After the Beginning
After the beginning: learning how to stay
January has a way of opening things and of inviting movement without demanding certainty about what comes next. This year, it felt especially alive for me. New space, both personal and studio, shaping my artist practice. New momentum. New things quietly taking shape.
And then February arrived with a different kind of invitation: to stay.
The beginning is often the most romantic part of growth—the honeymoon period. It’s filled with anticipation and possibility. But what I’m learning is that the real work doesn’t happen in the opening. It happens in the days that follow, when the excitement settles and the space asks to be lived in rather than admired.
The quieter phase of expansion
Expansion is often talked about as movement—more space, more visibility, more output. But once something arrives, it doesn’t ask you to move faster. It asks you to listen differently.
In my artist studio, I’ve felt that shift. The newness has softened. The room is no longer announcing itself. Instead, it’s revealing its edges slowly, teaching me its rhythms, asking me to pay attention to how I inhabit it rather than what I produce inside it.
There’s a subtle pressure that can creep in after a beginning: Now that this exists, what will you do with it?
Staying instead of reaching
There’s a temptation, especially as an artist, to treat momentum as something that must be fed constantly—to reach for the next mark, the next idea, the next project, the next proof that growth is “working.”
But lately, the more honest work has been staying right where I am.
Staying with the scale of the space; with the pace my body recognizes; and with the work that doesn’t yet know what it wants to become.
Not everything that opens needs to be immediately filled.
Integration as the real work
I used to think discipline meant pushing—showing up no matter what, producing through uncertainty, forcing clarity over intuition. But I’m learning that integration asks for something different:
As an artist, can I let the experience settle before defining it? Can I resist the urge to narrate something before it’s complete? Allow the work to change me quietly? And, does this apply to anyone and things not related to art?… (I think so)
In this phase, my studio practice and creative process feel less about making statements and more about building relationship—with space, with time, and with myself as I adjust to something larger than what I’ve known before.
This kind of work doesn’t announce itself. It deepens because I’m learning.
A different measure of progress
Success, right now, doesn’t look like volume or speed. It looks like presence. It looks like knowing when to stop. It looks like trusting that what’s meant to emerge will do so without being chased.
February has reminded me that beginnings don’t ask for proof—they ask for patience. And this is expressed through staying long enough for the work to breathe. Staying long enough to feel what the space is asking, and staying long enough to become equal to what I’ve created room for.
Staying feels like enough.
~
It’s been winter everywhere (even here with temps dipping into the 50s). I’m happy to have worn my sweatshirts and fleece but now I’m ready for the warm and even hot sunny days. I know, I know, I’m in the minority…but truly I’m longing for the off season again which allows me long days in the studio with quiet, no traffic and walking from the sand right into the water because its 90 degrees in the Gulf. Well I’ll have to wait for a bit for all of that and while I do, I’m sure I’ll see you on the beach enjoying your best days in our weather (well after it warms up to 70 again 😊)!
XO, Chris
