Challenge Accepted!

The gifts found in creative friendships, challenges and art-making

Hello Creative Soul, I’m so happy you are here!

“Check your mailbox when you have a minute 😉”

That was the text I received the other day. Now in a moment like that, you could either be excited or a little scared. I mean, depending upon my mood — which affects how I read it — and who it’s from, this text could have the Hollywood horror movie “The killer is waiting for you by the mailbox” vibes or, on the other hand, it might have an celebratory, “I just won a million dollars” vibe. As this was from my incredibly fun and super creative neighbor/friend, Kim, it had the exciting, “play is imminent” vibe that I absolutely love.

Slowly, I opened my mailbox to find an envelope and on the outside it read….

How could I not want to dive right in??!!

Inside the envelope were two things. First, a gorgeous card.

Kim shared that she’d seen my wildflower painting and noticed that I often translate colors into inspiration and energy. Knowing that I use bright colors, she wondered what it might be like for me to work with more subdued colors and a limited palette.

I wondered as well.

If I were to use less vibrant color, would I still be able to create a piece that would allow the viewer to feel the energy coursing through it? In addition, without those colors, would the work still carry my voice and feel like it came from me?

Along with the card, there were these two fern seeds/pods.

Kim challenged me to use the colors I saw pictured here which appeared to me to be varying shades of brown along with the grey from the grey sky that day. That would be my color palette.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

With no ideas about what to paint, I felt a slight panic. What if nothing comes to mind? That was when an interesting question arrived.

Who I might be and what might this experience be like if I just let the experience be the experience? No stress, no control just treat it like an experiment?

It was time to wash the dishes. Washing dishes, taking a shower - these are the activities that allow my mind to relax and open to possibilities. The water started to run and horses suddenly galloped through my imagination. What if I brought two horses together and used the browns in different ways on each horse?

I turned the water off and jumped into the experiment. Once I’d finished the horses, I went to the window and looked at the grey sky for awhile. I have to be honest, I was in awe of how much there was to see because it’s certainly not just a solid grey color. You have various grey hues - light grey, dark grey, grey blue. It’s exquisite and something I highly recommend checking out on a cloudy day.

I returned to the painting and without cleaning my brush, I dipped it into dark grey, then white, then blue paint. Each time the brush met the surface, I learned something new. Layer upon layer built a sense of depth and I realized that didn’t just want this to be a sky, I wanted these horses to inhabit a grey world. Finally, I used the lighter paint around them as a way to communicate the emotion radiating from them.

Challenge Accepted. Original work by Natasha Reilly

At the start of this challenge, I questioned whether or not this piece would still carry my voice and feel like my work without the vibrant colors. And what I found is that somehow it does; I can still see me. I feel like this is a direct reflection of life. A person can change their job, style, and more but there is still something you recognize about them. We can get so caught up in thinking that our job or style of dress is who we are yet art reminds us that we are so much more than that. We are something deeper, something filled with an individual beauty that becomes more recognizable the more we share.

Taking me out of my comfort zone took my out of my thinking mind as well and invited me to be truly present. We’ve all heard people say that art asks us to pay attention but it’s not just about paying attention, it’s about waking up to life again and again and again.

This challenge required that I be awake, trust myself and move through the fear that I might make a piece of really ugly art. Is this the best work I’ve ever done? Probably not but it taught me so much that I actually love it.

It would have been easy to step into this challenge and focus on “getting it right and making a gorgeous product”. But is that really the point?

I did not have an idea of what the finished product “should” look like but instead, I simply kept listening for the next step so as to keep moving forward. An incredible teacher of mine recently said, “Who said that each time we create we need to make these perfect, gorgeous pieces of art?” And it’s true. What matters is the experience and what we learn about ourselves and this world as we explore and communicate.

I love those two little horses that might not have appeared and come to represent love had I not been given this challenge. I would not have stared at a grey sky looking for color only to discover beauty that I’ve taken for granted.

In the end, I returned to the question - Who I might be and what might this experience be like if I just let the experience be the experience? No stress, no control just treat it like an experiment?

And I discovered that I am a scientist mixing components to test a hypothesis, a child playing for the sake of playing, and a creative soul who is trying, making mistakes and continually creating as a way to both learn and make space to let things become what they need to become.

To Kim, I want to say a huge thank you for creating this challenge. I had such fun and learned so much during this experience. I’m tremendously grateful to you and will be coming to you with a challenge soon.

Thank you all for being here. Remember life is a work of art - a work-in-progress - that’s meant to met shared; I’m so grateful to be able to share with you. Thank you for the gift of your time.

Love,

Natasha