Creativity can emerge in bursts of bright energy, flowing from fingertips like water. These instances are rare. Sometimes its in brief whispers you strain to hear.. and others, it is a continuous, rather painful slog fest.  

 Every painting is a mixture of vision, problem solving, emotion and skill. 

The professionals all have scrap piles. It’s part of the process. How we feel about those scrap piles can have as much effect on our growth as evolving skills. 

If it feels like a heap of failure, growth stalls.  We learn from unsuccessful work. 

Problem solving can be done with the brush, or a different activity can spark creative solutions. We can put it aside look upon it with fresh eyes in a month, or a year. Sometimes it’s destined for the trash, and other times, it can become something new.

When culling work, I enfold the ones I can. I sand them down, thank them for their little gifts, and begin again. 

It’s such a wonderful parallel in life, embracing our supposed imperfections alongside desire to improve. 

There is much joy in evolving, becoming the person we can be proud of, healthier, more compassionate, better in our relationships and work. 

Yet, if we are driving with need to constantly improve, chasing perfection without being gentle with our shortcomings, then we are driving with an unsettling force to a finish line we will never meet. We will not always say or do the right thing, or achieve a personal best, a masterpiece every time.

Growth matures when we embrace humanity in ourselves and our attempts. They are part of our foundation. We are built on the cracked and the solid.

This new painting comes from the foundation of another, and it’s gifts made it more successful than if I had begun anew.

My intention before I began, was it would be deeply personal, from a place and time that was transcending. I wouldn’t fuss with detail, or worry about end result. For the first time, I didn’t have the thought it was destined for someone else. I let myself become totally absorbed by my experience in this moment in life, in that connection.

It was freeing. ~

(see the live studio version of this post here)