Hi. I'd like to start a conversation about the creative process. I'm a painter, who over time has conditioned a kind of specialized painting brain, so the process will look a certain way. Please do write about your own experience. Everyone is different and of course there is no right and wrong, better or worse.
I've tried to describe it as clearly as possible........
Creative inspiration and energy are the basic elements of my work life. Since the age of 18 (now 51) when the first painting was sold, it has been important to understand the creative process and work with it daily. Livelihood has depended on this.
Inspiration/energy, can not be forced or manufactured. It can only be invited by cultivating good conditions and leaving myself open to it. Once it arrives it is a temporary state. It rises, crests, and falls away. Becoming familiar with how inspiration rises and falls, and learning to let it go, has been a necessary career and life lesson.
First Here is a description from my studio journal describing the quality of heightened inspiration and energy....
A tableau-vision is flash of non-sequential understanding. For example if I was looking at that tulip and painting it, the whole field of visual perception, all the relationships within it of light and shadow, colors (which all completely condition each other), as well as the entire technical order of the painting process, would be seen at-once. Put simply, things aren't “figured out” in sequence, the “solution” is experienced at-once. I think that everyone, in some way, experiences this “zone” in different kind of activities, not just in art making. It is a peak experience that makes doing a large complex project do-able, the race winnable, the mountain climbable, the realization of new skills possible. A Longer lasting element of inspiration is a state of Free-play, where creativity is a spontaneous, unselfconscious, dance at the highest skill level. This is marked by Joy. The Joy of free-play is not goal oriented. There is just painting. The process is the thing.Inspiration can be defined as the sudden appearance of a novel idea or vision. It can also be defined as a state of receptivity that allows for the flow of ideas. There is another factor that I think is more basic to all this. It is a special intensity of aesthetic appreciation that involves a welling-up of energy. This energy brightens and expands the whole outlook and activates abilities that are otherwise not available.
This spring I had a bad flu and was at one point feeling very weak. While in this state I was presented with a beautiful fresh tulip of vivid yellow. I saw that it was beautiful and felt uplifted, but from a place of physical exhaustion that uplift was limited, because the energy for appreciation just wasn't there. If I was in a healthy state, with a healthy level of energy, the beauty of that tulip would have taken on a greater charge. If I was in a heightened state of inspiration the experience would be of a different order. The tulip would take on a burning intensity, a kind of resonant perfection that lights up every faculty, and gives rise to tableau-visions. There would be an bright sense of potential, and the energy to realize that potential. It is a place were real magic can happen, and where a painting can be given the spark of life.
Both tableau-vision and Freeplay come and go. Creative projects depend on the former to launch, and on the latter to take it into new areas of skill and realization on the canvas. This is most helpful when starting with an empty studio. Through heightened inspiration and energy enough visual information can be created on the canvas that a feedback loop can take over. Then with the new skill level established, the energy required to continue is less. It is still possible to be “off” where skills are not strong, and that is a good time to step away, but otherwise a regular more paced approach is possible.
Beginnings and ending.
There are two endings I'd like to mention. One is the beginning and ending of high energy inspiration. It can easily become addictive, because it is a high. When I was younger I thought nothing of staying up through drugs or willpower. It was common among artists I knew, and there is even some self-destructive romantic myth around it. The truth is it only punishes your body and leads to burnout. Learning to feel the ending of natural inspiration and letting it go, has been a hard won skill, but I can still push it sometimes with caffeine and late nights, when a sale is needed and a deadline is approaching. I am working to reduce that as much as possible.
The other ending is an interesting one. It is the ending of a project-painting, When a painting begins there is bright promise and possibility. You put your energy into it, sense the gathering of elements, and see it start to take form. There may be points where the thread is lost, then found again, and as it nears completion there is momentum. Then it is complete, and the experience is over. When it is complete there is a little taste of grief. No matter how a project ends, whether in “success”, or as a “flop”, there is a letting go and a pause. There is a pause between inspirations. It might feel like inspiration will never return, but I have learned that left alone a new inspiration is born and the process begins again. Learning to ride these waves has been a big part of surviving professionally.
That just about describes my process. Thanks for reading
Gassho
Daizan
sat today
.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Daizan
