I’ve spoken about the Light, most recently in a mini-ebook, You’re Great – Now Magnify the Light! ~ and for the sake of balance, perhaps it’s time to mention the Dark.

Magnifying the light automatically reduces the dark, but dark, in and of itself isn’t “bad” – it is merely the absence of light.

When I was learning how to draw and paint, it was all about the light, the light. Where was the light coming from? From which direction? What was the angle of light? Where was the lack of light? What did the light hit first? And then, when I began to write memoir and remember the past, my foggy recollections immediately cleared when I remembered the light in the room or the light out of doors. Objects and people came into focus when I could ‘see’ if it was day or night, if the lights were on or off, etc. When I remembered where the light was coming from, I remembered the rooms, where the people were standing, even what they were saying.

I knew of course, that all memories are stored in the mind, whether or not we have the ability to access them. And I also knew that the Past itself, is stored in the Light. The Past doesn’t disappear; it remains the Past. It remains in the dimension of the Past. The past is stored in our memory banks, whether or not we choose to recollect it. Re-collect. To go back and collect the memories. I think if we can remember the light, we can remember what is stored in the light, which has never disappeared or evaporated, but remains, perhaps waiting to be seen again.

(Detail) Watercolor (1987) by Nancy Wait

I never thought of memories that might be stored “in the dark,” or lurking in the shadows. This lay more in the domain of psychoanalysis, a practice that was not productive for me as a patient, and led me to a kind of emotional paralysis, I think because the memories unleashed were so unbeautiful.

Art, however, was a different matter. When I tackled my inner life through painting and drawing pictures from my imagination, however negative the subject matter was—fear and loneliness—I could make it palpable. As long as there was beauty and harmony, even if it came across as a sad song, I could deal with the feeling behind the images. Dissonance also has a rhythm, and when we are attuned to it in the ‘right’ state of mind, it too, can be beautiful.

There are aspects of ourselves, perhaps hidden from us most of the time, that need to be worked through, resolved, let go of. In order to do that we have to be consciously aware of them, preferably without judgment.

We live in a world of polarities, north and south, light and dark. The union of opposites within is part of the path, is the path… And somehow we need to keep loving ourselves without judgment. Accepting the dark as well as the light. For we are both. To ignore the one is to cancel out the other. When I ignore my darkness, I diminish my light.

To dispel is to disperse, dissipate, cause to vanish. It reminds me of the time I moved into my first apartment in Manhattan where the rent was cheap but it was infested with roaches. I used to come home at night, switch on the overhead light, and watch the roaches scurry away into the corners, out of sight. This was after the roach bomb and the spraying, the traps and spackling up the cracks in the walls. Killing them was useless; new ones would simply reappear.

The same could be said of shadows. Turning on the light is useful, but the shadows only return with the darkness. But painting my inner life, creating pictures of unspoken, unexpressed feelings, and then looking at them, then writing about my experiences, unearthing the memories and making peace with them, was more in keeping with the activity of transformation. Transforming hidden areas by bringing them out, into the known.

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I have surprised myself. A week ago I finished up my late-night coffee (with caffeine please) at the Starbucks in my local Barnes and Noble, and on my out through the bookstore I decided to glance around at the displays. The racks for journals and sketchbooks is quite extensive and they are always adding new ones. Then, for some reason, I don’t quite know why as I’d seen it before and had no interest—I was suddenly captivated by the small book titled, One Sketch A Day. When I flipped it open I saw that each page spread was divided into four sections. Each section, no bigger than an index card, had a number and a place where you wrote in the date. There were 366 sections. This was for me. I paid for the book and took it home, and that night though I looked at it and felt a tingle of excitement, I didn’t draw anything. Wait till tomorrow, I thought, when I’m fresh.

first four sketches, NW Nov. 2012

And so I began to sketch again. First the tulips. Then the apples. Since the space was so small, the investment of time was minimal and easy to accomplish. And because there was a space for the next day and the day after that, I didn’t need to execute a perfect drawing or anything like that, because there was always tomorrow. And the day after that. Just jot down something, I told myself. Next was the candle holder and the tea kettle.

sketchbook, NW Nov. 2012

Fruit, flowers, objects around the house. Then back to Starbucks at my local Barnes and Noble, where people sit very still for long periods of time and so make ideal subjects. But now one sketch a day was no longer enough. My happiness in drawing again now caused me to take another sketchbook from my shelf to record the spillover of excitement.

sketch, NW Nov. 2012

A leaf.

Tree bark.

sketch, NW Nov. 2012

A tree.

What a wondrous world. How could I have stopped sketching for so many years?

sketch, NW Nov. 2012

I didn’t take up art seriously until I was twenty-eight, after being disillusioned with my career as an actress and discouraged by my feeble attempts at writing. Art was the fallback career. The last resort. The activity I had promised myself that I would do “some day.” So I found myself astonished in my first life-drawing class at the Art Students League when I realized I was picking up the energy of the model.

My early drawings of the figure were crude, as was to be expected. But I saw something there. I saw what I had. And, since art is about seeing, I also noticed that I had the ability (in spades) to see.

I might have asked myself why I didn’t know this before? Why did I have to be almost thirty before I found what I was really good at? The short answer is 1) I went into the theater to please my father, and 2) I had an appetite for “glamour.”

sketch, NW, subway bench (undated)

Anyway, at twenty-eight I was suddenly and irrevocably (I thought) devoted to art, and took a vow to never leave the house without a sketchbook in hand. To draw everyday, as many times as I could, and never give up. I sketched people waiting for the subway, waiting for the bus. Sitting on park benches or in cafes.

Fast-forward nine years. My passion for painting had not abated, but new thoughts, new ideas were stirring in my psyche, and they had to written down. What I had discovered through piles of canvases and stacks of drawings had to now be sifted through a different part of the mind. I needed to give the images a voice. The transition took ten years to fully adopt, and the result, a memoir, took another fourteen years to bring into print.

But who’s counting the years? Does it matter? What seems to matter most is to keep looking. To keep thinking and pondering and wondering. And to keep feeling, and being aware of what you’re feeling. And for me, feeling the world around me in the form of a person here or there, an object in my vicinity, a tree, a leaf, a piece of fruit, a bunch of flowers… Bigger plans are fermenting, now that I’ve rediscovered an old love.

If you’ve ever felt the urge to draw and sketch, do it! Take a vow to suspend judgment. Everything takes practice. The joy is in the doing.

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By the second week I was beginning to get the hang of it. The one-minute gesture drawings were still beyond me, and though I managed alright for the five-minute poses, my progress was discouraging. I couldn’t help noticing how advanced most of the students were in comparison to me, and had to keep reminding myself that I would improve if I just kept at it. There was so much to be aware of all of a sudden. Shadows, muscles, bone structure, blending or accentuating the lines. Then something strange happened.

I began drawing the model who was young and lithesome, half-sitting, half-lying on the beat-up wooden gray-painted model stand. I had the view of her back. And right away, from the first few strokes of charcoal, I saw I had captured something. My curvy black line not only looked like the curve of her back, it felt like it. I was amazed. But there it was right in front of me—the feel of her back. The feel of her. I had picked up the feeling of this girl. She had reached out to me from across the room and suddenly I knew I had it in me to be not just a run-of-the-mill artist but a great one. Because in some mysterious way I couldn’t explain, I had picked up her energy.

The year was 1978. I don’t recall anyone speaking about energies as long ago as that, but it didn’t mean I didn’t know what they were. During the break when I went around looking at the other student’s work, what I had done became more clear to me. Because now I was looking at some beautifully executed drawings, but they could have been of any nude, not necessarily this one. The instructor, Thomas Foley, had never asked us to connect to the model in a feeling way. Foley’s paintings of women and girls were practically all identical. The same pretty pastels over and over again. Light, airy, impressionist-style versions of his ideal feminine and very turn-of-the-century schmaltz. Who the female was didn’t matter. He saw what he wanted to see and made them all the same.

collage by Nancy Wait

What I saw that morning was different. With a simple line of charcoal I had captured the flow of her back. I don’t know how I did it, but I didn’t think it was pure luck. I don’t think feelings have anything to do with luck. What does the heart know of luck? “Lucky in love” has more to do with personality—astrological signs even. Or maybe just karma. I don’t know. I’ve had good luck and bad, and the bad was due more to poor judgment. Due to being carried away. Actually not judging at all.

I was definitely feeling carried away that morning in the Life Drawing Class. Who wouldn’t be, realizing they had captured something intangible. Something that couldn’t be taught. Something that came from within, from an unknowable place. A feeling place I saw I could access, when I couldn’t get to it in my stories or even in my life.

As time went on and I continued drawing, gravitating into painting by the following year, it became more clear that what I was doing was bypassing the critical mind. Bypassing the need for words that never seemed to come out of my mouth when I wanted them to. And then I happened to run into an actor I had once gone to school with. We met by chance on the street and brought each other up to date on what we were doing. I told him I was in art school. “I’m going to be a great artist!” I said.

He look at me aghast. “You can’t just decide that.”

But I could. I most certainly could. At least that was what my twenty-something self thought. It was an enthusiastic approach that got me over the hump of learning to use my materials and overcoming the despair that comes with being a beginner. And if after a while I revised my ambition so that I would state instead—be the greatest artist that I personally could be—what did it matter. I was in there. I was a player. A striver. A searcher. An artist.

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watercolor by Nancy Wait

There is a reason for everything that happens. An intelligence behind everything that happens, whether we’re aware of it or not. We can’t just mouth the words, ‘I create my own reality,’ we have to believe it as well. And then we have to ask why. Why did I need to experience XYZ?

I subtitled my book, The Memoir That Solved A Mystery, because I really did solve a mystery. It takes a tremendous amount of push to write and publish a book. Memoir, especially, is not for the faint of heart. Perseverance, Persistence and Push were my mantras. But one day I was able to make the needed connections, and it seemed nothing less than a miracle that I was finally able to connect the dots, find a raison d’etre for why things had to happen the way that they did. So that one day I would say, Ohhhhh….. 

So this is what I say to those who might be suffering on this journey through life ~

It’s going to be okay. Trust that it’s going to be okay. Meanwhile, keep looking for clues. Be aware of the  mystery of your being. Keep being the Seeker. Keep believing that one day you will find Beauty in the wound, Peace in the understanding, and Grace all around.

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Primitive and raw, battling my way out of confusion. A crumpled pink post-it upper left.

Placed at the back of the moleskin sketchbook, it reads from right to left.

It reads, to me, like someone trying to create some more space. This is not the kind of work I normally do. Even in a sketchbook. I’m usually one for creating patterns, even in my doodling.

Since doing this sketch, the bindings became tighter. Even as I tried to rearrange the furniture, clean out the cupboards, reorganize the drawers, make the appearance of things more orderly looking, the electricity went out. I lost the wifi web. Was visited by police and EMS, electricians and the cable guy. Finally, a couple of days ago, I landed in court – the MOST orderly place you can imagine! In Downtown Brooklyn too. With Big silvery words high on the wall, plain simple font, unfettered and uncluttered, that read, In God We Trust.

It was so clear. So unmistakable. I have to go back in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, I will continue to establish my new clarity within my four walls with the sycamore out front. At least my two cats have calmed down. That’s always a good sign. Other than that, it’s moment to moment, as usual.

Blessings ~

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The Nancy Who Drew: The Memoir That Solved A Mystery

One of the sailors led me to my cabin. We stepped carefully over cables of twisted steel littering the deck. We circled around bristly-faced men in heavy boots and watch-cap hats shouting in Polish as they lowered massive containers onto the bow.

The loading continued all day and into the night. We were still in port when I went to bed. They had given me a spacious double room overlooking the bow with large square windows on two sides. I could hardly wait till we set sail. Before turning in I wrote in my journal,

I must return. I can’t run anymore. I will go back across the water. I want to be a sailor. I want to love the sea. I want to see the sky change as we travel west. I want each wave to mean something. I want to sail across knowing that bottomless depths lie below and not be afraid. I will face the wind and the sea, and we will roll across the waves to America. The waves will rock me to sleep and I will dream a new dream.

But first I was living out an old dream, the dream of sailing across the sea. And maybe that was my new dream, this return to my original self.

I lay sleepless in my cabin, listening to the roar of the ship’s engines. The noise was as deafening as the subway at Forty-Second Street, all the trains coming in at once. It sounded so close, as if the engines were just on the other side of my cabin wall. The roar would continue until we reached New York Bay and the tug boats pulled us the rest of the way in.

Yet I did sleep. And sometime during the night we got underway. What a joy to wake up in the morning with nothing to see but the blue of the water and the blue of the sky, both of them endless. It wasn’t long before the noise of the ship became part of the sea and its vastness. Day after day I woke up to nothing but sky and water. Nothing but unlimited space. I had never thought the world could look so empty. Occasionally a tanker or another cargo ship was visible in the distance, no bigger than a spec on the horizon. We must have looked the same to them. A spec in the landscape. Yet I felt part of it all. Part of this glorious unbounded world of wind and water.

By the end of a week I no longer remembered what it was like to live in a world not constantly moving. Forward, forward. Always forward. We were fleeing the sun in the morning, only to chase it by late afternoon. All during the second week, on each of the last five days, we turned our watches back one hour. Gaining time instead of losing it. Perhaps it was the thought of gaining that made me realize how everything that had happened up until now had been worth it, because it had brought me to this place. And this place was perfect.

From The Nancy Who Drew © Nancy Wait 2011

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watercolor © Nancy Wait 22″x30″ (1986)

“The Shattering” is a phrase I came across in one of the Alice Bailey books. It refers to the way our world needs to shatter before we become willing or able to make the necessary progress to the next stage of our evolution.

It is a hard thing when it happens. I don’t think we’re ever prepared for it. But if we remain soft and pliable, we stand a better chance of getting through it in one piece. Or maybe that’s not the point, getting through it in one piece. A shattering is, after all, a breaking apart into many different pieces. It’s the necessary shattering of the ego, which takes us into that part of us that is indestructible, the Soul.

Though I painted this watercolor in 1986, it has come to seem more relevant in the ensuing years. I don’t credit myself with being clairvoyant – except when it comes to certain paintings. In the act of painting, not thinking, just being totally focused in the moment – in the zone – I sometimes see the “future” – sometimes the “past”. But whatever I see, it’s always good to remember that it is only another “illustration” of our collective Human Story. Just an episode, a fragment of the collective psyche I am able to tap into when I go beyond the self and into the higher mind – with a brush and a palette full of colors…

(detail) The Shattering, watercolor
©Nancy Wait 1986

The figure on the left, down on one knee, is calling out for help, calling out in despair, and seems on the one hand to be asking WHY, and on the other hand wants to hold up the crumbling ceiling.

The middle figure is equally stressed out. This figure is

(detail) The Shattering, watercolor
©Nancy Wait 1986

trying to protect herself or stop what is happening, or protect as well the figure below her.

The figure on the far right is on her knees — a good sign already.

(Detail) The Shattering, watercolor
©Nancy Wait 1986

She, alone of the three, seems to be going with the flow of change. The world around her is breaking up, so naturally she is concerned, yet she appears willing to ride the wave of change. By staying closer to the ground she stands a better chance of keeping her balance.

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oil on canvas; detail of Little Man series
by Nancy Wait 2008

Betrayal can propel you into a netherworld of confusion and hopelessness. It can feel like death. Betrayal changes us forever.

When everything we believe in is thrown into doubt, we question what we think we know. But if we have an understanding of the spiritual path, we might recognize the benefit of a death experience.

Many years ago I happened upon a book called Initiation by Elisabeth Haich. All I remember from it was the initiation she experienced or remembered experiencing as an initiate in Ancient Egypt. She was buried alive for a certain number of days, and went through the various stages of a death experience. But she was prepared for this for a long time by the High Priests in the temple. I think of that now because usually the shocks of life take us by surprise. Catch us unawares. And then we are led to a different kind of life than the one we thought we would have.

But if we can step away from judging the experience, from thinking it wasn’t meant to happen, we might get someplace. That is, if we’re willing to delve deeper into the mysteries of life. Because all new experiences are “initiations” into something. Leaving home, marriage, birth, a new job, a divorce, graduation—anything that changes us at all is an initiation into something new. Good, bad, or indifferent—it is just another experience, if we choose to see it that way.

When we can leave judgments outside of the equation, simply experiencing ourselves in this new and different place, even if it’s the horrifying and traumatic place of betrayal, why then, we’re on our way to being the observer of our life. From seeing ourselves from the level of Soul Awareness.

Grief has its uses. Grief and sadness propel us into another level of experience where we may start to ask ourselves why. And then, looking for answers, we may find ourselves being inventive in ways we never imagined.

watercolor by Nancy Wait
1986

I think why many people fall through the cracks is because they haven’t imagined Love as the cause of events. Maybe it’s difficult for them to imagine a world where All is Love. It doesn’t appear that way much of the time. But if that’s one of the lessons we need to learn, we might be thrown into that pit of darkness in order that we may look up, see the light, strive with all our power and might to get back to the light.

And yet, if we’re coming from a place where we know theoretically that we have chosen, or our soul has chosen, particular experiences for our growth and evolution on this plane, we have to ask ourselves why we might have chosen Betrayal. What good, what learning, are we supposed to have?

For me personally, I found the Blessing in the wound. I found that To Be Wounded, Is To Be Blessed.

I went from psychoanalysis to therapy to group therapy. But what really made a difference was when I got into painting my inner life. And then delving into the outer life through autobiography, through laying out all the facts and them putting them together. But in a new way. Because now I was in touch with my inner life.

I did not do this by myself. I called on God for assistance. I called on my Higher Self, my Higher Power. I put myself between Heaven and Earth, and strove to keep my ego out of it. Because as an artist I saw myself as a vessel, as a carrier of dreams and ideas, an explorer of the psyche.

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My first memoir, The Nancy Who Drew, the memoir that solved a mystery, is packed with pennies that finally dropped. Those “pennies from heaven” that enabled me to look deeper. So that I could draw  connections between those feelings and experiences in childhood and youth that had been mysterious, unfathomable fragments of an as yet unexplored psyche.

The Dreamer by © Nancy Wait (1981) oil on canvas

When I was thirty-one I had a breakthrough: I painted a picture that revealed a hidden agenda. Paintings can do that. Drawings, poems, automatic writing. Even if it’s not our own, we can go to museums to connect with artists, connect to their feelings which connect us to ours. We read others to connect to our unspoken, unexpressed thoughts. The greatest benefit, of course, is when we can create our own work, as that is the work that will speak the loudest and most deeply and most profoundly. Because we have connected to our own inner voice.

It’s a way of intuiting who we are on those inner levels hidden from physical 3D reality. An inner plane, accessible in dreams and visions, and to the inner senses. The fourth dimension, 4D, which has been called, the “Clearing House for Humanity.” – Patricia Corri

In2it. I spell it this way to emphasize there are 2 of you. The outer self and the inner self. The Dream-Self and the Awake-Self. The morning these two over-lapped, and the days leading up to it, I call my Spiritual Awakening.

The Awakening led me on a quest to realize the Dream of my Life. One veil had been pulled aside, only to reveal another further on. Another layer to be pierced.

In hindsight, a major step forward was the painting I did five years after the “awakening.” I called it The Dreamer. It was a large canvas, 48″x40″, and it came about “by chance” when a friend of a friend came by to pose in a green gown. I knew right away there was something special about that painting, that it spoke to me in a different way than others. It had to do with the way the model was looking off to the side as if lost in thought, and the way a door was open behind her.

Girl in the Emerald Dress by © Nancy Wait (1985) watercolor

Actually, I’m the only one who knew the door was open. In the painting it looks like a window. In reality it was a French door, and it was open. I had never done a painting where there was a door, open or closed, but I’d seen one open in a dream. Perhaps the girl in the painting was thinking of that dream. The model’s name was Martha, but she was also me. I read once that every portrait is a self-portrait. I think it is true. And I know that painting a thing makes it more real. And when it’s painted big, as this one was, then it becomes even more real. I eventually dripped paint across the canvas horizontally to give a watery feeling, a more dreamy feeling. Later, I did a watercolor version of the oil painting, and the dress came out a bright shade of emerald.

Nancy Wait 2010

Water represents the subconscious. The painting I called The Dreamer opened an inner door in my psyche, and was not only the start of a new series of work, but the start of a new life. Then, some 25 years later, at the start of another new life (my son left for college and my “empty-nest” would now be filled with uninterrupted work on that other baby, my manuscript) I took this picture of myself with a webcam. The significance of the green light above my head didn’t even hit me until just the other day when I was thinking about the Emerald Alignment.

The green light above my head is just like the green light I have been visualizing in my practice of the Emerald Alignment, a brief and wonderfully effective meditation created by Rainbow Light Foundation. 

I heard about the Emerald Alignment nine months (interesting number for a gestation period!) after my webcam photo. It was the first day of summer, 2011, during my blog talk radio show, Art and Ascension, when my guests introduced the meditation.

I have since renamed the picture, The Girl In The Emerald Dress. But of course, The Dreamer came first. (She always will.) I am currently working on a short story about how the painting came about, which I will make available soon, before my next book comes out, The Nancy Who Drew Herself Out of the Swamp.

I drew myself out of the (chaotic emotional) swamp when I connected to The Dreamer, who “happened” to be wearing a green gown that was transformed into an emerald dress when it became a watercolor.

Green is the merging of yellow (mind) and blue (spirit). It is located exactly at the point of color balance – midway between red and violet on the color spectrum. The human eye is able to recognize more variation in the color green than in any other color. Its energy contains: harmony, sympathy, health, abundance, balance, growth, and expansion.

©Nancy Wait 2012

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Nude Reclining, student work © Nancy Wait (1979)

I didn’t think about having or not having a muse until I went to art school and began painting from life. Painting the nude. Some classes had male nudes, but mine, for the short while I studied painting at the Art Student’s League, only had female nudes.

So there I was at the easel, painting the model. One week it was a young woman with full breasts and long black hair. My view was a side view. I was at some distance away, so although I could see her profile, her facial expression was not key. I painted her from the side. She was propped up with pillows. Her legs were stretched out. The cloth she lay on was a pale cream color. The fabric draped behind her complemented her skin tone. She would have blended into the background except for her hair, which was long and dark, a stark contrast against the peachy, coffee-with-cream shades of the rest of the canvas.

I worked without thinking what I was seeing. I looked without thinking what I saw. My mind was focused on the task at hand, not what it meant.  My goal was to finish the canvas before the end of the week when the model would disappear.

When the painting was dry I took it home and hung it up in the marital bedroom. At first all I saw was how well the colors went with the bedspread. How peaceful the model looked, and how she was restful to look at. I thought it was good work. I was pleased with my progress.

Drawings in a Collage © Nancy Wait

It wasn’t until I came home with a second female nude that I started to reflect on how I felt about the paintings and what kind of statement I was making with them, regardless of my skill level or any possible artistic merit. Was I looking at them the same way that a man would look at them? Did it make a difference? Should it make a difference gender-wise?

As I pondered these questions, I began to think of all the nude paintings I’d seen in museums and art books, and how all but a tiny few had been painted by men. And then I thought of male artists and their female muses. I didn’t have a muse at the time, but if I were to have one, would it be a man? How would that work out?

© ”Nancie” 1973

I didn’t come up with an answer, but it got me started thinking about subject and object, and how as an actress being photographed I had felt like “an object.” How I had subjected myself to different male interpretations, regardless of who I was inside. It made me feel both powerful and powerless.

But that was then and this was now. And what was I trying to say to the viewer? What were my feelings?

Oil on Canvas © Nancy Wait 1986

The question was answered when I began painting nudes—both male and female—from my imagination. Because then they came entirely from me, from an inner prompt, and were a reflection of my inner feelings.

I believe art transcends gender, resolves polarities, and takes us to another plane entirely. And those who inspire us—our muses—whether they be same-sex or opposite-sex, are those whom we see in ourselves and identify with.

I think with every painting, something is resolved for the one who created it. For me, it was the question, what am I seeing, and how am I seeing it. And finally, why am I seeing it this way? Which all boiled down in the end to—Who Am I?

Collage Drawings © Nancy Wait 1986

My study of the female form was more emotionally charged than that of the male, as I had so much more to resolve—namely about how I saw myself. And then it caused me to think what a good idea it would be if everyone was required to draw or paint from life.

Our culture is polarized in so many ways, and perhaps one of the most damaging is the “body beautiful” in the media, compared to the various shapes and sizes we are in the real world. What happened to me as a result of studying anatomy and light and shadow, was that I became fascinated by form itself. Judgments went out the window, and I began to see Beauty everywhere.

But that’s another topic, to be continued another time….

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