Thoughts About Life as an Artist and Art as a Way of LIfe

A Free Demo "Snow in the Valley"

2/6/2022 11:48:28 AM

"Snow in the Valley" a free demo that I gave to my students and newsletter subscribers.  Subscribe to my newsletter and access to more free tutorials and demos....Enjoy and Happy Painting.

FLOW..Relaxed Focused Attention

1/12/2021 12:58:08 PM

Flow can happen to anyone at any time seemingly at random. We often think of these episodes os spiritual or as visitation.  Observers described Mozart as taking dictation.  He could barely write music fast enough to keep up with the ideas.

But the idea of flow…that mental state of complete mental focus, attention and seamless response to ideas has been studied now for about 50 years.

Elite athletes have been smashing world records again and again…their secret is to find the Zone…

 Musicians fall into a type of “group Mind” and can pick up ideas from their musical partners without a word.  Athletes talk of being in the zone, and perform vastly better when entering it.  Extreme athletes must be completely focussed or they will die.

It can happen to you any time, when you are cooking, gardening, teaching, boxing, doing office work, talking, writing, painting, playing with your child.  It is not the activity, but the mental state you are in at the time.

I remember the hours of conversation with my husband when we first started dating.  The thoughts and ideas were fresh and new.  Ideas were focussed, engaged and flowing. We were both experiencing a state of "flow".

Children play in a state of flow.  Montessori education is based on the idea that children do their best learning in a state of relaxed focussed attention.  They will play tirelessly for hours, imagining, inventing and learning along the way.  Push the same child into a regimented classroom and he may become restless, mentally distracted or disruptive.  You cannot regiment the flow state, but you can prepare yourself and your environment to enter it.

“Without play, learning and evolution are impossible. Play is the taproot from which original art springs: it is the raw stuff that the artist channels and organizes with all his learning and technique.  Technique itself springs from play, because we acquire technique only by the practice of practice, by persistently experimenting and playing with our tools and testing their limits and resistances.  Creative work is play. It is free speculation using the materials of ones chosen form.  The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.  Artists play with color and space.  Musicians play with sound and silence.  Eros plays with lovers.  Gods play with the universe.  Children play with everything they can get their hands on.”

When the player has nothing to gain and nothing to lose, then he can really play.

“ Full blown artistic creativity takes place when a trained and skilled grown up is able to tap the source of clear, unbroken play-consciousness of the small child within” Stephen Nachmanovitch

Being in flow like riding a bike.  You cannot enter the flow state on a bike until you discover that the secret to effortless controls is balance.  When in flow on the bike, the body is constantly making tiny adjustments in balance to keep the momentum going. Remember that feeling? The elation, the freedom, the amazing experience of getting better and better all while testing your own boundaries?  This is flow. 

Practice your craft until your skills become unconscious.  If you had to think about how to balance every time you rode a bike you would crash every time.

Flow specialists say that a businessman who is in flow can work on Monday and accomplish more than his coworkers can in a five day work week.  

In my early years of painting, I remember being in that state often.  It was exhilarating.  I learned more and faster than in any other mental state.  I tried to describe the effect it had on me.  It was not so much that time slowed down or speeded up, it was that time moved sideways. It became almost irrelevant.  The constant critical voice in my head was silenced, and the only thing that mattered in that place was the work.

One particular event was so astonishing to me, that I began to try to recreate the site by willing it.  

I was painting a small image of two musicians sitting on a park bench. Woman in a red dress with a guitar.  Sunlight was streaming through the windows of my studio, my favorite music was playing.  Every decision about the painting came effortlessly and in exact succession.  I was painting the way I had always wanted to paint…When my lease was up on that lovely space, I slipped away from "Flow" even further, convinced that it was there and only there that I could find this elusive internal space....I was wrong, but it took time to discover.

How do we intentionally access the mental place of relaxed, focussed attention, where time seems irrelevant, and ideas flow seamlessly?

Here is what the research says...and how it meshes with my own experiences and the experiences of my musician husband, Michael Gotz.

STEPS.

 1. Prepare your work space. Do you need a private place to work?  Find it and set up your materials. Do you need to clear away distractions or do you work better in the midst of creative clutter?  Are there physical distractions in the environment that you can eliminate? Dryer Bell? Phone?  Whining Pets? Make sure your space is well lit. Are bills piled where you can see them? Move them.  Prepare any music you might want to listen to while creating.  Turn off the TV.  Turn off the phone.  Put the phone in another room.  Throw the phone out the window.

2. Prepare your materials.  Nothing messes with your creative energy more that having to stop every few minutes to look for a pen or a tube of the right color of paint.  Prepare your painting surface, materials references etc.  Make sure there is enough of everything, and that you are starting a new painting with a clean palette.

3.  Talk to your family or roommates and let them know what you are attempting. Partner with them to give you some personal quiet space for working.  Ask them to reserve comments or feedback until you are at a stopping place.

4. Prepare your body. Get enough rest. Feed and nourish yourself well. Change into comfortable painting clothing.  Do some deep breathing and stretches.

5.  Prepare your mind:  Write your TO DO list and tuck it in your pocket.  Remind yourself that you will do those things at the time you have scheduled for them, BUT you don’t need to think about them now. Visualize.  What does YOUR perfect painting look like?

Mentally review the steps you will take to paint it.  If you are starting in mid-painting, what is the next thing you KNOW to do?  Take some deep cleansing breaths and roll your shoulders.

6. Turn on your FLOW music.

7.  BEGIN your painting according to the steps you visualized

8.  When your mind wanders, sync your breathing to the sound of the music.

9.  Every 20 minutes  intentionally step back and squint at the progress of your painting.  Are you on track?  If not, re direct the next few steps to get yourself back to your goal and then go again.

10.  Create feedback only at the 20 minute interval in order to give yourself time to work out ideas without censure.

10 THINGS THAT STOP CREATIVE FLOW

1. Self Doubt

 Conquer self doubt by:

 Visualization

 Break down the task into small do-able steps

2.  Lack of Skills:

To fix this, go on line, take a course,

Get into a competent  critique group.     

Consciously Practice your skills

3. Loss of Concentration:

Set a timer.

Continually bring yourself back to Art Think without self recrimination…you are retraining your mental habits.  This takes time patience and perseverance. 

Eliminate concentration busters (phone chimes, notifications, bells, buzzers, 

4. Random Unrelated Thoughts:

 Make your to- do lists.

 Remind yourself that you now do not need to remember these items while painting.

If you are reviewing emotional hurts or dialogues, start journaling to bring your emotions and thoughts into clear focus so you can deal with them and give yourself a mental/ emotional break.

5. Conversations by Others

Move your painting space to a quieter zone.

Ask people to save that thought until your timer goes off.

 Remind people that you are trying to concentrate

Get noise cancelling headphones or turn up the music

Partner with loved ones to give you some quiet time to create

Turn off your phone!

6.  Praise or Criticism. (this turns on the ego and stops flow. )

 Ask others to limit their critique until you are done or at a resting place

7. Self Consciousness

Find a private painting space, or create a personal “bubble”. Let go.  Paint faster than your comfort level. Lose yourself in the process

8.  Fear

It is just paint.  Let go.  Write down who or what you are afraid of and put that in your pocket to deal with after you are done painting.

9.  Environmental Distractions :  Phone, dryer bell, door bell, dog wanting out,  

Put the dog out in advance, turn off machines, schedule housekeeping chores and write down the schedule in order to give yourself permission to paint.

10.  Physical Distress (pain hunger, potty break, too warm, cold)

Attend to your needs and your  environment in advance of your painting session.

Adjust the heat, or your seat, get a glass of water or cup of tea, put on or take off your sweater.  Etc.

 Get comfortable Reduce outside distractions!

Does it always work for me?  Not yet...often my self doubts come roaring...sometimes I need to study and practice to increase and internalize my skills...sometime life just throws me a crazy curve ball and I find it hard to enter the zone of relaxed focussed attention.  

So I practice ...

My Garden

8/8/2020 1:30:36 PM

Summer has deepened, and patches of the lawn have baked to a crispy brown. Ripe tomatoes are twinkling from the vines and the plums are darkening to deep violet under their dusty coats.

These small bits of nature act as touchstones and pieces of normality ... things you can count on in a very upended time.

I feel so blessed to have a garden where we can touch nature, find delicious hidden treats, where the grandkids can play, and the stress of the world seems so much less.

Something to be thankful for in chaotic times

.    

Harnessing Painting Power

9/9/2019 11:09:20 PM

Our world is filled with a cacophony of sound:  voices, shouting, blaring traffic, dissonant music, construction machinery, jets, jackhammers, someone is even yelling at you from your TV to buy their trucks. There are kids, dogs, spouses, doorbells, cell phones: clashing noises that create a mental dissonance and shatter out attention into smaller and smaller fragments.  If that is not enough, there is the constant mental chatter of the mind, going round and round on a hamster wheel of thoughts... issues that seem to never be resolved...trials...worries...relationship problems...the nightly news...

Stillness is in such small supply and high demand that it has become a vital resource.  Many artists find this still space by painting in the quiet corners of nature. Others find it in the solitude of their studio in the dead of night.  Most artists, when they enter their own personal painting power find themselves in a state of relaxed, alert, focussed attention.  The rest of the world drops away, time stands still or moves sideways, there is a laser focus.

Yet many of my students find themselves in a panic of indecision and doubt.  They chatter away with each other or on the phone while dabbing away aimlessly, and then wondering why they can never fix their bad habits or progress artistically.  Can anyone improve any craft under these conditions?  

This painting , "Nightfall"  24 x 18 was painted on Sept 4th as a demonstration.

for my class Harnessing Your Personal Painting Power.

The class is about creating a personal painting space both in the exterior (your studio, or painting area )

and interior: finding your personal focus, practice habit and flow. Finding an interior stillness when painting can begin to flow with creativity and power.

My Columbia

6/21/2018 9:56:21 PM

 I spent my childhood living on the slope of a valley overlooking the Columbia River.

We could see the river from our house…every sunset reflected in its expanse.

My favorite playground was a dry, steep, sage covered slope punctuated with an outcropping of lava rock.

 It was a perfect viewpoint for the valley, the river and the mountains beyond.

    Autumns from that vantage were abuzz with the sound of chainsaws:

smelling of leaf smoke and burning apple wood, and stirring with the activity of the harvest.

The river wound bright blue through the golden leaves of fruit trees.

    Winters were shadowy ultramarine and crisp white drapery over the rolling hillsides.

Shivering cold, the river was a steel band that seemed to hold the world in place.

    Spring blazed with wildflowers that raced up the sides of slopes, blue, white and yarrow yellow...

 the air  perfumed with apple blossoms. As the soft green grasses ripened into gold of early summer,

I would imagine the slopes were the tawny sides of a giant sleeping lion, with the river its bright string toy.

        

    But summer was a wonder!  My father was an avid water skier and summer meant

every spare minute was spent on the Columbia….our speeding boat slicing through the blue.

 My father, graceful and athletic as a dancer, balanced on one ski, leaning back, holding the line with one hand…

waving and smiling….sliced through the wake with a little jump….

my mother, sister and I getting soaked with spray.

 The smell was rich, like frogs and fish and mud and boats and power.

    One summer when I was still in grade school, my mother’s friend took me on a road trip to see the dams of the Columbia.

 We wound through desert plateau and sparse forest, following the river.

 I loved the deep powerful thrum of the giant turbines,

the mysterious view of salmon as they made their way up through

the murky water of the glass sided fish ladders,

and the multicolored lights on the spillway of the Grand Coulee Dam.

To my mind then the most wondrous thing I’d seen.  

    In those years, the Columbia was ever present … 
a silver thread that stitched its way through the center of my young life.  

In Many ways, these early memories are imbedded in my love of painting in the open air.  Spending time in nature, observant and very still was a way of life for me as a young child, and continues to be so as a painter.  Although I do much studio painting, I rediscover my self when I am painting outdoors surrounded by and breathing in the landscapes of my life.