Life Can Be Trusted
by
Ann Jost - Artist, Poet, Teacher
My name is Anne Jost. I am an artist and teacher. I have taught art or history for over 20 years. I also have a master's in counseling, which I find very helpful in teaching. I am blessed with three children and for thirty five years a husband and good friend. I also, after chemotherapy for cancer, have been taking medication for depression.
I am proud to belong to a family of four generations of artists. But my family also has incidents of depression and manic-depression. Along with a tendency toward depression, I am very right brained, have mild dyslexia and a heightened imagination, which gives me a unique view of the world, and helps me as an artist. So my life has been both challenged and blessed.
The art I create partly reflects how I work with depression. Humor, movement, color and mystery are important components in my work. I am interested in visually knowing an object so well that I can begin to experience non-visual seeing. This activity, which defies my ability with words, is a great source of energy for me. When an object is looked at for a long time and in many different ways, the experience of seeing begins to take on a sense of subtlety, reverence, surrender and connection, that feels something like falling in love with the object and all that extends from it. An essence of soul seeing is sensed and the object takes on a state of grace and beauty. This open process of creating, like any act of creating, is close to divine mystery. The challenge is to leave an imprint of this experience in one's work without trying to make this happen. And any process this intense requires discipline and hard work less it become misdirected. I discipline my self to do some drawing or creative work every day.
Exercises I use to improve seeing include creating through accident, discovering form in nature, looking at objects to see larger ones or focusing on the subtleties of other senses - hearing, smelling, touching and tasting. They all seem connected. Depression can take one to a place of darkness. But darkness is also a place of yet to be formed possibilities, not an entirely bad place to be for an artist. Others and I create from their depression new selves with greater strength and compassion. And with the medication I take, I can experience real joy and gratitude.
I will close with a poem of mine:
The prayer of life
in the folded seed of a flower.
Falling in the air
to a hostile ground.
Life can be harsh. The paradox is, that life can also be trusted.
Click a picture below to enlarge.
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Story and photographs edited by John Veierstahler and published
by HopeToHealing.com
with permission of Ann Jost.
© 2004 Ann Jost