We build our own mouse traps. They take us down those endless paths that lead to nowhere. They give us our excuses to rationalize our failure.
Knowing the tricks, knowing the ground rules, playing fair; they’re nobodies’ excuses but our own. Understanding what is preventing you from reaching your goal, that golden apple and admitting it, is the first step towards success.
Miniature Pastel on panel
Step one: recognizing that you hold the key to either your failure or success. Is it writing that first short story? It begins with the first word. Visual art begins with the first stroke. Nothing will emerge without making a move. Otherwise, it stays bottled up in your mind and without releasing it causes you to only see failure.
So where do we go from here? Well, what is causing you to come to these pages? Can it be just that vague feeling that there is more to you than what meets the eye and you need to find a way to express it? You know it’s in there. You can feel it moving around in your mind when your imagination is tickled. You recognize a small pang of what? Jealousy, perhaps when experience something that speaks to that passion.
We are on a journey to explore the ways to keep that stream of creativity stocked with what is necessary to keep us well fed. We’ll be looking at methods to open the floodgates to the potential that lies within our reach. We are all creative, even in the darkest time, we already have the tools. We simply have to unearth and discover how to employ them.
Setting grief aside, not dismissing it but honoring it in its own place, opens a door to let the light in. Freeing your mind from the stress of financial difficulties will allow you to walk more confidently unrestricted by narrow vision perhaps taking you in a new career direction. And unless you are faithful to yourself first the most intimate relationships around you will be malnourished.
Discipline is key, so we need to take one step at a time, affirmative action; taking control. All those that tap into their potential are those that claimed responsibility for their lives.
Transfer print with mixed water media
In 1987, somewhere in the middle after being released from college with a degree in painting and awaiting a world that had not quite yet embraced my work, I enrolled in a class called Art Therapy and Human Development. As it turned out it became my therapy and my development. To this day I believe my art has always been a form of self-therapy.
Monotype
I started to keep travel journals when I enrolled for a summer course titled Greek Art and History at The School of Visual Arts. It took us throughout the Peloponnesus to witness the land and culture first hand. The single most important requirement was a journal to keep notes from the many lectures as well as record impressions and experiences we encountered. I hadn't understood the true value of keeping such a journal or the breadth of information it could hold until I returned home. Each page revealed a slice of my journey in full detail. It brought back to me the richness of texture, taste, and smell. It filled in the gaps that my photographs created. With each trip I made that took me anywhere beyond my usual surroundings, either to a neighboring city or to a foreign country, I brought a journal. And it progressed to contain Polaroid’s, quick sketches in the margins, drawings, paintings, scraps of ticket stubs, restaurant receipts, anything that revealed the sense of place.
An essential part of my journals comes by way of writing. It is necessary for me to think on the page. It helps me to keep track of materials and methods I've tried and their result. It allows me to focus. And although I'm often tempted, I try to restrict my writing to steer clear of griping about circumstances unrelated to my creative endeavors. What inspires you? What fleeting thoughts, and they are all fleeting unless you write them down, cross your mind each day? Writing them down, see them take root and grow.
-Laura
Writing Project: Images that tell a story: Photos and images reveal a story to see if you can find the story within a photo or painting. Answer these questions:
Where has the image taken you that you didn’t expect to go?
-Laura
Painting detail from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
As it so often happens after a burst of creative power we find ourselves at a dead stop, crippled to move forward. What is it that stops the momentum? More importantly, how do we get it back? When we begin a project it holds a sense of mystery and promise. This fuels our creative energies. But as the project continues and we are faced with challenges and obstacles that energy can begin to wane. Any endeavor takes discipline and dedication and we can easily begin to doubt our efforts. We hope to regain that creative promise we first felt at the start.
One useful approach is to set the project in question aside and begin another work, preferably one that differs dramatically from the one you put aside.
When I first started art school I had a very difficult time keeping a sketchbook. The critic inside of me wanted every page to be perfect and I'd get frustrated when a sketch came out, well not as I would have wanted it to. Then in a desperate attempt to fill the pages, I began searching through discarded drawings, paintings, color studies, notes on lessons and lectures, postcards from museum and gallery visits, all the remnants piled in an old archival storage box I kept. I composed the pages grouping like topics together and when the page was complete I'd add addition notations. It was the birth of my journals...
Now, so many years later, volume after volume fills my studio bookshelf. Each one a reminder of progress, learning, and achievement. Long after my hands are too feeble to hold a paintbrush, I will still maintain a visual journal. It’s as necessary ad breathing.
-Laura
In the beginning, what started out as a simple attempt to fill the vast blank white pages has now evolved into an invaluable tool within the creative process. It is a method used to open up ideas that I believe is not only a fertile approach but also a therapeutic one.
I kept a diary as a young girl and then later as an adult, but I've learned that by fortifying it with imagery I can breathe life into it and now the words and images are inseparable, each holding equal importance. Over the years I can see the evolution of my work. It has helped me to organize my thoughts, to see my way into a project, and then out again; it jump-starts an idea from a thought in my head to a realized work of art, and in the journal lies its inspiration, motivation, and history step by step.
-Laura
Athens: Graphite
After accomplishing the first steps towards working your way into any given project, the next most difficult task is to keep the momentum going. How do you meet with the page every day? Is such a commitment even possible? We can begin to feel overwhelmed, begin to doubt our abilities (oh no, here come those voices again). All that you overcame to get you to this point seem just ahead, around every corner. I won’t lead you to believe that they’re not. Even the most accomplished writers and artists face their demons time and again.
When life gets particularly busy and I can't get to my studio to paint I quickly become irritable. All of life revolves around striking a balance between work and play, emotional and physical, needs of ones own and the needs of others. Weighing what is necessary against what is wanted. Each day we are bombarded with choices that tip the scale in one direction or the other. Continually we seek the chord that feels intuitively correct. We know that when the weight has shifted too far in either direction something must change- something will give way. So I need to be involved in some form of the creative process to feel at ease. What I mean by this is that I feel physically and emotionally at ease while I'm involved in some means of creating. This can be as simple as reading a book on painting techniques, or flipping through a photo album of possible subjects to paint.
I was never very good at keeping a traditional sketchbook. When I was in college, I always felt awkward and on the unlined drawing paper my handwriting became illegible. Classmates would diligently add beautiful sketches, while I was scared to death of the blank page. I wanted every page to be perfect, every drawing to be a masterpiece and since this wasn't possible I failed to record anything. No one pointed out other options or impress upon me that a journal is just as important as a means to stimulate and inspire. I wanted to keep a record of my progress as well as a place to collect my reference and scraps I found inspiration. It was not until ten years later that I began modifying the sketchbook concept to suit my needs. So I began to keep visual journals. The first one was born from collecting images based on the theme of a painting I was working on. I'd make notations and even small sketches to focus on an idea. From there it simply grew. Just about anything that I felt any kind of attachment to could be included. I devoured old sketches and drawings, cutting and cropping to fit the pages. I had years of work packed away that I never looked at. I found related themes or medium. I'd write dates and titles where possible. I began to add my own photographs that inspired new ideas. The pages included works I admired from others as well as notes taken from galleries and museums I visited. I made color charts and took notes on my findings.
On Keeping a Journal
I'm a journalist. Not the kind you find writing hot topic news articles, no I keep a journal, well several journals, okay three journals, four if you include my datebook. Five, if you add in my current travel log. I keep different journals for each aspect of my life; art, writing, travel, and general personal meanderings. I think I'm on the right track when I focus on journaling, its use during travel its importance for self-exploration, working out issues once they're down on paper. What about the use of the journal in therapy? There are several directions I could go... the journal during travel, the journal for art's sake, the journal for art therapy's sake. And then there is the process for making the journal. For instance, in my art journal I record the progress of a current piece of work, discoveries I make with my materials, what I've found inspiration. This journal is the most visual because it includes sketches and small renderings in paint or pencil.
