What if your creative confidence….
What if you your creative confidence does not look and feel like you thought it would?
Unfolding Ideas
Are you working towards something? A goal, an end point? How will you know you have got there?
The Messy Art of Creating
Life is not just one long straight line from nappies to walking to careers and home owning to kids and then a journey into whatever abyss we all believe in.
Making Progress That You Can’t See
There is a skill that is inherent in anything that creates something worthwhile and that is the ability to pursue an endeavour when you can’t yet see the outcome. In an era when instant gratification is all the rage, this notion flies in the face of it.
I Am Too……
Fill in the blank. When we are making an excuse for something we say we want but for whatever reason don’t think we can have, there are some common reasons that are voiced. I am too old, too late, too inexperienced, too something. The sentence begins with I am too…. and it ends with something that we deem true about ourselves.
Compassion vs Criticism
Imagine a flower but instead of the usual process of it moving from bud to bloom it went in reverse, full bloom and then moved into the tightest of buds, so tight that none of its inherent beauty remained and it went into decay.
Now imagine you and your creativity and think of the ways you think and feel about yourself when you are processing an idea. How do you nurture yourself to grow this idea into fruition? Do you talk kindly to yourself and show some compassion along the creative journey or do you instead criticise yourself for making mistakes, of not making the best work, of doing it wrong.
The Only Permission You Need
If you have a dream you would like to pursue who are you waiting for permission from to pursue it? There is the obvious answer, of not waiting for anyone’s permission but that is not the truth because as humans who are conditioned and brought up amidst a set of cultural beliefs and systems, whether we are aware of it or not, all too often we are waiting for somebody else to give us the green light on doing the things that we want to do.
Swimming in Distraction
How many thoughts do you think that you have each day? And of those thoughts, how many do you listen to? I never fully noticed how distracted I was by my thoughts and feelings until I compared the activity in my head to when I was painting. As soon as I would sit down to paint, it would be as if someone had just turned the volume down on the cacophony of thoughts that were there. The velocity with which they came slowed down, the volume was toned down and I wasn’t paying any attention to them. They were there but they were muted in the background.
Creating Art in Crevices & Craters of Time
When we are making art we can have preconceived notions of how much time we should be dedicating to the process. It can be a disruptive model of thinking that says that a specific amount of time is needed. When in actual fact, the time that you have available to you is exactly the right amount of time for you. Because the truth is you can create in the tiniest crevices of time when you have 15 minute to yourself or huge craters of time if you have a full day or week in which to dedicate to your artistic calling.
Bullying Illusions
When we decide we want to create a piece of art or pen a poem we all hear voices in our heads telling us that we can’t do it, that we have nothing worthwhile to contribute; that what we are creating is sub-standard. This is not something that is unique to you. Those thoughts aren’t only paying you a visit.
Freeze Drying Ideas
You can have an idea come along, seemingly out of nowhere, for free. You didn’t earn it, or pay for it or receive it as a reward for something you did. It just comes, as a gift for you to play with. So the idea is here, you get to create from it. And as soon as it touches base with you, one of two things can happen. You feel its arrival and you feel the lightness of its touch and entertain the sparks of your imagination. You go out and you play with it. You make what you will of it and you enjoy the undertaking. Or you freeze dry it and put it up on a shelf and you forget you even have it.
You Can’t Make Art Out of Excuses
When I have had conversations with other artists who want to create something but have not got round to doing it, I am met with eloquent excuses. They are excuses that are an art form in themselves. They have been well thought out, they are evidence based, there is data to support them and there are heavily embellished stories around them. They have had so much care, time and attention bestowed upon them that there is no wonder they are so polished and refined. And every time I hear them, I wonder this; if you spent that same amount of time and energy creating the very thing you have spent time creating excuses for then we wouldn’t be having this conversation. In fact, it is taking up the very same energy that could be used for creating art instead of creating excuses. Both are creativity in motion.
Googling Not Required
When you were a child and were living with abandon, you could be racing through your home and pretending you were a super hero and you would get struck with an idea. I want to paint a giraffe, wearing a sombrero, eating a doughnut. And you would stop in your super hero tracks and wonder off to find a blank sheet of paper and some felt tips that hadn’t had the life scrubbed out of them. And you would sit down and you would move that imagined doughnut eating, sombrero wearing giraffe out of your imagination and onto the blank sheet of paper.
Why You Are An Artist & Not Amazon Prime
Cultivating art in an era of speed and instant gratification is making a creative and intuitive process go against the tide of the warp speed of today’s wants and needs. We live in a world where we can look up something we want on our phones and with a couple of taps know that it will arrive on our doorstep within 24 hours. That is the backdrop of the current way we are experiencing life. With that comes a sense that everything should be that fast, move at that speed, be delivered within the shortest of time spans. Yet, that is not the case for things like the creative process.
The Art of Discomfort
You know that feeling when you have zipped up your jeans and they are just a little too tight and you spend the rest of the day walking around in a state of discomfort and the only thing on your mind is when the opportunity for you to rid yourself off these jeans is coming. We get consumed by our discomfort.
Creating An Art Practice
We are living in an era where all information is coming to you at supersonic speeds. Any question that enters our head can be answered in the time it takes you to type it into Google. With that type of instant gratification becoming hardwired into our brains, the idea of cultivating anything at a slow and steady pace feels counterintuitive to contemporary culture. There’s no speed involved and zero instant outcome, so where’s the incentive?
Game changes, same rules apply.
This post is all about changing games and having the same rule still apply. When I first started creating art and I wanted to share it, over 20 years ago, the game was completely different.
Return On Investment
How many ways do we stay in situations whether it be with people or objects or circumstances because we feel we have invested a certain amount and feel like we need a return on that investment before we walk away?
Make Art Not Seek Approval
Creating art that is your own and creating a life that fits you are two things that do not need the approval of others. In fact, seeking that approval will prove itself to be a hindrance over and over again.
Think small, then go smaller still.
Since beginning this experience of lockdown it has swept a level of simplicity into my world that I have never really experienced before. Enforced though it has been, the eradication of events, social interactions, lack of activity has reduced down each day’s contents to the lowest common denominators.