Do The Thing That Terrifies You. What’s The Worst That Can Happen? (Or, The Return Of The 100 Ladies!)

Dear Ones…

I was very afraid. You see I am self-taught in everything I do, have no art training, and didn’t starting drawing in earnest until I was 59. (I will be 67 in April.) And my first drawings were, as are the ones above, just heads. When I started drawing the “heads” I called them my “100 Ladies Project” and for 5 years drew and painted all manner of heads and wrote stories for them. I had so much fun. I knew full well that it wasn’t “great art” but I had finally come to the place where all that mattered was that I make whatever art I could make because it made me happy, it brought me so much joy, and I was playing. I didn’t call myself an “artist,” I just played.

I finally came, 2 years ago, to Maisie. Before her I hadn’t tried to draw anything but heads because I KNEW there was NO WAY I could draw a whole body. I hadn’t a clue how and I knew it would be dreadful if I tried so I just kept on happily drawing heads until one day, 2 years ago, for what reason I cannot remember or imagine, Maisie appeared, and yes, she was wonky, lopsided, cattywompus and looked nothing like a real person, but she was Maisie, a WHOLE BODY, she was what I could do, and finally that was good enough for me.

I only recently realized, finding myself somewhat stuck with Maisie, that I had kind of “painted myself into a corner” in that I go about drawing Maisie and her world in a very particular way. I draw the whole scene in pencil, then paint it, then do what I call “blacklining” (I’m sure there’s a real word for this, I made this word up because it just made sense to me, and no, I don’t care what the real word is. I’m just happy with what I came up with! When you are self-taught, and you find a way that is comfortable for you, and when people with “real art training” try to tell you how you might do things a better way, or differently than you are doing, you just freeze up, and may even stop. Your carefully ordered sense of things, how you have finally figured out how to do it your way, can be shattered once you are told you are not doing it right, or might do it different or better. I don’t want to make art like anyone else, I have no illusions about my work being hung at MoMA, I am making art because it makes me happy.)

The thing is that after 2 years and 40 Maisie paintings I had developed Maisie’s style to the point where I could only do her one way, the way that she came to be, the way that I was comfortable painting her, and that’s just fine, I’m happy with that, that is Maisie’s World, but recently I have begun to feel a deep sense of loss. I wasn’t playing anymore. There was and is a purpose to drawing Maisie’s World, a plan for a book which I am working on, a message that I believe is important for me to get out to the world through Maisie, and this is very important to me, but, well, I don’t know how to say this other than once I got to the point of making a book of Maisie’s World shit got real! It suddenly felt like a business, like something I had to do, and do a certain way, and make it “good,” and, and, and… Somehow or another I had lost the fun in trying to make a “business” out of Maisie. Now, I am still going to do the book, but suddenly it wasn’t enough. I want to do other art too, just for fun. Wild and crazy and loose and free and whatever it wants to be, so yesterday I played in my sketchbook for 4 hours and this page in my sketchbook became a painting I call “My ‘Imaginary Friends’ Are NOT Imaginary.” And it made me giggle. And I loved it. And it wasn’t until today that I realized what I had done…

I was painting my 100 Ladies again! Where in the world did THEY come from? I thought I was past all that. I thought they were stepping stones to Maisie, fun when I did them, but I never planned on doing them again. But then…

In some magic universe in the realm of my imagination it all made sense. You see Maisie and I are both agoraphobic. She lives in a world that is part real, part fantasy, and her story is part memoir, she is my alter ego. She lives with a number of delightful companions, some definitely real like her dog Daisy, some just for fun like Wanda, The Rainbow, Ex-Showgirl, Transgender Snail, and little Lolly, the character I am painting right now who happens to be an alien. But you will not see any real people in Maisie’s World, and yet, well, we all get lonely. That’s when I realized that the 100 Ladies had come back for a reason.

They are Maisie’s “imaginary friends,” they are very real to her, and they don’t need bodies. They are in another dimension, they whisper in her ear, there may be thousands of them, who knows? But the 100 Ladies were not precursors to Maisie, they are a very real part of her world. They belong in Maisie’s World. They are back, and they should be. They are right where they belong, here with all of us, Maisie and Daisy, Molly and I, Wanda the snail, Trudy Louise the orphaned kitten who showed up on Maisie’s doorstep, Cornelius the house mouse, Petunia, the mentally challenged flamingo, or Lolly, the little alien. This year, as I have written and talked about, is the year I let everything back in, all of the creative things I have done in my life — textile art, fiber art, everything, and now, it would seem, and quite a surprise it is to me too, the 100 Ladies are coming back as well. I can’t rightly create Maisie’s World unless I let everything in, all of it, and the 100 Ladies have surely been a very significant part of my journey.

So what is terrifying? At nearly 67 part of me, a big part really, feels like there isn’t enough time to dally around with all these other things, I should just PAINT MAISIE AND GET THAT BOOK DONE!!! But, you see, Maisie’s World comes out of my world, Maisie and I, in a very real way, are one. She is my alter ego, my muse, my guardian angel, my higher self, the best part of me, and to limit her world to a narrow focus and not allow in all the things that I am, not let them inform her world, would be as if creating a two dimensional world. Maisie is real, she is alive, she lives, inside of me and on the watercolor paper, in the book I am creating. She knits and crochets and weaves and sews and draws and paints and has a little one-eye chihuahua mix and more, and until I let everything back in, including The Ladies, I cannot do the Maisie work as fully as I can and should and want to. Maybe what this year is all about is letting everything in, seeing how it all fits together, painting Maisie all along the way, and doing the other art my heart calls me to do, and making things — I am and have always been “a maker” after all, as Maisie is — and in the end, if it takes 5 years, I will have a book worthy of the message that Maisie has had all along. All things are possible, no matter what your limitations, and we need it all, we need to do it and be it and celebrate it. And so I am.

Last night, without realizing it, I began again, returning to my roots, going deeper than I ever have, trusting myself and whatever, or whoever, showed up in the sketchbook, and more has been revealed than I could ever have imagined could or would be. Here’s how it went…

First I painted a bunch of heads…

And then, I made cheeks (although I know they look strangely like aliens with big pink eyes!)…

And then I started adding features…

And then I started adding color…

And then of course they needed hair…

And then I started adding details, but no “blacklining” which just didn’t feel right for them. They wanted to be freer, more ethereal, spirit like, they live in Maisie’s mind and all around her in a floaty sort of way…

And then finally I was done, or as done as I could be. It was simply play, a return to the joy of the Ladies (and I honestly had no clue that’s who they were when I was painting them), but I dreamed about them all night long, and they revealed themselves to me, and I knew who they were at last, and Maisie did too, and we both agreed they were part of her world, a very important part, and we both welcomed them with open arms.

I don’t know how it will all turn out, how they will come together with Maisie in the next painting, but I’m pretty sure there will be paintings of the Ladies alone, and perhaps with stories like they used to have, and this time I can sell them and send them out into the world, and Maisie and I will shed a tear and wave as they go, knowing that they, too, have messages to share. We all have our work to do. Now Maisie and The Ladies and I will see what we see, and do what we do, and how it all comes about will be magic…

P.S. The Sunday Afternoon With Maitri video is now up!