Reflections on The Artist’s Way, Week 6: Recovering a Sense of Abundance
This is the sixth post in a series on The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, a book and a self-study program developed by Julia Cameron in the 1990s. Each week of the program is focused on a theme. In this post, I’ll be looking reflecting on Week 6: Recovering a Sense of Abundance.
‘We cling to our financial concerns as a way to avoid not only our art but also our spiritual growth. Our faith is in the dollar.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 6
In the summer of 2008, I took a break from my life in New York City to do a post-graduate art program in Barcelona.
In the years between leaving high school and entering my 30s, I never stopped wanting to be an artist, but I kept burying the idea under my survival until I had created a life where the desire no longer seemed to fit.
I worked freelance as a designer for a software design company and lived with a close friend in a top floor apartment in South Park Slope, Brooklyn. There was nothing wrong with my life, but I kept remembering a question one of my design tutors from Parsons would ask when dull work was pinned up at critique. ‘There’s nothing wrong with it,’ he would say, ‘but what’s right with it?’
I felt restless. I was fortunate and frustrated. I had lived in NYC for 13 years, at least five years longer than I had intended to stay. I had started to do that annoying thing New Yorkers did when they got bored with their lives, and I’d talk about moving to San Francisco. I decided to do one nice thing for myself before reluctantly beginning to plan my relocation to California, and I applied to the summer art program in Spain.
I remember chatting with the cab driver as we cruised down Eastern Parkway toward JFK Airport. I had sublet my room in my apartment, planning to return to New York for a period before figuring out the details of the move west. I didn’t realise that when I’d return to New York a few months later, I’d be selling or giving away most of what I owned to move to Italy, eventually choosing to live in Europe long-term.
By the time I arrived in Florence a year or so later, after a period living at an artist community in the countryside of Umbria, the part-time remote work I had been doing for the software company in New York had dried up and I was struggling to get by.
I had a small reserve of euro coins to pay for my daily gelato (typically a scoop each of fior di latte and frutti di bosco in a cone), but the larger bills worried me. I considered my options.
‘In order to thrive as artists—and, one could argue, as people—we need to be available to the universal flow.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 6
I met a woman who told me she sat as a portrait model at one of the painting schools. It was a clothes-on gig, and the students paid the models directly. I went by the school and climbed up the dusty staircase, passing rooms filled with easels and the sweet smell of oil paint. I found the model notice board and posted the grainy headshot I had taken with the camera on my laptop.
A friend’s husband was studying at the school, noticed my photo, and called me. He was looking for a model for his next assignment. I ended up sitting for him for a few hours in the morning for the next few weeks while he painted my likeness. He and another student worked in the same room, and I sat on a raised platform next to the other model. She and I would chat during our break and I’d get to practice new Italian phrases. At the end of the week, the painter would give me a few folded notes to pay for my patience and stillness. I’d put the money in an envelope.
‘When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 6
I heard about a part-time nanny job from another friend. There was a Japanese-Italian family that lived within a Palazzo on the south side of the Arno River. They had a young daughter and the mother wanted her to practice speaking English.
When I arrived to begin our first afternoon together, I was surprised to hear the little girl speak English with a distinct New York accent. We sat at a large dining table and she finished her English vocabulary homework. Her worksheet had a line drawing of a family. Below the figure of the little boy, she had neatly written ‘brotha’ in pencil. Close, I said, gently correcting her spelling. No, she told me confidently. She was sure it was ‘brudda’. I soon discovered she had gone to kindergarten on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, which explained both the attitude and the accent. We found a good groove together.
One afternoon, her mother came in and offered me tea. Did you like green tea? she asked. A few minutes later, she returned carrying a blood-red enamel tray. On it was a small teapot and cup. She poured an electric green liquid into the cup for me to drink. It was grassy and fresh. This is real green tea, I thought, pausing like you do when you want to remember a moment. Letting it sink in just a little bit more.
At the end of each session, the little girl’s mother would give me a crisp 50 euro note. I’d add the cash to my envelope.
‘What gives us true joy? This is the question to ask concerning luxury, and for each of us the answer is very different.’
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, Week 6
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