I recently ran into an old friend, one of my first friends when I moved here, pregnant. It was a very hard time in my life, but this woman was part of a group of women who welcomed me into their meetings. All of them, if I remember correctly, were identifying with Crone energy. I am now entering that stage in my life, so it was serendipitous to see her after more than a decade, the son I was pregnant with at the time now an adult, off on his own.
I am searching for new symbols and archetypes to work with, and it makes sense to tackle The Crone. I don’t like my art to be too woo woo, honestly. I have a foot in new age spirituality and paganism, but I am about 75% atheist. I am just happier when I explore my ever changing identity thorough spiritual modalities.
I found this article about the Crone archetype. I liked this passage:
“With a healthy inner Crone, an adult woman finds her ability to unflinchingly speak truth to power. Though it may be painful to be on the receiving end, her intention is to do no harm. She is both fierce and compassionate.”
It reminds me of the Stag Woman archetype (sometimes I call her a spirit guide) that I worked with a few years ago, blending both male and female energy, as I worked to establish more assertiveness and healthier boundaries in my life.
Yesterday I did the “5 Why’s” technique to explore some of the themes I want to work with and some of the reasons why I have a hard time getting started and staying with art lately. I know a lot of it is just inertia, but there is something deeper going on as well. Yesterday the answers were about connection and loneliness. As women we do indeed get more invisible as we age and since I am a misanthrope I am 90% okay with the invisibility. But not completely! Artmaking for me is a way to process and heal, but I do enjoy the process of being seen and received through my art. So it is important to me that it touches others. But, when making art, that can’t be the goal.
Since I have been floundering for quite a few years artistically, making art means facing that I might not make something that others appreciate and that might mean that for a while my art is not a way to connect with others.
This fear reflects my feeling about my changing body. For the vast majority of (shallow and judgmental) people (who can fuck off quite frankly), I no longer have sexual value because I am older and fatter. This is complicated, because as I age I am more aware how much privilege I had when I was younger due to my appearance, even if a lot of trauma accompanied it. It just taps into the same insecurity I felt going through puberty, having no control over my body or people’s reactions to it, my own desires, my own opinion of my body. As many have said, young women’s bodies seem to become part of public domain, and a lot of our power historically has come through manipulating the attention and attraction our bodies attract. What is my value now?
It is just shifting. My value now is my wisdom, empathy, patience, affection, ability to love deeply, to see the true heart in others, to be be honest. I am able to do for others what I’ve always wanted for myself. I can do that now. In a way it is only because I am older and fatter that I can do it, like it is my parachute helping me to navigate the last third of my life with grace and equanimity.
So! In my class this week we are painting with expression. Of course, I thought I was already doing that. I felt a bit frustrated, like, yeah, okay, but HOW. I forgot HOW to paint with expression. But really is was that I was avoiding it. I was avoiding painting about being older and wanting connection while hating others and trying not to hate my changing body. The first exercise is to paint/draw in black and white, and here is mine after working for about 30 minutes, expressively, trying not to be overly concerned about correctly capturing anatomy and perspective, just scrubbing, slapping, scribbling, writing, smooshing with various media. It was cathartic.
