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Hello everyone and welcome to new subscribers! I hope that what I share with you offers you an opportunity to reflect on the value of art-making and creativity in your life. Your art matters, our art matters…and finding access to our creativity is healthy and necessary for our wellbeing. I started out the new year with a deep dive into my sketchbook practice by, once again, hosting my Fourth Annual Accountability Challenge that accompanies The 30 Day Sketchbook Challenge Course that I launched in 2022, and that is always available on my website. The energy of this lit-up community of sketch-bookers brought renewed energy to me as I hosted, and participated in the Challenge. I am so grateful to everyone who joined us this year. Thank you! In this month’s blog post I’m unpacking our relationship to failure, and offering us a perspective to consider – one that encourages us to practice meeting failure in a healthy way. Failure is an essential aspect of a creative practice, but not something we’re terribly comfortable with. I hope this post gets you thinking about your own relationship with failure and how to meet it in a way that serves you and your art-making. 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 my newsletter – full of additional resources for you!
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Can you imagine what it might feel like to have full permission, complete freedom, to fail? What might it feel like to be able to approach something new with the awareness that failure is just a normal part of learning, and means that you're pushing into new territory, gathering helpful information as you do? What would it be like to meet our creative work, our problems, and our wild ideas with an attitude of full-on curiosity…expecting failure as a natural matter of course, not something to avoid at all costs? How might this acceptance of failure change your approach to art-making – to your life? Many of us, myself included, have formed an unhealthy relationship to failure. For me, it was always something to be ashamed of. It meant I wasn’t good enough, smart enough, or didn’t try hard enough. When I was faced with new things to learn and try, there was always an overwhelming feeling of pressure. Would I look like a fool? Would I be judged for my first attempt in learning? With those kinds of thoughts running in the background, I would stay in my comfort zone more often than not, and miss out on many wonderful adventures - the kind that life offers us in abundance. I tended to do the things I knew I could do, the things I was good at, the things that would help me maintain the identity of being good, successful, and competent. I became quite perfectionistic…making very sure that all the details were right and everything looked good. Often I would stand in the illusion that this wasn’t fear of failure, that these were my high standards that I was meeting, and was challenged with letting go of control. Control equaled safety, acceptance, and love. As I write this now, I am aware of the deep burden this was to carry – the pressure and limits that I constantly placed on myself – the rigidness of living this way. While there were some benefits, the costs were high and I often overworked myself to remain in this position. All of it to avoid the feelings of shame that would descend when I floundered or failed at something. Making a mistake would feel like my world might end. Later in life, when I committed to making my art full time and attended art school, I bumped up hard against this unhealthy relationship to failure. I was now in an environment where failure was baked into the process - the creative process. But, I didn’t fully understand that and it wasn’t too long before things switched from learning modality to performing – I needed to be good at this, and quickly. Art had other plans for me.
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INSPIRATION FOR YOUR ARTIST’S MINDSET
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SUCCESS, FAILURE AND THE DRIVE TO KEEP CREATING : ELIZABETH GILBERT This month I am deeply focused on our relationship to failure, as I believe that it is one of the core understandings we need as artists in order to take the necessary risks in our creative work. Along with being the most potent way of strengthening our art, embracing failure in the creative process also builds our resilience so that we can meet the inherent challenges of art-making. In this short version TED talk by the writer Elizabeth Gilbert, we hear about her road to success, including all the many, many rejections along the way. Despite those obstacles, she persisted, and her book 'Eat Pray Love’ became the answer she had longed for – a monumental success.
Gilbert describes what came next as completely disorienting, as she recalibrated herself to face, yet again, “the random hurricanes of outcome.” Even when we achieve creative success, we still have to return to making our work without attaching to having another “successful” outcome. We need to stay true to our process in the moment. Gilbert offers us some wonderful insights on how to hold fast to your “home” as you ride the waves of this creative life. As you watch any of these videos offered this month, consider how this relates to your art-practice, and what you adopt to strengthen your resilience to the inevitable failures that are just a part of making art.
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ON TAKING RISKS : NICHOLE CANUSO Dancer, choreographer, artistic director, Nichole Canuso invites risk into her process. In this video, Canuso and her company perform, as she narrates and shares why the art of creative failure is important. I think we can learn a lot from writers and performers about the value of failure. Canuso tells us that the word “failure” implies an expected outcome, and that in itself is a limitation that stifles creative ingenuity. In her desire to “fail better,” she invites that possibility directly into the performance. Her work was funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and this short film can be found online under their American Artscape Magazine edition, The Art of Failure: The Importance of Risk and Experimentation.
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THE IMPORTANCE OF FAILURE : CHRISTIAN HENSON Christian Henson is an award-winning composer British composer that works predominantly on television and movie soundtracks. This video blog is a part of his sharing on the creative process, offered through his latest venture The Crow Hill Company. He has a playful and spirited way of discussing the role of failure as an aspect of the creative life.
”I hate to break it to you, but you learn absolutely nothing from success. Success, for me, is wrapped around failure. So to imitate previous success is to ensure you repeat those failures.”
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–THE 30 DAY SKETCHBOOK CHALLENGE COURSE– Looking for a boost for your art-practice? Have you been wanting a sketchbook practice that supports your art-making and creative process, but you don’t know how to begin? The 30 Day Sketchbook Challenge Course is an affordable, content rich, self-guided course that can be started at any time, and is always available for purchase on my website.
Once purchased, you’ll have lifetime access to the course and can repeat the Challenge at any time in the future, giving your art-making the boost it might need. This course also touches on many of the essential aspects of the Artist’s mindset – the ways we can think about and approach our creative work to move past fear and limitations, opening to what is possible for us.
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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Are you looking for that “thing” in your art that feels just out of reach, but aren’t quite sure what it is? Do you make art that doesn’t quite feel like you, and desire something more authentic? Don’t miss this wonderful opportunity to work in-person with Kerry Schroeder in her upcoming workshop in New Orleans!
I have known Kerry for many years, and have co-coached with her on the topic of mindset and connecting more authentically with your art-making. Her sensitivity, insightful understanding of the creative process, along with her skills as an artist, coach, and teacher are outstanding. It is sure to be a unique and meaningful experience. I highly recommend this workshop!
5-day workshop
June 11th - 15th, 2024
Paintspace Nola You can find all the details HERE
Registration closes May 1, 2024
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For new subscribers – please enjoy these previous issues of my monthly newsletter.
Links to additional back issues can be found on the right sidebar of my blog HERE. Thank you for subscribing!
If you know of any artists that could benefit from these monthly newsletters, blog posts, 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 subscribe.
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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
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