The Painting Curve

I find this to be really good advice for us artists, even if I haven't always followed it...

"My painting teacher used to talk about the “painting curve,” a line that looks like the letter U. He said that when you begin a painting (or other form of art), you are at the top of the U. Things look clean and wonderful in the beginning. But as you develop a piece of work, it often gets messier; that is the bottom of the painting curve. He insisted that working through the bottom of the painting curve—the point at which we think our work looks horrible or awkward—is critical to making good work. Working through the complexities of a piece to the point where it looks and feels wonderful again—rising back up to the top of the U—helps develop your technique as well as your unique voice."

From a sample of a book: "Art, Inc: the essential guide for building your career as an artist."

An Act of Rebellion

"When any of us meet someone who rejects dominant norms and values, we feel a little less crazy for doing the same. Any act of rebellion or non-participation, even on a very small scale, is therefore a political act."

Charles Eisenstein  -- The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible
http://charleseisenstein.net

"Mastering Creativity" by James Clear

Found this great page/blog from James Clear:

1. Transform Your Habits (Download this 45-page guide, for free)
2. Forget About Setting Goals. Focus on This Instead.
3. This Coach Improved Every Tiny Thing by 1 Percent and Here’s What Happened
4. How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the “2–Minute Rule”
5. Successful People Start Before They Feel Ready
6. Identity-Based Habits: How to Actually Stick to Your Goals This Year
7. Haters and Critics: How to Deal with People Judging You and Your Work
8. The Beginner’s Guide to Intermittent Fasting
9. How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the “Seinfeld Strategy”
10. How to Stay Focused When You Get Bored Working Toward Your Goals
11. Photo Essay: The Northern Lights in Norway (and the “Do It Now” Motto)

http://jamesclear.com/archives

Inspiration, motivation, or…?

"Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work." —Chuck Close

Painting Folies - Painting outside the Box

I have decided to create another blog in which I will post my "Process Paintings".  See former posts for explanations of what these are.

I am excited to announce the birth of:

 "Painting Follies" - Painting outside the box

"What would you paint if you ALLOWED yourself be TOTALLY FREE to play and express yourself without concern for the result...? This blog is a sample of what I have painted. Some I hate, some I love, some I don't know... but none of that matters. What matters is that in those moments, for the time it takes to do a full painting, I am not thinking... I JUST LET GO... I paint outside the box :-) "

http://paintingfolies.blogspot.com

More play...

Temperas on Paper

22 x 30 inches

Letting go...
What happens when we really let go of all plans and judgements and allow ourselves to play with colors and creativity, like young children do?
See former posts...

Medusa

Little by little, I think I may be adding these guys i.e. "Process Paintings" that are not about "beauty & result" but as the name indicates, about "PROCESS". See former posts for "explanations". Perhaps I need to reorganize  this blog and create a page just for these...

Temperas on Paper

22 x 30 inches

Letting Go...

No, I do not "like" this painting, anymore than the one from yesterday. But it's NOT the point. The point is to let go... For me, it means that I dip my brush in a color that attracts me in the very moment, with the brush size that attracts me, and I make marks that FEEL GOOD. Not about looking good, but feeling good. Not about thinking but feeling. Often, it can be very repetitive, because this is "what feeling wants". It is entirely about the process and ABSOLUTELY NOT about the RESULT. Just as it was when we were little children, prior to all judgments... before the world's judgements became ours... before we acquired certain tastes, aesthetic likes and dislikes.

Temperas on paper

22 x 30

Relief at last...

Temperas on Paper

22" x 30"

I hadn't done one of those in a long time... This painting is not about beauty, it is not about a result, even if I put it here. It is about the pure process of playing with colors without judgement. Without trying to control what the mind thinks will look good or bad. Instead, it is about pure creative self-expression - in the innocent way we approached it as children. It is about freeing our inner-child.

-- And "what does that do?" you may ask...

With practice, it helps us release, as we get in touch with the present moment. It ultimately brings relief to our energy field, emotions, stress... and it often reignites the creative flow in us - it has a very similar effect and process as the "Morning Pages" (See "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron) only with paints and colors instead of words, which is even more direct, less mental. But the 2 are not interchangeable. They each play a role, fulfilling specific "needs" for the physical, emotional, and mental bodies.

These 2 processes - "Morning Pages" and "Process Painting" do wonder for the Creative Life!

It may take a while to get used to this form of self-expression. Because a lot of judgments come up at first. And for me, and for many, this is the first step to a deep healing process. If you have never done this, be warned: It will very likely bring up frustration in you if you are used - like I was/am - to wanting to control everything. LOL!

On another level, it had a big and freeing impact on my way of approaching Painting - the "other" paintings I mean. It was like finally receiving my own approval and allowance to explore and play without fear. It eventually created a fresher and richer body of work. Something more uniquely "me".

To learn more I recommend reading "Life, Paint and Passion" by Michele Cassou and Stewart Cubley.
Michele is the pioneer of this method of what is often referred to as "Process Painting" ; and she is also the author of the perhaps more famous "Pt Zero". I personally preferred "Life, Paint and Passion". But both are excellent (available on Amazon). Pt Zero is very practical in that it teaches us how to ask ourselves simple questions in order to let go of the inner-judge who creates blocks - so we are able to continue to express, paint... and allow the freedom and feel exhilaration of playing with colors - or other forms of expression.

A lot of my entries in this blog have quotes from Michele Cassou. They can be applied to many creative processes and forms of expression - not just painting.

Letters to a Young Poet...

"[...] Yes, but everything assigned to us is a challenge; nearly everything that matters is a challenge, and everything matters."

Rainer Maria Rilke

What makes you excited about your work?

Oh, this is a good one...! It's nice to be let into another artist's wisdom when it resonates... :-)

"I don’t think that one develops a style consciously. It happens naturally with work. By painting (or sculpting, cooking, writing or gardening … enter creative pursuit here) it will emerge. The more you listen to your inner voice, and the surge of joy you get whenever you create something that you love, the more it will emerge. If I find myself attracted to another artist’s work it is often because they have successfully captured something that I too am working toward. We can learn from others by figuring out what we like (or don’t like about their work).

However, if an artist listens too closely to colleagues, critiques, teachers or patrons this voice might be muted. The more that we listen to ourselves, the more the individual comes out on the canvas. One cannot help but to have “style” emerge which is as individual as they are. Just as we all have distinct handwriting and personality traits; we have ways of handling paint, imagery and ideas, and having it “sing” for us. Our journey (life and painting experiences) contributes to our style.

This also means that style will change over time. There will be threads that will continue throughout, but our experience changes and this will slowly creep into our work.

I think the big issues are to pay attention and do what makes you excited about your work. When listening to others, also listen to what your heart says about their advice. Most importantly, is to keep working."

Carolee Clark

http://caroleeclark.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/daily-painting-poppies-on-clare-street-contemporary-urban-scene/

Painting a Personal Image

"To paint a personal image in our own way may seem too simple or primitive. So we reveal ourselves only partially, barely allowing a hint of form, suggesting just a minimum of definition. We are afraid that by allowing the particular to be painted, it will imprison us. But the reverse is actually true:

To be willing to be specific is 

to dive into our 

freedom.

The images that you have inside are authentic, and they need commitment and care in order for you to grow. When you paint personal images, their significance is found not just in the content but in what moves them, the energy that has brought the painting together, the life in it. When you let these images take form in their own unique way, you are in touch with something beyond yourself. The universal is not separate from the personal. On the contrary, the universe uses the personal to manifest."

"Life, Paint and Passion"
Michele Cassou

Trust the Process

This is what I have been learning since I decided to "dedicate myself to painting" after I finished architecture school...

Click on image to enlarge

From Shaun McNiff
"Trust the Process: An Artist's Guide to Letting Go"

Going deep, all alone...

It has been my experience that there are times in my creative life when it has been useful not to show my creative work to anyone - not just useful, indispensable! Absolutely vital! During that time, it was very necessary not to compromise or be swayed by others' potential requests or pressures - as well as those of my own mental agenda.

It can be difficult for some artists not to share/show their work, at least with a few close friends. But at critical times, it allows us to create a safe, protected space where the inner-child - the inner-artist - can go deep and explore mysterious realms that were never explored before. This is not the time to take risks of externalization. It is a time to be nurturing and truly free to "work" and express for ourselves only.

This very special, and often scary time, is needed in order to disintegrate and dismantle the old ways that are becoming stale; then, in parallel, or at a later stage of this process, we will be able to recharge and renew in a deep and genuine way. A good archetype for this transformation is the "Tower"-  the XVI card in the tarot.

When we come out of that phase, like after a long winter, we will be ready for the new Spring. We will be a different artist, a more genuine one again - more vulnerable perhaps, but much richer for it: creating from our deepest truth at last.

The Dark Night of the Creative

"Steven Spielberg: We hear his name, and we think, "Steven got his first movie camera at age eight." We hear this sort of mythic story, and yet I was once in a hotel room with Steven Spielberg and Brian De Palma. They were sort of babysitting me so that I didn't date while Marty was in France. (He had put them in charge of me, so to speak, and they were my babysitters.) We were sitting in this hotel room, and Steven Spielberg says to Brian De Palma, "I've been trying to make a movie about extraterrestrials, and I can't get anybody interested in it, and I really think I should just give up."

Brian said, "Steven, I've been listening to you for years, and when you talk about extraterrestrials, you sort of light up. I don't think you should give up." Of course, he didn't give up, and he made Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T.

The thing is, we don't often hear the story, "Steven Spielberg was tempted to give up. Steven Spielberg had a dark night of the soul. Steven Spielberg had doubt." Instead, we hear stories that tell us that there's such a thing as "real artists," and they are people who we are told are fearless in pursuit of their art. There's really no such thing."

From Julia Cameron
In an interview with Tami Simon on Sounds True:

http://www.soundstrue.com/podcast/on-the-creative-life/?#bottom

On The Creative Life

I sincerely enjoyed this Aug 2011 interview with Julia Cameron.

Tami Simon speaks with Julia Cameron, an award-winning writer and director. In addition to her many films, television episodes, plays, and articles in publications such as Rolling Stone, Vogue, and the New York Times, Julia is the author of the bestselling book The Artist’s Way. With Sounds True, she has recorded the audio teaching program Reflections on the Artist’s Way and, along with Natalie Goldberg, The Writing Life. In this episode, Tami speaks with Julia about how to break through creative blocks, how to deal with the internal censor that we all have when we write, and why creativity requires that we take risks. (50 minutes)

http://www.soundstrue.com/podcast/on-the-creative-life/?#bottom

Here is a sample of the questions Tami asks Julia:

TS: What about the person who has a block about doing Morning Pages?


TS: I think there's definitely an idea in our culture that if it's that simple, it's simplistic or lacking sophistication, or not really going to take you all the way, or something like that. How would you respond to that?


TS: Have you ever had a time in your life where you were blocked for a long time, like six months, or a year, or two years, or something like that?


TS: I know you've actually named your Censor. At least there's one name: Nigel. I'm curious how that came to be? What was happening in your life that this name was given to your Censor, and also how that works for you, if it's useful to have a name, and why?


TS: I read there [on your new website, JuliaCameronLive.com] that just because it might take us a long time to start a project doesn't mean that that project isn't going to be wildly successful. Sometimes we have an idea, [and if we think] "I haven't done it yet! I haven't done it yet!" that it means that it's never going to happen, never going to work. But that's not really the case, necessarily.


TS: Then the thing I'm curious about is, after having made this [Creativity]  the focus of your life now for many, many decades, do you ever have the sense that, "Maybe I would be more fulfilled if I had done this or had done that," or, "I really missed out on this other thing"?


TS: Now, there's one other quote that I read of yours that I'd love for you to comment on. Here it goes: "In order to grow as artists, we must be willing to risk. We cannot continue indefinitely to replicate the successes of our past. Great careers are characterized by great risks." I'm curious to know what, if any, are the risks that you might currently be taking in your life, [that] you identify [as], "Oh, that's a risk I'm taking."

http://www.soundstrue.com/podcast/on-the-creative-life/?#bottom

For more interviews from "Insight At The Edge"check out:
www.SoundsTrue.com

Not a Goal, Not a Label...

" You are not a painter - you just paint."

Michele Cassou
"Life, Paint and Passion"

The Mystery of Yourself

"As children we were taught how to do everything: how to read, how to study, how to be polite. We have been bombarded with the 'right way' to do things. So now we are approaching art and we think we should know how to do it. Yet art is the only thing that we should not know how to do!

Art is the place not to know.

To create is to move into the unknown - to move into the mystery of yourself, to have feeling, to awaken buried perceptions, to be alive and free without worrying about the result. But the mind is conditioned to think it wants a nice painting, a nice tree, beautiful scenery. No! Maybe you want monsters. Maybe you want chaos, maybe you want a mess.

Maybe 

it will feel really good 

to paint 

an ugly painting. 

Maybe that would open your being much more than a masterpiece."

Michèle Cassou

"Life, Paint, and Passion"

What's REALLY you...

"What you can rely on you've never relied on in your life. What you can't trust you've been trying to trust all your life. What you've been trusting has never been you. What you've been ignoring has always been you. Try to trust what's really you and see what happens."

Ra Uru Hu, the founder of Human Design

YOU Are No Mistake

"Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise."

Lewis Thomas, Physician and Essayist (1913-1993)

This World is YOUR Own Reality

"We've also been given a belief, in Phase 1 of The Human Game, that a powerful success strategy is to model the behavior of other people, that if you do what they do, the way they do it, you can produce similar results. That belief is particularly seductive if we have great respect for the person being modeled and really want what he or she appears to have. But neither belief is supportive to you in Phase 2.

[...]

"In Phase 2, there is absolutely no relationship 

between 

what happens for you 

and 

what happens for someone else."

From: "Busting Loose From the Money Game - Mind Blowing Strategies For Changing the Rules of a Game You Can't Win."
by Robert Scheinfeld

Remember who you are...

.  .  .
"As soon as you trust yourself, 

you will know how to live."
.  .  .

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)

Being Without Attachment

From Story Waters - You Are God. Get Over It!

"When you release attachment there will be much that will leave your life. These are all things that have run their course and are ready to move on. They are experiences that you were artificially sustaining with your effort. To release attachment is to face reality with clarity and allow it to be what it is, rather than what you were trying to force it to be. Initially this may be painful, but through the allowance of that pain will come freedom from addiction. In revealing a hole that you were artificially filling, you are offered the opportunity to see, and thereby heal the wound which the hole represents.

Your attachments act as temporary bandages which hold you from seeing your wounds. To let them go is to allow your wounds to breathe, heal, and be reintegrated into your being. Though letting go of your attachments may be painful, it is not the pain of loss, it is the pain that you shut down when the original wound was created. The only loss that ever took place was the loss of the aspect of your being that was shut inside the wound. To let go of your attachments is to regain something, not lose it."

Complete Allowance

By Story Waters
From "Love Is Awake"

"It can be seen here that awakened love is not necessarily even about liking something; it is about honoring its right to exist and express itself as it chooses.

Awakened love is about giving complete unconditional allowance. You personally may choose not to do something. But when you do not honor the rights of others to do it you step on your own right to exercise your will freely, and that is to say you limit your being."

Accept Your Heart's Desire

Story Waters
from The Messiah Seed

"Realize that this archetypical energy, of wanting what you do not have, is the manifestation of your belief in lack. Put energy into it and the Universe will always validate that energy, showing you that love and joy are everywhere except where you stand. Allow your Self to want. Allow your Self to want more. Do this from a feeling of joy for what you want and not from a point of disrespecting or diminishing what you have. With the power of your feeling of joy you will manifest your heart’s desire. Realize that you can accept what you have with your heart and still want more; but do this from living in the acceptance of your Self as you are, and not from the want for what is yet to come. Love your now."

The Quantum Conundrum

by Richard Bartlett - The Physics of Miracles

"The less you do, the more you have.

[...] 

There are literally billions of complex interactions that are constantly taking place within a human body. It is an absurdity to suppose that we could, exclusively through our conscious thought or intent, really do anything to influence this ultimate masterpiece of creative engineering.

[...]

We are the Door to the divine, not the Doer.

[...]

The less you do, 

the more access you have 

to the All."

Living by your Heart

Story Waters
From "You Are God. Get Over It!"

"When you feel your heart leading you to move in a particular direction you are feeling your Godself. As you come to allow yourself to live by this feeling of inner guidance your growing trust in it will make it ever clearer. The more you come to live by your heart the easier it becomes. You are birthing the realization of your unity with your Godself. Living by your heart will take you through your unfolding in the most joyful of ways. Coming to live by this feeling is the realization of joy.

To follow your heart is to love yourself."

On Your Own Path

"That which you are seeking is also seeking you."

Persistence

"Successful people fail their way to the top."

A Success Seminar Speaker
(Sorry, I don't know who...)

True Power

From Abraham - Esther & Jerry Hicks

"Most people rarely align with their true power because it seems illogical to them that there is power in relaxation, in letting go, or in love or joy or bliss. Most people do not understand that their true power lies in releasing resistance—which is the only obstacle to their true power.

The true path to the abundance and financial freedom that you seek is not a journey of action but instead an emotional journey. Your true power comes from the leverage of your alignment, not from your action. And while it is certain that there will be plenty of action involved, it will be good-feeling action that is inspired from your place of alignment from inside your Vortex."

Getting into the Vortex Meditation User Guide