Following Our Own Style

"When the creative processes grind to a halt, we have that unbearable feeling of being totally clogged...Instead of experiencing relaxed, energetic concentration, we jump avidly towards any distraction, no matter how trivial or ridiculous; we become easily tired; when we look back at our work nothing seems good enough; our eyelids glaze over; our brain cells chug to a standstill."  Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch


As you can see I'm still making my way through the book Free Play, not because the books slow reading but it's been a difficult summer for me physically so my reading time has been hit and miss.  Anyway, this chapter is on the function of both the muse and editor in our creative process, something we all have our scuffles with, if not a down right brawl by times!

I've been hedging my way around the teal  piece that I'd begun, then painted myself into a situation I didn't know how to get out of.  My thoughts on how to continue were pushing me towards a realm that I've never been comfortable in, realism, not even abstract realism.  Then yesterday, with head pounding out the warning that a storm front was moving in, (yes my head has continued to be a weather gage!) I found a way to bring it back into my natural creative bent.  Something Zom wrote in Pt One of her blog series on 'Developing Your Style' made me laugh and then find a way to return to my natural voice.

Gears stencil by Mary Beth Shaw

"You don't get to choose your style anymore than you get to choose your height or your personality or your looks. I started realising this at a certain point in my development when no matter what I painted, it looked like something that I had painted. This used to frustrate me. I used to look at a piece I was working on and say with scorn "that looks like something I would do." Zom


That last line made me burst out laughing because I'd done the same thing.  Gosh we are funny creatures.   So I'm back on track for now, adding a collage element that spoke straight to the situation by Graham Cook:


"Failure is not so much falling down as it is refusing to get up after a fall..."