There is a voice that doesn’t use words: listen! Rumi For me, painting is primarily an intuitive process. The colours I choose and the marks I make seem to come from somewhere deep inside. The less intentional I am when I’m creating, the more energetic and satisfying the experience is. (And hopefully the more appealing […]
The Perfect 100 Day Project (for me)
I can hear the wheels of the automobiles so far away Just moving along through the drifting snow It’s times like these when the temperatures freeze I sit alone just looking at the world through a storm window John Prine Way back in January I stumbled upon an Instagram post about #the100daysproject; an annual, online, […]
Can you make art for one hundred days in a row? #the100dayproject
Examine your reason for doing the project this year – are you doing it to have fun, to work on a skill, or to work towards an outcome? Having a clear why will help keep you focused when the project inevitably gets boring or difficult (working through it is part of the project!). Lindsay Jean […]
Group challenges, accountability and inspiration
Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life forever. Art-making is typically a solitary endeavour. In order to create and refine our work, artists need blocks of time without interruption or distraction. An afternoon to ponder a work in progress, […]
The tension between spontaneity and limitations
Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem. Rollo May The enemy of art is the absence of limitations. Orson Welles When I first started painting, I thought that the […]
Revision reveals the artist
The first draft reveals the art; revision reveals the artist. Michael Lee Good stories are not written. They are rewritten. Phyllis A. Whitney Nothing feels better than beginning a new painting. Some painters find the white of a blank canvas intimidating. I don’t. For me, the easiest time to be free and loose and just […]
The lightness of being a beginner
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired by Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods […]
Now is as good a time as any…
It’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a […]