BLACK IRIS: WHAT NATURE TEACHES US ABOUT CREATIVITY

My first encounter with Georgia O’Keefe’s Black Iris was in The Book of Symbols.  I was stunned into silence as I accidentally landed on the page while flipping through to find the meaning of some other symbol.  I couldn’t stop staring (and swearing, breathlessly) as I lost myself in the depth and the blackness portrayed through the most delicate curves and folds.  

Much of my childhood was spent playing against the backdrop of my grandmother’s flower beds. The entire perimeter of her backyard was wrapped with one continuous garden containing only one kind of flower: irises of every color.  Every spring she would shovel out a few bulbs and give them away to make room for a small tomato patch.

My grandmother’s entire life was spent in devotion to her family but she also fiercely protected her creative life.  Grandma is not a woman you would call sweet.  The trials of her life squeezed the saccharine out of her from an early age.  She likes black coffee and cigarettes and will never miss an opportunity to mumble swear words under her breath. There’s a piercing quality to her almost-black eyes that lets you know with a single glance that she’ll cut straight through your bullshit like a hot knife through butter.  It’s not personal, it’s grandma.

But every once in a blue moon, you could catch grandma in her craft and witness a wholly different shade. Whether behind the paintbrush bringing to life her latest ceramic creation, or in the garden harvesting the summer season’s first vine-ripened, red tomato.  But most especially, when the irises were in bloom. I instinctively observed her in those moments, when her severity softened just enough to allow a momentary glimpse of the unseen side of her – a slight sparkle, lightness, effervescence – hidden beneath hardened layers formed from the harshness of life. I savored those moments just as I did every homegrown tomato I was lucky to share with her.

The iris’ flowering cycle is short-lived, but its transient bloom will take your breath away and transform you if you allow yourself to open as the iris does. The creative life is like this. Inspiration is not evergreen. It comes in flickers and flashes. You know when it arrives, because a little splash of color appears, momentarily altering the landscape of your life.  And then just like that it’s gone.

The iris, like every living creature in nature, has a lesson for us. She asks us to savor and to surrender. To burst into bloom, opening yourself full-bore to the call of the wild, exposing your brilliance, even with the full knowledge that it will fade and wither, folding back into the very place from which it came.   

But the iris also reminds us that under the right conditions in the soil of your psyche, its silvery green, almost iridescent leaves are capable of reflecting the dazzling light of the creative life force that can carry you during even the darkest winter months.    

Like my grandmother’s garden.  Like the perfectly worded statement that comes to you on the highway and has you gunning for the next exit to write it down before it leaves you.  A desire to dance or read or sing or run or paint or hike or laugh or cry that is so strong you feel like you might erupt into a million pieces. That is the creative soul life burning in you.  Its only desire is to express itself through your unique genius in the way that only YOU can. When inspiration next calls will you, like the iris, burst open, surrender, and be transformed?

Seeing Georgia O’Keeffe’s Black Iris for the first time changed me.  Like observing my grandmother in rapture, I was keenly aware that I was inside of a sacred moment.  It is in those moments that we are called to unfurl, open our hearts wide, deep, and full like an expansive bloom on the canvas before us, and allow it to penetrate every cell of our being leaving us forever changed.  Even when we feel like it may swallow us whole. Especially then.

“I’VE BEEN ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED EVERY MOMENT OF MY LIFE – AND I’VE NEVER LET IT KEEP ME FROM DOING A SINGLE THING I WANTED TO DO.”

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE

That is wild and soulful living.  

Happy birthday to the rebel, the revolutionary, Georgia O’Keeffe.  Thank you for your spirit, your boldness, your relentless devotion to your genius, and your illustrious example of a life lived in full color.

Over to you, have you ever been so captured by an image or a moment that it changed the way you engage with the world?  Please tell me in the comments!

In Love & Wildness,