Pushing through the ego

My dear friend and neighbor Joanna stopped by yesterday, and we found ourselves talking about the challenge of artistic expression. Not the part about getting good at it; the part about consciously choosing to express what is you, without being influenced by the Unholy Four:

1. Will it sell?
2. Will I be embarrassed by this?
3. Is it any good?
4. How does it stack up next to other people's work?

They're all probably variations of the same voice, the voice of the ego, that longs to please and impress and be rewarded and not look foolish.

I've been trying to push through the boundaries set by that voice a lot lately. The improv class is probably the most effective way of doing that, but then, of course, my inner protector carefully shut down my memory on Monday afternoon so I completely forgot I had the class Monday night -- I woke up at 2 am and realized and was SO DISAPPOINTED -- because I'm finally starting to get the hang of it, and was looking forward to working on character development...

But who is it that shut down the memory, and who is it that was looking forward to the class? And which one is me? And, more importantly, how can I tell them both that I love them but I want the chance to choose my activities for myself?

The other place I'm pushing through ego -- though not very effectively yet -- is in my encaustics efforts. I took the class last weekend and loved it, so decided to follow through on my efforts to produce an encaustic piece for The Unexpected Dog. Unfortunately the Creativity Center is moving out of their current space after next week, so I only have two lab nights in which to work on this project. Last night I went in for the first lab night and realized three things right off the bat:
1. I wished I'd had more class time before trying to do this for real
2. It's WAY harder to do a big piece (this guy is 11 x 14) than a little one (the two I did in class are about 5 x 7), and
3. Not all equipment is the same -- which means my palette never got up to 200 degrees (and the one I had in class I had to keep lowering the temperature to KEEP it at 200) and my heat gun this time had a different temperature range, so I had a harder time controlling the melting of the wax.

So I was glad I had picked an image that had NOT been approved for the show, so I could calm my ego by telling her this was just a practice piece. And then I could just play, try things out, and forgive myself for the places where the wax pooled unexpectedly, or I accidentally scraped right down to the photo.

Fortunately I went in with low expectations and a willingness to experiment, and I had two lovely and very experienced women there -- Diana and Jessica -- to help encourage and advise me. And now I'm thinking that's really the key to feeling your way through the challenges of life: we try to stay flexible, not to expect too much, and -- if we're lucky -- we get encouraging guides to help us along the way.

Which makes me think of the amazing and wonderful poem by Sweetmango about friends that Karen sent me today -- it's really quite a breathtaking look at hope, friendship and love. Enjoy!