I don’t conceal; I sing my soul; I fly like a bird. My art is unapologetically me. I am most free in my art. My art is my direct soul expression. Frida Kahlo is her art. Picasso is his art. And so I too must become my art.

I experience utter freedom expressing through art; I flow. I unbecome in the act. The act remains; I am no more. Selflessness. To disappear into the act; to become the act itself. I don’t control the art but it sure controls me. My art owns me and I obey. I go where it takes me. I may become life but I cannot own it. I am that or I am not that. I am art or I am not. Being art is an art form! The greatest artists become art; become beauty itself. Engaging in the act of art they surrender themselves to God. They let go of themselves; trust in life, and so life happens through them. 

I am autonomous in my art. I am independent sitting in my soul concealed from the world but reentering life. In the world but not of the world. I am my art! Am I policing myself? 

I become great through creative output, facing pain in time. I become a master by unlearning it all. The world put me in a fine box. Constraints that aid, they say. Art doesn’t bloom in a box—art blooms in freedom. Art blooms in living souls. 

I must die to myself; to my collected past; to all that I think I am; to the shape I’ve assumed. An inorganic, robotic, mimicking, fragile artist seeking solid ground. Art has no ground. Art is alive. Art flows. There is no shape to cling to. 

I die to all that I have accumulated, to all that was taught; to art that came before me; and to art that I think I should and could create. I surrender it all. Who am I? I’m to find out. Dying to the accumulated me as mastery requires death. I learn to free fall. I don’t paint by a frame given to me. Where is the frame, tell me. There is no frame.

Speed. Motion. Creative output. Picasso painted a painting a day; what do I do? Ferocious advancement through facing pain in time. One painting at a time. One song at a time; freeing my little soul. Authentic soul expression is art. Where is authenticity in a box? I am scared of the unknown. Where is the ‘I’ in art? Not knowing who I am, how could I create what I am? How does one make art as their authentic soul expression? Well, I must find out who I am, to begin with. And I start by demolishing all that I am not.

By facing my current self that dies to my emerging self I set my future free. I set myself free. A clean slate; an empty canvas. Come to the canvas empty. I empty my cup. I don’t assume. I give myself completely to my art.

The voices in my head and heart scream and are confused and wrestle with me. I look at them. For the first time, I accept them and witness them fight. Who are they fighting with? What are they fighting for? I don’t know. It sure seems foreign to me and a little amusing to tell you the truth. I smile. I walk to the canvas and paint the most atrocious thing I ever painted. But I don’t quite mind. It’s something new and fresh. No one ever taught me to paint that! So ugly yet so beautiful. Nothing planned; everything unplanned. Every stroke, a completely fresh moment in time, never lived before. The painting takes shape and I see a bird and then the bird turns into a forest and the forest into a bird. The mistakes merge to an ocean of green and the experience feels like I am taking off an old, heavy dusty coat.

I want to soar like a bird. Art is alive. Am I alive? How can death create life? The dead create dead art for the dead. I think it’s about coming alive. Coming alive through art. And so I come alive through my art and let my art come alive through me. That is the highest potential of a blooming artist. I come alive and bring the world with me. 

I want to learn to live aligned with life. I don’t want to fight anymore. I lived through enough pain, alone, shielding myself from life and love. I am done walking alone. Perhaps there is more. 

And I fall to my knees. 

‘Today I serve you, God, show me the way. Today I’m yours, God, show me the way. Today I listen, today I serve, to bring the greatest joy to the world; the greatest joy that I can bring. Take my fate, work miracles through me, and show me the way. 

Today I don't walk alone to sing my songs on my own; today I sing my songs for you. Today I don’t walk alone to write my words on my own; today I write my words for you.’

I learn to taste life, eat it whole, digest it, and become life itself. When I make art I am my art. I am life itself. I cannot claim it; I can sure ride the wave. I can bathe in bliss while making art. My dusty self of past is waiting for me like a good dog, when I exit my studio, nothin' to fear. The coat of past will wait for me.

I can be in a state of love while in the presence of God when I create art. I heal through my art; every art session: a purge. My past falls off me like it was never mine. Pain melts in the face of God and I come alive. I dance with life and life dances through me. Who creates the art? Where am ‘I’ in all of this? I feel most alive when I leave myself at the door. The art needs me whole. The art demands I submit myself completely. The art demands to create itself. The art demands that I am a willing participant. The art demands my soul paints. I am a vessel, no more, no less. My soul takes the stage and I am healing. Maybe I am my soul, you see. Maybe I am that, you know? The being that paints. But it sure feels too divine for me to say that. Perhaps life is intelligent and plays me a fool. Yet I am very happy she plays me a fool! I am hers and I create for her alone. That is a secret. I don’t know very much. That is the secret. I come alive. Death is not art. Art is alive! Slowly I come to believe that I too might be alive. In the little moments when I forget myself, that is. What I forget might be simply what I’ve gathered. And what I’ve gathered cannot possibly be me. When I drop my coat of past I stand alone. 

I move through the air as much as the air moves me. I hear the birds outside my window and slip into a spell that emanates love from my heart in the form of art. Time flies by and when I look up in utter amazement at the art that I could have never created alone; it birthed itself through my hands. Is that mine? Was that me? I emerge from my art session with newfound freedom. The path of art is the path of the soul. Painting the past to free the future. Singing the song to be free of the pain. Transforming the old into the new, until love is left. Torment turns to love. And living art pokes life into stale hearts. I make art to heal myself until the scales tip and the art heals the world. 

Masters emanate bliss; burst with life, and beam fruitful art effortlessly. Effort is only required creating through the filter of the past. When there is no more past, there is no more filter. When the ‘I’ collapses into the piece of art, that piece of art comes alive and emanates God. Without a filter the art creates itself. Art is a tool to surrender layers of restrictions of authentic soul expression. Art is a path that ends in God. Art is divine as it takes you home. Don’t stop walking. Melt your pain and bring love to the world. 

'I've no idea where any of this just came from' 

That's the magic of art: it makes us commune with God through it. That's the kind of magic I enjoy so much: To enter flow and let the work work itself out. That's the pleasure of creating art: it creates itself.

If words resonate join ‘The Road For Artists’ Community linked below where we walk the road side by side and I initiate you into the Spiritual Path Of Art.

Listen to this week's podcast episode HERE.