Are you my mother?

The Art of Finding Love in Unexpected Places

Photo by Fuu J on Unsplash

Do you remember the children’s book by P.D. Eastman, in which a baby bird wanders the world asking, Are you my mother? Searching for the source of his existence, he mistakes strangers and machines for something that might care for him. I, too, spent years searching, first for a mother’s warmth, then for something I couldn’t name.

As the offspring of a woman taught that affection and coddling ruined children for their true work in the world (which was being in the army of God), I didn’t know from whom I hatched. Her hands-off approach was reinforced by her father, who spent his life running a cult, and by her mother, who supported him. Her past wasn’t over when she birthed me. I’m not sure it’s over even now. But the decades I’ve spent learning how to accept nurturing, and how to nurture myself, have shown me that love often arrives in unexpected forms, if we stop looking at closed doors.

One of those forms, I’ve found, is art.

As a young teen selling candy on the streets, I often befriended building security guards to gain access to bathrooms. One day, at The National Gallery of Art, I followed a guard’s instructions, hurrying through the modern wing—until I stopped, arrested by a canvas awash in a monochrome sea of black.

I knew nothing about art. I didn’t know who made it, why it mattered, or that it was even a thing. But in that moment, I couldn’t move. I stood in front of Ad Reinhardt’s Abstract Painting, No. 34 for a full ten minutes, transfixed—lost in the subtle gradations of shadow. Tears slipped down my face, unexpectedly warm and salty, pooling at the corners of my mouth.

I had no idea why.

I come from a radically conservative family, and art is not something that’s ever been talked about, let alone explored or celebrated. In fact, where I come from, we are so culturally and socially conservative, even religious iconography is shunned. This was the first time I had ever visited a museum, and it was my first time to see art displayed, let alone showcased in a space where it is named and revered. But there I was, and Abstract Painting No. 34 that showed me the way home.

I held it within me, the rest of the summer, the smell and taste of black, and I began to notice the gradations of hues in the night skies throughout the regions we travelled, through the thick air of the southern nights and the cool northern evenings that welcomed us as we made our way into Canada. I began to notice the intricacies of blue in the daylight and the browns of the earth we slept on. And all these years later, when I ask myself what that painting did to me, why it propelled me to spend the last three decades at the intersection of my personal and professional life extricating myself from my familial roots, I understand how art can be used as a compass.

Photo by Eastman Childs on Unsplash

What I know now that I didn’t know then, is that as I stood in front of that painting in Washington DC, I was seduced into feeling, not thinking. Curiosity drew me to a canvas vastly different than the classical depictions of realism I passed on my way through the galleries toward the bathroom, but curiosity was only the trigger. I had no idea why someone would paint a canvas black, nor why anyone else would hang it up in a space, heralding it as art, but in that moment, I didn’t even know to ask those questions. In front of that painting, I accepted an invitation to feel.

Art changes us as individuals, and in doing so, reshapes the world we create and the world we share. In the intricate dance between artist and viewer, we are invited to feel what we may not yet know. By tasting, hearing, seeing, and thinking in altered ways, we expand both our feeling and our knowing. Art is not an obvious tool, not a map with a clear destination—but it transports us, nonetheless.

I think about how Abstract No. 34 captured my imagination, and how I began to compare darkness to the rigid rules and paradigms of sin and righteousness I had been taught. And I began to envision a way out of my closed compartment, into the hope of a less defined space.

I understand when people say they don’t get art. Sometimes I want to tell them, getting it isn’t the point. Art expands our boundaries, and in doing so, helps us resist oppression, whether imposed from within or without. It allows us to ask questions too abstract to be measured by the binary logic of capitalism. Art helps us tell new stories and, sometimes, gives us the kind of nurturing we needed but never received.

As I once stood before that black canvas and accepted its invitation to feel, I have learned to stop looking at closed doors. Like art, love reveals itself in unexpected ways—if we allow ourselves to stand still long enough to see.

This is not a Metaphor

by Michelle Dowd

My sisters and I were raised in a circus

bordered by barbed wire.

This is not a metaphor.

As babies, we pulled our

little bodies up to stand,

until we were just tall enough

to get rammed in the eye.

We pranced on the backs of elephants,

orchestrated poodles, balanced boldly on their hind legs,

to play piano with their paws

submitted to straight-jackets, enclosing ourselves in

impermeable black boxes, while audience volunteers

poked steel rods through the sides,

to prove the box was indeed hollow.

Always,

there is the memory of barbed wire,

of riddled hands holding too tightly

of bobbing too high or recklessly,

of falling too near the spiked edge,

of circling round and round the border

imploring the softest dirt

to burrow a way out.

And now,

now I can’t dig deep enough

to undermine the wire,

and the elephants aren’t

tall enough

to catapult me into

your world.

Dictators and tyrants routinely begin their reigns and sustain their power with the deliberate and calculated destruction of art: the censorship and book-burning of un-policed prose, the harassment and detention of painters, journalists, poets, playwrights, novelists, essayists. This is the first step of a despot…who know very well that their strategy of repression will allow the real tools of oppressive power to flourish.

~Toni Morrison

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Upcoming Events (in person and remote options)

Foraging for Self-Care: A Nature-Inspired Writing Retreat on March 30, 2025 from 9:30-4:30. Establish a writing practice and reconnect with your writing—in nature and other artistic spaces, and share a colorful, nourishing lunch with our small group. Early-bird price ends February 15th. Click here to register.

Advanced Writing Workshop on April 27, 2025, 9:30-4:30. Learn more about the publishing industry, agents, proposals, contracts and how to get your best advance, while exploring elements of craft, reading and responding to each other's work, and co-creating a support system within the container of this space. Guided activities will inspire new perspectives to deepen your writing practice, help you reconnect with your story, and find avenues for publishing. Click here to register.

Artist’s Way group - The Artists’ Way is Julia Cameron’s seminal book on cultivating creativity. There are two main components in her 12-week program: daily Morning Pages (three sheets of unfiltered, anything-goes journaling, written by hand) and weekly Artist’s Dates (solo adventures during which you spend time with your inner artist). Our next cohort will convene for The Summer Solstice on Zoom on Saturday, June 21st at 1:00 PT for 12 weeks of self-directed study and guided support.

Thank you for being on this journey with me. I am grateful for the gift of your presence. Walking this path, knowing so many of you are walking it too, gives me hope. May we recognize our interbeing, with one another and the anima mundi, supporting each other in growth and recovery, like a mycelial network.

Art is what we call it when we’re able to create something new that changes someone.

No change, no art.

~Seth Godin

A huge thank you to all of you who are part of this Artist’s Way cohort! The comments section below is designed as a way for you to share your experience this week with other members of our group.

Please answer as many of the following questions as you have time for in the comments section, and feel free to respond to one another as support in our shared journey.

How did it go for you this week?

• How many days this week did you do morning pages? How do you feel about this week compared to last week?

• How about your artist date? Will you share what you chose to do?

• Did you do any of the tasks? If so, which ones? Any discoveries there?

• Have you found space for any creative solitude this week?

• What does art mean to you?

  Looking forward to seeing all your faces on Zoom on March 1 and April 5.

  (First Saturdays of each month at 1:00 PT)

  Same link.

  Join Zoom Meeting:

  https://calstatela.zoom.us/j/81542724656

  Meeting ID: 815 4272 4656

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