Heartsong Studio

When I first moved in with my present husband Bill 35 years ago, I found a new job on a US military base. As graphic illustrator, I was to make signs for military exercises, and I was given a mechanical “lettera set” for making them.

Though it meant I could be with my new man, after the innovative freedom of teaching at an International School, I hated the prospect of not using my creative juices all day long.

But, at first I did what was asked, and made legible signs. The soldiers were very satisfied. They got what they expected. I was successful, but bored stiff.

Who do you please, yourself or others?

A friend and client of mine regrets that she can’t develop her own ‘fun’ art because she has to churn out art that sells in her coop gallery. You may have found that friends or clients keep expecting your original type of work too. Maybe it was successful once so you don’t like to turn them down.

I bought some books on calligraphy and took a night school course. Soon I started making every work order in duplicate: one with the lettera set, and one in freehand calligraphy. Then I turned them both in and let the captain choose.

Every single time that I submitted two versions, the ordinary soldiers always chose the hand drawn calligraphy one. Within a week, I stopped making the mechanical version. This was soldiers expecting military signs, not people expecting varied art in a gallery.

How can they choose what they haven’t seen yet?

If you gave yourself the chance to develop some other sides of your art, then your clients could see for themselves the larger array of your creative capabilities.

If the soldiers instantly appreciated my creative calligraphy, how long do you think it would it take your clients to enjoy the choices of new innovations in your art?

The essence of your ‘fun’ artwork is no different from that of what you sell. All your work contains your essential spirit. You can’t help it.

Give yourself some private time to satisfy your own needs, to develop your art just for you, and see what’s in there wanting to show up. It needn’t take a great deal of extra time away from your usual work.

Try this:

> Fewer pieces but more options.

Work on your own ‘fun’ art, then introduce one or two innovative pieces along with fewer of your tried and tested ones.

> Cross pollinate.

After awhile you could interweave newly developing directions that show up in your newly emerging art into ‘old’ expected pieces, letting the ideas lead you as they seem suitable.

More creative freedom than ever.

It wasn’t long before I started to be asked to make advertising posters and tickets for the military community theatre group, and other functions. Work began to be really creative and fun.

Once your innovative side is exposed, I bet folks will start to seek you out with ideas of their own. You’ll be meeting your clients’ needs for beauty and developing some really innovative work at the same time. You’ll be much happier too, and this benefits everyone.

In our rush to satisfy what we perceive as expectations to please others, we sometimes just about forget the inner world of satisfying our own needs.

The home of the creative spirit, given any chance at all, will reveal its divine, miraculous capacity to heal, to make us whole, and to lead us to ever greater success as well as pleasure. Remember pleasure?

One painting a friend made almost by accident, moves her profoundly. Since then, none of her paintings even come close. After completing a milestone work, have you ever thought you’d lost your way, unable to produce an encore?

British scientist, Alexander Fleming was working on diseases caused by bacteria. One day in 1922 he happened to have a cold, and a drip from his nose fell into a culture dish of bacteria. He was surprised to find that the accidental drip had killed off any bacteria it had come in contact with.

Do you sneeze at serendipity ?

Sometimes when you’re least expecting it, a work will emerge unbidden, that seems curious, powerful, unlike any you’ve made before. Though you didn’t know you were looking for it, your willing innocence to find it changes everything that went before and comes after.

Maybe other scientists have had the same sort of ‘accident’ happen to them, but threw it out as a spoiled experiment. But not Fleming. Like you, he was willing to recognize the opportunity disguised as an inconvenience.

A willingness to be vulnerable, instead of intentionally trying to cause it, allowed you to recognize the serendipity for the amazing opportunities it held.

Was Fleming an overnight success ?

First he isolated the active agent in the mucus, but it proved too weak against the main disease-carrying bacilli. But he kept on doing the day-to-day work of unraveling what he could learn from the ‘accident’.

Unwrapping some of the mysterious gifts that were embedded in your first success, probably reveled a lot of meaning. You may not be ready yet to receive another opportunity of such magnitude. If every work you made were spectacular, you can see how you might lose your way, buried in unwrapped gifts.

You haven’t lost it. Like Fleming, you’re just creative.

The dryness that’s driving you crazy actually comes from your inherent creativity and optimism. For if you look closely at the art you have started since, you’ll discover that it holds reminders of nature you haven’t explored, life you haven’t lived, and touchstones for the myriad interests that beckon your curiosity.

The smaller works between the special pieces are part of the learning process of unraveling mysteries. Take enough time to enjoy living the secrets as they unfold, without trying to second guess what you may find next.

Six years later . . .

In his cluttered laboratory, Fleming noticed that a culture dish of bacteria had been invaded by a mold whose spore must have drifted in through an open window. Under the microscope, he saw that, all around the mold, the individual bacteria that he had been growing had burst. He saved the mold, and from it produced the world’s first penicillin !

When you’re good and ready, with nothing to prove and no stake in the result, you may be surprised again by surendipity. Let your heart feel the way to dance this image into a form it wants to be.

There are an infinite number of paintings great and small waiting for the opportune moment to be born through your creative hands. Like the miracle drug penicillin, one or two might even knock your socks off !

4 comments