Heartsong Studio

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.