Polygamy – The Canvas and Other Relationships

If I’m honest, it has always been a naïve fantasy of mine to have the strength and stamina of heart to offer myself fully to more than one significant other.  Little did I know, I was already trying to manage multiple complex relationships on canvas.

My journey into identifying as an artist, holding onto that construct at all costs, then dropping it in hard weather, then scrabbling in the dark for it again, has been a complex setting for a relationship with my work. Since I committed to connecting with one canvas at a time, I have been able to develop deeper more valuable relationships, worth unraveling for.

It is interesting to draw parallels here with significant human relationships. Let’s say, He or She reflects back all the parts of our internal world, that we hide away for safe keeping. Let’s say that all relationships, with canvas or human, perpetually push us towards completion, with no parts left out. Can it be that commitment to move through the lessons that arise in one relationship, compliment the clarities that become accessible in the other?

I have found myself juggling journeys, between lovers of canvas and of flesh, needing to be different versions of myself in each, pulled in different directions, committed to both but unable to offer myself fully to either. Dissatisfaction has been a helpful guide.

I am not suggesting that freedom and peace of mind can only be gained by having one lover (canvas or human) and that sometimes one must choose. I’m just saying that its possible that one’s current situation may have already been chosen. If you are torn and cannot decide something, there is truth in that. When we can see that we are gathering a more and more complete experience of ourselves from canvas and human alike, and that these ‘others’ are perhaps an external expression of relationships within, then these relationships can become one and harmonious.

 May the pursuit and creative gathering of harmonious truths be carved out of all our interactions. May there be many.