Artistic Accomplices
Art, Creativity, and Learning
We all have a story, and that story helps us navigate the world. It shapes our world and how we view it. And I think that story is how and why we create the things that we create and share the things that we share.
In this episode, I share more of my story as I get a bit personal, and discuss the magic gift of sharing our creations and our stories.
Talent is a word tossed about a lot when we talk about creativity, and in this episode, I dive into the topic and how I believe that a lot folks use the notion of talent as an excuse to not even try. They believe that you either have the talent or you don’t. But like Bob Ross, I believe that talent is a pursued interest, and if we’re willing to practice and to work we can do anything. Join me as I share some of my views on what talent is and isn’t.
Sarah Anderson, Sarah’s Scribbles: https://sarahcandersen.com
Sarah’s Scribbles, December 20, 2017 on GoComics: https://www.gocomics.com/sarahs-scribbles/2017/12/20
In this short episode, I discuss the notion of resonance and how something can resonate with us as it vibrates with the right frequency and pulls us and moves us, often quite literally. Though we all have different things that resonate with us, we know it when we witness and experience it. We might see a performance or hear a certain piece of music or watch someone paint, and we are overcome with that deep reverberation that is resonance.
Life can easily be thrown out of balance, and we can feel like we don’t have enough time to do the things that we want. Perhaps we simply clutter our lives up physical, mentally, and emotionally. In today’s episode, I share how my life has been cluttered up recently, and how I am beginning to change things around and declutter a bit!
The act of creating can have a very powerful and transformative impact on our lives. I’ve seen it in my own life with my work in the visual journal, and I’ve seen it with others in the work they do. Creativity allows us to connect with ourselves, to connect with others, and to find meaning and purpose in our lives.
I share a bit of my story and how the visual journal has helped me to find focus, to reflect on my life and art, and to grow and change.
We could do this creativity thing all alone, but it can be very lonely. It also can be hard to grow and to keep ourselves motivated. When we seek connection with other creatives, we can impact we can impact the lives and creativity of others and have our lives and our creativity impacted.
I explore the notion of connecting with others and why that is a vital thing in our creative endeavors.
How authentic is the creative work that you're making?
I discuss the idea of authentic making in this episode and talk about how in schools, studios, and artists’ workshops, many instructors teach projects where they make all of the decisions, and leave little to no decision making to students. If this is the case, whose artwork is it then?
How can we open our practice if we’re teachers to allow our students more of a say in their artmaking? And how can we as creative individuals work in a more authentic way?
We often can get overwhelmed with sheer amount of stuff that we have or that we feel that we need. The materials that we use are vital to our creating. Artists need paint or clay or pens. Bakers need ingredients, pans, and baking sheets. But many of us fill our creative spaces with a lot of stuff — stuff that we might not necessarily need — stuff that we might not necessarily even use.
We can easily be overwhelmed with all of this stuff, and find that we freeze with so many possibilities. I talk a little bit about how new materials and new supplies seem to contain a promise of creativity, but creativity doesn’t lie in outside things. It lies within us.
Bob Ross once said, “Talent is a pursued interest. In other words, anything that you're willing to practice, you can do.” Too often people use the notion of talent as a cop out to not even try anything creative believing that you either have the talent or you don’t.
I like the notion of talent as pursued interest. But of course we have to be careful because we can overly complicate out pursuits and end up frustrated since we may not be able to bring them to fruition. If we keep things simple we can make things more manageable, and we can be more successful.
Social media is such a part of contemporary life, and for anyone trying to make a living as a freelancer, it is a business essential. But too often people try to create Pinterest perfect posts that show an idealized version of reality, and sometimes, individuals project a persona that seems inauthentic.
In this episode, I discuss how there seems to be a rise in the number of Pinterest perfect posts and personas in the social media world of visual arts and art education and how these create a superficial or inauthentic feeling.
Getting started can often be difficult, and it can feel like we haven’t got any ideas. But often it’s the opposite, and we can be overwhelmed with too many choices. It’s very important that as we move forward with our creative endeavors that we learn to set limitations. It’s this act of limiting our materials and our ideas that our creativity can take off.
I discuss how we can set limitations for ourselves and spur on our creative journey.
Barry Schwartz:
TED Talk - The Paradox of Choice
Phil Hansen:
TED Talk - Embrace the shake
Relic: Luke Skywalker, Eric Scott, Mixed Media
How do you get started? I answered this question a few episodes back, but I dive a bit deeper into the idea of play as a way to get started. Using ideas that John Cleese discussed in a talk on creativity, I discuss closed mode vs. open mode, and how I use play and experimentation to generate ideas and explore materials and concepts.
Unfortunately, I misspoke when I mentioned the podcast Creative Pep Talk by Andy J. Pizza and said the incorrect name.
Creative Pep Talk - podcast by Andy J. Pizza
John Cleese on Creativity in Management - You Tube Video by Video Arts
Feeling like the last podcast was a bit rambling, I want to come at this topic again, and see if I could wrap my head around this notion that the universe is indeed conspiring with us. I focus on the idea that positivity, generosity, and compassion bring about positive, generous, and compassionate results in our lives.
It might be the stuff of cheesy self-help books, but we create our reality with the thoughts, emotions, and attitudes, and we can choose the path of the cold-hearted and stingy or the path of the generous and kind.
I go in a bit of a ramble about how we can often feel that the universe is conspiring against us when in fact it works with us to create our reality. When we become aware of this relationship, we can move ourselves toward the life we want to live.
How do you get started?
It can be difficult getting started on any artistic endeavor — from procrastination and laziness to feelings of uncertainty and being overwhelmed. in this short episode, I share a small personal struggle with procrastination and give a bit of advice on how to get started on your personal creative journey.
We must make a commitment, play and explore, start small, and learn some of the basics.
I sat down with good friend and artist Steve Loya for this week’s podcast, and had a good conversation about making art, being kind, and not seeing life and art as a competition. I have known Steve for nearly 30 years having met as freshmen at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 1991. It has be great being an eye witness to Steve’s journey as an artist and an educator. I hope you enjoy the interview.
From Steve’s website: www.steveloya.com
Steve Loya is a true believer in the power of art and creativity and makes every effort to explore this in his own life. A Bachelor of Science in Art Education major from Edinboro University of PA, Steve's work is motivated by a strong desire to communicate and express visually something beyond words or spoken language, however serious or playful his approach and subject matter may be. His work has been exhibited in solo exhibits, juried and group shows, galleries and small businesses throughout the Northern Virginia region, DC, NV, PA, MD, NY as well as in Japan, Greece,and the UK. His work has also been featured and published in a handful of physical and online artist publications and books during the past decade. You can follow his work at his frequently updated art blogs, Go Flying Turtle, and Splotch Monster Island.
tree 30, 7”x7”, watercolor and ink on paper
Endangered Kingdom series: Giant Panda, 10”x8”, watercolor and ink on paper
Yeeaah, That’s Right!, 12”x12”, acrylic on canvas
I conclude the discussion about creative blocks, as I delve deeper into the notion of attachment and how we cling to our identity, ideas, and materials as a way to stay in our comfort zone. We get in our own way by grasping at these notions and prevent ourselves from moving forward.
By being open to non-attachment we can become aware of our attachments to the past and the future and can stay focused on the present. Attachment can have us stuck in the mire, unable to move forward, but by recognizing those times when we grasp and cling, we can decide to act and get ourselves unstuck.
I continue the discussion about creative blocks, as I delve deeper into the notion of judgment. Our inner critic can rear it’s head anytime we create, and it can seem like it’s an endless loop of criticism. Unfortunately, it’s one of the ways the ego tries to convince us to stop creating and maintain the status quo.
Why do we diminish and denigrate ourselves so much as we criticize and condemn our creative endeavors? Only by becoming aware of this inner voice, can we lessen the self-defeating talk and stay present with our creativity. By opening ourselves for non-judgment and recognizing the truth about our skills and our creations can we diminish the grip our inner critic has on us.
I return to some topics from earlier episodes as I explore the creative block of Resistance and how we often get in our own way as we create. Though I discussed this a bit in the episode on Creative Blocks, I delve deeper and focus on how we may overcome this resistance.
By denying our creativity, by avoiding our creativity, and by staying trapped in our comfort zones, we resist our creativity and keep ourselves stalled and blocked. Only by becoming aware of those moments when we are resistant can we open ourselves and allow the creativity to flow.
It seems that there’s a lot of emphasis on the product over the process in many cart classes, whether you go into a public school art room or you go to the nearest art studio or art center. In part this push may come from our own personal experiences as students.
But how can we as educators, teaching artists, and students push ourselves away from the notion of a finished project and toward the notion of embracing the artistic process?
I delve into this topic in the latest episode and share some insight from my 20 years of teaching art in public schools as well as in the private sector of artists’ studios, art retreats, and art centers. I hope that as you explore your art that you can open to the process and not get so caught up in the end result — the product.
