It Begins With a Bird: Making Space for Art After Thirty Years

A few days ago, I sliced the cellophane from a tin of charcoal pencils, stood in front of an easel, and drew a bird.

A few days ago, I sliced the cellophane from a tin of charcoal pencils, stood in front of an easel for over six hours, and drew a bird. A small thing—insignificant in view of all the recent chaos and change—but it was big to me. So big that in the months leading up to the moment I plucked the pencils from the tin case, a quiet fear snuck up on me: Can I even do this?

After thirty years with zero art or creativity? After decades of depositions and objections? Endless conference calls and red-lined contracts?

Even in those last moments, I stalled. I stood at the blank sheet of paper, shuffling the pencils between my hands, trying to figure out where—and how—to start. I recalled a childhood bursting with effortless creativity, but I couldn’t remember the feeling from where I stood over one thousand miles (and three decades) away.

I held an image in my mind of a ripe piece of fruit sitting in a wooden bowl on our kitchen table back in Kansas. A peach or a nectarine. Someone needed to enjoy it before it went bad, but no one did. My mind played the time-lapse footage as the piece of fruit cracked and oozed, then sagged and shriveled. It was a dehydrated apricot. Then it was a raisin. Then it was dust.

I reminded myself I was drawing a bird, not a peach. I wondered whether a bird drawing should start at the feet, the wings, or the beak—or would a random tuft be more or less sensible. You probably just pick a place, I thought, and go from there.

I started thinking about athletes.

I wondered what it felt like to be so good at something physical that you actually get paid for it, but only for a small window of time. For pro hockey players, the average window is 5.5 years, but even a minor lapse in active play can permanently age the player out. No matter how hard they hit the gym, there’s no going back; the roster moved on. It’s the same for singers and vocal chords, cross-fitters and muscles. Use it or lose it. That’s how it works.

Why would it be any different for making art? I thought. The brain can atrophy too . . .

There it was—the real reason it was taking me so long to start. I was afraid my window had closed. I squandered my ability to create, and now it was too late. I aged out.

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A couple months ago, I decided it was time. I was tired of talking about making art—writing about it, thinking about it, researching about it. I pulled the trigger on a collection of art supplies that had been sitting in my online shopping cart, but when they arrived, I piled them into a cramped corner of my office where they remained, unopened, for over a month.

During most of June, I sat at my desk with my back turned to the pile of art supplies. I spent hours and hours studying my favorite artists and curating a master list of public domain art collections from all over the world.¹ All the while, a large blank canvas from the art-pile remained, ever-present, at the corner of my eye.

In early July, I finally decided I couldn’t make art until I made space. So I blocked a whole day on my calendar, blasted my favorite playlist, and worked up a sweat disassembling my entire home office. Everything except the couch went into the entryway of our house. All the framed “art” I purchased at Target, Homegoods, or somewhere online came off the walls and were piled outside the office doors, along with all the plants, books, vases, rugs, and other random office stuff, leaving hundreds of old papers and junk that went straight to the trash. When everything was out, I rearranged the chairs, bookshelf, and lighting. I swept, mopped, and dusted, and finally brought everything worth keeping back into the room.

But there was still not enough space to create. The couch had to go.

So out it went. I lifted the couch on one side and stuck dishrags under the “feet.” I then walked to the other side, heaved the couch from the base, and dragged the whole thing into the entryway directly facing our front door (where it sat for about a week). I tore all the new art-things from the packaging, released the old frames from their mass-produced artwork, and stuffed all the plastic, cardboard, and store-bought art into the trash. I then placed the new art supplies, plants, books, journals, and cozy blankets, lit some candles, and surveyed my work from the center of the room. Finally . . . space.

Space to handle business, space to write, space to read, space to make art, space to create.

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My former law office is now an adorable reading nook, writing hub, and art space.

*Also, primary headquarters for dogs that snore too loud in my ears.

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When you watch the video, you might catch the scent of creativity—cinnamon, cedar, clove, spiced vanilla . . .

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That was three weeks ago. Three weeks with a finished art space and no art.

Sure, I was busy. Sure, I was writing. Sure, I was doing mom-stuff and family-stuff and business-stuff. But, for the most part, I was sitting at my desk, facing my computer screen with that big white canvas—now mounted on the easel—staring at the back of my head. And I could feel it. Everyday. I could sense the blankness heavy at my back.

Number #1 on my To-Do List every morning was the same: “Make Some Art.” But what? What do you create after thirty years of not creating?

I coached myself. I said, “Just start something! Anything! You have to start somewhere.” I said, “You’ll be rusty, and it will be horrible, but you’ve been feeling the pull to make art for a long time, so do it! . . . The only way to make art is to start.”

So I started with a bird.

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Around noon a few days ago, I stepped up to the easel with the light, medium, and dark charcoal pencils clutched in my hand. I put on my current favorite album, stared at the blank paper for a long while, and finally placed my first mark in the middle of the big white space. Ten minutes later, there were another fifty marks—messy, smudged, and imprecise. I rummaged around Noah’s room for an old grade-school eraser, found one, and continued with my bird.

Within some minutes after I resumed my bird drawing, the plants, books, and journals from my office disappeared. The cozy blankets and candles, my laptop and phone—they all flew away. The music stopped. The office furniture sunk into the floor. The walls vanished. The whole world fell away. No—it was actually the opposite. Everything that was not the world disappeared, but the world remained. The world was the easel, the pencils, the bird, and me.

At some point, Paul and the boys got home and Jakob yelled “Mom!?” The sound resonated somewhere in the back of my brain and by the time I yelled back: “I’m in my office!” he was already upstairs. I wiped the hair from my face, suddenly realizing my hands were cramped and my knuckles were blackened. Minuscule carbon particles stood on the surface of my arms. Instinctively, I wiped them down and tiny black lines appeared. I then noticed it was dark outside. Holy Smokes! How long had I been drawing? It felt like twenty minutes. I checked my watch — almost 7 pm — I had been immersed in my own world for over six hours.

I looked up at that point. And there it was—the bird. My bird.

Here was something I made—something I created with my own hands. Here was something that proved I was not dead—my ability to create lives—reconstituted as if by magic in a single, long afternoon. Here were a thousand tiny pencil points coming together to form a perfectly imperfect imprint of my creative soul.

I leaned in to inspect the bird’s eye, and the glint of light seemed to wink at the notion of ever being “too late” to create. I stood back and smiled. I looked around at the other blank canvases and empty frames as I placed the charcoals back in the tin. “So it begins with a bird,” I said to myself out loud. Then I walked to the kitchen to make dinner.

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It begins with a bird. When I say “it begins,” I’m not just talking about drawing and making art. I’m talking about making a space to create, and in so doing, rebuilding a life with creativity at the center. I’m talking about disassembling everything—taking it all out, turning everything upside down, tossing the stuff that no longer belongs, and deciding what remains. I’m talking about reclaiming every carbon particle I abandoned to an artless career and recreating a life. I’m talking about creating from the inside out—leaving imprints of my soul on the world outside.

I am talking about remaking myself. One bird at a time. One flower at a time. One landscape at a time. One song at a time. One poem at a time. One essay at a time. One Substack post at a time. One novel at a time. One shared experience or truth or confession or masterpiece at a time.

It begins with a bird, but I don’t know where it ends. Possibly with a lot more birds. But undoubtedly with a lot of projects that don’t seem like much and days that feel tedious and unproductive. But I think there will also be some days just like the first one a few days ago. I’ll get lost for hours or days or months in the act of creation and suddenly—I’ll look up and see something. I’ll see something I made not just with my own two hands but with my whole heart and soul. And I will stand back and smile.

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[Here is a picture of my bird. I am especially proud of the eye.]

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The society to which we belong seems to be dying or is already dead. I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but clearly the dark side is rising. Things could not have been more odd and frightening in the Middle Ages. But the tradition of artists will continue no matter what form the society takes. And this is another reason to write: people need us, to mirror for them and for each other without distortion-not to look around and say, “Look at yourselves, you idiots!,” but to say, “This is who we are.” ― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

1. Yes, I will be sharing the list.