Create Without Fear

Dear Jonas… The most important thing you said to me on February 22nd when I had the serendipitous opportunity to meet you after being drawn to your gallery by the painting at the airport that stopped me in my tracks, was that when you came to Asheville from Miami you became free to paint without fear!

Then last night while watching your video, Letting Go, and hearing you say, “give up results, give up planning, give up worrying, and the big, BIG one…” – I knew what that was going to be – “give up FEAR.”  And in your blog you went on to say, “…how do you unlearn something?…Asheville gave me the permission to let it all go…to let go of all the rules…lots of different rules in all kinds of categories.”

No, you don’t mean in order to be lawless, but to create without fear, and as a creator of art, as an artist, that has bean to me for a long time to create my life.  That’s where all this comes together, this letting go and creating without fear, that’s the arena – Life! – this is the cauldron that refines the gold from the dross, the fire that burns away all that encumbers us and returns to us our lost innocence, the purity of nature, the childlike openness to life, the wonder that I see in you, and when I’m free from the neurosis I learned as a survival mechanism, that I see in myself.

There is not just one way of doing something.  God created infinite diversity.  We need to order and control the chaos of that, so we make rules and laws and out of those come conformity and sameness, and deadness of spirit.  But the artist plunges into that creative chaos and brings his and her own form of order and control by allowing a deep, inner energy to guide the work. 

That’s why the artist stands outside society, another reason.  The first reason is he and she has to SEE through the imposed order to get in touch with his and her soul force, the power to create something new.

I set out on the airport shuttle from my home in Asheville on February 18th ruminating on the theme, who am I to be so different, why do I “stand out?”  When I want to be a part of something bigger than myself, I often feel excluded from that group of people called “community,” or “society,” and I too often feel alienated and struck with a fearful loneliness.  Do I “stick out” or am I “out-standing?”  I decided I’d go with being outstanding and continue along with that self-identity while at the same time doing my best to be compassionate and kind to others, to merge with humanity while maintaining the one-step-removed point of view which made me an artist in the first place.

Then I met you and saw your work and was assured, reassured and confirmed in my decision – it IS possible to be BOLDER and not be arrogant, to be joined with others in the commonality of human life and not be swallowed up, to stand out, to be “outstanding” and not be resented or shunned; rather to exude such passion for life that people are benefited from that exuberance and self-mastery, that letting go the dictates of the mental self, the ego, and the letting the true self come out!  What I’ve always been looking for…and finding in various forms by different degrees through the course of my life.

Sincerely yours,
Patricia Pall