On my website I have a free creativity e-course called Let Go Make Art.
I have had good feedback about it’s benefits, but today I feel like I need to dig deeper into what Let Go Make Art means, for my own benefit …
I have just had a week of not letting go and not making any art.
Frustrating!
And that frustration potentially a downward spiral … ever diminishing unless I stop it!
Why have I made no art?
- I have been trying too hard
- Putting time pressure on myself
- Thinking I need to be ‘brilliant and amazing’, startle pattern provoking thoughts, and thus doing nothing and even doing nothing badly!
- Having thoughts about how good other artists are and letting that inhibit my own process. Comparison sucks!
- Letting all sorts of other problems and urgencies of life get in the way of making art
- Still feeling out of sorts and tired from being poorly
- Even using the snow as an excuse!
Yesterday I decided to get right back to basics and go and lie on my back, in Alexander Technique constructive rest.
To let go, stop trying so hard and do nothing well.
Doing nothing well! There is an interesting concept …
How easy it is to get stuck in a non productive state of thinking about doing …or trying to do or make something happen rather than allowing … or fiddling about on stupid things and getting stressed and cross with yourself for being useless in this half hearted state, instead of just stopping.
Permission to stop!
For goodness sake I know how to stop! Why am I not letting go?
I have even produced an audio about it – Body Magic.
Right now for me to let go into the process of making art – body magic indeed is needed!
I am painting the sea – the sea doesn’t get stuck!
It ebbs and flows – sometimes calm and still like a mill pond and other times fierce and powerful. a rampant raging energy. People’s energy changes too, it is natural.
What moves the sea?
The moon (a symbol for the feminine and emotions) effecting the tides and currents in monthly cycles …
The wind (symbol of the mind thinking) …
and I am guessing the lay of the land (earth, the body)….
My mind has been tired yet overactive, I have been pushing myself.
The moon has been full – emotional woman in the house!
And it’s the middle of winter, apparently the most depressing dangerous week of the year just gone … For me the lack of daylight forcing a kind of creative shutting down.
Result no art….
Yet …. Ideas are drifting in on these still low tides and cold currents.
Ideas about spirals and water …
Everything that lives and moves and breathes lives and moves and breathes in spirals
Even raindrops fall in spirals to the earth
How beautiful.
Spiralling water down the plug hole
Spirals as a force of nature
A Universal Law
Something to explore in painting …
No straight lines!
My last series of small paintings are spirals within seashells – thoughts about the inner ear, listening and balance …
Listen to the sea shells to move forward and up into the spiralling flow of art as yet unmade …
How?
Lying in constructive rest thinking spiralling thoughts in and through my body …
Allow muscles to release into spirally mobile length, free to paint …
Allow my mind to be present to the ebb and flow of my liquid energy …
Allow myself to float for a day or two aimlessly, soon I will be in new waters …
Allow myself to be part of nature, influenced by the moon, the weather and time …
Let go,
Let the mind spiral around the bare bones of ideas
Muscle wrap around bone in spirals
The body moves in spirals
Dance spirals
Draw spirals
Think spirals
Explore the curves and spirals of form
Let the body spirals unwind, the art will flow …
Blood and nerves flow around the body in spirals
Energetic spirals – increasing, decreasing …
Ideas start to drift in …
Drawing the shells in pencil – ideas emerging from the depths
See if you can understand the structure of the wave …
Spiralling waves
Is there form in the formless?
What is it about the sea that is calling?
Feel the energy of the sea pulsing through my watery body …
Enjoy
Let creativity swell up inside and then it can flow forward
Creativity comes in waves too
I am more than 70 percent water … be watery
Trust the process of making an exhibition –
Plenty of time for the art to emerge, for the tide in me to change, to become full again.
Let go and feel the tides of breath washing through me releasing my aching lower back, (too much driving), invigorating the creativity centres of the body.
Let go … to allow creativity to rise and flow …
Let my breath breathe me, let the inspiration come, stop trying to force art …
The waves will get bigger again
Allow rest … Stop …
The tide will change direction, it is inevitable, it just takes a few hours and then a new direction will emerge
The timing of the tides come at a different times of the day as the weeks progress.
Note to self –
Let Go Make Art!
It is a great title
There is a process in that simple sentence.
Remember to re – member ourselves …
To take time to let the whole self put itself back together again – rejuvenated, restored by simply stopping, and in order to find our body of art…
It is the art of body …
Which ever way your creativity flows…. let go make art is body magic.
To learn more about Body Magic click here
Link to free creativity e- course below…