Something I wrote one evening while backpacking in the Sierras last summer:
A field of sheer granite with rivulets, falling into the King’s Canyon itself thousands of feet below. Sunset colors, peaks on four sides, an outlet stream flowing downward.
“I wish my son was here, I’d tell him to go play” I think to myself, imagining how fun it would be to see him run out onto that granite, leaping carefree and happy.
Right then, in the core of my own depths, I heard quite clearly a voice, with a simple instruction for me…
“Go play!”
Emotion flows. It flows now as I write and recall it. God’s voice becomes my voice, and I am also the child.
So I run. Yes run, despite backpacking through boulders all day, out onto that field of rivulets granite, carefree and happy, marveling at the outrageously beautiful landscape around me.
It was just a few minutes. I stop and sit. Then I simply look. What a marvel that any place can be so beautiful. What a gratuitous gift to experience it.
After months of wrestling with a large painting that in the end, didn’t really work out, I want to get back to that free, childlike sense of play. Just make the damn art and stop overthinking it. Why is this so hard?
This latest painting is an attempt to do that. I’m enjoying the process of painting places I love. I’m trying to work fast and be not-precious about it (the last painting I did kind of chewed me up for months with ruminating and redoing, and in the end turned out weird). This is more fun.
Have you ever struggled with overthinking your creative work? How do you reconnect with a sense of play and freedom in your process? I’d love to hear about your experiences—whether it’s in art, writing, or any other creative pursuit!
Image is from a backpacking trip in the Sierras from a couple of years ago; David tells me its looking south towards Alpine Col in Darwin Basin. That was a sweet place. Photo below:
I’m in, Matt!
Jinks xo