Nurturing Creativity

Now that life has returned to a more normal pace I’ve been thinking about

It’s easy to fall away from creating and from nurturing creativity. There’s a lot going on in the world and it’s easy to become overwhelmed or to feel the need to be productive or useful. And to many spending time nurturing creativity is the furthest thing from productive or useful.

“Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Perhaps it is a luxury to be able to think about how I can be more creative. But I know that creating nourishes me in a way that nothing else can. Creating regularly helps me show up fully in the world. While my voice may be a small voice I use it to encourage everyone to choose joy and beauty every day.

Fresh Paint

For some reason it has been months since I picked up a paintbrush and made a new painting. Though the results of my watercolor painting adventures often look like a primitive painting made by a child, I love the process of painting and it brings me joy. But still I have not made the time to paint for most of this year.

Sometimes that happens in creative endeavors. One gets stuck, loses energy, gets self-critical, or becomes frustrated with lack of progress. I get it and I get stuck in those ways too. Getting unstuck sometimes takes some outside stimulus.

I’ve decided to use a new book co-authored by one of my favorite painters, Flora Bowley to create a new painting challenge for myself. My goal is to paint 100 small mixed-media paintings in 100 days.

“Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose – and commit myself to – what is best for me.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

I’m not sure when I will begin. First I plan to collect a few supplies like 100 small pieces of heavy water-color paper, a few acrylic paints to go with my watercolor paints, and a few interesting mark makers from discarded items.

Then I plan to begin and try to do at least one painting every day until I have made 100 paintings. I hope to find a few ideas to keep me going in the book and also to work really hard to let go of any expectations and simply enjoy the process of painting.

A Time for New Beginnings

Fall is a good time to start a new creative project. Just as the new school year seems like a new beginning for many, you can make a new creative beginning in the fall. Let the seasonal changes inspire you, or changes in your life, or your feelings about the world around you. Is there something you’ve been dreaming of creating, but just keep putting off? If not now, when is a good time for you to begin?

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!

— William Hutchinson Murray

I hope to create a home-made book out of my 100 paintings, perhaps combining the paintings with some of my recent photographs. But mostly I hope to simply be joyful and playful in creating.

What are you dreaming of creating, my friends? Is now the time to make a new beginning?

May you walk in beauty.

Note: The photo at the top of this post began with a simple photo of three calla lilies. I began to duplicate the photo and move it around in layers in Photoshop and then added textures to it. Here is the original photo that I used to create it: