The Elusive Mushrooms

The mushrooms are eluding me.  I worked on them again this morning sure I had come up with a a good idea.

But it’s not happening.

Last night I had a dream that I was working in a factory and there was a man on a very tall ladder.  The ladder was in my way, and when I walked passed it I bumped into it.  I knew this would happen and chose to do it anyway. When I bumped into the ladder the man fell off of it and died.

In my dream, I felt bad because I knew it was my fault, but I had still chosen to do it, knowing the man would fall.

I felt like my dream was telling me that I had to remember the distinctions between being true to my creativity and making money.

It’s always a little tricky because I make my living by making and selling my art. I’m always balancing the two.  Because for much of my life, I worked for an hourly wage (as people who work in factories do) I sometimes get caught up in the idea of trying to figure out how much I make an hour and the amount of time I can spend making something considering how much I can sell it for.

If I  were to actually work this way, it would be the death of my creativity and my business. (Maybe represented by my choice to let the man die in my dream?)

Everything I do in my life has the potential to influence my art.  And probably does in ways I’m not even aware of.  I can’t account for what happens in my subconscious which I like to believe is always at work somehow in my art.

The lines between my art and my life are blurry.  And since I started getting donations to help pay for the work I do on my blog, the lines between my life and how I make a living have blurred even more.

I’ve been thinking about the mushrooms I see on my walks in the woods and around the farm for over a year.  They pull at me.  I constantly get images in my mind of how I can recreate them in a way that would make them mine.

But after working on them for the past couple of days, I feel like I’m not there yet.  Something is missing in my process or understanding of them, that keeps them from being art.  Right now, they’re just fabric representations of mushrooms.  I don’t want to just make mushrooms so I can sell them.

But I’m not done with them yet.

I think I just need to put them aside for a while.  I have the unfinished mushroom I made today hanging on my wall.   Maybe I’m not listening, or I’m not ready to hear what it has to say,  because  I don’t know how to take it to the next level.

I’d guess that when the mushrooms do make their way into a piece of my art, they will be a part of the piece without being the whole thing.

So I’ll continue to look for mushrooms in my life, to take their portraits, and leave my mind and heart open to the gifts they bring me.