later, life finally caught up with me, made me suffer like hell untill i realised i was not on my way and no further step could be taken on that way which was not mine.
and time was given to me to stop everything, and take the time to be childlike again with no other responsibility than to be myself and nurture my own nature. and paint, with those fascinating colours, with my fingers, with paint all over me, just like a child...
and now this time was over, damage has been repaired and life orders me to get say my farewell to childhood, find the track back to adulthood, my own adulthood.
and i could sigh, i thought, as much as i wanted, and say how unfair and cry, and it is only fair.
fair to get back to responsibilities, like just anyone.
So, lighthearted i started painting. I hadn't touch my painting knives for a month.
and what happened was what i most feared, the very reason i discovered suddenly why i hadn't dare painting for so long...
what i painted was what i had to paint, my hands went where they were dying to go, quick and splashing and unreasonable, beyond control. i painted not caring a dime wether what i was painting was beautiful, attractive, suiting the market, possible to sell....i just painted for the sake of painting.
and that broke my art and left me panting, awfully sad.
this is what i feared, a rebellion inside my self against the sheer idea of art and business. and it cried inside of me, art is no business, painters are chamanes, who asks a business plan from a chamane?fuck fuck fuck you all with your money matters and business plans and financial projections and market analysis, you're killing the very thing, you're killing everything.
And so what?
I got quiet and remembered that beautiful korean movie about a korean painter in the 18th century, wild and ferocious and filled with the passion for his own art despising all moneymatters and his stupid clients, fleeing accross the country anytime society pressure around him became unbearable.
And i remembered my own erratic times with painting, those dangerous times when reason flickers like a flame in the wind, when one totally looses contact with the ground, the intoxicating freedom and the violent fall down.
And i thought, i am not that, i cannot be that again, whether i lack something -courage , faith, madness....or there is too much reason in me or desire for stability or whatever... anyway i am not that.
so what?
back to business plan.
with still some sourness and sadness in me, something unhealed for the moment.
with some hope too, that there is a middle way, there is always a middle way.
that middle way finally always requires more strenghth and courage than all other excessive options because it requires long term effort, never ending effort and mindfullness to fall neither in one excess or another, always balancing, always being aware of inside and outside winds....
this friday i will start a 3 day meditation retreat- back to the old familiar cushion - in bishan monastery.
till then i've decided to let myself loose, painting or modelling clay or reading or swimming or whatever.
and monday i ll get back to the business plan and do my best to translate in this unfamiliar economic shape and language my projects for my future.