Emerging as an Artist with The Journey
Iris Kiewiet, “My Room”, Acrylics on canvas, 2009, 4 X 4ft / 122 X 122 cm
Iris Kiewiet, “Peeled Orange”, Acrylics on canvas, 2008, 35X58″
Iris Kiewiet, “Awake”, Acrylics on canvas, 2007, 96 X 60″
Emerging as an Artist with The Journey
The growth that came with letting go.
After finishing the Arts Academy, ‘Minerva in Groningen The Netherlands, my art developed into a very narrative and mythical style. I started with collages, hand made and later on using Adobe Photoshop to layer them digitally. The size of a collage is limited to the used footage that comes from magazines and old books. I felt that there was a sense of hiding by working that small. I started to wish I could make large artwork. This was a transition that I could not make. I sat around the table with my coach Ingrid Dassen and we came to the conclusion that besides the ‘how to do it’ there was probably a need for personal growth that was inner twined with it. I did not know how to proceed, other then to accept, for that time, I did not know. And that gave the process of how to upscale my work, a little mysterie.
That same year, in 2003, I attended my very first Journey Intensive weekend, with Brandon Bays, in Eindhoven The Netherlands. I found a part of myself that I had hidden away. Back in my studio, I didn’t come loose yet until a deadline for a solo exhibition in Rotterdam gallery “BLIK” was getting closer. I set up huge cardboard panels and had all the acrylics I needed. This was the time to do it. To make large artwork. And I conquered the blank surface. It was the Journey process that helped me do it. Because I had experienced the going inward, and then the dialoging with people involved, I knew how to get into the moment and the meditation that wanted to take shape and form, and then start the dialog with the canvas. The big size canvas really helped to have a clear dialog. As if the canvas could say it wanted some yellow at the left upper corner. When I start a new work, I do not know what it is that I will paint. It is staying open and ‘listening’ to the image what it wants to look like. Having done The Journey made me able to stay open, feel, hear and reflect that with paint. My studio time became apprehensive, fulfilling.
Art is connected with who you are. The Journey helps to uncover the blocks that keep you from being your true self. A painting or drawing shows how I am doing. I can see this and see the stages as time passes. The hurt, the love, the anger, the innocence. This was a blessing when I went through the Journey Practitioners Program. My paintings formed a mirror for me and an anchor when so much was changing in me and around me. An aspect that kept coming up is that a part of the painting, it could be a figure or an arm or background, would turn out blue. A kind of blue that was etherical, as if this part wasn’t really here. Saintly, but with a hurt. It puzzeled me why I could not paint a warm, giving, filling image. The work was always spacious, as if you could fall into it. Tranquil, maybe even distant. It took some time. And in one painting, ‘Peeled Orange’ 2008, the climax played out. I realised that in my paintings, I was giving full authority to ‘what was there’, ‘what wanted to be painted’. And I didn’t like where this specific painting was going. The figure was in an environment that was bare, empty, hungry. I very consiously chose to change the outcome. I was dressing the figure, painting food in the dishes. This had a direct impact on my personal life. At that time my family and I where without a home for a month. The next day, after having painted the orange parts, we had an offer to move into my studio apartment, because the main renter had to give up the lease. The paintings I made after that, where more and more grounded, alife and abundant.
‘Create, paint, things will be ok.’ This line came into my awareness repetitavely, before I had a stable studio. And I still ‘hear’ it when I am all caught up in what should happen. And that I can’t paint because we have to pay the bills. This is not true. From my own experience I can say that I am taken care of when I am the artist. It is as if the Universe is replying when I dare let go and create. A phonecall, an email, money coming into my account. Being caught in should does, is still coming up. It is unbeleivable how much STUFF can come in the way between me and my studio time. I put it there, or I allow it to be of matter. Try it. Even if you can’t paint. Make a drawing, dance or sing a song, in the moment where you are most worried. Trust and let yourself free to feel joy, fulfilment. I have a dear friend who had just had a very rough time in hospital with the HIV virus. He wanted his own appartment, his own home, and was very afraid. I asked him, ‘what is the worst that could happen’. He said, ‘that I am not able to pay the bills.’ I was stunned, ‘aren’t you afraid something might happen and you are alone in your home, even dying without someone being there’? He replied that he wasn’t afraid of that at all, he had faced death several times in the hospital. ‘No big deal’. And he has his own appartment now, and is the head of a team of 17 people at work. What does that have to do with painting? Well, creating, being an artist, is a life quality, of daring to live out your potential and your dreams. How simple they might seem.
My parents have blessed me with their love for me and freedom in what I wanted ‘to become’. An artist attitude is what developed out of that. My parents where no artists in the literal sense. My mother sowed our cloths and my father grew our food in the veggie garden, also carpeting and fixing around the house. That gave me the knowing that you can make things yourself. Hands on. My art is therefor very close to me, an organic process, very real. It is funny how many ideas excist about artists. I play with it when it comes up. At parties, ‘What is it you do?’ ‘I am an artist’. ‘And what do you do for a living?’ “I make art’. And then observing these seconds that the other person needs to realise an artist can be a job. Another misunderstanding about art is that is is ‘out of the pocket’. One of my collectors is a lawyer and had a big painting I made in 2004 above his desk. He said that before, a client of the other party would come in and the lawyer would yell he would brake him in this tryal, would devour him in court. And that since the painting is up, they talk about the female body parts they see in the painting, yes there is some nudity. And have a completely different dynamic in the office. Another misunderstanding about making art is that it has to be the right time. Well, live happens and happens fast. I met a coffe salesman who said that some day he would pick up painting again. I replied, ‘how about this afternoon?’ And I could see the shock going through him physically. He had been projecting into the future ever since starting his family and his company. And now he was experiencing how it would be, if he would take some time, today. Having this artist attitude, makes me see wonderful thing all around me, enjoying images in other people, in events, in nature. It creates the space to paint, even as a young mother. I get a lot of assumptions that now I am not able to paint, with the kids. Well, the children are such a rich part of my life, that it works though in my imagery, my archetypes. They like it when I paint. And it makes me a happier person.
In the few years after that first Journey weekend, there where enormous changes. I married, had 2 children, emigrated, did the Practitioners Program, all the while I kept on painting. There is a painting, ‘Birth’ 2005, that stood over the bed, during labor of my first daughter. The paint still wet as I finished it 12 hours before Lily was born. There is a painting, ‘Guardian’ 2005, that frightened a friend who ended up buying it and it gave her support to make a life change. There is a painting, ‘Shelter’ 2004, that I made in the same week as my husband, on an other location, made a shelter out of mud and logs without each other knowing. There is a painting, ‘Snowcircle’ 2008, that is showing a woman that is one with her surroundings and yet very grounded. This piece is supporting a woman in her process of following her call, her vision. It is amazing how people who see my work, can have a very specific YES with one painting. As my husband says, ‘your paintings should come with a warning’. Now my own life has found ground, it is time for showcasing my art.