The Power of Ordinary
We can find the concept of the extraordinary quite alluring. It is always holding a promise of something outside of the norm, it is special and it happens occasionally. We can get hypnotised by its promise and when it comes to our creative processes and outcomes, we want to be in the vicinity of the extraordinary.
Yet, this can be an illusory pursuit. Because of the very nature of the term extraordinary, it cannot happen in the everyday, it does not reside in the normal and therefore its appearance can be elusive and sporadic. This is the opposite of what we want our creative practice and outcomes to be. The power does not lie in the pursuit of the extraordinary, it lies in the collaboration with the ordinary and when we can normalise the creative process and incorporate it into our everyday, normal lives, then extraordinary things can happen.
We may find that we have begun creating on a more regular basis, that we are developing our skills and our artworks whatever form they may take. And it is through the acceptance and placing our art and our creative journeys into ordinary settings that this can be accomplished.
Within the world of art and its creations there is a lot of mysticism and awe about where this creative inspiration arises and how it comes to be. And although I truly believe that there is a mystical and magical alchemy that takes place when ideas are created and made manifest through our art, I also believe that we lose out on actively engaging with this artistic process when we dwell on this idea of it being other worldly.
I believe it is but I believe that this can create an onus on the artist who then feels they need an extraordinary idea or they have to be creating from a place that doesn’t feel like the everyday to be able to make art. We put creating art and its process on a pedestal and then we can’t always reach it. When it should be with us in our everyday life, alchemising our ordinary lives with the power that it holds.
When we make anything normal and ordinary what we do is grant ourselves access to it without creating barriers and obstacles. We misunderstand the terms to mean boring and anything other than creative, but it is from the pursuit in our normal, ordinary lives that art can become an active agent in our lives and we connect with it more and create more because it is no longer a far away mystical dream, but is alive in your everyday life and you can find it and engage with it whenever you desire and wherever you find yourself.
We normalise so many things that are in essence extraordinary. Our bodies are a prime example. We brush our teeth and we wash ourselves and all the while our bodies are doing extraordinary things by breathing, digesting and enabling us to live. And we bring taking care of our bodies in the realm of the normal and everyday. We don’t wait until inspiration strikes or we are in the mood to brush our teeth, we just do it and in turn we get to have the delight of eating and drink and smiling and our teeth do their part.
We want to bring making art into the same realm of the ordinary because this is truly where the power exists. Poems get written, books get penned, art is made in the ordinary. When we set aside the romanticised versions of making art and the creative journey, we allow ourselves the gift of having the magic of art accompany us in the everyday, where we live. We don’t live our lives in extraordinary moments, we reside for the majority of the time in the ordinary and so that is where we want to be able to home our art. A place that feels accessible, safe and is close by. The ordinary is where the art is created and it is from these creations that the extraordinary comes to pass.