Join me in a creative goals workshop on January 6. In this 2-hour online session, we’ll sketch a roadmap for creative projects in 2026. You don’t have to be a creative to benefit--but you'll learn how to use creativity to reach your destination.
Only $25 if you sign up before January 1st.
Your presence helps me in my journey, too. Let’s do this together!
“All that you touch you change,” wrote Octavia Butler. “All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change.”
But what about comfort and security? That elusive goal that our egos nonetheless pursue non-stop. How do we manage those relentless wanting monsters? More stuff, more ease, more predictability, more safety!
Yet creativity lives right outside that realm. It beckons from the other side of certainty. It dances with Spirit, that other undefinable force at the root of life. Change is where “God” lives. It’s also where art is made.
"Beyond the Skin 5," which was as much about resistance to change as it was about the strength of anger.
In order to maintain the practice of art-making, I need to get comfortable with experiencing the unknown. Even those disturbing seasons of upheaval. In fact, the most fruitful periods of creativity often bloom through the hardest challenges. Those moments where life brings me to my knees, forces me to surrender my desperate grip, and delivers me gasping onto a new shore.
"The Mother," part of the series "Dangerous Angels," which I painted during and after my divorce 12 years ago.
That’s where I discover faith. It’s never what I expect it to be—which makes sense, because it’s the unknown that creates the experience of grace. If I could predict what it looks and feels like, I’d still be inside the ego’s pursuit of comfort. But one thing I know for sure: faith brings a much better feeling than anything my safety-chasing self can achieve on her own. Maria Popova describes faith as “this ancient need for something to keep us from breaking the possible on the curb of the known, to keep the heart from breaking on the cold hard floor of a world that has always mistaken the limits of the imagination for the limits of reality.”
"Faith," watercolor, 2002--one of my "Transgender Superheroes" series from back in the day.
Terry Tempest Williams said, “I want to feel both the beauty and the pain of the age we are living in. I want to survive my life without becoming numb. I want to speak and comprehend words of wounding without having these words become the landscape where I dwell. I want to possess a light touch that can elevate darkness to the realm of stars.
This vascular malformation could bleed and burst. Or I can simply go on living, appreciating my condition as a vulnerable human being in a vulnerable world, guided by the songs of birds. What is time, sacred time, but the acceleration of consciousness? There are so many ways to change the sentences we have been given.”
Some might consider Virgil Ortiz's art more fierce than healing--but as you can see from my art, I love art that pushes me beyond my comfort zone. Maybe because I need fierce courage not only to create art, but to get through life. When I see others making art from inside that uncomfortable place, I feel inspired to keep going.
Virgil Ortiz, "Incubators," high fire clay vessels, underglazes, acrylic paint with corning glass tendrils, 2016
