What is your relationship with simplicity in your creative endeavors? Have you ever explored the many advantages of learning to create simple pieces, even if it’s just for practice or exploratory work? Well, whether you have or not, you can get a lot out of this conversation come with ideas about how to recognize the essence of your work through the ideas of simplicity, how to apply it to your exploratory practice comma and even your everyday life period.
Join Sage for this very heartfelt solo conversation.
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CREDITS:
Cover design by Sage; Illustration by Olga Kostenko
Photo, Homage to Rothko, by Richard M. Ehrlich
Music by Playsound
Transcript
I think simplicity has a place in every artist process or toolbox, primarily because I think it would be hard for someone who cannot reduce what they do down to its most basic characteristics to create intentionally. Hello all my uncomplicated and ever. Changing creatives out there. Thank you for joining. Me on the Sage Arts podcast. This is sage. I am solo today and I actually will. Be solo for the next. Several episodes, I’m not sure how. Long if you get the. Newsletter you may already have read that I am dealing with an overwork injury. That is, when you work so. Much and your body says stop. It’s something I’ve dealt with before. If you’ve been a reader or followed me for a while, you know that I developed it. While I was doing the magazine and it never. Away, one of my therapists said that I probably damaged it permanently, so I gotta be careful with it. And right now I have to kind of ease up on. The audio editing. Which is fairly intensive when I’m interviewing or when Brett’s in here because it’s multiple tracks and there’s a lot of crossover and I can’t just rerecord it if I don’t like how it came out. So I’m doing it solo because I can rerecord as needed and that can be a job that only needs the one arm. Everything else seems to require two arms to be efficient. So we’re just gonna back off, and it’s just gonna be me for a while, so hopefully that’s OK with you. I thought it was better than me. Just not doing it. And this kind of ties into our subject matter today because I’m having to simplify my process in order to keep going, and it’s giving me some time to sit back and think about what I’m doing and why I’m doing the podcast. So yeah, it’s. Just going to be you and. Me for a little while, which is fantastic. Let’s get to know each other better. Come on in and have a seat in the comfy cow. Coach Amber, I’m not sure where she is. She might be under the desk, so it’s all yours. Come on in. Have some nice tea. If you would like. Some what do I have? Very go to cola. Green matcha tea because I can’t ever just do one tea. I’m a weirdo except mint. You can do mint by itself, mince a great tea by itself. But in any case. Have a little tea. Have a seat. We’re going to talk simplicity today and this whole concept of simplicity is something that. I felt was really for everybody, but it also kind of played off of last week’s episode when I talked about things being easy and why you don’t necessarily want them easy. And although simplicity and easy aren’t the same thing, I felt like afterwards I was thinking I hope no one thinks that doing things simple is not a good thing. This simplicity is a fantastic thing and I’m going to talk about that today. But before I get into the meat of the conversation, I have some great comments out there. This past week, Dave Goff saw the should it be easy podcast cover on Instagram as he was boarding a plane and he stopped to make a comment, he said write this very moment. I’m thinking about a similar thing. I think my greatest struggle is the anticipation of struggling. I should be doing art, but it sounds so hard. Like so much work. Maybe I should wait another day when things will be easy but is easy. What I want, and that was really just key to so much of what we talked about last week. And he hadn’t even heard it yet. So. Apparently he was going to download and listen to. It on the plane but I. Love that sometimes when I put. These things out there. There are people out there and. This is exactly what they’re pondering and I think. In a lot of. Ways a lot of the subject matter that they bring up is on all of our minds on some level, so it’s not too hard for me to key in on that, or at least that’s. I hope but I want to thank you, Dave, for letting us know that you are struggling with this too. I think it makes all of us who are struggling with similar things feel like we’re part of a community and I think really helps in us moving forward and working on it right, because we know other people are working on it too. So thank you so much for your comment. Everybody else. Thank you so much for your comments, your likes, your shares. I really appreciate that. If any of you have other comments that you want to send me, you don’t have to put them out on social media. Although Instagram and Facebook at the Sage Arts podcast pages are open for comment and you can also direct message me through there, you can also write me at the sagearts.com go to the contact page and use the. From there, and if you get the newsletter, did you know you can just respond to the newsletter and it comes directly to me? And if you’d like to sign up for the newsletter, it’s on the homepage of the sagearts.com at the top and using notices button I just send out that one notice on Sunday mornings. So you know that the podcast is out and what it’s about. And if there’s any. Extra material. It is always available through that newsletter. Sign up for that. And while you’re on that home page, if you appreciate what I’m doing and you want to give back, you can do so through PayPal or buy me a coffee. There are buttons for that on the homepage of the sagearts.com, and all of these links are also available in your show notes or description section of your podcast player so you can go there for them. As well, and someone asked me about the whole donation thing was that last week. Why do I ask for donations? Well, because because this costs money to do right, and I don’t make money in another way. I’m not doing advertising right now. I’m not trying to sell anything specific. I just want to do this. But I also don’t want to be in the red doing it. And I want to keep doing it. So if you value this and you want this to keep coming and you don’t want me to turn to advertising because I’m really trying to avoid that, donations are gratefully accepted. So we can keep the format as is. Any case, enough of all that stuff? Let’s talk about simplicity and how it’s complicated and how it’s hard. And if you’re struggling with it, how to approach it, or if you don’t think about simplicity or don’t use it in your work or your processes, I’m going to give. You some ideas? About how to do that and why. You want to do that so as we head into this. Consider how simplicity plays in your work. Do you aim for simplicity in your actual? Network. Or do you actually infer complicated and we’ll talk about why this is still a subject matter for you, even if you do complicated and ornate work, and another question, are there areas of your creative life or even your home life or your other work life that seems overly complicated because we’re going to talk about how simplicity works across the board. For us as creatives, so just have. Those queries in mind? Mostly what is? Your relationship with simplicity in your creative endeavor. And I’m not bringing up the subject matter because I. Think it’s all? Good or all bad or whatever. I think simplicity has a place for all US artists, but that’s my opinion and you will determine for yourself through this conversation what role simplicity might play for you. The fact is, first of all, like I just said, simplicity is complicated, ironically enough. And it’s really hard to do simplicity. Well, it’s actually I think one of the hardest approaches to art now, a lot of people think, oh, look how. Simple that is. I could have done it or, you know, whoever could have on my. You could have done it. But the fact is, is good art takes. A lot of thought and a lot of understanding, a lot of education, a lot of skill, a lot of practice and simplicity, really, really can show that. But I do think people, especially people outside of. Our think that simple minimalist work is. Easy and it’s not. It might look like they just went up and. Slash slash and they were done. But as anyone who works commonly with simple design, I’m sure they would tell you this is that there’s a lot of subtraction that goes on before making those few strokes or those uncomplicated beads or identifying those spare few details to photograph. You can think of it as getting naked. It’s pulling away the things that cover us up, the pretty attire and the distracting statements we make with what we adorn ourselves with, or what you cover up and adorning your artwork with. That’s a kind of imperfect metaphor, but it really does speak to the essential part of simplicity. How it is about stripping things down to the most essential. Parts revealing that fundamental nature can be really hard because quite often it’s uncomfortable. That’s not to say that simplicity can’t be beautiful, but it can be kind of ugly. It might even be dull or disappointing, or it could be startling or amazing. The one thing you can count on. Is that if the essence of something can be summed up in a few strokes are a handful of simple shapes the one word that can be used to describe those things is truth. Through simplicity, you can uncover or discover or unbury. The truth of. A person or a place, or an object, or a concept or an experience you’re trying to capture or are exploring in the creation of your work. Truth, as we all know. Is hard stuff. And simplicity is all about aiming for an essential truth. And that in large part is what makes it hard. Creating work that can convey an essential truth can be quite a challenge, but it often has. To do with us. Puzzling out or trying to understand our own core motivation for the way we live, our personal aesthetic, our emotions, maybe even our past or our dreams. But the bottom line is. Finding the essence of what we are exploring is often rather elusive. Sometimes this is because that essential nature is not what we want to see, right, or we might be blinded. We might be so dazzled by the shiny bits around us that we can’t see past it. Sometimes we are simply out of practice and it’s hard to dig in and find the truth because we haven’t spent much time recently, if ever doing that. So simplicity really is a practice, at least for those who aim to do it well and get out the truth. In its most essential form. And before those of you who don’t work in simplicity, before you go off and hit the stop button on this podcast, thinking simplicity is not your thing. And so this is not going. To have anything for. Thank you. Let me reiterate that simplicity is not just about the final work, not just about what your goal is in your artwork. It is actually a really wonderful approach to assist in crafting any type of art, because even if you make things that are very ornate and complicated or busy or whatever, there is an essential truth. To what your work is about, what you’re trying to express or share or just experience through its creation. So if you can figure that out, taking away all the other distracting things that you may have put into your work or want to. Put into your. Work. It can guide you. Through your choices. Identifying the uncomplicated truth of what you’re doing means you also know what to ensure comes out in your work. I think sometimes we can get really involved in what we’re doing, that sometimes we end up removing really essential parts, and then when we complete it, we realize it’s missing something that we could swear was there before. So identifying the core ideas is a way of simplifying and understanding the essence of your intention and your focus. So yeah, I think simplicity has a place in every artist process or toolbox, primarily because I think it would be hard for someone who cannot reduce what they do down to its most basic characteristics to create intentionally. And that’s why I personally think simplicity is something that we should all practice on some level in some way. And so let’s talk about a few different ways to use simplicity in your art. And your creative life. First of all, obviously you can work with simplicity as an objective for your artwork, as in choosing simple or uncomplicated subject matter or complicated subject matter represented by a minimum number of elements or creating sparse compositions or employing uncomplicated applications, just basically making. Relatively minimalist art that could be one. Way to do it. But also, as I was just talking about, you can use simplicity to identify your intention and focus something. I think all his artists could benefit from, but of course that’s just my opinion. Something many people don’t think about too often, I don’t think, but it’s been really important in my personal journey and process as an artist is that you can really benefit from practicing simplicity in the exploratory phase and the exploratory process of developing your work. For example, in my painting practice right now, I’m. Exploring new techniques with this same basic simple image. It’s a silhouette. Of trees against a full moon. It sounds maybe a little hokey, but I’m using it for all of my practices. Because it leaves me a simple. Image to work with. That allows me to explore new techniques quickly because I don’t have to stop and think about what am I going to do. But it’s something that does. Actually mean something to. Me. I’ve always been really drawn to that kind of visual image. It’s always felt very emotive for me. In other words, I don’t spend time figuring out what to do while I’m exploring. And yet I’m actually refining and digging down on what this image means to me as I make new choices in each iteration of my practice. So strangely enough, I’ve simplified my exploratory process using the same image, not going with something mundane, so it keeps the practice interesting. And as a side benefit, I’m working out the essence of my connection to this image, so that’s pretty neat and efficient. And then years ago I used to have this practice of writing haiku. Every day. The haiku is an ideal example of simplicity, but in the art of poetry. Although poetry was the heart of my creative writing at that time, I had never much enjoyed writing haikus. But then I had this very long period of really terrible self criticism, along with having a stressful job that didn’t allow me a lot of time for writing. And so I wasn’t motivated and I wasn’t getting my creative writing done. Then on a whim, I don’t remember why I started writing high. Use kind of to see if I could write something worthwhile while I was just like in the shower or driving to work, the practice turned out to be rather freeing because I mean, it’s so casual I wasn’t even writing them down, but some were really good and that helped me find the enthusiasm and motivation. To write even after a long day. But. It also forced. Me to be. Efficient and intensely particular about every word that I was choosing, because that’s really what haiku is about. It’s about getting to the very essence of a subject. And to this day, I can I can get very particular about every word I put into a poem or a story, even although I try not to get too picky when writing an initial draft or it would just. Take me forever. To write anything but in editing, I do that and it’s been very helpful and it’s really an insightful skill for me. Although art doesn’t have a particular form specific to distilling the concept down like haiku, you could say minimalist art, but creating with simplicity in mind. Regardless of what kind of art you do can do for you what Haiku did. For me, for one you can do very simple pieces to free yourself up to get the rest out of the wrist as I call it, either as a way of easing into a creative session or if you’re feeling a lack of motivation, show yourself what you can do and get your brain into a creative groove again. But also if you approach a piece with the intention of creating something with absolutely nothing more than the core ideas and forms needed to communicate your expression, you will be forcing yourself to look very closely and carefully at your. Subject As well. As each and every decision that you make and every element you put into the piece. This skill is something you can take back to even the most ornate work and improve it with a homed perception. So yeah, that lesson of looking at every single word that’s used in a poem or story does translate into art in that every element that you choose, whether the work is simple or ornate, sparse or busy, forces you to be more deliberate. In your choices, and that’s really what’s at the core of simplicity and what makes it so hard. Because unlike something. That is really ornate and has a lot going. On in this simple piece, every single. Thing has tremendous weight and impact. Because it has to, because there’s not that much to carry the work when there’s not a lot going on to keep the viewer distracted and entertained. Each element in the piece is going to have to work well and work hard to relay what you’re trying to show or what you’re trying. To share with them. And so you can end up. Deliberating quite a bit over each element, especially if it’s something super simple. Like let’s say it’s. Just two strokes. And a dot, and that’s where these design lessons that we’re getting into at the beginning of the month will really come in handy because, for instance, knowing that a single horizontal line will feel calmer than a diagonal which depicts movement versus a vertical which is bold and grounded, can really change up your piece. And then. With the marks that you’re making to make those lines are heavy or thin or deep or shallow, or organic or graphic, all the characteristics of that individual element is going to speak very loudly. In a simple piece. So every choice for every element, for its orientation, its weight, its color, its value, the level of controlled application, the medium, even the tools, even every single one of those choices is going to make that mark or that line say something different. And I can’t even get into the principles that go into it like composition. Rhythm, hierarchy, unity, all that stuff. There is so much you can do with just two lines in a dot because you have so many decisions to make and everyone becomes super important in a simple piece. Because your viewer is going to notice these things subconsciously a lot of time is true, but still the overall sense they get. From your work. It could be changed dramatically by tweaking any single element or principle in some small way. So yeah, simple is hard to do well and with intention because you have to pay attention. To all of the choices that you. And make note that the way simplicity works in art and the way it works in writing like I was just mentioning, this translates into life as well. This includes your art business or the way you try to get your name out there or the work life balance thing you’re trying to establish. Right. Few of us live simple life, especially anymore. But we could probably benefit from a simpler version. I think it’s almost. A chronic issue in our lives these days. How busy we get. For some of us. It’s kind of part of our makeup raise my hand. We like to stay busy. But probably for most people a. Super busy life is not what they want, not intentionally, right? But it’s hard to find time to step back and see what’s really going on. We just keep kind of. Going out of out of inertia. Right, because our lives are so busy we don’t have. Stop. But what if we did? And we looked at the things in our life with the same kind of pairing down and subtracted exploration as we might do with our own art. If we took that idea of simplicity to heart, we could explore possibilities for new routines and processes in our lives. By applying the idea of simplicity of choosing only the most essential thing to belong in our day-to-day or our business plans or whatever it. Is it feels? Too complicated and too busy for. I read a really interesting little newsletter last week and it’s maybe it’s more interesting for me because it was a podcast thing, but I. Think it relates they were. Saying that they think all of the social media efforts that people put into their businesses these days, on top of the newsletters and the blogs and all the many things that any one of us attempting to. Share or sell? Think we’re supposed to do? And they may note of an example where someone who did a podcast who does podcasts did nothing for their podcast except make reels on Instagram, so they simplified it down to just one single social media item. In fact, I think it sounds like it’s the only promotion in marketing they did was those reels. So no other. Social media. No other marketing. And what it did was, well, number one, it really opened up their time to make a quality podcast. It also reduced their stress and they were still seeing growth and accomplishing the purpose of their podcast, which was, I think, to sell classes or sell coaching. In this world of ours, I think there are a lot of things we believe we’re supposed to do and that we automatically kind of get on board with because we don’t even consider whether we have a choice. And so I think stepping back and simplifying our lives might be really beneficial for many, many of us to stop and not just. Do what everybody else is doing, not just do what we think is expected of us, but actually look at the individual steps that we’re taking. Look at the things, the tasks and the the to do lists that we’re giving ourselves and not think, oh, we have to do. These but ask yourself. Do I have to? Do that you know, and then maybe you can simplify things and be a little less busy. And oh man, this has been speaking to me so much this week as I’ve been working on creating this part. Of the podcast for. You and I’ve mentioned this once or twice before, but when I feel like things are getting. A little overwhelming or I feel like I’m doing too much. I make priority lists and figure out what’s most important to. And that for one makes you stop and look at what’s in your life, whether it’s your creative life or your whole life, your family, your social life, your work life. You write down whatever you feel is necessary for you to have a happy and fulfilled life. If you did this, you sat down and wrote out just the minimum things that you need instead of prioritizing maybe or or do both. I bet social media wouldn’t make the top five. Probably wouldn’t even make the top 20. And yet how much of our day is spent on social media, or otherwise distracted by things online or on our? If you’re feeling like things are kind of getting out of control. In that regards, if. You can’t ever seem to find enough time. For all the things that you. Feel you need to do maybe stepping back and doing a simple assessment of what’s necessary, like a haiku for your life. You might find there’s a lot of things you could do without with that kind of assessment and. This was what was. Monumental for me while I was working on this this week and there and not only was it just the fact that I was working on the subject matter, but serendipity is a weird way of putting things in our path. When we need. Them and this whole thing about keeping up with social media. Personally, I find it really stressful. And with my overwork injury, I’ve been looking at what what can I not do, what? What can I do without? That we’ll keep. This podcast project going while I kind of recover from this. And this thing came across my feet because, yeah, I was online. Thing was on Instagram. Might been you two, I don’t know but. I’m going to talk about this more next week cuz I had this. Whole idea for. Episode that will cover some of this stuff, but. Just really quick. For right now. The gist of the information is that it talked about unplugging. From technology and our phones and all that. Stuff and it just really. Struck A chord with me and got me thinking about what was eating up my time and what was causing me stress. So I did. A simplicity assessment of my life, because that’s what’s been all my brain so. It’s not like let’s just. Look at what the essential things. And one of the things I realize is that there’s a lot of things on my phone that are vying for my attention. Like all the time, even though I keep notices off on my phone for pretty much everything except for texts and comments. I think from social media and everything else is supposed to be off. And yet there’s so much at our fingertips. That they’re just. Like black holes sucking up our time when I really me, I want to be writing and painting and getting out with my camera. If I stop and thinking about those other things important to me, well, and my family. My friends, you know I need my friends to keep me sane. I need my family in that sense of belonging. They give me and I do need to podcast. Actually, I honestly need to be able to talk to you all and feel like I’m contributing to something bigger than me. What I don’t need is to watch reels while I’m having lunch or stress over not posting 10 times. Week or when I do post wasting an hour fine tuning these posts or a reel to give it that little extra edge which may or may not be effective, or to check in on social media several times a day or go down. A rabbit hole. On Amazon trying to find. Just the right mini food process. Sure. Why? Why are there even 25 different mini food processors out there, right? So yesterday I decided to take some action and I actually took all my social media apps off my phone. They’re gone. The accounts aren’t gone. I’m I’m still. I still have live accounts. I’ll still be interacting with you. I just didn’t want them in my fingertips anymore. So now I have to go to my computer and specifically bring them up and most of them are more difficult to work with and get lost in on the computer. So that’s been really helpful these last couple of days since I did that. I do have to figure out what to do about the Amazon app because it’s hard to comparison shop while I’m out and about when it’s. Not on the. Phone. But I’m. Trying by making a shopping list and then maybe trying to allocate say my lunch time to doing whatever shopping I need to do. I don’t know. I think that’s going to be a work in progress. But bottom line, whether it’s social media that’s eating up your time or you just have too much on your plate, consider simplicity as. A goal for your life? I’m sure some. Of you really thrive. On busy and chaos, but as mentioned in the contrast episode, we do benefit from. Variety. So contrast to your chaotic and really busy times with some simple times. Look at scaling back in certain areas of your life and ask what you really need or start with a list of absolute essentials and then maybe slowly and sparingly, add back the things that truly make you happy. I think most of us could be in a better place, having more time for art and family and friends. If we do a little simplifying in our lives. Now if you get nothing else from this episode, I do hope you can take away one thing that taking time to figure out what is most essential, whether it’s in your art in general or for a specific piece or for your life, that that can show you truths about your work and about yourself that would probably be. Pretty hard to discover any other way. So this week, we’re not contemplate simplicity. I think a really. Great practice in your art itself is to look at finished pieces and determine what the most essential parts of them are, and then make something with just those essential elements. If you have time to do that and see. Does your intention still come across when you use just the basic things that you think are? Most important in the piece. Or you could look at every single mark and line and texture or shape color choice. Just every element in a piece and ask yourself what each items purpose is. We don’t always know necessarily because a lot of our choices are instinctual, right? But see if. You can figure out what each thing does. If you can’t figure out what any one thing does and imagine the work without that one element, does it change it for the better? Does it make it worse? Would it not matter whether it was gone? Would it not matter that? It’s there. This kind of exercise will help you identify the extraneous in your work and the necessary in your. Work. It’s a. Way of learning to work more deliberately, or at least to Polish or edit your work with more deliberation. Like I said about my writing with my writing, I try not to be too micro focused and it’s the same with my art. Try not to focus too much on the individual stuff in the initial rough sketch or first pass, but man, that stuff really comes in handy when working out the final piece. And if you’re. Doing study work on shape and form this month because that’s our our design lesson for the. Consider how simplicity affects shape and form, and then if you don’t already do this, maybe look at the process of exploring simplicity in your own life. See if there’s some areas where it can help you in your day-to-day or in your creative life, personal life, relationships, whatever. Now if you’re. A seasoned practitioner of simplicity, maybe you have some really great stories that other people would get a lot from, and sharing them could be really helpful. I would love to hear them. Like I always say, I’d love to hear your stories. You can write me at the sagearts.com to send me an e-mail through that contact page. With your stories, you can also reply to the newsletter like I mentioned, and if you don’t get the newsletter sign up for it on the home page of the sagearts.com, just look for the news and notices button or send me your stories or messages or just whatever through social media, Facebook and Instagram. And yeah, I may have taken them off my phone, but I do check them once a day so I will get back to you. If there’s something that you send there. So you can jump on the Sage Arts podcast pages on Facebook or Instagram. If you’re getting valuable information and inspiration from this podcast, do consider giving back by going to the homepage of the sagearts.com a little ways download for the PayPal or buy me a coffee donation. And buttons any and all of these links that I talk about can be found. In your show notes. Or description section of your podcast player. And while you’re looking at your podcast player, don’t forget to hit that follow button if you haven’t already done so. That will let you know when new episodes are out, and it also helps make the podcast more visible so more people can join us. On this conversation. So indifference to the theme of today’s podcast, I am going to wrap this up. And Amber apparently thinks it’s time too cuz she just came out from under the table and is now staring at me. But before she starts making some noise, let me just say that I hope you become more curious about the essence of your work, about what you do. About how you live and that you use any of these discoveries that you find to motivate you and to feed your muse. So go out there, stay true to your weirdness, and I look forward to chatting with you again next time on the Sage Arts podcast.
