An Artist's Date

Meeting my inner artist via Frida Kahlo?

May 16, 2025

The Artist’s Way, written by Julia Cameron, is a 12-week program to “unblock the creative artist” by means of treating creativity as a kind of spirituality.

I’ve owned this book for a while now, but had never started it because I wanted to “do it properly.” I wanted to have 12 weeks that I knew I could dedicate to the practice without getting interrupted. Well, that time never came but when I did my quarterly solo time in February1 I brought the book along.

For my solo time then I booked a hotel room in downtown Richmond. It turned out to nearly be a bust of a weekend, as I had a gnarly head cold and just hours before my husband was in the ER getting stitches in his hand. But I made it, and I took a long hot bath (a questionable choice given the severity of my head cold — I was almost too exhausted for it) and watched Conclave and tried to sleep through my cold and the loudest air handler imaginable.

The arrival of morning time was a great relief all around. I walked (well bundled) through the cold rain to a quiet restaurant in a hotel, ordered myself lox on toast2, and opened up The Artist’s Way.

The book, as I said, has a 12-week format where Julia writes on some topic or another of “creative recovery” — each week was supposed to have some different focus but to be honest a lot of it all sounded the same. Each week also includes a list of writing prompts and small assignments.

The magic of the program, as Julia and others who have used the program say, lies in the accompanying exercises. Two exercises remain through the whole program and are encouraged even afterward: morning pages and the artist date.

Morning pages I have mentioned here: three pages of longhand writing every morning, where the only rule is that you do not stop moving your pen. And for the first 8 weeks or so at least, you do not read what you have written. Julia talks about how morning pages are more effective if you do them rather than try to write them; she says writers actually often have the hardest time with them.

The artist date is a weekly affair and is much less prescriptive. Julia writes, “An artist date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist. In its most primary form, the artist date is an excursion, a play date that you preplan and defend against all interlopers. You do not take anyone on this artist date but you and your inner artist. That means no lovers, friends, spouses, children—no taggers-on of any stripe.”

The point is to spend quality time with your “inner artist child” just as a couple or a parent and child would set aside time to get to know and spoil each other.

I did end up, by crook or by hook, making it through all twelve weeks of the book, in my own fashion. I found time to write morning pages about five out of every seven days, and every Saturday or Sunday I read the next week’s chapter and looked over the assignments, occasionally making it through some of the writing prompts.

But what I never did was an artist date.

Did I do fun and interesting things in that time? I did. But I never scheduled an artist date. I never did anything to go and interact with my “inner artist” on purpose — though occasionally it happened on accident.

My twelve weeks serendipitously finished up the last week that I was in the office. I thought about going through the book again — wouldn’t my sabbatical be a great time to take it on in earnest?

I decided against a complete reread but opted to continue morning pages and commit to a real artist date every week. I figured it shouldn’t be too difficult, seeing as how I now had five days a week to myself.

Somehow last week came and went without an artist date. I did lots of things, but I didn’t plan any of them with the playful intentionality that I figured should go with an artist date.

Here we are: today, I took myself on an artist’s date.

Frida looks like Frida; I look like a startled animal.

How did this happen? Here is how: I bought a timed-entry ticket to the art museum’s Frida Kahlo exhibit last night before I really looked at everything I had to do today.

After 13 weeks of avoidance and excuses and thinking about the artist date, I had interesting expectations. I imagined that my inner artist would come and talk to me, like Jiminy Cricket, telling me about ideas for art she wanted to create or visions of work.

What happened was that I discovered Frida Kahlo to be a person who experienced a lot of pain in her relatively short life and reflected it in her work: often crude, grotesque drawings and sad, pained portraits. It didn’t help that the title of the exhibition was “Beyond the Myth”: mostly sketches, portraits, and backstory to reveal the person behind her famous art. I would have liked to have been more familiar with her work generally before seeing this particular showing.

I wonder how I would have walked the exhibit had I been alone. The exhibit was dark. I felt like an old person walking right up to each sketch and picture to get a decent look and moving on before I was done because I was in the way.

At the end of the exhibit they had set up tables with paper and colored pencils for you to try your hand at a still life or self-portrait. I thought about this sad, pained woman and tried a self portrait.

My hastily drawn conclusion on the way out of the gallery was that I would rather not be a famous artist, if the grotesque products of my pain are what made me famous. But then again I am not familiar enough with her other work — only the pieces shown today which closely mirrored her losses: her chronic pain, her troubled marriage and love, miscarriages, and the declining health that brought her to her death at 47.

But I’m going to keep thinking about it.

Today I:

walked 2 miles at a local park
went grocery shopping
bought C a second pair of shoes and me a new set of bedsheets - the ones I had had for over four years gave up the ghost last week, splitting down the middle when I just went to sit up in bed
toured the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
came home and collapsed onto the couch and scrolled, which I did not like at all
made a coffee, switched the laundry, and wrote this post

Today I felt:

Delighted that I finally went on an artist date. Down and out because it turned out to be kind of depressing. And then kind of a malaise, an untethered sort of feeling from not having the go-get-it energy that I had last week and the beginning of next week. Energy does wax and wane like the moon, but I want to be careful to still choose life-giving activities over sucky ones (like scrolling) even when I am tired and unmoored.

Next week:

Next week is all sorts of up in the air. I have a couple doctor’s appointments. I am supposed to learn to rake hay on Monday. Memorial day weekend is just around the corner and I need to prep a bit for a trip we are taking. Over the weekend I hope to take a look at my projects (ongoing and still to do) and see what I want to prioritize next week.

Tell me:

Dunham Dwells

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