Cultivating creative focus
I have been looking up. It has been an icy week of crisp days and clear skies. I have been blessed with saturated sun sets and subtly painted scudding clouds. I have taken off the mantel of the pressure to paint and process and spent time dreamily looking at birds cut across striated skies.
These blessed images are now held in my mind’s landscape. One or two have stuck and this week I took tentative steps to paint them. Sky markings, sky explorations….Sky sketches.
It can take a lot to begin again after time off, or time of a low creative ebb. Too many creative thoughts can flood in, almost harder to deal with than too few. There can be a tangle of unfiltered ideas and possible realisations. There can be a sense of wanting to embrace the new but afraid of failed attempts to express what is in the mind’s eye.
Embrace the chaos. No one has a clearcut path to success. If you are lacking in ideas, creativity is in the unexpected corners of our thoughts. It happens on the fly - noticed moments gain cohesion and a bubble of a project begins to expand. Keep with the mindful chaos. Few of us get to take off the busy-ness of life. We have to expand beyond it and collect and curate as our feet take us through our daily routines.
Once there is a glimmer of a project, don’t expand it too quickly. You can end up working it all out in your head with no sense of concrete action. Focus is in what we do, not in our dreams. Set an intention - letting go of many ideas to start with one.
The plan is to discover a balance that nurtures sustained creativity. Create a nourishing environment and lifestyle. Make rituals and sanctuaries where you can feel wholly you. Make peace with your studio - clear up and clear out. Bathe, light incense, drink tea. Allow space to think.
When you do begin to make a mark again, give yourself permission to get it wrong, permission to feel uncomfortable. Permission to rip it up and start again. Like society’s overwhelming, and unattainable, pursuit of happiness, art is not a pursuit of perfection, so don’t expect it.
Focus is not a destination, but a constant aim. Sloughing off self doubt, saying no to what no longer serves you creatively. Keep moving towards a nugget of a project that you can begin from…..and then begin.
(If you would like some help to kickstart your creative year, check out my new online course, ‘A Card for all Seasons’)