Anna Malaika Tubb’s new book, Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation, literally expands your horizons. She redirects your view from these three famous men to the women who raised them, Alberta King, Louise Little and Berdis Baldwin.
By telling these women’s stories she widens the lens on who their sons were and where they came from. She reveals their lineage in political, spiritual and relational terms.
Not only does she tell the story of how these women shaped their sons, she describes how they influenced their husbands. But it’s not just about the mothers’ relationships to the men in their lives – it’s about who they were individually, their dreams, their yearnings.
By making visible the talents, passions and identities of these women before they had their sons, she also provides the context for the yearnings central to social justice movements that existed before, and fed into the civil rights movement, and the racial justice movements of today.
By reclaiming these mothers, Anna is doing healing work, and revealing the mother wellspring that nourishes humanity.
In an interview with Alicia Garza, Anna describes her impetus for the book, “Moms are so underappreciated, overlooked, unrecognized. And that’s beyond biological motherhood – it’s those who are doing motherwork – those who are nourishers, who are teachers, essential workers are doing motherwork, caring for others, making sure that the world continues to move forward.”
You can watch the dynamic interview between Alicia Garza and Anna presented by the Women’s Foundation California here:
For the past couple years, I’ve been in love with watercolor – the puddles, the merging, the transparency, the texture. Lusciousness.
Then earlier last year, I started learning about gouache – opaque watercolor. Gouache opened up a whole new world of density and layering. Now, I’ve taken the plunge into acrylic paints – there are so many types. Fluid, heavy body, even transparent.
The vividness of the colors has my attention.
Unlike watercolors, you can cover up previous layers. They open up a whole new world of incorporating mistakes by design.
The two paintings here were my first two acrylic paintings. I used an old credit card to smear the acrylic color, then stood back and looked at it. I asked myself, what might be possible on this surface. I used a carbon pen to draw the women. I drew them scribbly, restating the lines, accepting why lines.
And then, right on the page, I freewrote a little bit about the pressures I sometimes feel to do more, learn more, prove more.
Through the writing, I started to relax, and felt this sense of relief that led to and informed me writing the words, “I am Enough!” Such a feeling of relief to embrace enoughness.
Accepting that I am enough is not a one and done effort. It is a cycle of reaching, relaxing, releasing. What might you release so that you can embrace and rest in enoughness?
Making marks, playing with color, arranging shapes, doodling, drawing and making art has helped me to claim my vision, my voice, my full self.
I have always made marks on the page. I am a writer, after all.
But I started learning to draw in 2016.
The impetus? One day, I was watching my boyfriend, Lloyd, an artist, draw some yoga poses for an assignment that he’d taken on. I noticed that he was looking up the yoga poses online, and then using the poses to guide what he drew. What are you doing? I asked. He told me he was researching the poses, learning what they look like, and then drawing his versions of them.
I was puzzled. What? Artists don’t already have the images they draw in their heads? What? Artists do research too? Of course, it made sense. As a writer, I know that research is an important part of my work. But the work that visual artists do had always seemed like magic to me.
After Lloyd explained how he used references to draw, I took myself to a café, googled the om symbol – a image that I love – and practiced drawing it. By the end of the hour, I could draw the om symbol. Wow, if I can do that, what else can I do? Then I googled art classes and signed up for one at Studio One Art Center in Oakland.
I enjoyed my class at Studio One, but when it was over, I wanted another. I had a book by Mona Brookes called Drawing with Children: A Creative Method for Adult Beginners, and knew that she had an art school in Berkeley. I called and left a message. She called me and explained her method.
I was struck by how she deconstructed the instruction process. Students don’t start out drawing 3-d objects and still lifes the way so many art schools do. If you don’t have confidence in your ability to draw at all, that’s too much of a leap. Instead, as a student, you start with drawing lines and shapes from 2-d images.
Step by step you build your capacity and confidence to make lines, shapes and connect them into recognizable images.
I signed up right away and studied at the Monart School of the Arts for a year – first with 8 – 10 year olds, and later with teenagers.
In one of my early classes, we were drawing a picture of a man playing a lute. I was proceeding along quite nicely, having drawn the outline in pencil, then inked in the drawing, and now was starting to color. Well, I got to a certain point in his pants and I made a mistake. UGH! I raised my hand and asked for white-out. Katherine, the instructor, came over and said – oh no, white-out would show through when you color in the rest.
You’ll have to make the mistake part of the design. And guess what I did, while considering how making the mistake part of the design is something I could do more of in the rest of my life.
I was always the only adult student during the Monart classes. Reflecting on the experience of those weekly classes, especially with the younger children, I can now more fully appreciate what an important part of my artistic development these experiences were.
As I watched the younger children produce their drawings during the step-by-step instructions, I saw us, all of us, drawing an image, such as a peacock, or the man with the lute, in our individual ways, maybe lines shaky, proportions a bit wonky, and yet each so beautiful and so delightful. And yes, mine was delightful too. This was mind-opening.
Along this path, I’ve practiced markmaking, zentangling, drawing faces, bodies, animals, flowers, buildings, learning how to use ink, brushes, watercolor, gouache, acrylics and icons.
Because I wanted to be able to draw my thoughts as well as what was in front of me, I studied visual thinking and graphic facilitation and practiced diagrams, sketchnotes, mental models and visual templates. I drew from observing what I saw in front of me, and I drew from my imagination, curious to see what would emerge on the page.
I PRACTICED – one hour, two hours, sometimes more than that, every single day. No day was complete if I hadn’t drawn something.
Within weeks of committing myself to learning how to draw, I was in heaven – delighted, thrilled, ecstatic. I was in heaven because I realized I could color in and around and between the lines, no matter how perfect or imperfect my lines. I realized this because I was reading one of Lynda Barry’s books and I saw that she colored in her imperfect drawings, and the drawings were delightful. I realized that until this moment, I held a belief that you could only color in your drawings if they were perfect, that coloring was dessert.
I have learned that for me, coloring is part of the MAIN COURSE.
I was able to practice so much, draw so much, because I delighted in what I drew. I enjoyed the process, and I savored making marks and images.
Throughout this process I learned that drawing helped me to see myself more clearly and realize more about what mattered to me.
I could draw something absurd, and make myself smile, or draw something disturbing and make myself frown, wonder and reflect. I could connect one idea to another through making marks, playing with color, arranging shapes, doodling, drawing and making art.
Are you intrigued? Do you wonder if you can draw? Of course you can. If you can write, you can draw.
Here are some resources that I recommend to get you started. There are many, many resources. I am suggesting these because they are kind and encouraging, but over the next few months, I’ll share much more.
Mona Brookes, the founder of Monarts, has written two books. I recommend them both – but especially Drawing with Children, if you are a beginner.
Becoming Me: A Work in Progress: Color, journal and brainstorm your way to a creative life, by Andrea Pippins. Written by artist, illustrator Andrea Pippins, this is an inspiring workbook journal that has great drawing tips. Wonderful for getting your hand moving – markmaking and coloring.
Doodling for Writers, by Rebecca Fish Ewan. This new book by cartoonist and memoirist Rebecca Fish Ewan takes writers by the hand and helps us practice lines, doodles, mental maps, diagrams and more to help us have more fun writing and moving the world.
The Drawing Mind by artist, educator Deborah Putnoi does a great job of expanding our ideas of what it means to draw. This is a great workbook that will have you following your marks, lines, and shapes into infinite worlds and possibilities.
I recently bought some ink sprays from Dyan Reaveley’s Dylusions line. These are acid-free water-soluble dyes that you can spray on your journals and artwork. They’re reactivated by water so you’ll have to keep that in mind when you put wet media on pages that you’ve sprayed with these paints.
I’ve been using them like watercolors – spraying them on a variety of my drawing and watercolor paper surfaces, or taking the spray head out of the bottle and drawing with the long plastic tube.
The triptych was made by drawing shapes in ink, spraying the page, then applying a wet brush to pull the color out over the page.
The other paintings were made by painting on tracing paper. In some parts of the page, I sprayed through a stencil. I may draw or write on top, or cut them up and use as collage papers in my journal.
Is there an art medium that you’ve been wanting to try? Let yourself experiment and play.
One of the things that we learn as coaches is how to ask empowering questions.
Sometimes I think of these questions as flashlights that shine a light on something that you may not have noticed. The questions capture your attention.
When used during a coaching conversation, sometimes you can feel movement not just in your mind, but in your belly. Something opens up. These are questions that are designed to help you think deeply, notice your situation anew, consider different ways of seeing, and discover surprising possibilities.
Here are some of my favorite empowering questions:
What is the purpose that you are called to fulfill?
What moves you?
What do you need?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how committed are you?
What is it to be with yourself?
In what ways does your body flow?
I invite you to read a few, then stop and journal, or doodle, as you let the questions move in you, sparking fresh, spacious curiosity.
