framing the stories within

December 2012

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. G.K. Chesterton

I struggle to find words to frame the experiences of a life lived, but it seems my body does not.

I’m having a skin cancer removed from my neck next week. It’s not a big thing and I hope it won’t turn in to a big thing. The doctor cuts an ellipse around defective skin cells. Like an open eye, inked lines frame the raised basal cells, drawing attention to something grown large, discoloured and textured.

It seems my body has become an art gallery: home to stories now framed with odd growths, crinkled laughter and frown lines, stretched skin from having children and etchings on my right knee from an arthroscopy a few years ago.

The stories of my life have enriched and contributed to my embodied knowledge about making. My skin has become a moving, shifting frame for experiences explored through creative play.

Danced art work has left residual shapes in the cells of my body. My mind’s neural patterns have diversified through practice and exposure to other people’s created artworks: both the work of their hands and the work of their lives. The value of a performance could evaporate in a moment; dismissed as nothing but entertainment, but it doesn't. It doesn't, because the limitation of the body draws attention to something eternal created in the act of making.

So, I don’t mind that our bodies are limited. It’s interesting to me because the shape and substance of created stories give the gift of beauty to the frame. The artwork created during my life has left traces in my skin and anyone can see the spirit within, for it marks the frame without.

Increasingly, I am drawn to the artwork within the human form of others. Some people leave me hushed by exquisitely crafted beauty evident just under the surface of their skin. Others I delight to encounter for their souls are shiny new crayon drawings of sunshine and flowers and rockets shooting through stars.

I still love the created art work of the sculptor, the dancer, the musician, the writer. It is something I can almost see, touch, and hear: something to absorb in the frame of my very own being. After the curtain closes, the film credits roll, the musician puts away the instruments, I am changed. I have encountered something that challenges and enriches my own creative process and the artwork I then create will be deeper and richer for it.

Once I leave the doctor’s surgery next week, red and tender skin on my neck will be stitched with black twine; knotted and rough. Eventually the redness will fade; the eye will close over scar tissue and the framed picture of this latest story will be indelibly etched in the skin near my voice.