My Journey to Discovering the Art I Want to Make

+ How to Approach a Tiger

My submission to MCDT Week 229: Tiger Tattoos—come share yours!

I have a confession to tell you. I’ve begun writing poetry.

Yikes, I know. No one on the internet wants to read poetry! People want suspense-filled fantasy romance novels like Fourth Wing! (Which by the way, I’m not putting down—I just plowed my way through it and loved it.)

So why start writing poetry? I’m slowly realizing I have more breadth as an artist than I thought. I used to think of myself as an artist only in terms of drawing. I usually introduce myself as an “illustrator”. And while drawing will forever and always be my primary home, it’s dawned on me that I make a whole lot more than that. And that different types of artmaking can accomplish (or discover) different things.

I’ve been writing these weekly essays since 2017. Am I not a writer as well? Must an essay writer always write essays? What if, after 7 years of writing essays, the writing begins to morph into new forms? What if, just as my sketchbook drawing led me to create children’s picture books, my essay writing is leading me somewhere new as well?

From Prescriptive to Communicative

My first few years of writing essays were heavily focused on creativity and how we, as artists, could make more art or make art that felt more like our own. I suppose you could call those essays Prescriptive, although I was mostly trying to prescribe things to myself, not others. I wrote what I needed to hear. If I wrote a creative pep talk, it was because I was in a creative block and needed to hear a pep talk myself.

Over time, my essays shifted to be more personal. As I opened up and wrote more directly about my struggles with artmaking, my struggles with life began to seep into the essays as well. How could I write about one without also writing about the other? As Jane Hirshfield says,

“How do poems—how does art—work? Under that question, inevitably, is another: How do we?” –Jane Hirshfield

I think my first completely personal essay was the one about my miscarriage. Writing and sharing that piece was not a conscious or well-thought-out decision. Perhaps if I had been thinking straight, I would have written it but not shared it in this newsletter. After all, this is a newsletter about drawing and artmaking, not personal traumas. The internet pushes us to niche down—if you want to make a living on the internet, pick a lane and stay in it! So they say.

But, I shared it here anyway. I wrote that essay because I had to. In the depths of that moment, I knew I had to somehow communicate the darkness I was feeling. I had to pull it out of me or I was going to drown in it.

And after that, it was as if a wall had been broken down. I began writing more personal essays—pieces about my struggles with motherhood, my existential questions, and my search for spirituality. And I shared them all here in this publication.

All my writing has a home base in art, because my entire life has a home base in art. But the mode of writing shifted from prescriptive to communicative. I was writing to communicate my inner experience, probe the questions in my mind, and tug on the threads of my thoughts.

Did this cause me to lose subscribers? Yes! Most people would rather be told what to do (prescriptive writing) than read about the inner workings of a struggling artist/mother/human.

Did this cause me to take a blow on my income? Yes! Likewise, people will throw money at you if you say you can solve all their creative problems. Shelling out a few bucks to read about someone else’s journey to find meaning in life? Or paying a few dollars to watch the unabridged process of an artist flailing around on the page trying to figure out how the heck to paint a translucent jellyfish? Yeah… most people don’t want to pay for that.

Do I regret it and want to go back to trying to be a one-laned brand? No! It’s that simple. I feel more alive as an artist and more creatively energized right now than I ever have before. When I make my art, whether a drawing, an essay, a book, or a poem, it feels like me. It wasn’t always that way. But right now, I’m not trying to be anything for anyone or trying to do anything in a way that people will like. I’m not a polished brand with a cohesive suite of offerings. I make the things I want to make, and I strongly believe that’s how the best things are made. This is how I draw, like it or leave it. This is how I write, read it or don’t. I’m gonna keep making it.

And now, having fully moved from prescriptive to communicative, I believe I’m in the midst of another creative shift.

From Communicative to Contemplative

I’m currently reading the spectacular book Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World by Jane Hirshfield. In it, she says that “good art is a truing of vision, in the way a saw is trued in the saw shop, to cut more cleanly. It is also a changing of vision.”

Hirshfield talks throughout the book about the power of poetry, but almost everything she says applies to any type of art. Her main thesis is that poetry is not just about recording our inner experience or outer perception. It’s not just writing down how we feel or what we see. Instead, “it makes by words and music new possibilities of perceiving.” Art changes the way we see.

Poetry, Hirshfield says, offers a different way of knowing, a different way of discovering meaning. She calls poetry “a playable organ of perception.”

“Poems do not simply express. They make, they find, they sound (in both meanings of that word) things undiscoverable by other means.”

Each time we write something, draw something, make something, we are truing ourselves like a saw, “to cut more cleanly.” We are fine-tuning ourselves, opening ourselves to new modes of perception.

“This altered vision is the secret happiness of poems, of poets. It is as if the poem encounters the world and finds in it a hidden language, a Braille unreadable except when raised by the awakened imaginative mind.”

This then, the discovery of a hidden language, is where we enter the contemplative realm. Previously, my essays were communicative—I aimed to express my thoughts, my feelings, my experience. But more and more, my writing has become contemplative as well. It’s not about finding an answer or even expressing a concise thought. The contemplative goes beyond the self—beyond the I, me, my. It goes beyond telling. As Hirshfield so eloquently says, “heightened speech requires an equally intensified listening.”

The contemplative mode of writing involves not only writing but also listening. At first, I was trying to write essays in this contemplative way, but I’m beginning to think the essay is not meant to do that. Or at least, it’s not the ideal form to do so. But poetry! Poetry is the ultimate vehicle for artistic contemplation.

Poetry speaks, listens, and changes the way we see the world. It says one thing, but means so much more. It imbues the most ordinary things with beauty and meaning. And it can be interpreted in so many different ways. Poems, as Hirshfield says, “include a certain kind of tropism—poems lean toward increase of meaning, feeling, and being.”

“A poem plucks the interconnection of the experiencing self and all being. In poetry’s words, life calls to life with the same inevitability and gladness that bird calls to bird, whale to whale, frog to frog. Listening across the night or ocean or pond, they recognize one another and are warmed by that knowledge.”

Life calling to life. What a grand thing to reach for.

So, all that to say… I’ve been writing poetry. And I plan to sometimes share it here. I still draw in my sketchbook, I still write essays on creativity, and I still make books and classes sharing what I’ve learned. I do all these things. I am all these things. I refuse to stay in one lane.

Below you can read the poem I wrote, How to Approach a Tiger, alongside my MCDT drawing for this week. It was written the morning after a rough night when it took 3.5 hours (and lots of tears) to get my daughter to sleep. The poem basically wrote itself in my head while I was drawing the tiger below. I don’t claim the poem to be perfect, or even good, but when art makes itself, when it pours out so easily… it’s usually a sign that you’re heading in the right direction. I’ve learned to listen to that.

How to Approach a Tiger

I woke up this morning feeling like a tiger.
And not in a good way.

I felt angry and agitated and aggressive.
I lashed out and snapped my teeth.
All I wanted to do was brood alone
and lick my wounds.

How do you approach a vicious tiger?

Tiger, won’t you please sit down
for just a moment?
Sit here, relax,
you’ve had a hard night.

And once she sat,
(which took some time)
I looked at her.
And then I pulled out
my paper and palettes
and began to paint her.

I painted her eyebrows first.
They were working so hard
to hold up the burden of her anger.

Then I painted her eyes,
as they flashed and flared,
and I could tell they ached to
just
close.

Next, I painted her teeth,
those bared, pointed teeth,
hostile and ready to fight.

I painted her front legs,
strong and muscled,
veins pulsing with energy.

And then, I painted her long body,
arching upward into the sky,
exposing her soft, white underbelly.
She was surprised by that.

Her legs were next,
painted quickly as she stretched them out.
Spreading her toes,
extending her claws,
and then setting them down.

And last, her tail.
I painted her long, beautiful tail
as it gracefully curled beside her.

With my painting finished,
I set down my brush,
and reached out to her gingerly,
palm facing up.
She sniffed my fingers,
sighed,
and laid down her head.

I reached further still,
and with the soft pads of my fingers,
gently closed her eyes.

Thanks for reading, y’all. And an extra-special thank you to all my paid subscribers who have stuck with me through all my shifts and changes over the years. Your support and encouragement allow me make art my full-time job. I’d still make art even if no one paid for it, but it’s your support that gives me the time to do so and share it with the world. Truly, I’ll never be able to say thank you enough. ❤️

If you’d like to join these art angels and become a paid subscriber to help support my art, you can subscribe for 50% off over the next 48 hours. Thank you, thank you!

<3,
Christine