It wasn’t that I was stuck; merely the thought of feeling frozen.
My fingers callous and frostbit; I couldn’t pick up the brush.
My knuckles were ice-capped and unmoving.
My body morphed into a stone-like position as a statue would.
Except I wasn’t a Venus, impossible to be David, more of a reclined, unmotivated excuse of a sculpture.
That October morning, I stare into the blankness of my bedroom wall from my bed as I lay there. I suppose there wasn’t any significance to the morning. I didn’t notice the shallow field of light cascading from my skylight or the slight sound of birds chirping outside of my window. For my window was sealed shut and all I could hear was the pounding of the garbage truck dumping trash into the dumpster loudly from a parking lot nearby. I closed my eyes and wished it would stop.
Methodically, I managed to stand up and make myself a cup of coffee. I reached for my favorite mug and set it below the Keurig. My back ached a bit from working at the restaurant the night before, carrying trays and plates around the entire evening. I looked at myself in my bathroom mirror and noticed the gentle hue of dark shadows under my eyelids. I felt a sly sense of defeat laughing back at me mockingly from the reflection in the mirror. I walked back out to the kitchen for my coffee. Stirring the milk into the dark, brown liquid, I suddenly remembered that I needed to make a new drawing today for Inktober.
Inktober is a world-wide challenge created to rid creative blocks and challenge artists to make an ink drawing every day during the month of October, based upon a word prompt each day.
I reached for my phone to look up the word.
Today’s word: freeze.
Immediately upon seeing the word, I felt the gears beginning to shift in my brain:
freeze – cold – frozen – ice – ice cube?
– making the ice cube look surreal – huge ice cube – small human – frozen in time
– draw someone frozen in a cube?
In turn, I let my mind do its thing. It roamed free, delving into crevices that felt unreachable before.
Quickly thereafter, I shot a reference photo while sitting down, grabbed my sketchbook and pens, and began to draw. My hands jolted to life, the ice from the tips of my knuckles seemingly melting away. They moved in synchronization with my mind — my mind and body seemed to be working as one unit.
This painting is based off of that sketch that day.
It encompasses the idea of feeling small, inadequate, frozen by circumstance, our environment, or the worst of all: ourselves.
Our bodies seem to overtake our minds and tell ourselves to give up.
What’s the point? You aren’t good enough. You don’t have it in you.
You’re tired. You’re stuck here. You can’t get out of bed.
But, it’s merely illusion. It’s this cube you’ve cornered yourself into.
The limiting beliefs (the outer cube) that must be destroyed and melted away by your inner light.
Unbeknownst to you, the power is within you already. It is blaring yellow, iridescent gold.
When we unfreeze ourselves, we connect to that larger being, breaking through our own subconscious. Realizing that, yes, we do have the power to melt the ice cube and reach what we set out and intended to.
The creative spark. The thing that peels us away from our bed and gets us moving. The hot air balloon that we long to fly away in. The dream.
We didn’t see it before, but it was dripping from the brush the whole time. Quite simply, what if it begins then. By standing up, pushing away the tiredness of your body, cracking open the window, and listening to the subconscious mind. Escaping your physical environment and just listening.