Heartsong Studio

Of course you’ve been expressing yourself in your art adequately; that’s how you got where you are.   If it seems like you’re starting to repeat yourself too often, and fewer people are drawn to your work any more, you might wonder how to reinvent yourself.

“Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.” (Picasso)

How can you make a shift in your work’s impact and feel that creative rush of adrenalin once again ?

Try scaring yourself.

My sister and I used to take turns lying on a bed with our heads hanging over the edge.  The other one would look at the upside down face until she saw a 180 degree different face in it. Hint — Her hair hanging down could be a beard.

We’d look intently until the strange face suddenly snapped into view.   There was always the thrill of a moment of fear, knowing our own eyes had created it.

What’s this got to do with reinventing yourself ?

Expression isn’t about subject matter or style… even though these are important factors. It’s easy to get into ruts with the thousand details like your subject, style, colour palette, texture, chisel marks, glazes. . .

Expression is about viewpoints.  It’s about personal perspective.   Basically, it’s tied to the eyes through which you see the world around you, and all the filters between your brain and the world of which it’s trying to make sense.

To shift your perspective, try this:

Think about all the sorts of feelings and heartfelt ideas you express in your art.   Now, write down a few brief sentences about what you’ve expressed recently.   Keep it simple.

It’s okay, I’ll wait. . .

Now, imagine you could hang this concept upside down and focus on it from a 180 degree point of view.   See it out of the corner of your eye.

Come at your concepts and ideas from a startlingly different angle, and write down new statements, seeing your art’s purpose as you’ve never seen it before.

See how hard it is ?

Maybe you got off to a fresh start, but how easy it is to slip back into the old rut of thinking about your work.

What does it matter ?

It matters because it’s necessary.  It matters because, in order to stay on top of the wave of a world that’s in constant flux, you have to constantly be reinventing your view of yourself.

Why?   Because if you keep on drawing, painting, or sculpting, the same old tired platitudes, you’ll go on being the same person you were yesterday. You’ll slip gently into the good night of obsolescence.

It’s not about merit.

It’s about Conviction. Courage.   It’s about why you’re on this planet.   To make a dent in the universe.   In other words, if you want to reach people from your heart, you have to dig deep.

You have to extract the essence of what you’re about, and offer it up on a platter to yourself, and anyone and everyone who sees your work.  If you hope for creative satisfaction, even sales or references, be prepared to share your very soul.

And, my friends, none of this can be done without some open-hearted introspection, dogged determination to strike to the core of who you are and what you do, and the genuine desire to connect with your fellow humans.

If you insist on swanning around with superficialities, you’ll marginalize yourself.   There’s too much ambient noise these days to just whimper, and expect to be heard.   If you want to be seen, you’ve gotta dazzle; swing from the chandelier.

Bare-naked art.

Start with the stripped-down, bare-naked, raw-to-the-bone stuff that your art is about.   But it doesn’t have to be ugly.   It can be a glorious sharing of your innermost desires, an arms-wide-open invitation to the world to glimpse the essence of who you are.  And sharing of that magnitude rarely goes unrewarded.

Some may not like what they see.   Some may object, driven by their own fears and doubts, and blame you for their pain.   Others may counsel you to take a safer road, or keep hidden, or “appear professional.”   I say, let them have their way.  You forge yours.   Let them leave.   You stay.  And shine.

Some people - the right people, the people who matter - will love you for it.

Why? Because you’ve given them something to love, something to wrap their eyes around and hug.  Those who stay hidden can’t touch, or be touched, like this.

It takes courage to step outside of your comfort zone.  But that’s okay.  I know you can do it.   I believe in you.

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Have you tried and tried to make art that pulses with life, only to end up time and again with mediocre results ? If you just can’t seem to get beyond the ordinary, you may have all but given up on that elusive work that brings your special light into the world.

You may have started with a visual image that you hoped would blossom into a meaningful work. Then you tried different approaches within your capabilities, corrected for accuracy, and worked it to death, without any magic happening. But it’s not just about precision.

Making a work of art is a lot like falling in love.

To set about manufacturing an important piece would be like trying to engineer your true love all on your own. If you’ve ever tried it with love, you know how painful failure can be.

So how do you go about falling in love?

Here’s the thing — you don’t. You cannot intend to fall in love all by yourself, or dream up the finished form that will let your special light shine. You either love someone or you don’t. You’re either pulled towards an inspiration or you aren’t.

One half of a partnership cannot create the other half, yet the relationship can’t start without the special light of both meeting.

Eventually you might have given up hope of a match made in heaven. So too you might have given up ever creating a remarkable work of art, and resigned yourself to making the most of what you have.

Don’t get me wrong.

There’s nothing wrong with making the most of what you have. But, in love as in art, what you have is only half the story.

You know what’s missing — the other half. Even in great art — maybe especially there — it’s about relationship.

There’s you, the artist, longing to find the visual metaphor for your special light, and there’s the metaphor longing for the perfect you to find it and give it visual expression. Both parts must be vulnerable and able to recognize and receive the other.

How can an image respond in partnership ?

The images you choose embody personal feeling, and continue to hold that meaning for you. Here’s where faith comes in; faith in your essential light, and how you conceived of the image. If you respond to it as though it had a light of its own, then it will come to life.

Letting go is the scariest.

Just as in love you have to be willing to share control, so too in making art. There comes a time when you have finished with the reference sketch or photo, and need to let go of your preconceived idea, and step into unknown territory.

“The Fertile Void is the long, slow, deep breath — the gathering in of strength — that precedes a daring leap into the unknown,” writes Suzanne Braun Levine.

Not knowing is crucial. Besides providing excitement, this element of mystery may be the reassurance that you are not doing this alone after all.

Every step of the way, keep asking what the relationship needs. When the visual metaphor responds to your spirit as an equal, magic can begin. The most natural thing is to work in the flow of partnership, together developing the unique form it will manifest in the world.

Just like that.

Once you are engaged in partnering with a work in progress, and have forgotten all about forging it alone, the masterpiece will begin to take shape. It may seem to drop from the sky like a seed into fertile soil, or it might be a slow, delicious growing. If it is your greatest work yet, you will feel the recognition without doubt, just as you would recognize your soulmate.

Whatever missed you couldn’t have hit. Whatever hit you couldn’t have missed.

The perfect concept might already have appeared and you weren’t ready, so you didn’t recognize the sacred moment. But that’s all right. If you weren’t ready, a lover or work of art wouldn’t have come to maturity anyway.

You would have saved yourself the heartache of overworking and ruining a good idea. Besides, it may very well appear again later when you are ready.

Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.

When one work turns out not to be your special one after all, you have the opportunity to learn and grow from the experience. It won’t have been a mistake so much as a learning step before you are ready to receive the greatest work of your life.

Don’t ever give up.

When the right one does land in your heart, what follows isn’t hard work in the slightest. It will envelop you from all directions with a powerful reassuring strength. You will know without a shadow of a doubt that this is the creative inspiration for you in this moment.

A true masterpiece grows of mutual love until it fairly swoons with big, deep, wide meaning.

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