The secret of being an artist...can it be this simple?

I don’t know what to make....

You may be one of the fortunate ones who know what you want to make and you make it.  It’s taken me more than 50 years to get to that point.

Very few people know what tool they would like to use, let alone what shape they’d like to make or what color it might be.  A crayon? A circle? A watercolor brush and paint and a landscape? Green? Yellow? no color at all? How do we know? I believe the process I talk about is the same for all forms of self-expression

We have to pick up a tool and play - no product, no judgment, no urgency.  All we have to do is overcome that inertia (fear) and start. Everything flows from that. And where does the fear come from?  All those voices start chorusing in your head: a “real” painter does....a sculptor always starts with...no one can get anywhere in the art world without learning to draw...and on and on.  All these voices are saying the same thing: I’m afraid to find out what I like to play with and what I like to make. There is no shame in being afraid anymore than there is shame in feeling happy.  And once named, fear becomes changeable.

difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them.

-Constantin Brancusi

Overcoming the fear

How do we help ourselves overcome the fear? Some of our fear comes from how overwhelming the choices seem to be.  Easy solution to that: put some constraints on things.  Every artist does this.  Every artist is overwhelmed. It goes with the territory and isn’t all that mysterious nor is it any reason to “not make.” 

and I think ‘Is this going to be it? Is it the end?

-Robert Rauschenberg

What kind of constraints?

I believe you often have to “sneak up on” making art. Perhaps you start out saying to yourself that you are simply doodling on the back of an envelope. Perhaps you could start out by playing with just one medium at a time for a limited time. 

There are lots of tricks you have to keep playing on yourself

to walk away.

-Janet Fish

Established artists (ones who make art every day) have to do the same thing you have to do: overcome fear of the blank page (or open stage, or formless clay). Tomes have been written about “how to be creative,” and many of these books offer wonderful ideas for jumping the hurdle of fear.  No harm in trying them out - one might work very well for you.

I like to imagine I’m as free as a child (and to do this I have to construct a story for myself: for the next hour, in this room with no one around, I’ll play at whatever I want and I’ll feel free to toss the product into the next wastebasket.) Perhaps I’ll just sit here in this space and make thick, crusty oil pastel lines, then smear them with my fingers.  It doesn’t really matter since the point is to notice how I’m feeling while I’m playing around. 

My goal is to get lost in the motions of making marks on a blank sheet and be tuned into my likes and dislikes enough to notice when something feels vaguely nice, or fun, or satisfying in some indefinable way.   For this period of time I won’t be ashamed to treat my own feelings as the most important thing in the universe (which goes against just about everybody’s training).

Maybe I doodle awhile and find I’m getting bored - a sure sign that I’ve got something I want to “say” and I’m afraid to do it. When I notice that,  I might scribble madly, energetically (the goal being to let the unconscious know I’m not stopping). This usually moves me along to doodle something else.

Maybe what I notice is that I hate the absence of color.  I want color (and I don’t have to know why). I’ve gained an interesting piece of information about myself as an artist.  It doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate things in black and white, or that I’ll never try anything in black and white, it just means that now, in this moment, pencil and ink don’t stimulate my imagination enough to be energetically mobilized; I may fine myself feeling bored and/or discouraged. So my next experiment will be with something that produces color: crayons, paints, pastels, markers.

Dreaming as metaphor for creation

Looking at our dreams can help move along the process of finding out what we want to make.   In our dreams we imagine anything; we juxtapose seemingly separate things. We are actors, director, stage manager, choreographer, musician,  and story writer. Our dream world offers a blueprint for creation.

The art we produce in the waking world comes from exactly the same place:  the unconscious; but unlike a dream, we need to MAKE it in the 3 dimensional world - we need to draw or paint it, collage it, sculpt, compose, dance, or write it. We need to use the body to bring it into existence.

Dreaming while I’m awake

The conscious mind helps us make (as opposed to just thinking about) things.  The bridging action  is to stay in the in-between state between conscious and unconscious: dreaming while I’m awake.  The conscious mind helps me  make a choice of color, of medium, of shape, it helps me direct my arm and hand to pick up the brush or pen, to make decisions about where to put a shape and tells me when I feel done . I believe that this makes the unconscious very happy. The unconscious feeds us imagery, feeling, and metaphors, and informs our intuition

Just as chance favors the prepared mind, creation favors the person who shows up to create. 

Walking the tight-rope

But how do I stay conscious and unconscious at the same time.  Well of course I’m over stating to say that I’m doing this.  But what I am doing is trying to approximate it.  I am clearly awake, clearly conscious, but I have learned how to keep a door open to the unconscious and with repetition it becomes easier.  It isn’t that different from the descriptions I’ve read of those doing meditation.  There is a quiet current inside which is always turned on and it’s rather amazing to realize it’s as available as it is - if it’s noticed.  Its messages can seem  soft, quiet, nuanced, even vague, or blurred: perhaps I have  a slight sense of liking or not liking.  I might pick up a yellow marker and if I’m in this meditative, “noticing” state of mind, I might feel a slight aversion to that shade of yellow and choose another shade. I might have drawn a square and found a tiny voice saying “what you really want is a circle here.”  I don’t ask for explanations, I just stay open to whatever information is there no matter how subtle it is.

Some examples from my own life: After drawing and painting for quite awhile I finally noticed that I had a vague desire to make three-dimensional objects, but didn’t seem drawn to sculpture when I tried making things in clay (polymer clay for ease of experiment); I had a hint of a desire to use things like saws and wood and glue.  My Tower of Dreams came out of that urge, and my long buried enjoyment of doll houses in my childhood.

I didn’t learn to do this “noticing” over night.  What we so often call “real artists” have by quirk of nature or nurture, been able to do this (or perhaps unable NOT to do this) from an early age. The rest of us artists have to work at it.

I have various tricks for myself to actually reach that point

of solitary creativity.  One of them is pretending I have an idea.

But that trick doesn’t survive very long,

because I don’t really trust ideas - especially good ones.  

Rather, I put my trust in the materials that confront me,

because they put me in touch with the unknown.

-Robert Rauschenberg

So what I’m saying is simple (but I don’t think simplistic): we have to learn to pay attention to ourselves, without judgment.  Judgment is like a lawn mower in a patch of seedlings; it cuts them right down and they can barely grow again.  And we have to be willing to jump the hurdle of fear and make one mark, and then another.  “Baby steps,” as Bill Murray put it in one of his movies.  Baby steps will get you there.

Next: How I found my way into the art labyrinth...