How Categorizing My Art Held Me Back

Breaking ocean wave in Paia. Maui, Hawaii. Photograph by Melanie Biehle, November 2022.

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.

Sunflowers in Maui, Hawaii. Photograph by Melanie Biehle, November 2022.

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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