|
Referring again to Kiki Smith and how she “follows the work.” One thing I have some tension around is using skill and being intentional while also inviting in Source and intuition. Part of this comes from my time in the expressive arts world where we are deliberately using “low skill, high response” materials and approaches.
For Miss Kiki it all seems merged together. It is “the work” and of course you use your skill, and if you don’t have it you find someone who does. It feels holistic. You use everything you got! Intuition versus Skill: Do They Contradict Each Other? Using skill sometimes takes us away from working intuitively. I have met so many highly skilled artists making beautiful work, but they yearn for something loose and free. But maybe that is an old idea for me, from when I needed to heal and recover my creativity. Now it feels like another rule. Drop your skill, drop your art class critiques and just MAKE. What is it to have too much of one (intuition or skill) and not enough of the other? How do we tune in so we can trust ourselves, our process, and our results? And how does allowing-inviting in Source fit into this? Positive and negative experiences in no particular order of working intuitively:
(where is Source in this list ...is it only the positives?) Positive and negative experiences of working intentionally:
(where is Source in this list…is it involved in the design decisions we make?) Why are these lists separate for me? Do they need to be? Why do I think of process as separate from craft? Is Source the same thing as Intuition? But really the question is why is it so hard for me to fully trust my work and the direction it wants to go? How can I integrate all of who I am and follow the work, let it use me? Asking why is dis-empowering. It is better to ask “the reason I have this problem” (from life coach Alicia Wood) The reason I separate intuition from intention is… The reason I think of process as separate from craft is… The reason it’s so hard for me to fully trust my work and the direction it wants to go is… Ooooo. Oooo, hmmmm! Some of us work in a relaxed, allowing way versus an effortful, challenging way. I struggle with understanding this and how much I should accept/allow and how much I should change/challenge. Where is Source in this? Does Source want me to be yielding or assertive? The reason I am not sure if Source wants me to use skill or not is... Letting/allowing/relaxing/flowing Working/Rendering/Asserting/Advocating Are we good collaborators with Source? What does Source need from us? I included the word “advocating” because we need to stand up for something - maybe Source wants us to push back, give our own ideas, be technical and pragmatic, figure out together how to make it happen. Stop being such a fucking needy ‘I’m not sure, wahhhh” wimp. Source says “goddam it I choose YOU for this will ya stop doubting already?” Source needs us. We are not beggars. We are collaborators and Source chose us, just as we are. We are perfect for what it wants to grow in us, through us. Source needs us, not just our hands but our brilliance, our memories, our skills, our sensibilities, our traumas and bad habits. It says “ooo! I want to play with her!” We get to set boundaries on what experience we have when playing with Source. Many of us want our art to be a way to find hope, peace, and beauty in these chaotic times. Source heals when working this way. Our artmaking can be a peaceful refuge with no conflict. I personally need art in order to process and find meaning in this chaos, to fix my eyes and mind on the uncanny and the cognitive dissonance and say “what the fuck is THIS shit?” Source challenges me when I work, but it gives me what I need, which is meaning. For myself I find that if the process is pretty, too easy or passive then I deem the result to be satisfying but vapid. Do I need a little struggle, a little bit of a puzzle? Because if there is too much of that then I feel disconnected from the work. Sometimes Source is bored and sometimes I am lazy. Sometimes we aren’t understanding each other. Is Source allowed to make shitty work while it figures out how to work with me in a new way? Can I blame source for my shitty work? (I think I will!!!) I give Source credit for my best work because usually my best work comes from a place where I do not understand how I ended up with what I got and I love it. It is a big yeesssssss THAAAAAT. Why isn’t it like that more often? What would it be like if it was - would I still value it or take it for granted? Does Source know this about me, only gives me what I can handle? What are your “The reason I have this problem is…” questions?
0 Comments
Kiki Smith's Artistic Freedom I just watched a short interview with Kiki Smith (embedded below). She says “For me, in my work, I don’t try to set it in any path or any direction. I really try to follow it and I really believe in following it. As much as possible, don’t question my impetus or motive for doing something. I just do it and then see what happens. I'm not trying to get anywhere or I'm not trying to have my work mean anything or stand for anything or represent anything.” She also says “a lot of the reasons to make things are really to have an experience of the process” and also “I like working with people that are knowledgeable and have a deep craft. I like craft a lot.” Don't Compare yourself to Someone with Privilege Let’s acknowledge she is privileged to work this way. Her time and energy are dedicated to art, from which she makes her living. She is able to hire studio assistants and to collaborate with craftspeople. She was born into this elite section of the art world (and I value the art she made, the truth of it) Living the dream really! Limited Resources, Unlimited Potential I don’t get to follow my work where it wants to go and have the resources of time, money and energy to manifest where my work wants to go. Few of us do. But I do have some time, energy and resources to dedicate to my art. I have enough of those things where it can’t be an excuse. Self Doubt and Half-Hearted Commitment Are the Real Obstacles But I still have this lazy bitter avoidant part of me that does not take full advantage of what I do have. I have this feeling that it won’t be worth it, so I hold back. I don’t give my art my everything. I have committed to a degree, but that last bit of commitment is where it actually counts, and that has really eluded me. Unpacking Artistic Insecurities Because I don’t fully love myself, my art, my process. I don’t fully believe in it. I hold back from a whole hearted loving relationship with my own creativity. Because of self doubt, because sometimes I make shitty art, because there are other artists better than me, because I wasn’t one of those kids drawing obsessively and that makes me doubt it, because I used to actively hate art. I feel I don’t deserve it. So I’ve halfheartedly danced around it, committing half way but not all the way. I don’t even know what it means to commit fully to anything. I doubt everything I’ve ever done or will do. Joy is bittersweet A Powerful Reminder: We ALL Deserve to Actualize Our Creative Potential  This post started out as a Facebook post, and I got this lovely comment, screen shot above. I am actively working on overcoming these self-imposed limitations. This is my current challenge, and I AM going to figure it out. I recognize that my doubts and fears are normal parts of the creative process, but they don't have to define my artistic journey. Moving forward, I commit to:
To my fellow artists struggling with self-doubt: You are not alone. Let's support each other in fully embracing our creativity and the joy it brings to our lives. Leave a comment below and share what small step can you take today to show up for your art :)  How do you evaluate your own art and why? I recently hung three new artworks I made last week in a group, which led me to reflect on the process of evaluating our own creations. This evaluation, I've realized, happens on multiple levels - some practical, others more emotional and complex. Distance Reveals Details Sometimes it's technical - you see things from far away you don't notice up close. [Which feels annoying - once I have stopped working on a piece it is hard to enter back into it and trying to fix something often opens a can of worms. Sigh.] The Search for "The One" But there's this other way I evaluate that might be a problem. There seems to be this sort of "searching for the way" that I am evaluating them for. Which one is best? Which one is true? Which one should I riff off of? Is any of these "right"? Which one is "me"? Which one should I choose? It is beyond editing and adjusting and curating. There is this searching - are you The One? Will you complete me? The Quest for Validation I know part of it is looking for something iterative - that is good. But there is a "look at me mommy" feeling about it, underneath. Which one will get me what I want? Which one can I use for approval, to sell, for attention? Which one proves I have value? How is value defined? Do I have value, really? Moving Towards a Lifelong Process I want to move away from treating each piece as a first date and make it more of a lifelong process that I just DO. I know this intellectually, I think we all do, but we are tricky about it. We give ourselves (we hope) a safe time-space for being creative, and then when we come out of it we evaluate what we've done for its value to others. I don't feel like I am doing it right, it feels distorted. But I'm working on asking deeper questions, and that makes this process rich and meaningful. The Ongoing Journey As artists, how can we view our work as part of an ongoing journey rather than pieces to be judged? If you're struggling to connect with or find meaning in your creations, I have a tool that might help. Discover a New Way to Understand Your Art Download my free "Intuitive Art Bundle" now! It includes a video guide on dialoguing with your art - a powerful technique to deepen your connection with your work and creative process. Click to get your "Intuitive Art Bundle" today and transform your relationship with your art! IN THIS POST:
Today I am thinking about honesty in process and product. I am thinking of an artist who did a demo and started out with loose scrawled words and bright colors and then buried it all in heavy layers of neutral paint and the final piece was in his signature style. He did not believe in happy accidents, he did not believe in following the muse. For him that was all a distraction from exploring his visual voice and set of limitations. I was baffled by his approach - he negated everything I love in my own process. But I saw his point. And I see how there is a certain symbolism in burying the aliveness of you in what you allow yourself to be in the world. He is gay, and I know the painting was referencing a tragic gay poet. So, that is many layers of honesty. There is the honesty of being alive and free in who you are, and the real experience of living in a world that has a long history of bigotry and violence. I love to create images that contain beauty but are not only beautiful. I am compelled to add in awkward distorted figures. The figures are not conventionally beautiful but I have complete affection for them. It is much easier to have affection for them when they are anthropomorphized animals. But lately it has been crones and hags. The other day I posted a declaration that “Maybe I don't get to decide what my art is. I only get/have to make it. Maybe it's as big a mystery to me as it is to everybody else.” I think about this when something emerges in my work that I am not sure I like. There is not liking something because it lacks skill, and there is not liking something because it disrupts you. The piece that accompanies this post is disrupting me. It is not my usual style It has a very masculine energy It feels powerful It feels kind of Native American and makes me think of cheap tourist art. It is why I kept the shape of the head, to communicate that all is not well here. Do I get to change it? Should I not show it? [It has other issues, like the collage pieces not being integrated with the drawing. I haven’t quite figured that out yet.] The feathers are meant to reference wings, an ignorant useless attempt to be something other than what you are. But I feel haunted by the figure. I feel haunted by the feeling of it being a warrior, an archetypal energy I’ve never really explored or embodied. What if there is a mismatch between being honest in your PROCESS and being honest about what you want to create as a final PRODUCT? Because I loved the process of making this. And here it is! Yeah, yeah, I know all of the arguments for choosing process over product. What if your process results in something you hate? Thinking about these images here, and the things I was thinking about when I was depressed, and that this is the result of that processing, I see awkward growth towards strength. I am intimidated and mystified by warrior energy - why did that come through? No! Interested in experimenting with an intuitive process? Check out my free INTUITIVE ART BUNDLE  I FINALLY got my butt into the studio. One thing that helps me is to pretend I am filming a workshop. The workshop I created for myself was to use opposite colors to explore inner conflict.
I set things up on zoom and started painting and (self-)coaching. I started working with orange and blue. I went with the totally obvious symbols of those colors, happiness and depression. I wrote more words on my paper as I worked and felt new meanings. An odd figure emerged, awkward and weak. The big insight I had is that I am much more scared about sharing publicly than I was acknowledging. I like to explore honesty and vulnerability in my work. I don't seem to be FB friends with any jerks or trolls, but witnessing the comments I see on other people's posts makes me sad. Why can't people just shut up? Some things are very easy for me to express, but there are other things that are much harder, where I am still in the learning and processing of it and therefore myself extra vulnerable. I was putting my pressure on myself to be more vulnerable and open than feels safe. It was good to see this, that I need boundaries around my work. That I don't have to share before I am ready. But for a day or two I really felt my fear about this growing edge. It was like my mild social anxiety flared up very large and dramatically and that part of me was yelling "I AM REALLY NOT SURE ABOUT THIS AND I'M QUITE SCARED." So, what am I going to do about that? At that moment it felt bigger and scarier than it does now. It felt like a deal breaker. Sure, I can have a "thicker skin" but what does that mean in practice? Does it mean not engaging - post and flee? Does it mean sharing less fully, protectively? Now it feels like something I can manage. I can wait to share things, I can keep some of it private, I can share more fully in safer spaces, I can block people that have icky energy, I can do energetic work around what I share to make sure it is strong enough to be let loose (and I am strong enough to protect it). This painting is the final version of the one I started with the orange and the blue. It has many layers on it. And suitably bare-assed! In this post:
Listen to this post (or watch the video at the end): I love the safety, ease and simplicity of a wine-and-paint party. I always learn something new, and it is nice to just focus on the painting process itself without worrying about what it means or what I want to say. It is enjoyable and relaxing, and a little silly. None of us take ourselves too seriously and maybe we are also all a little tipsy. What a joy! But the resulting painting is not my art. I feel no connection to what I make in a paint party. I find a lot of more advanced art classes are similar - you are learning something about the teacher's approach and technique. I have been frustrated in art classes I’ve taken in the last few years because techniques, skills or materials aren’t what I want to learn - no fault of the instructor. I was chasing a shiny new thing, not understanding what I needed. For example, a few years ago I took an online printmaking class. I was really excited about meeting some other artists and refreshing my artistic life. All of the techniques were ones I have already used and even taught myself. There was not really much for me to learn. That wasn’t what I was seeking, but that’s what the class was. I realized this too late, when I asked the teacher if there was any kind of prompt she had to offer us for something to explore in our prints. She looked at me blankly - clearly that was my responsibility. But it was also my need. I wasn’t searching for a new medium through which to express myself, I was searching for techniques for how to express myself in a new way using materials I was already skilled in. The teacher is there to share their wisdom, and often they can’t help you find your own unique way. It is like a vision quest, perhaps. Is it something you must do on your own? I think a lot of artists have the “curse of knowledge” when it comes to this. They know that if they just start working, new directions will emerge from the work itself. I know this too. But sometimes that stops working. Sometimes you really have come to the end of a vein of gold. For years I struggled with questions like:
Yes, but I felt like my tires were in mud - I was doing the work but didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere. Earlier this year I was creating “creativity catalysts.” The intention was to offer an open ended concept to explore. We have art classes to learn technique, things like Inktober that offer specific noun-based prompts or illustrators. I wanted a different kind of prompt, one that took me deeper into who I am as an artist and my artistic destiny. Not a map, but a stronger hint. I wanted to go on a journey, to dig deeper in my experience of myself through some kind of lens, to catharticly express my suppressed feelings and current life experiences onto the paper/canvas/board and then to resolve it through art. I’d always been able to do that but for some reason stopped being able to (I know the reason. It’s staring at me in my peripheral vision as I write this, chuckling at my avoidant drama). I don’t want my art to be a bypass. I don’t want to suppress or overlook what is deeper inside me. I want it to be an experience that heals. Coach Vanessa Carvalho in a recent conversation said it well when she said “I think that there is a big connection of the soul between using your hands to create something and curing yourself inside.” I want my art to reflect both the pain and the peace. Bittersweet. Gallows humor. Perfectly imperfect. I use the word “deep” a lot when I am writing about this. It has never felt like quite the right word. I think the right word is “honest.” I want to offer a journey where we can be honest and vulnerable about our lived experience in the now, get it out in a cathartic way, and then use that as fodder for a transformational artistic experience. This is what I am creating. If you are interested, join my email list (and get a freebie! Many freebies!!)  It's almost summer solstice and that means we are already half way through 2024. There are a lot of planners and goal setting that happen in January. But this is a great time to review those goals and re-set for the second half of the year. This workbook will help you explore and set goals and it's fun. Do it with a friend for extra energy and power - I do this every year with friends. Say hi in the comments if you download it! Musician Christine Roseann (IG @heartbloodmusic/) and I did a session of improvised intuitive art and music, responding to what the other was doing. This is the second painting, with an excerpt of her music (which I love so much).
Expressive Arts Activity Bundle! (scroll to bottom) Soul to Series: Your First 5 Steps to Create a Cohesive Body of Work! Visioning and Manifesting Extravaganza!
Kiki Smith is one of my favorite artists. When I look at her work I deflate. I know she was born into the biz and had access to resources and connections that enabled her to fully actualize her artistic vision. I feel defeated and limited.
It’s hard for me to see how little ole me matters when there is someone like Kiki Smith, or Rithika Merchant or Michael McGrath making work that makes me feel obsolete. This feeling that in order for our art to matter, we are in competition with those that inspire us, and that we have to surpass them in order to have value, or a place. We get told a lot that our art matters, that we matter. Yeah, yeah, yeah , whatever, sure. It’s easy to know we matter intellectually but to really feel it in your bones that you matter is a whole other thing. I truly doubted the truth of it, and felt that the cost of coming to truly believe I matter was to become an insufferable spiritual-bypassing selfish twat. But this is not true. The most recent Art Biz podcast episode was about the book "Must Be Nice" that addresses the jealousy and defeat many of us feel. In the interview the author Jason Kotecki talks about building up your own unique 'talent stack" and knowing which "game" you are playing to help appreciate your unique contributions. We can and should do this for our own personal development. But it's actually deeply important we do it in order to build an entirely new way of living a good life. Many of us artists and coaches are trying to define our lives outside of the corporate/capitalist/colonialist machine. We want to fully actualize our potential but it feels like the inhumane march of progress is leaving us behind or making us feel conflicted. There is so much to take into account, our need to survive, our desire to thrive, our values that we all ALL should have access to basic dignity and safety and feeling guilty and angst-ridden over the experiences others have of poverty and violence. How dare I ask for more? We also struggle to find meaning, our individual value and contribution. We struggle with “why bother” and feeling minuscule and average and amateurish and forced to be a dilettante because we also work and raise families. We feel like "something in me is still unexpressed and I fear I will fall ill or die before I am able to get at it." Yesterday I had the thought that scientists are mostly discovering what is NOT true. Collectively as artists, coaches, and creators, our attempts to live our best lives, even if we fail, are vitally important. Maybe I sound like a lunatic, but it feels like with AI and corporate greed that something is coming to a head and we who are trying to build a life outside of all of that are FIGURING OUT HOW TO DO IT, which means finding out mostly what does not work. Our “failure” contributes to the larger quest. Understanding why things don’t work, incorporating our values and concerns for humanity---how are we going to live a better life, how are we ACTUALLY going to build this new way? This is why your art, your creative life is important, because it is part of a cultural movement to live your best life. That is radical and quietly revolutionary. Deciding that you matter and putting your work out there, asking for support, building a network, supporting each other, daring to be a business person, this is deeply important work and each person’s experience of it, not just the shiny successful stars, but each of us trying, it is part of a giant collective movement. It is part of what is changing the world. We are going to be examples to others trying to do the same. We are helping to figure out how to do it, from all these different perspectives - including yours! It is really hard to live outside of the “system” and make your work. We each have our individual needs and ability to say no to things we don't want to do. The more we can each individually find a way to live our unique actualize life, the more we can do it in a way that acknowledges and takes responsibility to the well being of all humans, the more we can take risks to tell the truth, make the thing, ask for support, give support, the stronger this alternative way of living becomes. It is not just okay for you to make your creative work and put it out there, and define ways to be supported in making it - this work is truly part of what will save us. What are you trying to build in the world? Where do you need support? Let me know in the comments :) Context Clues: 1) Listen to the latest The Art Biz podcast episode with Jason Kotecki https://artbizsuccess.com/kotecki-comparison/ 2) Kiki Smith’s art, specifically this piece https://www.artsy.net/artwork/kiki-smith-harbor-2 3) Simone Grace-Seoul (I am in her writing class and she is amazing) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cw1zHRbuXGR/?img_index=1 I'm moving into my studio season and this year that means working on a Series. I am motivated to work in a series, and have done small series with mixed results. I dislike the feeling of having no direction and I want to work deeply and thoroughly on something and examine the energy around repeating myself and having a routine. I'll be documenting my process, progress and experience.
|
AuthorLaurel Antur Archives
July 2024
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed