Tag Archives: artist

take a minute…

21 Sunday Feb 2021

Posted by in art, Creativity

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I have been psyching myself up and out–for months, years even, trying to re-establish an art practice. I have gone the way of the parent who decided to stay at home and raise a child(ren) and then never went back to work outside the home. Having done freelance work from home for years I thought I would just naturally drift back into that once the child had left home. But the husband was used to someone to run the home while he traveled for work, and the child didn’t leave home until she was 23…and then there was breast cancer. The practice was well and truly buried. Deeply.

I drifted from dribs and drabs of painting, to jewellery making, to various crafts but I never developed a discipline. That was probably because I didn’t have to. But something in me really wanted to. It felt like I wasn’t finished yet. I’d gleaned all these amazing shapes and colours and textures from living life where I wanted to be and it felt like they were meant to live through me in another form.

In recent years I’d have a burst of creative energy or ideas once or twice a year but somehow I couldn’t convert it to a sustained practice that was taking me on the journey of discovery I wanted to have. What to do?

Not even the stay-at-home days of the pandemic had given me the push forward I needed. I searched and read and listened and scrolled to get inspired. While all of that was interesting, I had not yet figured out how to convert it to a practice.

One podcast inspired me to take an online course presented by an artist who came to her practice in her middle life. I enjoyed the course but when it was over once again I found myself with a few new skills and no practice, no direction.

The next time I was inspired by an online course, I was not even that successful. I followed the instructor’s lead, but realised it just wasn’t my thing. The next course I never even started. I loved the idea and his lessons were good but it just didn’t float my boat. Once again, it felt like I would be working in his style, rather than developing my own.

The holidays came and I was back to doing what I’ve become pretty good at, being a homemaker, wife and mother. I love all those things and don’t want to abandon them, but I want more. So when the holidays were over and I had caught up on rest, I was back to trying to get myself inspired. I thought what was lacking was inspiration so I followed more people on Instagram, watched YouTube, read inspiring stories and occasionally visited my drawing table with sporadic and unfulfilling results.

And then on January 14th came a TED talk. Even they had been falling a little flat for me in recent months. Everyone was trying to communicate their idea of something great. I didn’t want someone else’s ‘great’, I wanted my own. The TED recommendation came via email, and didn’t interest me. But I scrolled down the same page. An unassuming small talk by a woman I’d never heard of, piqued my curiosity. ‘The one minute secret to forming a new habit’…and it was only ten minutes long. I was in.

The talk was given by a novice video editor presenting from home, as per the covid-norm, and so it was a little annoying, but I kept telling myself, ten minutes is not that long unless you are having root canal work done, so hang in there. She stated her case for taking one minute out of every day to establish a new habit. Her new habit had been running. Her only stipulation? You have to be okay if you suck at it! C’mon, that is doable, right? I can suck with the best of them! That very day I began. I would take one minute and sit at my drawing table and doodle. To be honest, from day one, I took more than a minute. And I did suck most of the time. But I loved that sitting down, and embracing the suck-ness freed me up to keep coming back. It wasn’t about the quality of the work, it was about showing up.

Every day I sat down, and curiosity would take over. In seconds I was wondering what this colour or this mark would look like with that one and where it would all lead. And I reminded myself it didn’t matter if it sucked, I was just establishing the habit. Even the days when I didn’t feel like doing it, I sat down and did a little something.

  • You can see the numbers in the lower right corners of the early works. These denote which days into the one minute journey they were done. You can also see that my progress/result was not consistent. All of these pieces were done using markers and pen, another media combination I enjoy, and as you can see it produces a very different result.

After a few days my mood lightened. I felt happier within myself. Maybe it was just coincidence, I thought. After a week or so I noticed that I was having more creative moments throughout the day. I would look at something and immediately wonder what kind of drawing or painting that would make. I was taking more photos again, and not to post on Instagram, but as reference for potential drawings or paintings.

On day 10 I had taken a striking photo of the light at sunrise, of the houses and trees that we see from our place. That day I made the first pastel work that I have ever liked out of several attempts in years gone by. The next day I went back to sucking again.

Even though this piece was one of my very first it is still a favourite for the energy and simplicity of the image.

But the day after that, I still showed up for another minute…and another minute…and then more than a minute and then more than an hour! I couldn’t believe this simple change could make such a big difference so easily. Soon I found myself watching YouTube videos to learn how to use the soft pastels that are my new enthusiasm. Watching the videos was not included in my one minute session, that was in addition to the one minute, which by then, were almost never only one minute but stretched into half hours and more.

This was an early piece and I still didn’t have a grasp on how to layer the pastels, but I started learning rapidly.

I began to employ a little trick I used to use when painting more regularly. Years ago I’d noticed if I began a painting and had it, say, two thirds completed, enough to see where I was going with it, I would walk away from it for a day or two and then come back. It beckoned to me to come back and finish it, so it got me back into the studio again. This time, I found that I would not fret about how much time I had spent on an image, but I could leave it to return to later. As I walked in and out of the room, passed the table, I would glance at it and mull it over all the remainder of the day. Then, fresh with enthusiasm I would return and finish it next day. For many artists this doesn’t work. They find the mood is broken and they can’t get back into the flow of that work again. But in my case, it works. For me it’s important to self evaluate, not judge the work good or bad, but evaluate effective procedures and practices, study the colours and composition so I can modify things or use the time to advantage.

This was also a fairly early piece. I was just beginning to grasp how to work with the pastels.

For me, this little one minute change relegated my relentlessly judgemental self to a position that was much less inhibiting. It reduced the task to the smallest increment and allowed that to be crappy. I just had to show up. I’m good at showing up, just not very kind to myself about the results—or I wasn’t, until now! I will be writing more about my journey which is now beginning the sixth week. 

I have not missed a single day, but if I do, I will know how to begin again.

thoughts of an artist…

29 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by in Creativity, photography

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I regularly see or hear things that give me shivers. It was about 20 years ago now that I first became aware of this quirk in myself. Perhaps you have experienced it too. I’ve heard people explain a feeling akin to which I refer, as something that makes your ‘hairs stand on end’; though mine is a shiver down the spine. Many years ago, I asked a trusted friend who was a massage and colour therapist what she thought of this phenomena and she said ‘it is your way of recognising something to pay attention to.’ I had surmised as much but confirmation is often helpful as we blunder through life, having left our roadmap at home.

Dried native lilies in milk jug. Waterlogue

Dried native lilies in milk jug. Waterlogue

Dried wild flowers. Waterlogue

Dried wild flowers. Waterlogue

Recently, I read a blog post and within minutes found myself purchasing the book to which it referred with great anticipation and still experiencing shivers. It’s unlikely it would be the same experience for most of you, because we all respond viscerally to different things. If you have been sharing much of my creative journey, you know without even reading to the end of this post, it will change my perspective. Everything visceral does this, whether or not we recognise it.

The blog to which I refer, and have included links a number of times previously, is Brainpickings by Maria Popova. The book with which I connected on this occasion is ‘Daybook – The Diary of an Artist’ by Anne Truitt. Brainpickings’ posts are based on books, sharing the views and comparative analysis of other books, essays and life observations. I hope Maria gets a commission from Amazon or Dymocks because she has often moved me to purchase books about which she has written. Maria’s blog post, and the now deceased, Anne Truitt’s thoughtful journal, reinforce the power of the written word to change ideas–even lives. 

Grasses

Grasses

Last year I wrote about Elizabeth Gilbert’s book ‘Big Magic’. I relished this book so much I did not want it to end. It wrestled with the age old question of ‘what is the difference between being an artist and leading a creative life?’ Truitt, herself an artist, with background education and experience as a psychologist, left that profession to follow the creative life. Her psychoanalytical mind and her artistic soul, have given her a unique voice. She takes this question a step farther, asking whether or not one who practices art can, or should, call themselves an artist.

Devouring this book in near record time, has taken me a step closer to understanding who is an artist?

In the grand scheme of things this is an unnecessary question to answer. Of course. That we exist is all we really need to acknowledge. But my human ego wrestles with it. Truthfully, no one except us probably cares what we call ourselves, though others often want to put us into one crab basket or the other by asking ‘what do you do?’, thus labelling us according to their understanding of whatever you answer. Truitt points out there is baggage that goes with calling oneself an artist, indeed, with any label, but, specifically, there is often (not always) an arrogance and competitiveness in the echelon of calling oneself an artist, with which she and I don’t care at all to be associated.

Grevillea and Rosella Pears

Grevillea and Rosella Pears

Perhaps the most compelling reason in the affirmative to label oneself, is so that we are not allowing others to define us. Early in the book, Truitt writes “I refused, and still refuse, the inflated definition of artists as special people with special prerogatives and special excuses. If artists embrace this view of themselves, they necessarily have to attend to its perpetuation. They have to live it out.” And isn’t that the dilemma of any label we put on ourself or others? The need to live out the expectation can be heavy baggage. I know personally, I stick to one suitcase with rollers when I travel and attempt the same when accumulating baggage in life!

I see now that one must separate the expectations of the artist, and the process of being an artist; leading the creative life, as Elizabeth Gilbert calls it. To set oneself aside as something special, either because one calls oneself an artist, or chooses not to, is an egotistical rationale that may or may not correlate respective skill, message or intent.

Later, after a period of residence in a community of artists, Truitt is reflective of her former attitude and admits:

So to think myself an artist was self-idolatry. In a clear wind of the company of artists this summer, I am gently disarmed. We are artists because we are ourselves.

This was the nugget of truth that lay in my shivers. My deeper self had recognised this immediately, and felt much more at peace. The process of being oneself doesn’t require a label, it just requires unfolding.

Treasures.

Treasures.

Do it.

01 Saturday Sep 2012

Posted by in Creativity, Inspiration, Life

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The other day I was on a mission to try and save the painting I was working on.  It was a painful struggle all day.  I even began questioning why I was painting at all.  I wasn’t particularly enjoying myself, the results were not satisfying, I would never be a great artist, why, why, why?  But if nothing else I’ve learned two things in life, asking questions leads to discovery, and to become better at something you need to do it.

 The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize  -Robert Hughes

The very recently deceased Robert Hughes was someone I admired, not only because he was able to see things uniquely and deeply, but because he called a spade a bloody shovel, which at times got him into controversy.  He was not a perfect man and was the first to admit it, but he enlightened us and made us think, and he really, really enjoyed and connected with his life.

So what if you don’t want to be recipient of the consolation prize?  What then?  If you overcome the self doubt and continue to work… why?

Why?

I remembered a book I bought last year about an artist named Vuillard.  Something drew me to his work, what was it?  There was one of those pesky questions again.  But I had the feeling if I could answer that it would be helpful.  For a while I thumbed through, looking for what, I didn’t know.  And then it struck me, it was the paint itself that was the problem with my own work.  Recently I had seen a documentary that discussed a belief held by many artists, the paint itself speaks, just as the subject matter or composition does.  I needed to apply paint that would compliment the composition, and the paint itself needed to speak clearly.  I had an inkling of how it needed to work, but not quite the vision.  And then I saw it, the painting that spoke to me.  I hustled back into the studio in the late afternoon and rubbed away the earlier day’s work, and started applying the paint with revised awareness.  Too tired to enjoy finishing the painting that day, I had things on track for the next session.  I’ve discovered that I enjoy savouring a new idea for execution until I am rested and fresh, so I left it for another time.

It was a happy evening, feeling I had broken through yet another small challenge and still, I had no idea why it was important to me to keep going.  I suppose there is always that quiet little hope that one will create a small gem!!

A terrible night’s sleep followed.  But the exciting challenge that lay before me was enough to get me out of bed next morning with some enthusiasm.  I heated my little moka pot of coffee and savoured the aroma, as I always do.  “Wake up and smell the coffee!” a teacher friend of mine used to say.

Steaming cup beside me at the computer, I sat down to check email and there, the Universe spoke to me through one…

“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow.  So do it.’  -Kurt Vonnegut

Who am I to argue with Vonnegut?  Rhetorical question… thank you.