Acceptance!

Photo: A process shot from the making of my painting, Acceptance. The green paint is applied onto the bumpy tape.

On Tuesday May 5, I opened up the Doodle link to pick a word to make into art for the Words to Art 2020 project. There were so many this time! I scrolled and saw what the other artists had picked: Broken, Longing… I scrolled up and down, undecided, when suddenly, Acceptance stared back at me!

I had just finished a painting for a friend. It was red. I knew red was the color of the Root Chakra. I picked up my phone to check which chakra the word Acceptance was connected with. And there it was—Heart Chakra! And the color was green, like our lawn which I had stood on this morning. It was being mowed by my son, now home from college, who had his headphones on.

The syllable for the heart chakra, was YAM.

I wanted to change the text on the website though. After all, I love words and how they can change meanings ever so slightly if we are not paying attention. I am careful about the ones we use and ponder them a lot. And so, in “Self acceptance is at the core of our desire to be the best person that we were meant to be,” I’d change “best” and replace it with “whole.” Because, of course, best had some judgement in it and was totally subjective. And so I didn’t agree with that word. Afterall who decides what is the “best” person I can be?

I pulled out a print someone had donated to the Studio, turned it over, marked off a square and taped it up. Marked a1/4 horizon line and taped it. Made a delicious green color—the color of emeralds! I tore the tape used for my last red painting and rolled and bunched it up and applied it all to the 1/4 of the paper. Then I painted the green over the bumpy area. The rest I painted an even gorgeous green, like my lawn, lush with the spring rain. We had let it grow wild for the last 6 weeks! It was resplendent with clover flowers so many bees were buzzing away at. I had even convinced my new neighbor to forgo mowing. He also watched the bees enjoying the clover. Everything was new for all of us during the pandemic Lockdown afterall.

Back at the studio, while the paint was wet I wrote YAM in Sanskrit or the horizon line with wet graphite. It went over all the bumps, bumps of suppressed feelings in our body and subconscious mind. Or like a lawn gone wild. On the dots I applied liquid gold paint and then scratched over the letters with the back of a thin brush. I also used the back of the brush to write Acceptance twice into the even green 3/4 section. The tape started to uncurl in places exposing the red and white underneath! The piece became very 3D, like the stuff we had suppressed was exploding out. I just loved it! I wondered what it will look like tomorrow…

 And did I make it because I needed to see the green? Be near the green? Around the green? Feel the vibrations of green?

And after spending 4 years in love with blue…

But we were, of course, in a global pandemic and everyone was terrified. On May 5 I replied to a friend’s email: 

I understand your worries about how these times will imprint on our children, if they will be scared of people, if they will worry about hugs. But here, in these “unprecedented times” I feel it's different. Here Love is also an option. The kids are home with family. The stories, information and experience of closeness and care, of empathic concern and compassion, and of a worldwide suffering and help, will not be lost on them. Kids are more and more anxious nowadays and this has caused many to actually relax… because they are home with loved ones. It is always a choice for us—to let Fear lead the way or Love. We can teach the kids that to let care win is also an option, to care for ourselves and the community. I have been hearing a lot about the panic. I have also felt great when I find these stories and experiences. I feel there is much hope. But yes, Fear lies just below the surface...

And then I had shared my artwork for that week with him, saying: I just finished a painting related to the Root Chakra, one of the seven energy fields in yoga. The color is red, and the Sanskrit syllable is LAM. As I had picked Acceptance as my word for this week, I looked it up as well. It was connected to the Heart Chakra, the color was green, the syllable was YAM. “Self-Acceptance is at the core of our desire to be the best person that we were meant to be,” the website said. 

I made a delicious green color. Then I tore, rolled and bunched up the tape from my red painting and applied it all to the bottom of the paper. I painted the bumpy area green. The rest I painted an even gorgeous green, like my freshly mowed lawn, lush with the spring rain. We had let it grow wild for the last 6 weeks! 

I wrote YAM in Sanskrit on the horizon line with wet graphite and made the dots with liquid gold paint. The bumps felt like suppressed feelings. Or like a lawn gone wild. Soon the tape started to uncurl in places exposing the red and white underneath! I wonder what it will look like tomorrow…

~ Sushmita Mazumdar, May 5. Mixed media using water soluble graphite, acrylics, gold paint and tape.

The next day I had a reply. My friend wrote:

One of my favorite pieces of music is Miles Davis's "Blue in Green," and I've probably listened to it 500 times. But as much as I've loved it, the title was always mysterious to me ("Blue in Green"?): that is, until about an hour ago.  

First, thanks so much for sending "Acceptance." I know that shade of Green. Wherever it appears--in fresh-cut lawns, the floor of a deep forest, the chest of a hummingbird..., or a painting--it always carries the same message and produces the same effect, which is Tranquility.  The Heart recognizes it and wakes up.  The pinwheel starts turning, and those invisible threads that connect Everything start to shiver and dance. 

It's the perfect color of Acceptance.  And 'Acceptance' is the perfect word for our Time.  And as for the piece you've just created, all I can say is: it's alive.

I couldn't find the Sanskrit word, but you wrote that it was written "on the horizon line" in water-soluable graphite, so maybe it dissolved and was transformed.  Became invisible.  Went down into the roots to nourish that incredible Green.  And if that's what happened, it would be perfect too.  

But what delighted me most, I think--besides the Green itself--is what you wrote about how the tape is peeling to show its former red and white, proving that the Work itself is alive: "I wonder what it will look like tomorrow."

Nobody asks that about Lady with an Ermine or Guernica or The Dream (I have no idea why these three examples).  They will all look the same tomorrow, although our relationship with them could change: we might see them with different eyes.  I know it's possible to construct art that changes over time, by design.  But that's not the same thing as when a work of art insists on speaking in its own way, telling its own story back to its creator, and to the world.  

It's a refreshing, liberating thought.

Back to Miles Davis.  If Green is the color of the Heart-Chakra, then Blue is the color of the Throat: of sound, speech, communication.  And in that miraculous piece of music, Blue in Green, the Sound comes straight out of the Heart; it carries that same tranquility, that same 'vibration' if I can put it that way.  And the proof, for me, is that after 500+ listenings, it still has the power to transform and realign the Vibrations all up and down the Energy Tree.  

Thanks for the early-morning gift.   

End:

So what is the artist’s role in society? To show that we are all so different and its okay. To show that we all express our many emotions and feelings in different ways through different media. Because artists by nature are sensitive and artmaking is their exploration of being able to express their feelings after all. And by letting their creations help everyone else feel, in whatever way they connect to it. So even as society reaches out to help the artist, the artist keeps helping everyone. And it feels good.