Skip to main content

Musings on Creativity: 8 do's and don'ts to increase your self-confidence as an artist

1. The myth of inspiration

Waiting for inspiration to strike is the greatest myth in the creative industry. If you consider yourself a professional artist, creator, designer, writer etc., honor your craft by staying fully committed to it, regardless of the changing moods and circumstances.

2. Has it occurred to you that the page/canvas need you?

Show up and use the page or the canvas to figure out what it is trying to communicate to you. Rest at it. Wonder about it. Feel the thrill of the sweet overwhelming awe that comes over you when you realize that you are working on YOUR ART. A lot is hidden within the seeming blankness. By showing up, you allow it to reveal itself to you or you allow yourself to craft your meaning out of the potential of the expressive space.

3. Nobody creates masterpieces on a daily basis

Some days you will do great work. Others, nothing remarkable will happen. Be OK with that. Accept it as an essential part of how your creative brain selects, filters, processes and actualizes your artistic visions. The important part is to keep showing up frequently enough as to stay intrigued by the process of creating. Learning to enjoy every moment of it is probably the most challenging, yet the most rewarding, feeling an artist can experience.

4. Tolerating uncertainty

Essentially, creativity thrives on uncertainty. For anything fresh, new or exciting to come into existence, a serious amount of time is usually spent exploring unchartered territories without the guarantee that 'new lands' will be discovered. The willingness to go into the unknown, while tolerating uncertainty, is what makes art an act of immense courage and vulnerability. 

5. Did you know that envy is for amateurs? 

Every minute spent envying somebody's talent or success is a minute you could have invested into creating new meaning and value, or simply achieving a greater level of mastery in your own craft. A more productive way to view envy is as a compass guiding us towards what we really love and desire to be(come). Figure out what triggers the feeling of envy in you, and explore it from a fresh perspective. Ask yourself: what does this tell me about what I truly want to achieve and be? 

6. Finding freedom

You are free the moment you focus on work that feeds your soul before it feeds your ego. The most powerful you are when YOU create for YOU first. I do not mean to say that all art must be self-serving. Yet in order to do seriously good work, we need to be able to detach ourselves from any fixed expectations of the outcome of our effort. More importantly, we need to detach our sense of worth from how others might feel about what we create. Our identity as artists does not equal our creations. It is much bigger than all of them.

7. Replacing discipline with devotion*.

Millions of creative folks live their life in 'must do's, need to do's or should do's'. There is a point when, if we are not careful and prepared, commitment easily becomes a burden that kills the creative spark and the desire to attend to our art. Instead of looking at our tasks as obligations, we could reframe them as priviliges. Rather than demanding of ourselves to stay disciplinedly focused, we could gently remind ourselves that we love what we do and we are devoted to it. 

8. Verba volant, scripta manent.

This is Latin for 'words fly, writings stay'. Brilliant ideas, lines and thoughts have the tendency to be fleeting. Figure out what are effective ways to capture your creative insights. Aside from always having a notebook and a pen with you, make the habit of using the Voice Memo and Notes app on your phone frequently. It is true that great ideas tend to come to you when you are in a relaxed state, so keeping a water-proof notepad in your bathroom does not seem to be such a crazy idea.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Life - Transforming Questions

If the quality of our life depends on the decisions we make. And the quality of our decisions is largely determined by the quality of the questions we ask, what are the questions that could lead us to the greatest breakthrough in life? Here is a (never complete) collection of questions I believe can assist you in moving forward and transforming your life. You don't have to try and answer all of them. Instead, feel free to browse through the list and contemplate the questions that resonate with you at this moment. The questions might be used also as journal prompters and in practising meditation. What do you stand for? What person do you wish to become? If thoughts shape reality, what would you like to think about that would help you move forward? If you'd have to do the impossible with nothing, where would you start? Who are you without the doing? Who are you when you just are? If you could re-imagine and transform their life just by visualizing and thinking, wha
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Bother Making Art?

Art is the highest form of hope and the boldest form of self-expression. Creativity - the greatest rebellion in existence. It takes courage to create and share our work.  Both art and creativity are based on transgression and rooted in possibility. Their right of existence lies in providing an opportunity for a space to shape itself around a concept.  Artistic work is both a matter of survival and a chance to learn how to live, achieving inner stability and restoring the connection with the core of our being. We go through a fragile process of filtering perceptions, learning, un-learning and re-learning how to listen, look and see before giving birth to new realities. We allow ourselves to become who we are. "Art-making is not about telling the truth but making the truth felt."-  Christian Boltanski Yet both vulnerability and authenticity require practice. Exposing the core of our being to a world of friends and strangers to love, criticize or ignore is never simple
Post a Comment
Read more

Creativity, Uncertainty and Possibility

When you're new to something, Rick Rubin enlightened us, you bring an ignorance that can be highly innovative. The usefulness of experts is indisputable but when you need a breakthrough freshness of insight is a priority. Indeed, so much of what we know somehow stands in the way of developing new perspectives. In a sense, we're at all times hostages to our mental models. And only by becoming familiar with them and aware of them can we learn how to see things from a new angle.  Sometimes we may need to impose constraints on our projects in order to channel our creative energy. At other times, we may be asked to do exactly the opposite: drop the limitations, un-scope and acknowledge the importance of exploring something totally new, even if we don't know where this would lead us to. Unchartered territories obviously don't come with maps. They do, however, come with the promise of allowing us to be the first to map them while navigating them based on our inner compass.  Ne
Post a Comment
Read more