What If This is Enough ? proposes abundance as reality.
I’ve found my way into a process that is generative and self-sustaining, where the magic of printmaking offers me a tether from which to explore my sensibilities. It welcomes me into its current, gentle movement softening the tight coils of my mind and body, so everything can settle, and I can listen. I print monotypes from drawings of sweet plant forms in primary colors, and scribble on them with colored pencil, responding to their shapes and building layers. I then sew them together, hanging them in conversation – each one settling into its place, drifting, spinning, just a little. Being in the studio, in the process, makes me feel like myself.
This is a practice in meeting myself where I am, and simply being with, connecting with my intuition – learning to trust it, to trust me – to choose colors that feel warm and sweet, without questions. To trace the shapes of the plants that stop me as I walk, giving me no choice but to get closer, to study their seed pods and petals and leaves, to give them a chance to tell me what they have to say. I am making space for myself to play, to let go of expectations, to slow down, to stack layer upon layer of ink – letting the cadence carry me.
I’ve been moving along a path I didn't realize I was laying, towards this moment. One where you start to catch glimpses of how all the things you’ve been doing and thinking come together, talk to each other, present themselves to you with new hues behind them, new companions beside them. How wonderful it is to see and feel that. Reassured that you have reasons to trust in yourself, that the process will take care of you, that you are growing, in a direction, that this is just a small part of a great future ahead. A reminder that bits of all the ideas steeping in me have found their ways out into the world, that I can trust I will come into what I need from them when I need it.
I am indulging the idea that what I have, what I've done, is enough. It feels like a radical way of being – choosing contentment while being told we must always be demanding more. We’ve gotten so good at creating scarcity that perhaps it’s a question we need to hear – what if this is enough? Just imagine. Let it in, let it steep. See where it takes you.
Thank you to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass and Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, whose essays and poems on love and plants have nourished me in a way I only hope to return in my own work. Whose joy and gratitude and care and good humor have helped me to see the paths of those who, as Ross Gay writes, have loved us before they knew us, and offered me a way towards imagining somethings better. I am practicing. Working to reorder my priorities and attention in ways that support my well-being – looking to build more mindful connections, more sustainable relationships with ourselves, each other, and our environments.
This is just a small part of everything I've been thinking and feeling and making. I still feel like I want to, but I know I can't capture it all. And that’s part of the practice. Taking to heart that there is time for more later. That this is enough for now. That maybe the others – ideas, thoughts – aren't ready to be pinned down just yet, they need more time for floating, flowing. We have time to listen. And we have everything we need.
