2022: A Year of Letting Go

My paintings work best when I create in a process that insists on good editing. This doesn’t come naturally to me.

When I start a new painting, my first instinct is to include every detail I see in the scene, and my first versions are stiff and don’t include a lot of personality. I’m not content to stay there; I try out painting different versions of the scene. I experiment with letting go of the details that don’t serve my painting well, and in this editing process, the strong bones of the painting emerge. My painting begins to reflect the artist’s eye and style, and what comes out is more like art than any copy of a photograph. The best art is created through a process of letting go.

Letting Go: A Life Principle

As I look back on 2022, I’m seeing a similar parallel in what I’ve experienced personally over the last twelve months. This has been a year of letting go. 

In May I closed the Heart-Led Artist Community and took a five month sabbatical. I needed a rest after having poured my heart and energy into serving my students and my community through the years of covid uncertainty and lockdowns. I took that time to regroup, to rest and read and think about what I wanted the next decade of my art career to look like. I can consider myself a mature artist at this stage of my career, and I want the decades ahead to be sustainable for both me and my creativity. 

Visiting Tennessee in October with my husband Wade.

Letting go makes art more authentic.

Letting go isn’t just for the details in a painting. Authenticity has been the most powerful impetus for change in my life since I first started to pursue a looser watercolour style ten years ago. I have learned that when I let go of expectations and self-judgment, I am free to paint from the core of who I am. I am discovering an identity inside of me as an artist who creates beautiful, original art that doesn’t require someone else’s approval or permission. When I lose sight of that, my art struggles, and I’m learning that there is always another layer of hesitation or fear to peel back so I can be unguarded and vulnerably free. 

It’s funny that artists often feel like we need to keep adding to our skillset, and yet we don’t think much about what we might need to subtract. 2022 felt like a year of subtraction; letting go of many things in order to make room for what’s ahead. Setting down the weight of things carried for too long. Taking my hands off concerns that weren’t meant for me to hold. And this is a learning process for me; I am wired to cope by trying to fix things and be the one in control. Seeking rest has been a learning process, and I’m not finished yet! 

Letting go is painful.

2022 was a difficult year. Letting go isn’t easy, especially when what is needed to be released feels important or precious, or has been held so long in habit. I’ve grieved some losses, struggled to let go of others, and dared myself to move forward differently than I have in the past. I didn’t know how long it would take, this process of letting go, and I feared getting stuck there with no way out. 

And, just like in painting, when it seems like there’s no way out of the wilderness, suddenly there’s a glimmer of light and a break in the tangled branches, and a path begins to emerge. Maybe I am healing and finding new paths. Maybe this is a new beginning. 

As artists, we must deal in new beginnings if we want our art to stay fresh, to reflect who we are even as our story changes. Change is fearful, but it is also inevitable. Losses can be grieved, even as they make room for something new. We tend to mark a new year with resolutions; we welcome those changes that we get to control, even though a few weeks later we often realize that we had less control than we thought, abandoning even the best resolutions for habit again. Control is an illusion, but change is inevitable. Making art has taught me that an artist willing to attend to change and respond alongside of it, rather than fighting for control, is an artist who can make beauty out of the unexpected. I want to be able to do that in life as well as art. 

Was 2022 a pivotal year for you, too? How are you reflecting on the lessons of this past year? How will they shape your plans for 2023? Leave a comment below: