For Episode #42, I couldn’t go small. This had to be the answer to life, the universe, and everything (nod to my fellow nerds out there who get the reference.) But seriously, this is a really full, rich episode contemplating everything from the source of our unique voice to how to process inspiration to combating the overwhelming noise of today’s modern world.
In this essential discussion, I break down the difference between our source of artistic creativity versus sources of inspiration, why access and awareness of this inherent source of creativity is important to you and your art, and define ways to keep that internal well full and available to you in a world filled with so much distraction.
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Resources mentioned:
Miyam Bialik – 2 Weeks Unplugged; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gM-kwqZuyU
Miyam Bialik’s Breakdown Podcast: https://www.bialikbreakdown.com/
Sage Arts companion podcasts to listen to:
The Necessity of Doing Nothing: https://rss.com/podcasts/thesagearts/918599/
Feed Your Muse: https://rss.com/podcasts/thesagearts/860948/
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CREDITS:
Cover design & photo by Sage; Illustration by Olga Kostenko
Music by Playsound
For Transcript click on the episode here: https://rss.com/podcasts/thesagearts/
TRANSCRIPT:
Transcription (AI transcribed, unedited. Please excuse the copious errors.)
Transcription (AI transcribed, unedited. Please excuse the copious errors.)
The source of your art doesn’t come from the Internet. It doesn’t come from other people’s opinions. It doesn’t come from social media or YouTube. It doesn’t even really come from books or classes, or even like a great podcast. But I think we can mistakenly think that’s the case sometimes.
Hello all, my passionate creatives out there. Thank you for joining me on the Sage Arts podcast. This is sage. If you’ve been listening the last, I guess two episodes. You know, I am having trouble with my right arm, so I’m having to keep these as Salou episodes for the while. Just because editing is so much more intense. When I do interviews. We even have right here. It’s just the combination of two different. Voices does require a little bit more finagling with the audio to make sure that it’s clear and concise and on target when I hand it over to you. So in any case, today I am going to talk about a subject that is, I have to say one of my passions kind of an underlying. Reason for all the things I do in terms of my sharing and and education. Whatnot. So I’ve talked about similar things. So if you’ve listened to the necessity of doing nothing episode or the feed your news episode, preferably both, you will have a little. Background on some. Of the things that I’m going to talk about today, and if you haven’t listened to those two, I do strongly suggest that you listen to those episodes. They don’t necessarily need to be listened to. Before this one. So you can listen to this and then go listen to those as well. In any case, they kind of all build off of each other. So if you. Want to listen? To those, please go do so. I will put links in the show notes so you can get the direct links to those, at least any web browser or capacity, but you can always look for the titles, use your search option in your podcast player as.
Now the subject today is about the source of your art and where and how to access that primary vein or well of artistic imagination to create truly fulfilling and original work through, and what I hope would be an enjoyable and meaningful process, which of course is what this whole. Podcast it was kind of about, but I realized I’ve never really talked about this innate artistic curiosity. This innate source of art within ourselves. And that’s the thing that we need to tap into. But let’s work our way into it by a shout out to Kathleen. Dustin who kindly gave the podcast some generous support and kind words. She mentioned listening to a few of the episodes just recently and found the discussion on simplicity especially true for her. Kathleen is a veteran craft artist who I highly respect, and she has some insights on the subject. I thought I’d share with you, she said. The best art is authentic, personal and true, which is what enables the artist to peel down to its essentials. I can’t agree more. Kathleen, she goes on to speak to creating without intention or a concept saying there’s nothing to drive those essential decisions except design or the latest technique invented, which isn’t enough. I know it may be difficult to see in my complicated and detailed work, but I in fact spend most of my time making those decisions about essentials. So it was really nice for one having a validation to hear the same thoughts from of someone I respect so much about the ideas of simplicity being an inherent part of the artistic process. And this actually feeds into our conversation on today’s subject in that the same understanding of the importance of recognizing essential aspects of a piece. Is also true about the advantages of recognizing the essence of who you are as an artist, and that is the source of your artistic creativity.
So it’s great to have a note like this to share in my inbox. But there was more to that than just the insightful words. That was really telling and getting this comment from Kathleen. For those of you who are familiar with. The polymer art. World or fine craft art, maybe. I’m sure you recognize the name. Kathleen Dustin. She’s one of our pioneers in polyp. And works at a very high level of fine craft art. She’s has pieces and museums all over the United States, even one in Amsterdam. She’s regularly awarded commendations even like best in show in these huge fine craft shows like the Smithsonian craft shows. So one can say she kind of knows her stuff, and yet she’s listening to this podcast. And I know for a fact that she spends time educating herself on whatever her curiosity leads her to. And I think that’s actually key to some of our most successful artists because they never give up on learning. They never give up on listening and being open to new and even old ideas. I know I’ve been guilty sometimes of thinking, oh, I don’t need to know that or I don’t need to hear. Or listen to this or read. This or whatever it is, because it’s probably. Going to be something that. I already know The thing is, it doesn’t matter whether the information is something you already know or not. It only matters that you’re open and receptive to bringing those ideas to the forefront and. That oftentimes is what this self education is about. It’s about reminding ourselves. Even if we know what we’re doing and we’re really, really. That it there are so many aspects, especially in an area like art that we forget or we neglect, and having those reminders through things like this podcast or available books or magazines or talks or conferences or whatever, it’s all really important to keep yourself actively learning and thinking and not just creating an existing. Fully within your own. You know vacuum.
So thank you, Kathleen, for your comments and your kind words and your financial support. If you, my dear listeners, would like to send me your thoughts and your stories and your. Questions, please reach out to me through the website at sagearts.com via the contact page there or you can go to social media, Instagram, or Facebook. We have the Sage Arts podcast pages where you can send me direct messages or leave comments in any of. The post you can. Also reply directly to the newsletter if you get that and if you don’t get that, you can do so by going to the front page of the sage. Arts.com website and hitting that news and notices button I just send that out on Sunday morning to let you know what the new episode is about. I throw in any extra material that might complement the most recent podcast, and if there’s any relevant news, it is in there. As well, and if, like Kathleen, you’d like to financially support this podcast, this can be done on the homepage of the sagearts.com. Just look for the buy me a coffee or PayPal. Donation buttons are little ways down that homepage and that and any of the links that I talked about can be found in your show notes or the description section of whatever you’re listening to this podcast from,
and with business taking care of. Let’s get into our conversation. First of all, this exploration about where art comes from, you might want to ask yourself, are you aware of and in touch with the essential source that motivates? Informs your art that’s going to be the questions to keep in mind as you listen. What is the essential source that you mine for your artistic vision and creativity? There is sure to be other questions that will come up. As we go along that are going to have to do with getting in touch with your specific artistic well or spring or source whatever you want to call it, and we’ll go over how to do that and ways to keep in touch with it before all is said and done. So you have access to that source whenever you need to call it up.
Now I acknowledge that I’m probably going to tell you a lot that you on some level already know. But as I mentioned just a moment ago, constant education, constant curiosity, and ongoing openness to examine or re examine ideas and information can really make a difference in one’s creative success. So if you cut yourself off from new ideas. Or re examining old ideas. I would say you have a diminished potential for growth and probably for joy in your work. Not learning, not growing does kind of reduce the risk factors, which is probably going to be a whole another episode about vulnerability, not to just in future, but sticking with what’s comfortable and what you know and not pushing beyond that or examining what you know can. Be stagnating for an artist, so I hope you’ll keep hanging out. With me today regardless. Of where you are. On your journey and being in.
Touch with your artistic source. We should probably start with what? It is I’m talking. About what do I mean by where does your art come from? Well, I’m not talking about inspiration, not the initial seeds of the ideas that you have for any particular piece, but rather the will of ideas and preferences and aesthetics and motivation to create. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been kind of amazed that we create things from absolutely nothing. Or so it seems. We may have some ideas. We may have some materials, but how does something that never existed before that can affect other people that can give them joy that can get them thinking they can change their view of the world, or maybe even change the world? How can that? Come from a bunch of inert material combined with a simple drive to create something between that drive to create and the manipulation of those materials is a whole series of decisions that we make, and those decisions come from a very personal and specific place unique to us. Those decisions come directly from our experiences and our inclinations. The aesthetics we’ve developed, our passions, our dreams. Sometimes our anger, sometimes our love, sometimes our curiosity and wonder.
The choices we make while we create are a direct result of who we are, the culture that we live in, the things we’ve been exposed to, things that we’ve been taught. And the emotional and psychological roller coaster of just human. At this point, you might be asking yourself how this differs from the concept of inspiration. Well, inspiration is like nudges, like small or sometimes big ideas like turn on a switch. Inside of us that. Gets us thinking they’re not in and of. Themselves, the source of our actual. Art, they are external motivators. They are idea generators. We can draw excitement and energy from them. They can form guiding visuals or intentions for our work, but they aren’t the source of our artistic creative. City those come only from inside of you, so our artistry instead of taking inspiration kind of wholesaling, reworking it is more like a filter that shuffles through all the input that we have, all the sensory input, the visual, the tactile, even the taste and sense of the world around us, and it pulls. Out pieces that are useful for our artistic creativity work with, but our inspiration can also be more conceptual, as in, they can be drawn from emotions or stories or experiences, or a passion for various issues or injustices. But the key difference between these sources of inspiration and the sources of our art is that those inspirations are external. We draw from them and our source of art filters them for us to use. Does that make? Sense,
in other words, inspiration is more like your art material than the artwork itself. Right. So you can think of inspiration as. All the choices. You have when you walk into an art supply. Store you go through and pick the things that. Speak to you or that help. You say what you. Want to say but those supplies are not yet are not until you make them art and the only thing that can make your art is you. So you are the source of your art. It’s inside you. It’s not external, it’s internal. I think understanding this difference is important in that we Canmore closely listen to the voice inside ourselves when creating. If we understand that external inspirations are just unmanipulated supplies that anyone can do something with, but the source of our artistic creativity, the power and the mage. Is what gives the materials, including the inspiration and the physical or other materials we work with so much potential to become something far beyond the sum of its material parts. The source of our art is kind of these secret sauce in the mix that takes in their materials and raw ideas and makes them into inspiring. Additions to. Our world.
Now, why is knowing where your art comes from Important? Well, for some, maybe it won’t be so much, but part of this conversation is learning and understanding what is important to you. I personally think it can be immensely useful for all of us to be consciously aware of the source of our artistic ideas as knowing where your art. Comes from. Means you should have more ready access to the source of your creativity and the filters that. Sift through your. Recognizing that it is a separate source that you can dig into keeps you from falling into the trap that the inspiration is the thing that’s going to lead you or the material is the thing that’s going to direct your creativity, and that is not to say that inspiration or the material is not an instigating factor in getting your creative. Engine running because they are. Often, but without reaching into your creative well into your artistic source, you may be able to craft something potentially beautiful, but it’s not going to be a view and this Harkins back to the conversation. I think Brett and I were talking about in the last episode, we did together on whether art should be easy since we spend some time. Trying to define art in the first. And that is what got me thinking about doing this episode actually, because if we don’t understand that art is about putting ourselves into the work we miss out on giving the world and ourselves the gift of something truly unique and awe inspiring.
But even more than that, we miss out on a process and experience that is honestly. Indescribable. It’s like. Thinking that you’re in. Until you’re actually in love, which means you never really know if you’re actually in love because you could end up with another experience that really redefines it for you. I I don’t know how else to explain this. It may sound crazy, but creating from a personal well from that source of your art and being able to access that in a full and authentic way just gives you a full and authentic. Bit of. It’s but a lot of people don’t know that they haven’t had that full inauthentic creative experience because they haven’t delved into their internal well enough to find that to realize that. So they think they have what it is that they are after in their creative journey, but maybe you. Need to push. Yourself a little bit more. And see if there isn’t something more because you won’t know until you’re there. I hope that makes sense. A lot of this stuff is really. Abstract, but it’s just important to be able to access and be conscious of where your art comes from so that you don’t mistake external sources for your authentic. Yourself.
So let’s talk specifically about where art comes from. Number, what it comes from inside of us. Right. That means we need to look inside ourselves for those sources, for those ideas and preferences and aesthetics. And that means getting to know yourself. In ways that. Might be difficult or uncomfortable, but also might be mind blowing. An amazing and freeing and we’ll get into some of the ways that you can do. That towards the end. Here, but just think. About it, art often comes from our emotions, from our pain, our hopes, our dreams, our joy, positive or negative associations, our experiences, our various loves, our passions, our relationships. All those crazy. Messy things that we have in our life can be hard to see honestly, but just like I mentioned in the episode on simplicity, being able to dig down to the essence of who you are, what you want to say, what you want to share, how you see the world is going to give you a source and directives. For the intention in. Your work, in fact, the whole idea of exploring your motions and your experiences and your relationships and your relationships with your emotions and experiences can be a source for your artistic creativity. I know you have known of or heard about or read about artists who are working through their own traumas or difficulties. Are trying to get to know themselves better through the exploratory process that. Is making art. But that process is not relegated just to big time fine artists or very conceptual thinking artists or whatever you want to call them. Even if you make cartoons or cutesy sculptures or fanciful little bun pendants, you can make those more than just a product that you sell or just do for fun. You can make them art, but that takes using them in a way. That explores who you are. I mean to start with, you choose to make the things you do, because in part it’s who you are, at least. So and if you want to dig deeper, you reach into that creative well of yours and you ask the hard questions and you push to find the essence of who you are in that particular line of inquiry. Let’s say you make cute dragon figurines. What is it about Dragons that. Draws you. What is it about? Taking something that Mythologically was a fierce and fiercesome creature, and turning it into something approachable and ado. There is probably a reason for that, and if you explore internally, you may come up with all kinds of wonderful insight as to why you create these things and what they mean to you, and that can really tell you a lot about yourself, but it also feeds into your work. It gives you ideas and insights into the kinds of things that. You would make. That are meaningful to you and that actually. Put a little bit. Of you into the work, not just making something that you think will sell or that you think will gain attention. Because people do like kidsy things. But it’s much more. Meaningful and fulfilling if that cutesy sculpture is imbued with something of yourself, then it becomes more meaningful and fulfilling for you as an artist. Another big thing and kind of important for these days is that when you’re looking inside to see who you are looking at that internal well of yours. Is to be able to actually recognize it as something that’s part of ourselves, not something that came from an external source, and that we’ve kind of adopted, but it may not necessarily really be who we are. We just think that is something that we should think or believe, because that’s what we’ve heard so much or we are exposed to so much. That we all know that we live in a world with an immense amount of external input. There are rare moments when we are not getting input from the external world, and I don’t mean sensory perception input like what we see, what we hear, what we. Smell what we. Taste. I mean information and education and being sold things and being told things. To such an extreme. Time that is nearly impossible to ignore or not have it influence our artistic choices before it goes through the filtering of our artistic creativity. That source that does the filtering and makes the choices based on our personality, our experiences, and what it is we need to share. That is not to say that external influences shouldn’t be a part of our art. They absolutely can be. But again, we need to recognize that those are like art supplies. Those are bits and pieces that we can rifle through and pull out what we need to share what we want to share and create what we want to create. But they are not the source of our. Artistic creativity. So let’s talk about what the source is not. So you’re also clear on that. The source of your art doesn’t come from the Internet. It doesn’t come from other people’s opinions. It doesn’t come from social media or YouTube. It doesn’t even really come from books or classes, or even like a great podcast. But I think we can mistakenly think that’s the case sometimes, maybe unconsciously, even and kind of what I mean by that is we often find ourselves. Searching for components that we think we need for our our artwork from these external, informational and educational sources. And this is not to. Say that those sources aren’t useful, maybe even necessary in certain parts of. The journey, but they really should be building on and informing what’s already there within you, these external sources. Are tools or? Bridges, really. They also mostly come to you in like, very general or raw form. So if you learn something from, say, a YouTube video, it wasn’t specifically taught. To you and for you is top for a more general audience from the limited, if talented, perspective of the person who’s teaching you. But you realize it’s not. From you at all. You have to process it. That’s what I mean by it being raw. And by processing I mean that you need to pick what it is from that educational session. That means something to you that sparks your curiosity and that can be used for the kinds of things that you want to explore and investigate. The real take away from those kinds of educational opportunities is really going to be learning a skill or maybe some design. Concepts. But if you use that education as the source for your ideas for making your work, you aren’t mining your own artistic source. Really, you’re mining someone else’s artistic source. So instead of trying to make something based on what they made or the types of things they showed you in a video, you want to practice the skills they taught you. And maybe play with the design ideas you learned and not just come up with your own version of what they did. Rather, let those skills and design ideas filter through who you are. And you do that by being curious and asking questions and not just doing things the way you were told to do them. You explore, you let curiosity and your aesthetic and your preferences guide you through the exploration and refinement of what you’ve learned. Don’t try to come up with something different than what they did. Because that’s just brainstorming off of their designs. Brainstorm off of the technique or skill that you learned, but apply them to forms and concepts that interest you. For example, when I started learning ICM photography, the intentional camera movement painting the light approach, I saw a lot of images using vertical movement with trees and you’d move the camera in a quick vertical motion to do this and all the trees look really smooth, like pulls on those with great streaks of color in them, and they’re really cool photographs and I do like trees a lot, but. My preference for trees are like crooked and gnarled and just kind of crazy and different, and those don’t do well for that kind of movement in the camera. So although I liked the technique and I like trees, what other people are doing wasn’t me. So I had to look at what piqued my interest and the things that piqued my interest would be like pinpoints of light that would streak in ICBM, and it’s kind of an, I don’t know, maybe an understood rule that you avoided pinpoints of light in your. Scene because they’re. Really dramatic. And they kind of distract from everything else. Well, I decided to use this technique of photographing smooth vertical lines. But to do? It with shiny things to see if I. Could get smooth vertical lines. Right. And I got some really cool images from photographing my shiny tools are hanging from the little magnetic strip organizer in my studio table. I also did some stuff with waterfalls in our pond and my favorite were these different colored wine bottles that I arranged with the light coming from One Direction so the streaks are all separated so. You see how I. Took the concept that I learned online how to make smooth vertical lines in ICMP and instead of applying them to trees which seem like. What everybody else is. I asked myself how the technique could be applied to something that intrigued me personally, and so I found a way to control streaks of light by using the same technique commonly used on trees in ICMP. I didn’t try to find something different, rather I had a technique and it looked at all the things I wanted to explore and. They saw a potential that piqued my curiosity, and by the way, it also works the other way around where you learn skills and techniques and you put. Them in kind of like a skills. Your technique toolbox mentally and then later on you find something that you want to explore, and looking at the techniques and skills in your toolbox, you can take the subject matter concepts that you want to explore and play with these already learned skills and techniques. So you’re basically just pairing up things that you learned that you liked the process of. And subject matters or concepts that you want to explore. So now you are using your creative well where your ideas and creativity comes from. To determine what things are going to be used together, what techniques are going to be used, what subject matters so. That is filtered through. You and then the artwork that you make comes from your own source of curiosity and your own source of exploration. When you do that, you’re going to have to access your own aesthetic and preferences, and that will be you. Turning to that internal well, your artistic source for the creation of your work, instead of looking primarily to the external source from which you learned these techniques or design skills. Another thing to. Look out for is turning to the Internet for ideas and inspiration, and again, I’m not saying that it can’t be a source for both of those, but if you find yourself regularly scrolling through Instagram or Pinterest or looking up galleries for sources of artwork to jumpstart your design, you’re going to create a lot of noise. In the form of other people’s design choices and aesthetics. So although it can be useful, I might suggest that you put some kind of limitations on looking at other people’s artwork. For one, I would highly suggest looking at artwork that is predominantly not in your primary material or art form. Good design translates across mediums and forms and cultures and aesthetics. When you’re looking at artwork that’s not associated with the type of work that you do, rather than look at the techniques and specifics of things that they do with your known material, you look at and see the design and the colors and the textures and the shapes and the forms. And all those things that can inform your work independent of the material. That way you don’t consciously or unconsciously take pieces of their design and just integrate them into your.
Now there are times when integration makes sense, because digging down into your internal source you find certain shapes or textures or color combinations really speak to you. But again, you don’t just. Use these new. Supplies of ideas wholesale. If you like a particular texture, don’t reproduce it just like you saw it play. With it and. If you see it in another medium. You’re going to be forced to play with it to see what kind of similar textures you can create with your medium, and that will force you to investigate rather than directly appropriate. What you saw? The other thing I would suggest if you want to continue to look at other artwork for inspiration is to keep a sketchbook with you as you look at these things and use those concepts we talked about in the simplicity episode to narrow down what it is you like about the piece, and then make notes or sketches of those aspects. So let’s say you find this gorgeous landscape painting. Maybe it’s just. Layer after layer of hills. With long shadows from the sun being low in the. Sky and it’s. Got gorgeous colors, warm highlights, maybe purples. And Blues and the. Shadows, but instead of heavy texturing, maybe everything looks really smooth like cutouts or. And having recognized that, you’re drawn to this picture, you want to ask yourself, what is it about this image that draws you in? Is it the colors? Is it the undulating lines of the hills? Is it the fact that the scene is represented in such textural simplicity? Is it the long shadows? How dramatically they curve over the hills and create the forms even with the flat texture? This is where simplicity is helpful in narrowing down what it is in the image. What is the essence of what is drawing you in? What is your emotional response to it? What is your eye drawn to? What parts of the image stay with you when you turn away from it? Just get to the essence of what it is that you like and then make a note or sketch out your own version of that visual or concept or color combinations or whatever it is.
OK, let’s get to something even more concrete. A minute ago I mentioned the fact that exposure to a lot of art creates a lot of mental noise, and that can be hard for you to get through to dig down and access. Your personal source of artistic creativity. This feeds into the thing that I started to mention last week that I wanted to explain more. This week,
Miyam Bialik, she’s best known for being the title character in the 90s, show Blossom. She also played the awkward girlfriend to an awkward boyfriend in The Big Bang theory, and most recently she was a host on jeopardy. But she’s much more than an actor. She actually has a PhD in neuroscience, and she has a great podcast called Me on the Alex breakdown. Where she breaks down mental health issues, mostly with interviews with rather well. Known people but. In any case, she is very interested in you know how the brain works and how we operate in this modern life. If so, when sag Afra? Went on a strike here in the. US she stepped away from her position in jeopardy and with the sudden time off she decided to try an experiment. She’d become aware that she was increasingly unhappy and was able to pinpoint an association with being plugged in so much, whether social media or emails or. Just being constantly accessible to anyone who had her phone. Number or her.
Now, so she decided to spend 2 weeks, not just completely unplugged, but basically in isolation, socially speaking. She said she had no cell phone, no computer, so no social media, no news, no emails, no phone calls, no talking to friends, not even her mom. She said she did have a burner phone, so her. Kids can get ahold of her. But let’s just take. Minute and just think about what that would mean for us. What would that would mean for our lives? Can you even imagine not checking e-mail every day, or maybe not checking your social media every day, not knowing what’s going on in the news, not being able to look things up instantaneously like we do not being able to play little online games? And she honestly. Didn’t think she was going to be able to do it, but she did stick it out and not surprisingly, she learned an awful lot about herself in the. Process and having done that episode I did on the necessity of doing nothing and really exploring the whole idea of stepping away from everything. I wasn’t surprised that she had a lot of really dramatic and interesting and eye opening and things come out of this, not the least of which was that she realized she was not the kind of person. It was meant to be available all the time.
So this was definitely an extreme version of doing nothing. And I’ll put. A link in for this video in the newsletter and the show notes this 12 minute video that she explains what she did and. What happened with? It and just listen to what she. Has to say. Because I think it was really inspiring in our. Household we used to do. Screen the Sundays. It kind of got thrown off by the pandemic for some reason, but I. Think it was just. A lot of need to be connected to people. During that time, but what we used to do was turn off our phones except for phone calls and texts so that we could reach people. And the kids could reach us or whatnot, and we would plan things that did not involve screens. We’d play board games or do projects in the garden together, or go for hikes and. Of course we did, art. Or been listening to Miami’s talk about what she did. It reminded me of how wonderful. Those days were and I. Was like, why aren’t you doing those anymore?
So we are trying to get back to that, but she also mentions her anxiety around social media and emails and that hole being connected to the outside world. And it sounded kind of familiar. I definitely have some anxiety around social media. This is that. I can’t keep up and that I’m not doing enough and honestly, she pinpointed that problem. Well, I don’t really want to be constantly accessible. It’s not that I’m an introvert, but I am one. Of those people. That definitely needs a lot of alone time. I can’t mentally juggle being connected to people all the time through social media. It gets into my head and messes with my creative time with my own. Work as creative people. I think the noise that we get from all the stuff outside can be very detrimental to our process of kind of marinating on our inspiration because we have so much coming in all the time and our brains don’t have a lot of opportunity to work through things that we’ve seen and experienced. So in the necessity of doing nothing. So I talk about needing time where you’re doing nothing for that very reason, to give our brains time to work creatively through the input that we’ve had in our day-to-day. But the thing. I didn’t connect at the time. Was that you do that so that you have all this material, this fodder for your muse, and then you’re able to access that place where your artistic creativity comes from. That brings out and works with all this inspirational material, that video really reminding me that it’s really an important aspect. And step in the creative process to give our minds the time to process so that when we work through the material that we run into and that we are curious about, that we’re able to do so from within ourselves, not through this haze of all this other info. Information so that leads into the concrete things I want to suggest that you can do or contemplate during or try out at least that can help you more readily access that place that your art. Comes from.
So first of all. Kind of analyze your connectivity to technological sources and maybe unplug from. External information sources for particular hours of the day or particular days, whatever makes. To you, I did this after listening to my mom and now my phone is mostly disconnected from all the. Noise during the. Day first I deleted all my social media apps from my phone, which I think I mentioned last week. I’ve been doing great without. Them honestly and. Then this week, I turned off my cellular data for almost all my apps except for like my phone and my text, and the messaging apps. I need to keep on so people that I need to hear from can get in touch with me and in things like maps so. When I’m out and about, I don’t get lost. And then during the day when I’m home, I actually turn off the Wi-Fi on my phone as well. If you want to do this, you can just straight up turn off your Wi-Fi and turn off your cellular data, which are options, and I believe both iPhones and androids. But if you do need some things to work, you just go into your cellular data and you just turn off the things that you don’t want to be coming through during the day or whatever. Time period. You’re trying to be undisturbed by these or want to minimize the possibility of being distracted by them because they’re so easily accessible that they’re just at your fingertips on. Your phone so it doesn’t actually keep you from accessing your apps. You can just turn these things back on. But because you have to turn them back on each time you go to do that, you’re forced to stop and think, do I really need to be accessing this right now because it’s inconvenient to have to turn it on and turn it off. And that kind of thing. So you will stop and think about it. It’s not going to be so. Automatic and not so easy to access. You can also turn off computers, turn off monitors just anything that is bringing in unnecessary external information. This is not something I do during the day because I do actually have to be on my computer to write because I actually use speech to text because of my right arm. Even handwriting on paper is hard, but if you have that option, you can leave off all your technology. And just do things old fashion way. Pen and paper or pencil and paper pencil. And sketchbook, whatever it is. But you really could get away from all this technology if there’s nothing that you need to do to fulfill your primary needs. And what are your primary needs? Like you have family and friends and your artwork, and maybe with the exception of getting online to sell your work, if that’s what you do. If that’s when your outlets, you really don’t need this technology on. A regular basis. So if you find yourself feeling a little too connected, you can put this all away and really reduce the noise that. You have to deal with. Another thing I started to do is and this can be hard for a lot of people, is not to have anything to entertain myself in those moments when I could turn on a podcast or an audio book or turn on the television or play a game or scroll through social media because I’m sitting in a doctor’s office waiting for an appointment to start or eating. A lunch basically just being super aware of not trying to fill every quiet moment in my day with something that’s going to keep my mind busy. It’s not like my mind’s not. Going to be able. To keep busy with art ideas and writing ideas. So why do I need to have it be distracted all the time? Obviously I have nothing against listening to a podcast or an. Audio book or? Or watching some television when we need downtime or because we do want that information for particular reasons, I’m just being. Hyper aware of. What information is coming in and being more conscious? About choosing it like I do put music on because. It can raise my energy. And I tend to dance, which means I get some exercise in and I kind of budget a certain amount of time to take in good information, like listening to a good podcast or listening. To a great. Book that I can be in. Tired by maybe, I have long periods of time when I’m doing like housework and I don’t really enjoy it and I can get otherwise distracted. I can put on an audiobook. It’ll keep me focused, so it has a real purpose, not just entertain myself because it’s too quiet here in my brain without it. I just aim not to fill every minute of my time with this kind of thing. I make it a conscious. This is. So I suggest. Quieting the noise around you to the extent that you need to, and I can’t tell any one of you how much you would need to unplug, if at all, because for some people the online stuff has no real temptation and they just want to get emails to keep in contact with people or know when the next big sale is at the art supply store. Then there are those of us who feel the need to have something going on. The time and maybe we tell ourselves that we need to have input at all times as a form of multitasking so we can get done as much as possible and learn as much as possible, but examine as to whether that is actually an excuse. Give yourself long stretches where you’re not getting any input from external sources. And see if. You feel edgy and anxious to turn something on that could be a sign that you’re kind of addicted to that external input. It’s probably also a sign that you have way too much internal noise, because if you can’t be quiet. With yourself, it can make it very hard for you to access your particular creative will. If you feel a. Little too dependent on those external input sources, and you’re also feeling like you have a bit of an artistic block or feel stagnant in your work. You may want to consider that there’s a good chance those things are related, and if that’s the case, look into reducing external noise and giving yourself more quiet time. Maybe a little bit of time. So you can build up to something that is comfortable, but you know, just listen to the podcast on the necessity of doing nothing else. That’s a really good starting point. Once the noise is. Diminished and at an acceptable level for you, whatever that. Means for you. You can really benefit by doing things that allow you to get to know yourself better. The better you know yourself, the better you’re able to recognize what’s in that creative well of yours. I think understanding not just where your. Art comes from in you. But why it is the? Way it is, it’s influences from your experiences and likes and dislikes in both in nature and nurture, aspects that influence who you’ve been. Tom is really another way to feed your muse and give you even more to work from in your own artwork. So things I suggest to get to know yourself better. One journaling and it’s absolutely my favorite thing to suggest I do it personally in my creative coaching. When I was coaching, journaling was often. One of the most productive tasks that I would give them because putting down your thoughts in black and white forces you to really think through the ideas in your head and verb. Realize them, we don’t realize how nebulous our thoughts really are until we try to talk them out or write them down. And then when you do that, you’re having to make them more concrete, make things clearer. It also allows you to get ideas that are roaming around constantly in your head out and on paper and. It’s great because our minds can’t seem to calm down when there’s things that are constantly being juggled because they’re not concrete enough for us to just let them be. But when you put them on paper, you’ve put them literally. In a physical. Form and our minds feel like they’re safe and they can be accessed when needed, so the alternates to that if you’re not really into journaling or you could do this as well, is to have conversations with good friends or family or whoever that you want to. Talk things through, confide in brainstorm with, because having to explain your thoughts and feelings and your dreams and your goals or whatever to someone else forces you to work out the way to communicate those words. Just like with the journaling, but on top of that, you’re able to get reactions and feedback and maybe even some really. Good bits of ADL. Also, when we’re talking to other people, we tend to think about how they are hearing what we’re saying, which puts a bit of a new perspective on. Our thoughts for us. Plus, people may actually mirror back to you what they’re hearing from you and give you their view of you, which can lead to some very eye opening and surprising insights about yourself. And that’s a really excellent way of getting to know yourself better by kind of getting an outside view or outside opinion of. Yourself. Also try to find ways to spend time doing things. By yourself? Like hike or bike or travel or go to dinner. Even or just? Coffee and people watch and do this. All on your own. I think it’s especially useful to do things that don’t take up a lot of mental bandwidth when you’re doing this. So you’re not only alone with your thoughts, you’re able to give them the space to stretch. And to marinate. In whatever metaphor you want to put down. But if you went to a hockey game by yourself, you’re going to be distracted by the hockey game. Or if you go shopping, you’ll probably be distracted by all the things that you could buy. So if you do things that don’t take a ton of thought and aren’t modes of entertainment, I think that would be the best way to give your mind the space to let ideas rise up and you can learn a lot about yourself. By just being alone with yourself. This kind of alone time also really lets you know what your likes and dislikes are. You may think you know, but if you are constantly going out with other people, then you’re probably making concessions for their likes or dislikes. Or maybe you’re trying to please the other person. So being by yourself teaches you a lot because you don’t have any not only external input of information. But external influence socially from. People,
I also want to suggest that you try meditating if you don’t already do so, and keep in mind meditating does not have to be the sitting cross legged chanting monk thing. My type of meditation is actually done standing with visualization and either sing or hum and that’s what keeps me focused. If you have repetitive. Creative tasks that you like to do that don’t really take any brain power you can get yourself into a flow state doing that and then be consciously visualizing or focusing on your. Breath and through. That process you can do much of what standard meditation does, which is to calm. Mind, relax your body. Let go of stress and allow your conscious and unconscious mind to have an exchange which is not normally an operation that goes on in a heightened sense of awareness and information processing. There’s also all kinds of guided meditations on YouTube and various other apps on your phone, of all things. But you can use those. To help guide you and get you used to meditating. If it’s not something that you commonly do.
And then here’s another really cool thing. This is kind of like the spend time by yourself. It has a lot more planning and intention along with the potential for a lot of self discovery in short period of time. And that is to go on a self retreat. What that means is just going off on your own for the express purpose of self examination. And internal. Section. I’m not gonna spend a lot of time describing what this is because there’s entire websites on this. You can Google how to create a self retreat and get more specific ideas from those. They’re actually companies who will plan these for you if you need that, but it really just involves planning some time away on your own with some structure to guide you. For instance, you could do. Three days camping or get a little. So on a beach and then just do some basic planning like say you’re going to general first thing in the morning and then take a walk or hike after breakfast in order to look for sources of creative inspiration. Then you could line up meditation or yoga in the afternoon and then spend the rest of your time in between on creative endeavors, maybe ending your day by journaling again to. Discuss with yourself the things that you just. Word, like I said, look up ideas online and find something that really speaks to you, but I feel like this is becoming a more common thing. I know several members of my family have done this. My one sister went away for five weeks on her. Own I have. A brother-in-law who planned a backpacking trip by himself as well. So the idea of kind of taking a vacation by yourself to do nothing but be with yourself might sound a little odd, but a lot of people are doing it and probably. For really good reasons, because we are all so plugged in and we really need to step back and get to know ourselves better.
It’s funny when I started making notes on this where your art comes from thing for this podcast, I thought this is going to be really short, but apparently you have a lot to say about this and it is something I feel really passionate about and it’s something I’m trying to do better with myself as well. Because I get. So busy with just life, you know? We’ve got the podcast and the vestiges of business still and my artwork and my writing and the family and the house. And it’s also distracting that sometimes I feel like I can’t access that source of my art, that artistic creativity that used to be just right there in front of me all. Time. But I do think if we’re quiet enough and willing to look inside and get to know ourselves better that we will have more of an internal access to that space to that source of our artistry. And it may mean reducing noise. It may mean facing things about ourselves that maybe we’re not comfortable with. But I think you need to learn to trust that our internal well is going to filter and process all the inspiration that we see and leave us with good essential material to create from, and that then we need to trust in it to help us develop the art and not look to all these external sources that we have so readily at our fingertips.
If you have thoughts or comments on that good, bad or otherwise, please write to me in all the usual places. e-mail me through the sagearts.com contact page. Message me through Instagram or Facebook at the Sage Arts podcast. Pages there reply to the newsletter. If you get that, and if you don’t hit the news and notices button on the homepage of the sales arts.com to get that. If you enjoy the content in this podcast and you’d like to give back, you can do so via buy me a copy or PayPal look for those buttons halfway down the homepage of the sagearts.com, or find these and all the links. That I bring up. Including the video link for me on Biolex unplugged experience in the show notes or description section of wherever you’re listening to this pod. Yes, from and don’t forget to hit that follow button on your podcast player so you know when the next episode is coming out and. To help grow. Our community, because the more people following means the more often it’s going to show up on search results for podcasts. I just really want to build this community because for one, I really believe in what I’m doing here. And I really want to give. Other creatives an opportunity to. Expand their creative will and redefine their version of success and not just follow all the things that we’re hearing all the. Right. So if you think these are important concepts for other people, other creatives, please help spread the word. Tell your friends, share the posts you see on social media, share links to the podcasts. That would be wonderful. I would like nothing better to have all creative people out there be able to access their true artistic source at will and be creating just the most wonderful original. And fulfilling artwork possible. That is literally why I do this podcast and offer all the things that I offer I feel like it’s a way of paying it forward for all the people who do this for me in the past and continue to do so by sharing their own experiences and so. Stories out there,
so please do go out and get to know yourself better and dig deep and uncover that source of your artistic creativity. Use that process to feed your muse while staying true to your weirdness, and I’ll see you next time on the Sage Arts podcast.
Another ripper episode Sage. Loved it! This will take repeated listening!