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Hello everyone, Happy New year! I hope 2023 brings us all just a little more ease in our daily lives…let’s face it, it has been a very challenging couple of years. As always, I’m grateful for your subscription to this newsletter…and for this arts community that I so enjoy connecting with. You are the reason I do what I do. For me January is about new beginnings and setting intentions. After spending some time reflecting on my year, reviewing my work, and compassionately offering myself some feedback about what worked and what didn’t, I like to choose a word that captures the essence of what was revealed to me through this process. This year my word is “wonderment”…and reflects my desire for more magic, more mystery, and a focus on connecting more deeply with the wonderment of this life, and art-making.
I wish you a year that offers you both what you need and what you might not know you need…may you also discover wonderment in your life and art-making! For those of you that have purchased The 30 Day Sketchbook Challenge Course, I am once again offering my Accountability Check-ins, with an invitation to jump-start your art-making year. All the details are below and we start on January 16th…I hope you’ll join us! My most recent blog post touches on the subject of why art matters in our lives. As both an artist and an art collector, I am able to experience the wonderment of art making from both perspectives. And just a reminder that my monthly blog post is also offered as an audio recording, allowing you to listen rather than read. To listen to the recording just click on the READ MORE OR LISTEN button in the ‘FROM THE BLOG’ section of this newsletter and you’ll find the MP3 file on my website at the bottom of my written post. If you have any feedback for me, I always love hearing from you. Thank you for reading and sharing this newsletter…it truly is appreciated. PS: For those of you that are new subscribers I have included a link to find previous issues of this newsletter – full of additional resources for you!
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I recently moved back into our home after a lengthy renovation. One of the more difficult aspects of packing up and moving out for a period of time was having to put our treasured art collection into storage. It was equally surprising how important it felt to place the art once more after we returned to our home. It was like the house wasn’t truly alive until the art hit the walls. Until then it felt like it was undressed, incomplete, and missing its soul. Even the most beautiful of homes can be elevated by the thoughtful placement of art. The energetic shift that happened when that first piece of art was hung in our new space was palpable. It immediately just felt right. I was home again. Because I make art I have an array of my work to select from to hang on our walls, but I also buy art. I love collecting work that awakens something in me – pieces that just feel right and that I want to have in my life for a long time. It’s the best feeling to encounter a work of art that does that, touching into a place that nothing else can. Just as music can sweep us up in an ecstasy of emotions, and written words can carry us into dreamlike worlds, art also offers us a place of wonderment – an escape from mediocrity and the confines of our predictability. Art has the power to provoke, elicit, and bring into question the assumptions we seem to make so easily. It reminds us that we are changeable, fragile, sensory beings and that we know more than we often allow ourselves to consider. Just as the artist has to trust the process of making the work, art finds us and connects with us in this way only when we’re willing to travel with it, trust its lead, and let go into it. Artists infuse their work with life and meaning, and we get to experience it as they did while making it, but through our unique filters and position with the work. We get to have our own experience as the viewer - one that belongs solely to us. While the artist knows the work intimately, from beginning to end, through the ugly stages to resolute beauty, the viewer sees it as a complete expression, all of it being revealed in that single moment. Even a score of music or piece of writing unfolds over time, but art confronts us – asking us to see it now, in its entirety. There may be evidence of the artist’s hand or the history of its creation, but it is its wholeness that we meet as we take it in. And that can be both overwhelming and captivating, bringing up much for us to consider. Art requires us to be present and open, both in the making and the viewing.
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INSPIRATION FOR YOUR ARTIST’S MINDSET
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I AM INTERESTED IN THE CYCLE OF DAMAGE AND REPAIR : PHYLLIDA BARLOW British artist Phyllida Barlow candidly shares her process of arriving at her multi-dimensional sculptural work in this thoughtful and informative Louisiana Channel video. It’s clear from listening to this interview, as Phyllida reflects on her process, the nature of her work, the materials she chooses, and how she finds her way within the process of art-making, that she thrives in the boundary between things – the transitory spaces. For me this interview captured my attention for a few reasons – the practice of drawing as a method for finding a way into her work, her thinking process, and how she attends to these thoughts and obsessions, and for the importance of art speaking to the transitional aspects of our human experience and the conventions of our culture and time. “Doubt and failure – both are incredibly important. They aren’t necessarily destructive, not a big heavy black mood or anything like that, but more like a desire to find the unfindable. The process of remembering and forgetting becomes very significant in what the object might end up being.”
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ARUNA GOBLAN : I STOPPED THINKING AND STARTED DOING. I RECOMMEND IT For me, mindset underpins everything and is the foundational change we can make to help ourselves achieve what we most want in our lives and work, while experiencing less discomfort and more ease in the process. I love finding articles on approaches to overcoming some of our inherent challenges with overthinking and applying what is being offered to our art-making process. It’s quite amazing how it translates and gives us a path forward to more freedom in our working approaches. In this Medium post by writer Aruna Goblan, she states that there are two key reasons we’d rather think about doing something than actually doing it: Risk aversion Fear of failure
The article goes on to offer some very sounds advice on how to move forward into action, which always brings us results and feedback, helping us to turn our intentions into actions. And, as in life…so it is in art-making.
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A STORY IN FOUR PAINTINGS : GEORGE ROWLETT AT 80 “Watching George work was like watching a cat hunting: complete stillness and concentration, an arresting pose, followed by fast and fluid movements. Every day he would disappear to the lake shore where he would stand in the teeth of the weather under a great oak tree…the resulting work was not just evocative, but more moving and passionate than I could have imagined.” – Howard Hull, 2021 This quote sums up the complexity of feelings that washed over me as I watched this video of painter George Rowlett, at 80, fully immersed in his process. As he heaves his oil ladened boards and materials, back and forth, into the landscape to make his work, it seems nothing will stop him, and no conditions are too harsh. His laboured breathing, grunts and groans, movements and gestures, only add to his impassioned, animalistic approach to making his art. This video leaves me in a state of wonderment…feeling both inspired and mystified. How does he do this?
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GIVE YOUR ART PRACTICE A BOOST…WITH THE THIRD ANNUAL 30 DAY SKETCHBOOK CHALLENGE! The 30 Day Sketchbook Challenge Course is an affordable, content rich, self-guided course that can be started at any time. You’ll have lifetime access once you have purchased the course and can repeat the Challenge again in the future. Once again I’m inviting artists to join the 30 Day Sketchbook Challenge by either purchasing the course, or revisiting the daily posts I made on Instagram the first time this Challenge was offered. They can be easily found in my IG story highlight 30 DAYS. You can also download the FREE PDF with the daily prompts. Link is in my Instagram BIO. Already purchased the course and want to jump-start your art practice once more? Come join us on January 16th, 2023 and travel together over the next 30 days as you explore the possibilities this Challenge has to offer you. Each Monday of the Challenge I will create a dedicated post on Instagram and Facebook, inviting any of the participating artists to share their experience…just as a way of helping them find accountability and connection with other artists that are doing the same work. Start Date: Monday Jan 16th Check in dates are on Mondays: Jan 23, Jan 30, Feb 06, and Feb 13 If you decide to start on a different date, you’re welcome to join the check ins at any time. Everyone is welcome! The hashtag #insightcreative30daychallenge can be attached to any Instagram posts to make them searchable, allowing you to share and find others that are engaged with the Challenge. Sign up for the 30 Day Sketchbook Challenge Course before January 16th to join us for another engaging 30 days of sketchbook work and inner reflection. You can find out more about The 30 Day Sketchbook Challenge Course HERE. You can also email me at info@insightcreative.ca with your questions or for more info.
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For new subscribers – please enjoy these previous issues of my monthly newsletter. Thank you for subscribing!
Links to additional back issues can be found on the right sidebar of my blog HERE
If you know of any artists that could benefit from these monthly newsletters and/or my 30 Day Sketchbook Challenge Course, please share this email with them and invite them to have a look. They’ll receive my free PDF download on ‘How to Make a Creativity Journal’ when they do.
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Art-making is such a personal experience, always calling us forth and asking us to be more of ourselves, to trust more deeply and to show up for the work.
When we develop a healthy and resilient attitude towards the struggles we may be facing, we feel more balanced and set ourselves up for success. I hope this newsletter gives you some tools to help guide yourself towards more trust and awareness around your creative process. Thanks for being here…wishing you abundant creativity today and every day!
Warmly,
Cheryl Taves
info@insightcreative.ca
h: 250.360.1453
c: 250.818.3239
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