Do you ask yourself “what if?” If you do ask yourself “what if” a lot, then you’re not even going to have to think about the answer to that. If you have to think about the answer, then this is an episode for you. And even if you do ask yourself “what if?” a lot, maybe you don’t ask it in all the ways that you can as an artist. So, let’s look into this phrase and why asking “what if” can be the key to unlocking a lot of creative potential while breaking down creative blocks.
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CREDITS:
Cover design by Sage; Illustration by Olga Kostenko;
Photo by Lucas Andrade
Music by Playsound
Transcript:
–AI transcribed, unedited. Please excuse the copious errors.–
Because asking a few completely wacky off the wall may be even ridiculous. What if questions can really get you to look at what you’re doing more closely, and probably very differently? Hello all my curious and questioning creatives out there. Thank you for joining me on the Sage Arts podcast. This is sage in sunny Smokey, California. It’s been a crazy week out here in California and the United States in general, things have just been so topsy turvy and stressful. And yeah, we’re in a part of California. I don’t know if it’s in the news where you are, but there is a huge fire. We can literally see it from the top of our street. It’s on the other side of the. City from us, so it’s unlikely to make it to our. Area the last time we had a fire close to us, it came from a different direction. So we’re really thinking that it’s not going to affect us, but it is affecting a lot of our friends, some of the businesses that we go to and just the traffic and the air quality and all this stuff that’s been on our mind, to say the least. I went out and. Check the stock on the camper. Van and make sure we are. Ready to go at a moment’s notice. So we’re good there, but otherwise we are just trying to focus on ourselves and our mental well-being in the state of things here today. And we’ve been staying off of social media. We’re actually staying off of news and everything else as well. Working on art and enjoying the cooler temperatures that we’re getting for our fall season, so hopefully you all are getting out there and enjoying the outdoors and and just breathing some good, fresh, clean air because it is really hard to say exactly what tomorrow will bring. So let’s live in the moment and let’s create beautiful things. Let’s create art. So I’m just gonna get directly into today’s subject matter and I’ll start, as I often do with some questions for you. So the question for today is, do you ask yourself? Elf, what if just that phrase? What if followed by subject matter, interest, curiosity, whatever it is, do you ask yourself that a lot? And I’m thinking that if you do, then you’re not going to have to think about the answer to that question. It’ll probably just be, yeah, I I find myself asking myself, what if all the time? But if it’s not something that you find yourself doing, this is an episode for you. And even if you do, ask yourself what if a lot, maybe you don’t ask it in all the ways that you can as an artist. So let’s look into this phrase and why asking what if can be the key to unlocking a lot of creative potential and breaking down creative blocks? Now when we talk about creativity, we talk a lot. About being curious like a chi. Wilder, letting your child side out or playing with our materials to unleash our creativity and brainstorm ideas. And I’ve been thinking a lot about this childlike thing this whole child imagery that we bring into art and the idea of being creative. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but it seems almost like. A limiting first step because as children we don’t commonly put a lot of thought into. Do what we make. We are usually just messing around. No direction, really. No goals. And as a mindset that can be a fantastic way to get familiar with new material for us as artists. For us as grown-ups or to break a stubborn creative block or just ease yourself into studio time. But in all of those cases. There is commonly some kind of end goal we want more than just the play time itself. We want it to lead some. There. Now I’ll be the first to say that the playtime can be, and sometimes really should be the end goal. Just go, have fun and enjoy messing around. I mean, why not? I I think you’ll get more memorable enjoyment out of that than scrolling through TikTok or Instagram all the time, but it also has benefits and feeds and goals like becoming more familiar. And adept with materials and tools, and it can refine your eye and it can be the source of new idea. Because when we do this kind of playing though, it’s more than letting our child side out because we are grown-ups with ambitions and hopes and dreams, the kind that children just don’t have in their younger years. I think really the part of being a child or reaching in for that inner child that’s most useful to us as grown-ups. And artist is the fearlessness under which most children play with. Skills they aren’t worried about doing it wrong or having a good peace when they’re done. They don’t worry about the quality of the lines or the use of color. They don’t worry about failing because it’s not a concept they even associate with their finger painting or their macaroni collage or their first pinch pots. They almost all know how to explore without fear. And if they don’t like it, they might destroy it or leave it or paint over it, and they just go on to the next thing, right. It would be very hard for most of us grown-ups to approach our work without some trepidation. Now that we know what our work can be, we’ve learned that there is a judgement levied against what we do. We ourselves judge what we do sometimes based on what we want to be, and sometimes based on what we think would impress. Others the idea of being childlike is great, but I don’t think it is possible in that kind of extreme sense of not being fearless and not thinking about some kind of end goal. So I want to propose a different way to approach that, and I know I refer to writing a lot in this podcast, and I know it’s about. Visual art, but writers, they have the words right? This is auditory, so it’s pretty natural alternative to look to writers, cause I only have words to relay this stuff to you and to lean on things from writing when we don’t have, you know, visuals. But in writing, especially in fiction and poetry, which I always think of as closest to visual arts in the sense that they are both so greatly sourced from the imagination we talk about in writing, the what if moments now most books you’ve read as well as most movies and shows you’ve seen or anything that involves making up a story. Often starts with a. What if moment you know what if two young people fell in love but belonged to rival families? What if a wooden puppet wanted to be a real boy? What if a man vowed vengeance on a monstrous whale because it bit off his leg? This is a writers curiosity, raising its head and saying, hey, let’s play with this. Last week I had a what if moment that is turning into a short story. So it was a writing. What if moment and I usually let my story sit around and kind of marinate. And so I go off and do something else. So I was working on the color pencil, actually colored pencil, watercolor piece. And I was thinking about the story as I was painting. And it got me thinking about whether myself or other artists approach art in a similar way that writers do in this what if kind of scenario by asking what if and using that as a springboard to playing with ideas? And that’s when it struck me that maybe instead of just saying, we let our inner child out the making of art is kind of one step further. It’s the curiosity that comes from saying, what if, and I do think children think in terms of what if just not in a conscious or maybe even intentional. Way, but if we as artists, especially those of us who might have difficulty accessing our inner child or the idea of an inner child. Maybe we have, you know, a logical or even controlling side of our minds that get in the way of just completely letting go. Maybe, you know, first of all, maybe that’s not a bad thing, that we don’t always let go completely. But maybe instead of saying, I’m going to be curious like a child, maybe we say we’re going to be curious like. The storyteller. I’ve always said that I felt like art was storytelling, kind of, even if the whole idea of storytelling is in art, something that has to be kind of stretched to make it fit for, you know, people who do things, they’re maybe primarily decorative or just visually pleasing. I do think that no matter what kind of art you’re making, you’re finding patterns and connections among the elements that you work with, and that’s exactly what storytelling is. You say. What if and then you start finding and coming out with the elements that connect to make this story, or with artists. In this case imagery. What makes it interesting and compelling or shocking or whatever it is that you? After a writer who’s telling a story and an artist who’s telling any kind of version of a story, we’re all doing the same thing. We are trying to open up the eyes of our readers or our viewers and get them to see some little portion of the world differently. Maybe we bring something unfamiliar to them, something from our own lives that we want to share. Or we create something that never existed before that makes them stop and observe, and elicits an emotion. And I think. There are these. What if inspirations around us all the time? In fact, I think most of us probably do it, but I don’t know if we all consciously know that we’re doing and if you don’t consciously know, how do you hold on to those ideas and bring them into the studio? The most creative and ardent artists that I know ask what if a lot I can see it if I don’t actually hear them. Saying that, you know, I remember being in the South of France with a handful of other polymer artists some years back. I don’t remember what year that was 2018, something like that. And we were walking from the town that we were staying in to another town and along the way, we saw these old homes with just crazy worn walls and textures. Creeping vines that were breaking up the walls and we just all gravitated towards them like without discussion and just started looking at it all and chattering about how lovely it was and how we could see recreating it or using it or what it said. To us or how it became like that and basically all of those things we were talking about were some versions of what if because we don’t know why the wall became the way it did. And so we make suppositions about it and we don’t know if we can recreate it in our materials the way we’re thinking. But we’re asking, what if this? Wall became the way it is because these plants did this to it. And what does that say and what kind of theme does that suggest? Or what if I try to recreate it in clay for like jewelry? And what would that look like? What kind of techniques would be appropriate for small sized clay texture of this type to make it part of the kind of jewelry that we make? And yeah, we all walked away from that wall. Some of us with photos because, you know, couldn’t help ourselves. Because some of us just with ideas that we’re starting to mill around in our heads and I don’t know that any one of us went off and made something from that observation. I know I didn’t, not specifically. But the what if that we. We’re doing was kind of a more conscious moment for us because this is what we do, you know, two months ago or so I did a podcast about daily inspiration. And although I’ve attempted to keep up the practice, it hasn’t actually been daily anymore. I have to say, but that’s OK. I do notice that I observed things a lot more. Consciously than I used to. For having done that for the six or eight weeks or whatever, that was very strictly and now I’m trying to work in this. What if idea into my inspirational kind of review of my day. So instead of just looking for something I could find visually inspiring, I’m starting to ask myself if I’ve had a what? Of moment that day, and I’m starting to recognize more. What if moments. I don’t know, like yesterday I asked myself why clouds are always at the top of panties and top of pictures. Yes, clouds are in the sky, so the sky is always the upper half of a picture or painting. And yes, they’re usually high because they’re way up in the air. But what if the image? Had the clouds low in the sky and I’ve seen this cause, I’ve done a lot of driving in the Western desert and you’ll see these clouds low on the horizon and that kind of thing. But it doesn’t seem to be very, very common in the imagery that I see in the photos and and paintings that I’ve been looking at lately for the kind of stuff that I’ve been doing. So what if the clouds were done low and the primary image or images were high? What would that be saying? So I have this piece just. Bear with me. I’ll get to my point in a SEC. I have this piece I’m about to start and it has a solitary blue bird on what looks like cherry blossom branches. It’s from a photo that I took a while back, but I’ve been trying to figure out what it’s saying to me what this photo is saying to me and why I feel drawn to translate it into watercolor and color pencil, and what my intention for the piece will be and when. I thought about this cloud thing. It made me think of this image because there’s just all this blue sky as the background for the bird and the branches and the bird to me does seem to be rising above the earth because in the photo it’s just up there by itself at the top of these branches. And I knew its position in the composition of this photo is part of what draws me to it. But the composition as it stood in this photo just wasn’t saying what I wanted to say. And the whole point of doing it in another art form rather than just being a photo that I could print of is that I can change the composition and what it. Specifically saying or what it is I’m trying to do with. Imagery. And so I thought, yeah, if there are low clouds in the picture and the bird looks like it’s above the clouds, then aren’t I saying something about transcendence in nature and that kind of thing? And to me, that gives me the kernel of a story behind the art that I’m trying to create. And that gives me the intention. Of what I’m doing with the work itself, or at least the start of the intention, and I’ll work that out even. Actually. And first of all, if you haven’t listened to the intention podcast, it’s the very first full podcast that I ever recorded and posted. You really need to if you only listen to one podcast, which of course you’re listening to this one, so it won’t be the only one, but if you only listen to one podcast I put together, I would want it to be the one on intention. Because if you’re not aware of the importance of the idea of intention in your artwork. I feel like you’re hobbled kind of like you won’t be able to take your art to all the wonderful and satisfying places you can because you don’t understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. Doing but having an intention means you have a direction. It means that all the various decisions you make in the work can be kept cohesive by simply asking if it feeds your intention, and then you’re all directing things for the same reason. So I guess what I’m trying to get across is simply that to find inspiration. And to understand what those inspiring Nuggets are that you find out in the world and to know how to take them into the studio and use them in. Art may be the missing element for some of us is that we don’t ask what if enough, maybe we’re to direct between inspiration and implementation. So let’s look at an example that I bring up a lot for some unknown reason. Let’s say you’ve had a wonderful vacation on the coast and you want to recreate that. Experience in your work in some fashion. How can you change that from a I’m going to translate what I saw and experience at the beach into my artwork. And instead first translate it into a. What if scenario and it it’s not an easy thing to do, because the idea that you want to take your experience and simply recreate it in your artwork seems pretty straightforward. And you know, why would you complicate it by trying to turn it into a? What if question? Well, you do that. Because it’s going to push you to think differently about what you’re doing. So how do you make that a? What if scenario? Well, you can ask yourself. Like, what if I took some of my favorite elements from what I saw at the beach and created a visual story instead of directly replicating a photo of these things? Or what if I took a stylized image of those clamshells I was always seeing and made them an abstracted repeating? Elements in one of my decorative pieces? Or what? If I just want to share the colors of the ocean in the sky and the birds? What approach? What materials, what forms and shapes and lines would complement and convey the emotion that these colors elicited in me? I think the question of what if is also really important. If you find yourself inspired by other people’s work because you really don’t want to just copy what they do or do something like them instead. What if you’re asking yourself, what if this was done with my favorite colors and shapes and themes? I think that question alone will break you out of the idea that the only way to make something that looks as good as what you’re seeing in another artist’s work is to replicate those more obvious elements like the imagery or the shape, or the line, or the color of the size. Ideally you look at someone else’s work and say what if I took this one part of it. Maybe it’s the texture and the peas, or you’re really drawn to like the colors. Or maybe it’s the movement in the lines it’s drawing you in, and if you can identify the specific element that catches your attention, then you can ask yourself what if I used a similar thing? But in a completely different kind of piece, like what would this delicious crackle texture look like in an otherwise very graphic piece? Because I’m really drawn to graphic shapes or something right now, or what would that dark tree imagery look like if the sun was rising behind it instead of being a night scene? Because right now I’m creating hopeful scenes, not foreboding ones. And you know, that actually has me thinking is this what if question a way of identifying contrast? Because we rarely ask what if this thing was just like something? Else. We usually ask, what if this was an antithesis to this other thing, or what if this reflected the opposite or another side of something else, right? Like. You know what I mean? So let’s say my wondering about the clouds. My what if clouds? What if they were at the bottom of an image and off the top? It’s kind of a contrast, at least in our expectations of where clouds would be placed. Or look at Cubism, the what if of Cubism is probably something like, what if we took organic imagery and used straight lines and geometric shapes to express it? Wouldn’t that contrast and organic subject matter with precision of man made things? I mean, Romeo and Juliet was the contrast of two families and the lovers caught in between them and Pinocchio was contrasting the nonexistent desire of an inanimate object with the actual desires and experience of a real. By contrast, is it’s just really important in art, right? It’s what brings in the energy and the drama for most visual works. So what if questions might be very important for establishing various types of contrast, both visual and thematic, in your work. And then let’s bring up the fact that what if? Is a question we should probably be asking ourselves as we work on our. This is, you know what? If I punched up the contrast or what if I reduced the contrast or what if I put all the most interesting elements to one side and had all this big open space on the other side? What would that say? What if I try a different color and the thing that I just did or what if I do this bigger or smaller or what if I flatten one side of my round bees or? Just left a hole where one would usually expect the big focal gem to be on a. Nicholas. Of course, any of your what if questions and the resulting answers should be done within the context of your intention. Or at least what you are interested in or curious about, because asking a few completely wacky off the wall, maybe even ridiculous. What if questions can really get you to look at what you’re doing more closely and probably very different? And I’m just thinking that the question of what if could be really powerful for visual artists in a very similar way. It’s powerful for a writer, I think for most of us it would rather shake up the way we look at what we’re doing and the way we have that conversation with ourselves about what we want our artwork. To be, but I think for many of you it will be recognizing that you do say, what if probably more than you think you do, but it’s so low key a conversation in your head or might even be subconscious that you’re missing out on great ideas and inspiration for lack of recognizing. Your innate curiosity in that moment, because what ifs get you very close to that childlike imagination that we’re always exalting as artists, right? We just need to train ourselves to be more aware. Of it. Now, if you don’t think you recognize those, what if thoughts as readily as you should? You could do a couple of things. One, you can ask yourself at the end of the day, like I mentioned, especially if you’re doing daily inspiration work that I talked about, did I have any what if moments and if you do sketch them or write them down or make note of them in some way? The other thing to do is to practice just asking yourself, what if when you see someone else’s work that you like, find the one element or a primary element that really intrigues you and create a what if question? Or what if scenario it’s not something you need to use. But you’re exercising that line of questioning, which should make it easier to recognize it when it happens naturally. And then when you’re actually working in the studio, take breaks to back away from your work and ask some what ifs on things that you could be doing differently, or perhaps imagining new iterations of your work and. Come to think of it, that’s something we should talk about someday soon. Doing more than one version of anyone. Idea doing the same thing numerous times and asking yourself what if I changed this or what if I change that it’s another form of using. What if in your work and it can really help you develop very specific themes and ideas, especially for bigger work or for thematically connected bodies of work, right? Yeah, this what if question I think is really important and maybe your first. What if question is what if you use that phrase a lot more in your mental meanderings and discussions with yourself about your work, right? If you recognize that you have that kind of way of curiosity, and it’s already active in some areas of your. Life or work? Figure out where. Maybe it’s not so active and see if you can implement it there more. If you don’t find yourself asking what if much at all, see what you can do to make it more of a common practice. It may naturally bring out that childlike. Curiosity that eludes some of you because it allows your more logical mind to play a part in something that it may have a hard time letting. So try it and see what happens, and then let me know what you’re coming up with, what kind of changes in your approach to your work, or the development of your ideas this affords you. If it does help you and you can let me know by writing me at the sagearts.com, just go to the contact page and and send me a message to there. Or you can reach me through Facebook or Instagram at the sage. Arts Podcast or YouTube as well. There’s a comment section there that I will get notices for. And if you get the newsletter which you can get by going to the homepage of the sagearts.com and hitting the news and notices button, or finding the links in the description section or show notes section of wherever you’re listening to this podcast from, if you get those newsletters, you will know when these episodes come out and you’ll get any additional material that needs to go with them. But you’ll also be able to. Just respond directly to the newsletter and it will come directly to me if you listen to these podcasts and you find them really inspiring and you want to pay it back. Little bit, I welcome donations to help me keep this going. You can do that through PayPal or buy me a coffee and you find those links in that description section or show notes section or on the homepage of the sagearts.com just like scroll like halfway down and before you leave, do you remember to hit the subscribe button in the podcast player that you’re listening to this from or follow or whatever. It says in your podcast player and that way you’ll know when the new episodes are posted and they’ll be in your library there. And if you want to leave me a review to help other people know and understand what it is that we do here and come join us, that would be fantastic. That all said, I do hope that you go out with that curious side and really start questioning the heck out of the world around you with all those what ifs and find those stories out there and find those inspirations in the world around you. So yeah, do that and that will feed your mutes so you can feed your muse through that and and new and novel experiences, of course. And then as always. Be true to your weirdness and then come join me next time on the Sage Arts podcast.
