Fervor
The creative process is wildly different for all of us. It is a personal journey where strengths, observations and admirations love to roam. It can be playful, therapeutic, lucrative or it can feel very far away. Do we dress it up or keep it disguised by choice? If we distance ourselves does that cushion the blow?
It is fair to say there seems like an endless list of limitations; time, money, attention to prevent us from starting or keeping going forward with our creativity.
Somewhere along the line between disappointment and success lies a specific energy.
Lately, I feel like I have been injected with a creative fervor and to share a little of my findings is to imbue a shortening of the maddening for anyone who has experienced the depths of these blows.
Tools to support Creative Flow ⬇️
This painting is one part of a diptych I made circe 2022/25.
The whole piece is called Suspend Belief, a phrase I love as I can imagine something within myself lifting.
It is created with acrylic, ink, thread, pencil and some toilet rolls I would fold and cut into hearts. It was made with emotions that wanted to stay hidden but kept showing me different ways to accept them. I moved with them. I move still!
Tools to support Creative Flow
Learn the Rules and break them, intentionally, if a little subconsciously
Balance, aesthetics, perspective, flow allow viewers gain access to the work, we can make it easier for them by following some rules. It is also every artist’s duty to recreate them too. A revolving door of possibility. Some will feel more invited to sit with it, others will do anything than that. Many will see nothing, their eyes, the ability to focus their attention, lives elsewhere. Perhaps the subliminal plane is where there is more conscious connection? This is best felt when we dive through our practice with authenticity.
Allow yourself to hate the piece
While I would love to be endlessly positive and encouraging it would defeat the purpose for the process to always be smooth-running. I reflect on an art piece that had gone through some periods of creative punishment. I threw the painted canvas outside for a couple of days to get rained on, allow the elements wash it. I hung it upside down for another few and still didn’t want to look at it. I painted it upside down. And one night I softly painted over most of it, like it was having an unspoken command over me. I like this piece now. I love that it allowed me feel more into my creative responses to it.
Fail more
This may be a combination of the last two points. How many of us feel almost haunted by a desire for perfection? Is it worth doing at all if it is not brilliant? Well, that overly common phrase ‘Trust the Process’ is immensely potent. How willing are we to go through difficult processes? The failing can be re-phrased as experimentation. There is such joy to be found in happy accidents. Recreating these is an artform of its own.
Do nothing
There was a couple of days lately when my eyes began to hurt as I had been staring at paint and using different lighting for an excessive amount of time. When I needed a break the phone was not a possibility, or watching anything on any screens. I put a blindfold /eye-mask on and gave myself strict permission to stop. Less is more. Eyes and mind began to readjust. Nothing amounts to maximising productivity.
Love
No matter the difficulty, the disappointment, the restriction, the failure there is a value. There is an incredible charge of energy that occurs when we create. I have been focusing mine through meditation, memory, words, colour and story. I know that it is a jumbled up way to show a journey but it lives with universal intent, to simply respond to the world, through love.
