Beautiful Paia in Maui. Photograph by Melanie Biehle, November 2022
Sometimes the message is subtle. In other times, our intuition knocks us down with knowledge like a rogue wave. My epiphany was closer to the latter.
If you’ve looked around my website lately you may have noticed that the neat and tidy way I categorized and described my art has disappeared. The Sea, The City, The Land, Energy + The Mind…those categories are no more.
The art is still there. The sentiment and energy behind the work hasn’t changed. But I received a very strong message that I was actually holding myself back by using those seemingly efficient categories. And that message didn’t come from a gallery, an art advisor, another artist, or a collector. That message was directed to me from me — a pang of deep knowing that shot through my body.
The first inkling of this transmission came through when I was working on Exuberance.
At some point while I was (I thought) deep into my process, I said to myself, “What category will this painting go into?” And then I woke up.
The first painting I completed post-categories — Last Splash, January 2023.
I realized what my brain had done. It tried to stifle my creativity by asking me to put my work into a box before it was even completed.
I’d like to say that I’m so enlightened that I figured everything out on the spot, immediately dropped my categories, and continued on my way with fresh insight, purpose, and direction. But I didn’t. I was more like, “Hmm…yes…what category,” and felt a bit troubled by the whole self-created conundrum for at least another month.
But luckily, I went to Hawaii in November. I had some time to relax and notice what it felt like to live in the present (beautiful) moment and focus on one thing at a time. I liked how my brain felt during that trip — duh, it’s freaking HAWAII — and although I can’t currently live my days immersed in warm ocean water literally swimming next to sea turtles, I can bring back some of the feelings I had around presence and focus.
Sometime after I got home I added daily journaling to my creative process to assist me with clarity and focus. And it was during one of these daily deep dives that the experience I had while painting Exuberance came back to me.
Here are some excerpts from my journal over the past month that led me to dropping the categories:
I don’t think I’ll create a specific collection for the show. Maybe I’ll just paint and form a collection when the time comes. I can pull from past or current work and build from there. Yeah. I like that. Always paint whatever I FEEL, whatever speaks to me, and any show can be a curated subset of what I make.
I’m almost feeling myself giving way from my city, sea, land categories. Melding into ME, the artist. The energy of my experiences. I mean, that’s what it all is for me. I don’t need the land/sea, especially when they’re both there in the work. It’s always been about the energy.
THERE IS ONLY ONE EXPERIENCE THAT I CAN SHARE — MINE.
I feel like I’ve been categorizing my work to make it “easier” to digest. But maybe really I just need to introduce the whole of it and let it go. I’m expanding past categories. Feeling hemmed in by them. Maybe this next group of paintings is when I will make this change. Dissolve all categories. Make it BIGGER than that. Bolder, even.
I am feeling so FREED by this revelation! And I write here because I know that writing here helped lead me to this.
Expanding. Opening up — to myself, to life, to POSSIBILITY, to Spirit, to my art and creativity. That is what I want to nurture.
My paintings are inspired by nature — inner and outer.
Thanks for reading! If you’re thinking about trying daily journaling, I say go for it. It’s been really useful for me.
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