Scaffolding the Soul

Balancing Act (detail) digital collage 2023

“Art is not an end in itself. It introduces the soul into a higher spiritual order, which it expresses and in some sense explains” [1]

Life as an artist has its highs and lows. When we are in the throes of creativity, everything flows, there is a synchronicity in every meeting, every conversation, every encounter with place or person. You feel full, alive and vital.

Then there are periods of emptiness. The fallow times when you know you need to rest, but in the resting comes doubt and questioning. You can feel like you are in the lowest of lows. Only experience reminds you that these too will pass. There are seasons for everything under heaven.

Being very aware of the highs and lows of an artistic life, I created ‘hacks’ to get me through the fallow periods. For 10 years I created a small art piece each day, with 6 months off in 2016 when I did my honours degree. This year, in March I stopped my daily practice altogether as I wanted to experience true emptiness without structure or rhythm.

Now after four months I am feeling its effects. I am learning to sit within emptiness and discomfort. Way out on a limb questioning everything. It’s a test of faith.

Scaffolding is a structure you use when building or renovating a house. It is also the term for a method teachers use to support students in the process of learning a new skill. I think of scaffolding in visual terms as ladders, beams and rafters bearing the weight of a person, a floor or roof. All components in building a house for the soul.

When we left Victoria and moved to northern New South Wales fifteen years ago, a particular chapter from Thomas Merton’s book Care of the Soul, became my scaffold during a ‘dark night of the soul’ moment. I have that book on my bookshelf at home and although I have never read it from cover to cover, I dip into it in times of crisis or when I need to find a new perspective on life.

That scaffold inspired me to paint a house under construction; all its beams, rafters and staircase exposed and a bit wonky, but with blue sky overhead. I went on to produce multiple images of houses as prints, artist books and collages as I settled in.

It’s raining here on the Isle of Arran in Scotland, there are no books to read or places I want to walk to in the rain. I sit on the bed in our motorhome thinking of scaffolding of the soul, how we need to nurture ourselves through empty periods when creativity is fallow.

Then I remember how perfect yesterday was with sunshine and a rocky beach to walk on and a sandy bay begging to be swum in. I know that rain will pass, sunshine comes again and the beach will be waiting for me. Trust, faith and hope are the beams, rafters and ladders to scaffold the soul.

  [1] Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.36, Shambhala Publications

House of Spirits 2008. Relief print.