I’ve always loved making things, especially without rules. If it’s been done one way before, why try to replicate it exactly when we have machines to do that. I am a ‘change it up’ advocate. I find doing the same thing over and over life sucking. Yes, I steal what is special or important and I work on boosting my tool belt by adding to my supplies and knowledge, but then, I make something new. It’s a great way to avoid comparisons and competition. Both are seriously effective ways to entirely squelch my creative juices.
Perfectionism is born of comparisons and competition, and it is a wasting disease. It creates feelings of lack and dissatisfaction. It stops up pleasure and joy and replaces it with suffering. It disguises beauty as ugliness. It tarnishes this amazing journey.
Wonder and awe, gratitude, play, love, those are the tools I consider most necessary for a good life and creative flow. Giving those tools more importance than competition and comparison shifts the light from fear and suffering and can’t, to the magic of endless possibility and do!
Think about it. Any healthy ecosystem is diverse. An ecosystem full of the same thing, fails. In nature perfection just isn’t necessary. A hermit crab needs a shell with room but the barnacles on the outside don’t matter. An annoying grain of sand making its way into an oyster can be changed into a smooth pearl and pearls aren’t all one shape or size or colour. A chipped tooth on a lion won’t stop it from growling when it needs more personal space. And, a limbed grand fir still stands tall next to the non-trimmed tree.
And speaking of nature, nurture is what I’ve been doing lately. I’m a grandmother for the first time. I have a new job description, more to love, and appetites to tend to. The baby is perfection just because she’s arrived. She doesn’t have to do anything or be anything more than herself.
Even during pandemics, beauty surrounds me. And one thing I know for sure is that:
The ‘art’ of raising a child is perhaps, one not spoken of in the halls of the Louvre, and yet I can most definitely view it as an act of creativity. There is no perfect one way to do it, but do it with wonder and awe, gratitude, playfulness and love after meeting the child’s basic needs and I’m sure you’ll be near the mark most of the time.
Until next time, may all of your coming days be sweetened with spring’s unfurlings. May you celebrate your many gifts or at least, introduce yourself to them.
Champagne As featured in British House and Gardens Magazine Details on the Featured Art Page of this site
Happy New Year! I am so glad you are here to live 2020. As long as we have breath, we have work to do! Artists are witnesses; witnesses to the joys and sorrows, the justices and injustices, the beauty and ugliness of all that is human, inhumane, biotic and abiotic. Our art is a record of our experience and we have much to communicate. It takes many voices to accurately portray a story, or the stories of a time, and those voices must be the truthful, from all directions, all cultures, all genders, all ages, all senses, and all the telling talents.
It’s an impossible feat, perhaps, but witnessing and recording ‘ourstory’ shapes now and the future. We are never as alone as we may at times feel. Your voice, my voice, the many voices, create ‘ourstory’, a lessonworthy, collaboration that many of us artists are unaware of belonging to.
Life is a collaboration!
Canada’s Conscious Skeptics #4
Adding to my previous post, here are two more practices that can help to strengthen your artistic identity and align you with prospective collectors.
Practice Three
The Artist Statement. Why do you create the art you do?
I know the world I want to live in. I’ve known that world of ‘beauty’ for many years. I look for it in everything, everyone and everywhere. What I look for is what I see, and what I end up painting. As a result, I understand why I create in the style I do and I can articulate that to my audience.
I believe in morning pages and artist dates. Sound familiar? If it doesn’t you really need to read Julia Cameron’s, The Artist Way. Both will contribute to your clarity in their own way; one rinses you clean while the other fills you up.
It is during artist dates that I get really clear on what I look for in the world.
Practice Three begins with The Artist Date.
Then simply notice the kinds of things that draws your attention and make some mental notes about that.
While you’re out there on the date, also try to get clear on Mahatma Ghandi’s quote …’we need to be the change we see in the world’… and what it means to you.
When you get home, go look at the art you make. Look for the themes, the design elements and principles you rely on.
If you’re a writer, and even if you’re not, record some of your thoughts as you try to wrap your head around these three somewhat philosophical explorations because it will help you to unlock the commonalities and connections.
Scribble some notes to these questions:
1. Describe the ‘_____insert colour____’ coloured glasses you view the world through. What are you seeing?
2. What do you passionately care about?
3. Describe the commonalities in the pieces of art you create.
4. How is your art helping to create the world you want to live in?
An artist statement in the making!
You may want to work this statement out over a series of weekly artist dates the first time you attempt to write your statement. Expect and welcome change as you get clarity on why you paint, why you paint what you paint, and what you are trying to communicate to your audience.
Expect your statement to be dynamic. Experiences, responses, unions, the passage of time, it grows us and as we grow so does our art. Revisit your artist statement from time to time.
Practice Four
The Short and Sweet Purpose Statement
When someone asks me what I do, I have often answered with, “I paint.” or “I’m an artist.”
Both were skimpy, inadequate answers.
I have since retaught myself to answer, “I am an intuitive artist who paints.” The question is now an opportunity to share one of my beautiful business cards that shows a glimpse of my artistic style, my purpose statement, as well as contact information. Answering this way leaves me feeling professional and worthy of answering follow up questions related to my work. It also allows the person I’m talking to look further into what I do and possibly become a collector. I’ve noticed that it’s relationships that sell paintings. Collectors, purchasers, they want to feel like they know the artist!
Do you carry business cards?
Creating my purpose statement for my business cards really helped me answer the What do you do? question more confidently.
I was super lucky to get help with it over lattes from some wonderful artist friends. They know me. They know my art. We brainstormed. Eventually, the writer among us nailed it.
Don’t have that community yet? That’s okay. Use the work you did in exercise three to get to it. A purpose statement is just a whittled down artists statement. A one liner, unique to you.
You’ve got this! If you need a little help, email me, sherri.twb@gmail.com and we’ll set up a coaching session. I’m here!
Because I want my readers to know me as an artist, I don’t often remind you that I was/am also a longtime school teacher, mentor and coach. The thing about me as a teacher is that I’ve always come at it from curiousity and play. What can I learn from these people I’m serving? What happens if I meet X with Y? What will change if we do it this way? How can I do X without causing harm? I never thought I’d teach as long as I have, because I’ve always been an artist, but teaching has provided well for me and my family and it acts as one of my muses. I’ve had the great good opportunity to connect to thousands of people and their stories!
These two practices will help you to feel authentic and align yourself with your prospective audience. The first activity is easy, the second requires that you know yourself. If you are not there yet, tune into Plato. He can help.
These two exercises are to create your strong foundation in your artistic practice. the heart of you who are and who you are for.
What Do You Want To Be Known For?
When I began painting as a daily practice and knew it was my work, I struggled with even labeling myself as an artist. It felt pretentious to say, I am an artist, out loud. In my heart I knew it was true but my head kept telling me, I was something else, something I’d spent seven years in school earning documents and skills to become. Something, anything other than what I was.
Do you stuggle with imposter syndrome?
Exercise One:
Do this exercise to courageously strengthen your identity.
Repeat after me, I am an artist. Say it out loud three times. Practice saying it to nobody but yourself every morning and every night while you brush your hair or do your pushups. Attach it to an exisiting routine so it happening. Let it make your body smile.
My Art Is For These People
Now consider your artistic style. What is unique about it?
My Most Current Art Manifesto:
My art is bold, bright and non-traditional. Its joyful, often amusing, sometimes beautiful, sometimes sad. My art relays information about society, nature, beauty, and ugliness.
I don’t make my art for those who prefer traditional art I make it for those who like a touch of whimsy, or magic; those who still allow their inner child to play and refuse to take this earthly experience too seriously.
I make my art for those who walk to their own beat and don’t want to compete with the Jone’s next door or anyone else.
I want my art to be owned by people who dance outside of any box; people who know how to feel free inside, even if they must be attached to systems.
My art is for the freaks, the children of freaks who embrace freakishness, and all of their freakish friends.
My art is preferably for socially responsible people who stand against mysogny, even in the smallest of ways.
My art comes from a place of curiousity and wonder and awe, that lies deep inside of me. I want my art to be collected by those who appreciate that owning a piece of my soul is more valuable that owning my flesh and bones.
Who is your art for? Have you thought about it?
It is not enought to say that you paint for yourself because you are of this world and here to learn and contribute to the cacophony. This is a party and you need to know who you want to hang out with, literally and figuratively.
Exercise Two:
Do this exercise to bring clarity to your practice and to your audience.
Create a list of what is unique about your art. Ask creative friends what they think is unique. Think about where your art muse lies. List it. Think about how you are seen by others. If you don’t know, ask a friend to be frank with you and bless them for their honesty knowing that they are probably lighting you up a little because they are your friend. List it. Imagine the rooms or places you’d love to see your art hanging and imagine the people who would live with it. What are they like? Look for the connections on your list. Construct your own manifesto. Let it be known to yourself and others that it is dynamic and revisit and refine it from time to time. We are creatives.
We grow, we change, we evolve and writing down our manifesto brings our awareness and the awareness of others to what you want to be known for.
When you have you maniifesto completed, feel free to share it in the comments below!
Hello! It’s been a while again, I know. I’ve been writing just not here. I’ll work on that. I’ve been reading and painting and …. nothing consistently right now. I’m a creative tornado at the moment, interrupted from completing anything by my next big idea. Which I start, because I love starting something new…I just usually finish more starts than I have been this year.
For a moment today the wind seemed to lull and I had the opportunity to talk about Walk Through Walls, Marina Abramovic’s Memoir which I have been in the process of reading for a long time. She’s fierce. I can imagine myself fierce, but I would describe myself as something other than that. Dedicated, maybe. Passionate, at times. Dreamer, always. I find Marina’s ferociousness beguiling. She did not allow it to be beaten out of her. At least that’s how she tells her story.
Perhaps I’ll rewrite mine.
Abramovic is a performance artist. She’s worked with Lady Gaga and James DeFranco, and she’s been emulated by Jay-Z. She’s written books, made films, performed in the most famous big city galleries. She’s done important work and developed important contacts. She’s an intellectual, cultured, exotic, opinionated, heard. She experienced Ulay as her Diego. Marina doesn’t just make art, she is art.
It was interesting to think and explain all of this about a woman artist. Have you noticed that the past is filled with famous male artists? If you ever browse Invaluable, take note of how many female artists reside among the men. Take note also that the bulk of those female artists …Carr, Kahlo, Abramovic, O’Keeffe, Cassatt … did not have children.
What do you think about that?
I know what I think. Time for a fierce discussion about stereotyping.
Sherri Jean McCulloch 