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Hello everyone and a warm welcome to new subscribers! Thank you for being here and giving yourself, and your creativity, the gift of inspiration – I’m sure we can all use some. As our world is feeling increasingly unsettled and uncertain, artists can begin to struggle with ongoing questions around the purpose of making our art. This month’s blog post invites you to consider the role of meaning in our lives, and particularly how it relates to art-making. I hope it encourages you to continue to make your art, even when times are challenging. You and your work are tremendously valuable, and it is your connection to meaning. This month I am trying something new and offering you the option of an audio recording, so you can listen to my Blog post, rather than read. I’m a bit of a novice at this, and I hope to get better with practice. But let me know what you think, and if this interests you I can continue to offer this option in the future. To listen to the recording just click on READ MORE 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. I hope this month’s offerings inspire, expand and invite. These qualities are essential to the Artist’s Mindset and help us to work more strongly – with a resilient and curious nature. If you have any feedback for me, I always love to hear it. Thank you for reading and sharing…it truly is appreciated. PS: For those of you that are new subscribers I have included some links to previous issues of this newsletter – full of additional resources for you!
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One of the great existential concerns that many artists struggle with is why they make their art – questioning what purpose it serves. This concern can arrive all on its own as an artist attempts to carve out space and opportunity in their life for art-making, but it is especially concerning in times like these when there is so much need, suffering, and uncertainty. In these past several months we may have found ourselves struggling – feeling uninspired, apathetic, unable to focus, and even beginning to question if making our art isn’t just self-indulgent and unnecessary. When galleries have closed and opportunities to show and share our work are even more limited, what motivates us to show up to the studio each day and continue making our work? What purpose does art-making serve in times of such struggle and hardship? And what if we feel that our art-making is dependent on the external circumstances being just right, and when they are not moving in that direction anytime soon, what then? The answer that can help is to recognize that art-making and being creative is a way of making our lives meaningful. There is no other creature on this planet that makes art for the sheer joy of it except for maybe the amazing Bowerbirds, whose courtship rituals involve building elaborate nests very specifically decorated with groupings of coloured objects – composed, placed and designed to attract an interested female. While their artistry is motivated by finding a mate, they also seem to enjoy the process of making. But would they do this without the underlying motivation? Probably not. Only we would, because we find meaning in making and experiencing art. It moves us emotionally, provokes our awareness and provides us with an outlet to express what we are feeling or needing to say. As artists we have an interesting relationship with this need to make meaning. We want to know that what we make matters, but we also see so much good work already out there in the world and we wonder how ours could matter. And that creates creative anxiety for us, anxiety that arrives as procrastination and resistance, which unchecked prevents us from making our art.
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INSPIRATION FOR YOUR ARTIST’S MINDSET
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SWIMMING POOL PAINTINGS : EMILY BALL Like many artists I can’t get enough of hearing other artists talk about their work. Knowing what inspires them, how they developed their visual language, along with some of the challenges they had to overcome in their work, truly inspires me to think more deeply about my own relationship to my art-making. The Swimming Pool paintings are a body of work by Emily Ball. Done over a five year period these large scale paintings were inspired by the seemingly mundane task of watching and waiting. As Emily attended her children’s swimming lessons she became enraptured with the sensory experience of it all – the play between the figures and the water, the sensory experience to the sounds and smells. Our lives are rich places, filled with colour, sounds, texture, light, fragrance, and emotion. When we connect with these aspects from an artist’s perspective there is limitless expression available to us. The written description for this video really suggests why watching this is sure to inspire and ignite possibilities for where you might source inspiration for your own work: ”Made over five years, these paintings have an ambition and confidence that reveals an artist following her instincts and creating her own painterly language that meaningfully captures the essential qualities of her subject. The resulting work has a gravitas and weight to it, so that whilst colours may zing and leap on the canvas, and subjects may be full of joy – the paintings themselves are anything but lightweight.”
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FRANK BOWLING : FROM FIGURATION TO ABSTRACTION Born in Guyana, a 19 year old Frank Bowling moved to London to study at the Royal College of Art. In this video Bowling considers how his move from London to New York impacted his work – shifting it from figuration to abstraction. Bowling shares, “As I become more involved in the making of the paintings, I realized that one of the main ingredients in making paintings was colour and geometry. And in New York I found ways of proceeding to deepen my investigation in that area.” The new work developed through pouring paint directly onto the canvas – spilling and dripping. Colour fields and gritty textural surfaces seem to dance perfectly together. This second TATE video How to Paint Like Frank Bowling, gives us an inside look into some of his techniques.
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ARTISTS ON FINDING CREATIVE INSPIRATION Every artists, regardless of their medium, understands that the creative process can have its challenges. And when these challenges arrive, we need to know what to do to alleviate feelings of being uninspired, creatively blocked, or paralyzed with resistance. One of the things that is hugely comforting is to know just how common it is for artists to experience fallow times in their creative work. It’s a natural, and expected, part of the process of making our work. So be assured that you’re not the only one staring at your half-finished painting without a clue where to go next. There are artist of all types navigating this place with their work. Artists that have methods to help themselves at these times are able to move through the stickiness and get back to their work. I’m sure you also experience these moments in your own creative process…and if you’re looking for some ideas on how to help yourself, this article offers up a heap of wonderful suggestions. From composers, dancers, play writes and artists, there are some really helpful tips that may just be what you needed to hear today.
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THE BEAUTIFUL ANARCHY PODCAST : DAVID DUCHEMIN I love this podcast for so many reasons. Each time I listen to David weave his words around the topic of creativity and all that entails, I come away inspired and ready to work. Episode 032: Mistakes + Mutations was a powerful reminder of how we spend too much of our energy trying to avoid something that actually can help us grow – mistakes. “Embrace the mistake” is something that we often hear. This phrase suggests to us that we should be willing to make mistakes, even making them an integral part of our art practice. But what does it mean to do that, and why? David has a way of speaking to this that really guides us to understanding that in life and in creativity mistakes are inevitable. It’s what we do in response to them that makes all the difference. As David says, “I’m not saying there are no mistakes in our thinking, I’m saying there’s nothing to fear from them. It’s all raw materials. Mistakes are not failures; there is possibility in everything.”
You can find The Beautiful Anarchy Podcast HERE.
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PAST ISSUES OF THIS NEWSLETTER
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For new subscribers – please enjoy these previous issues of my monthly newsletter. Thank you for subscribing! June 2020
May 2020
April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
If you know of any Artists that could benefit from these monthly newsletters, please share and invite them to subscribe. 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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