One. One hundred, really. One Hundred Heads. I counted backward in order to have a blast off effect when I arrived to this place. 3,2,1…
I did it, it took two years longer than planned, but I arrived at one hundred heads. I looked back at my first post of the 100 Heads project and was surprised to rediscover that I started it in conjunction with opening my occupational therapy private practice, Arise Therapeutics. I wanted the two to grow together and this is part of what I wrote then,
I've always been uncomfortable with drawing faces, they never seem to come out quite right. Drawings from my art school years are filled with faceless torsos. Back then, it seemed there would be time later to get to all the things I didn't understand. Now that later is now, it's time to come face to face with faces. My 40's seem to be a time of delving into all that is uncomfortable, in order to see what is really there...
…for so long, the things I love to do have lived like decorations on my life, attended to in spare time, while work has been a stressful chore that takes up the majority of my days. Can watering the seed of what you love crack the concrete? Is it really possible to close that gap? What might happen by facing the uncomfortable?
It turns out that watering the seed of what you love can crack the concrete. I found this out one person at a time. And what happens by facing the uncomfortable? One baby step at a time, you arrive to truly become the person you have always been.
I'm not only no longer afraid of drawing faces, I now enjoy it. How do I make a nose look like it's coming out? Or eyes like they're set in? It turns out that curiosity trumps fear. For so many years I convinced myself that those faceless torsos showed a depth, a mystery, but inside I knew I just didn't know how to draw them. I now see that depth comes from going into the unknown and uncomfortable and letting it look like what it looks like. It comes from delving rather than avoiding.
When I graduated from OT school and was overwhelmed with the fear and trepidation of being a new therapist one of my instructors told me that my OT license didn't mean I knew it all, it meant I could begin."You now have a license to begin," she told me, and that's what I feel when I look at this final portrait, that I have arrived at the beginning. The fear of getting into the ocean has shifted to the surrender of riding the wave.
Speaking of new beginnings, I will be leaving my quiet corner of Blogger, this place that raised and served me so well. My blog can now be found at my new art website, annewoodsart.com
Later is Now.
