What We Say and Do Is Important!

March 2020

Professor Cheryl H. Hooks

With Students from Fine Arts Studio

The University of Mount Olive, North Carolina

What we say and do is important!

During a conversation with two artist friends, Traycee and Cindy, we discussed various books we have found helpful. We began to discuss The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.* All three of us have found the book quite helpful. Cindy went on to comment that the book could well be applied to our lives as artist, even beyond being a book of wise concepts. How true! How true!

As I enjoy connecting the life-gifts given me with the artists in my Fine Arts Studio class, I decided to incorporate The Four Agreements into our creative meditation sessions. We pause at the beginning of class to gather as creative human beings to mediate, reflect and respond in a creative manner. This is a sacred time in a sacred space.

Be impeccable with your word.

Be impeccable with your word, is the first agreement offered by Ruiz. In Fine Arts Studio, we discussed what the concept meant to us as human beings and as artists. In response to some of the statements in the book, I asked the artists to answer a series of questions.

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Being impeccable with your word is the correct use of your energy; it means to use your energy in the direction of truth and love for yourself. If you make an agreement with yourself to be impeccable with your word, just with that intention, the truth will manifest through you and clean all the emotional poison that exists within you. (32-33)

Write down a positive, nurturing statement for yourself as an artist – one in which you “use your energy in the direction of truth and love for yourself.” Create a number of statements and then choose the best one.

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Do you see how you use the word against ourselves? We must begin to understand what the word is and what the word does. If you understand the first agreement, be impeccable with your word, you begin to see all the changes that can happen in your life. (42)

The words you use against yourself can be the spoken word or the thoughts you think. Identify self-limiting thoughts you have had against yourself as an artist. 

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Change first the way you deal with yourself, and later in the way you deal with other people, especially (other artists).(42)

How much you love yourself and how you feel about yourself are directly proportionate to the quality and integrity of your word. When you are impeccable with your word, you feel good; you feel happy and at peace . . . . This first agreement will change the kind of seeds your mind is fertile for. (44)

How can you use your word to help encourage other artists? Be specific!

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The students in Fine Arts Studio were asked to reflect on these statements and questions and to return to class with their written responses. 

In preparation for the next session, I cut and taped down watercolor paper to hardboards and gathered watercolor painting materials for a creative response activity. Each artist was given a watercolor paper on a board, watercolor and a rag.

Once we were all in place, I asked them to mediate on the concept, Be impeccable with your word. We then began the creative session. Here is what I shared with the class.

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We are all connected. What we say, how we use our words, does not only affect us. We are not truly in control of our lives. Others are a part of our lives and they make decisions which in turn affect us. You have paint and a rag in front of you. Create one swipe across the clean page. This is your word.

(I then asked the artists to move the watercolor paper on the board to the student to their left.)

Now you have another person’s word – the creative swipe of color - as a part of your creative space, this sacred space. You can not control another person or their word but we do want to try to give each person our respect. Create another swipe of watercolor on the paper for the artist who began this image. Continue to pass the boards to your left and pause and reflect on the mediation for today, share ideas, and listen with respect. Continue with this process until each artist has had the opportunity to swipe a watercolor shape on each piece.

Once everyone has had the opportunity to add a little of themselves – their word – their creativity - to your piece, reclaim your orginal board. The image before you is what the creative universe has given you. Work with what is there. What do you see? Make what you see your own while keeping the original shapes, marks and values. Create a work in response to the meditation, Be impeccable with your word, while embracing the contributions of the other artists in the class and your individual response to the initial image.

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The artists took their images and returned with a finished work. An online discussion forum was created for them with the following instructions:

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After you have uploaded an image of your work of art:

1. Discuss the work of art and how it reflects you as an artist. If possible, address how it addresses being impeccable with your word.

2. Contemplate how important it is to recognize our connects to each other and how the work of art reflects this importance.

After you have posted the image, answered the two discussion points, read the other posts by the artists in this course and respond to the work and the reflections. Encourage and reconnect!

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A number of students have shared their finished image and their responses.

Elephants have a significant positive spiritual meaning and are used as symbols of good luck, power, success, wisdom and experience.

The way I see it, elephants represent the importance of being impeccable with my word, being impeccable to myself, and to others. They represent community, and they also represent the internal spiritual journey we all must take. For us, we use our art to experience that journey. Like the elephant we are emotional and travel with our community, we are wild and untamed until we begin searching our soul for enlightenment and wisdom. Like elephants we are strong, connected, and always observing the nature around us. Not only is it important to nurture our spirituality for our own mental well-being, but for the sake of our art, and sharing our individual paths with the world.

Amber

In this piece, there is a strong calm woman in a powerful stance with the moon above her and a one-eyed snake below her. This piece reflects me as an artist because of the energy I convey with the things that I saw and drew in with the ink after the group wash. When I am impeccable with my word I create a sense of security and peace within myself and around me while also staying in balance with the flow of the world. The woman in this piece is at peace and is able to keep her balance and flow with the world, this is shown by the placement of her arms and her closed eyes. 

We all know that life doesn't go as planned, even if we always make the right choices for ourselves we can't always control what happens to us or around us. A great example would be what we are all going through right now. Couldn't have picked a better time to ask this question, we are all connected and even in a selfish society, we cannot deny these ties to the rest of the world. What you do impacts other people and what other people do will impact you. It is essential to life for us to recognize how connected we are. The work of art reflects this important because it could have not been created or even envisioned just by my hand. During the group wash, everyone had a chance to add their own mark on everyone's board and no one knew what it was going to look like until the end. I had to work with the marks already on the board and I went along with their flow to create my art. This symbolized how we are connected in everyday life and how even if we don't notice everyone leaves their own mark in your life but you decide what you want it to be in the end.

Celeste

As I looked at the painted board that I was given, I felt a “flow” of energy and I “saw” a dragonfly tail touching the surface of the water, creating a ripple effect. This vision fueled my work. Highlighting the ripples and revealing the Source of the ripples was my goal, and I did this by creating a 2-step block print on top of the painting. The block printing itself represents my recent discovery of the love of block printing: the dragonfly represents my current series in progress, and the ripples on the water represent my mermidian spiritual path, in which water represents spiritual illumination, and ripples represent the beautiful effects of this illumination upon our Higher Selves.  

In order to “be impeccable with (my) word,” I must not “muddy” these waters by delving into fruitless information – information designed to actually divert my attention from my true course in studying Hebrew and Jewish mysticism. I want to stay true, stay impeccable, with the WORD (also referring to Scripture), as I engaged in forty years of dabbling, and now it is time to dig for the Source of the Word.

It is truly important for us to realize our connection with each other and honor that connection. The way we treat each other is important because it affects our futures – all of our futures. If we speak with kindness, the other will see a world that is kind. If we speak with harshness, the other will experience a world that is harsh. It is inevitable that we will meet with circumstances that call for a static, quick moment of discussion about negative things in order to deal with the issue, but after it is done, it SHOULD BE DONE. Gossiping about others or talking about someone’s shortcomings only creates a negative experience for the listener and degrades your own presence.  

To any whom I may have offended, I apologize and ask for your forgiveness! May I only create shiny ripples upon clear waters from now and into the future. May we all do this with our art!

Cindy

For my first piece of art for the four agreements, I saw an eye in my washes. I feel that an eye is a good subject when speaking about being impeccable with your word. I think people need to "see" other people. Not just look, but see. I feel that you need to realize others have feelings and that you should always try to remain positive when speaking to them. I chose to put a lot of colors and patterns in the eye because I wanted it to show that everyone is different. We all have different things that make us and it is important to see those things. 

Even though each individual is unique we are all still connected in some way. It could be through our family, our faith, our hobbies. Each person has something to contribute to you, you should always continue to learn. I wish in times like this people would see what we all have to offer. The world is in a panic at the moment and we all need to take a step back and help one another to see. 

Danielle

For my piece I saw a UFO. The UFO represents the unknown. You never know what someone else is feeling, (or) vice versa, they don't know how you are feeling. So being impeccable with your word is important to being positive in your life and others’ lives. 

I used all the marks that everyone put on the piece that I probably wouldn't have created otherwise. So, without the help of everybody in the class, I wouldn't have created this new thing. 

Destiny

The waterfall represents how our brains flow and how words just flow out our mouth. Sometimes we can't control what comes out our mouth and I have never seen anybody control a waterfall. 

It’s important to recognize our connections to each other because it helps us work as a team and understand each other’s style of work. This work reflects how we worked as a team to create difference works of art and our on style.

Elegance 

The piece above depicts two space ships traveling through a cluster of comets and stars. This piece represents my connections to the universe. As an artist I want my work to represent that connection so that each piece gives off mystifying energy. I decided to fully color in the piece to allow my inner colors to grow from the marks that were made, truly making them my own. I used metal leaf to allow the bright light that shines in my heart to reflect itself into my work. The spaceships represent my unique and possibly otherworldly aura that I give off. This piece was first created by all of us as a class, and even though we did not know who we were making the marks for I believe that these marks were made to perfectly represent myself and my art. 

I took those marks and made them into what reflects me most, which could be a way to represent how we are connected and how that affects who we are. Without even knowing it we have all affected each other in some way. With a word or even a silent look we all affect each other in some way. This is why we must address each other with positivity and kindness, because that is the only way to help each other grow both as people and artists.

Hannah

In the work of art I created, there is a long blue dragon surrounded by smoke clouds. This reflects me as an artist because it is what I saw in the ink washes. To me, being impeccable with your word means thinking about how what you say can affect others both negatively and positively. This piece represents that with the smoke behind the dragon being the flow of thought, leading to good choices of words.

Recognizing our connections to each other is important because you never know what someone is going through, and we can use our words to positivity impact each others’ lives. The smoke in this piece also reflects that uncertainty of not knowing.

Kayla

The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, shields us and helps fight off the evils in life. Be impeccable with your words, use the sword of the Spirit as we fight spiritual enemies.

It is important to recognize our connections to each other because we all make up one big world. Similar to how this piece was created, we all made different strokes that created one image. We live in this world together and the things that we do affects others as well as the world we live in.

Malana

*Ruiz, Miguel. The Four Agreements. Amber-Allen Publishing, 1997.