Chaos and Order / by Shala Dryden

Saturday, Oct. 14, 2017

The Pisces in me tends to get stuck in the dichotomies of perfection vs. chaos… Caution vs. reckless trust. When I’m in my creative flow I’m coerced into surrendering to the faithfulness of the process, by releasing my grip on my need to be in control, as well as my tendency to want to crawl away and hide my face. In the same instance, each time I get stared down by a blank canvas I know its asking me to leave all honesty with it, and when you get honest, things tend to get a little messy. 

This parallels my life; it's been pretty messy at times and I've had lots of bottoms. I've worked hard to clean it all up, but at any point when things really started to feel "right", they just fell apart again. I’ve had this ebb and flow of trying to make sense of the nonsense, straighten up what was out of order, and put back together what had fallen apart all my life, but one thing I’ve never been able to do is alter any of the imperfections.  It's occurred to me that what appears imperfect is cemented, and it may be that I've simply made too many speculations against and just judged them as 'not right'. As I’ve grown to accept imperfection life's begun to make more sense and this translates into my work; forging order out of chaos. 

The creative process has been healing for me in this sense, and as I’ve learned to trust my dialogue with a blank canvas I’ve adapted to trust the uncertainties of life.