Meeting inspiration.

The only way to be creative is to create.

Being creative requires inspiration, but you can’t always wait to be inspired. It doesn’t always come to you... Sometimes you have to go to it. You just have to put pen to paper or paint brush to canvas and create.

'When inspiration doesn't come, I go halfway to meet it.’ ~ Sigmund Freud

When I’m too much in my head I need to move my body, so I go for a walk. Walking clears my mind.

I let go of the puzzle I’m trying too hard to solve... I just walk it out.

I like to wander as I wonder... And somehow just by walking, the pieces all come together. 

‘My work is inspired by two things: the external world and the internal world. A good day is when they meet on canvas.’ ~ Bonnie Mandoe

Sometimes I am inspired to paint, and other times I paint to be inspired. I let my desire to create lead the way, and then I meet inspiration around every corner...

What do you do to meet inspiration?

Filling up at the Well (of well-being)

‘Water the root to enjoy the fruit.’ ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

I remember my mother telling me that the glass has to be full before it can ‘runneth over’... I think she learnt this from the Maharishi.

I grew up watching my mother practicing yoga in the living room and meditating every afternoon. When I brought my friends home from school I’d say, “Shhh! My mum is meditating.” This was many years before yoga and meditation were remotely mainstream, so some of my friends were actually a bit scared of my mother... it didn’t help that she was also the local “health nut”, which in those days was like being the local witch.

When I was 13 my mother had me initiated into Transcendental Meditation. Now when I came home from school, I had to meditate for 15 minutes every day. I don’t remember how long I had the meditation practice for, but I do remember one experience I had during my meditation... My mind went completely white. No thoughts... just a feeling of floating in empty space. I experienced nothingness.

Nothing mattered. No-thing-mattered.

It was peace.

'Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.' ~ Buddha

Now, anything that brings me to that Being state is my meditation.

When you are feeling so connected in your body, your mind and your spirit... you are in a state of Being. 

I call this the creative moment. Or you could say, being in flow or a state of grace.

To be so focused in the moment of creation, like a dancer on the dance floor or with paintbrush on canvas, all other thoughts disappear...

It's not about the outcome. The point is purely the creative moment. 

Nothing else matters...

To have the energy to Do and create, I must first Be.

Whenever I feel disconnected or overwhelmed, I know it's time to fill my cup at the well.

Oh, and my mother still meditates every afternoon... I just make sure I don’t call her at that time...

Create Your Life

There’s a new way of being in the world. We no longer look outside of ourselves to see where we fit into the world. Instead, we create the world from the inside out .The world then becomes a match to who we are.

Each day we get to decide ~ What will my day be like? How will I live?... What will I create today? Our lives become art-ful.

Life is a play. We are the writers, directors, producers... we are the Stars of our own play...

 

That which is creative must create itself. ~ John Keats

So what will the next Act be?

Chapter 2013... What will Your story be?

Create Your Essence Art vision board... sign up HERE

Your Essence Art

Do you have goals and dreams for the New Year? For your life?...

I have created Your Essence Art ~ a vision guide.

Your Essence Art is a picture of what your soul desires to be, do and have in your life. It is creative expression from your soul and connects you with the vision from your heart.

Knowing why you want something helps you to become clear. When you resonate with the essence of your desires you are in alignment with the truth and purpose for your life.

Spirit communicates through symbols and images. Art is a tool that we can use to connect us with our spirit. Your Essence Art is a vision board process that provides insight to what your soul wants to experience and express.

Click here and receive Your Essence Art vision guide.

What is Art?

What is Art? It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Art is beauty, inspiration and magic...

I love creating... transforming the visions in my mind to form on canvas. When I write I transform the words and ideas swirling in my mind and bring them together as an expression on paper. When I dance I express through movement...

Through art I express and create mySelf. I define who I am through what I do and how I express.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

How we live is an expression of who we are. Everything we do, say, wear, eat, think about... is our art.

Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Art is the expression of our inherent beauty and way of Being in the world.

What do you love?

I love waking up to a new day.

I love bedtime too... wondering what adventures I’ll have in dreamland...

I love listening to the rain when I’m cozy inside... or walking in the rain with a brightly coloured umbrella...

I love lying on my big rock that overlooks the sea... the summer breeze whispering over me... tall grasses growing... waves, seagulls... summer...

The letter S, the letters R, A...

The number 5,

The colour red.

Hour-long northern sunsets...

Travelling, adventures...

Mystery.

I love creating. I love the whole process of creating. To create is to Live. Creating is magical...

What do you love?

intuition and creativity

Creation is a spiritual process. Everything first begins in the unseen world before it comes into Being.

Intuition is the female energy of spirit. It is a knowing sense of what is possible.

Creativity is the male energy of spirit. It is the outward action; the doing or making of something.

When we take inspired action then we are in the divine flow of energy. Life becomes magical and exciting!

A couple of months ago I had a thought, an idea, of a new studio space. I played with this idea for awhile... imagining the possibility of it. One day I had a sudden inspiration to act on it! And I did - right away! I immediately made a phone call and started the ball rolling...

Now I'm watching my creation coming into being. My studio is almost ready! Just a little more male energy and it will be ready for me to move in...

Thinking from the End

When I begin a painting, I've already created it in my mind. The painting is complete and hanging on my wall.

This is what imagination is. It is tapping into the universal mind, or spirit, and visualizing what already exists in essence, and then bringing it into the physical plane. 

It is easy to understand this when you think of making dinner. You first think of what you want to eat. Perhaps you picture the entire meal laid out beautifully on the table, with candles and wine... you imagine if you are sharing the meal with someone... you imagine what it looks like on the table and on the plates; the smell of the food, the taste...

All of this can happen in a flash when you think, "What should I make for dinner?"

Once you know what you want to create, you get out your recipe book, head off to the store for the ingredients, and then you make dinner. Within a few hours you are enjoying your creation!

It is the same when I paint. I create an image in my mind, perhaps as an idea that I want to express. 

I'll picture the size and shape of the canvas, the colours, shapes and images that will express this idea and feeling that I want to create on canvas.

I keep the finished painting in mind, but of course, there are little surprises along the way... I let go of the outcome and allow it to unfold and come to life as it is meant to.

Like giving birth - when the baby is born there is joy and surprise, yet you also feel that you knew this person all along.... everything is exactly as it is meant to be.

Right now I have a few paintings in mind. They are there, just hanging in my mind, until I'm ready to give birth. This is the joy of creating; having a vision and then experiencing the coming into being...

When Life Gets Serious...

It's time to seriously get playful!

‘Heaven lies about us in our infancy,

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,

He sees it in his joy.’ ~ William Wordsworth

‘To stimulate creativity, one must develop the childlike inclination for play.' ~ Albert Einstein

Here are seven suggestions to ignite your creative spirit:

1. Call your most light-hearted friend and ask her if she can come out and play...
2. Find a set of swings, preferably with long ropes and high enough so your feet don't touch the ground... Go as high as you can!
3. Take a drive... anywhere. Just drive and see where you end up (it's called adventure).
4. Take yourself on a date. Visit a favourite cafe, a museum, an art gallery. Enjoy a leisurely lunch... buy yourself some beautiful flowers.
5. Pack a picnic and head to the beach for a blissful few hours of sun, sand and solitude...
6. Go skinny-dipping! (Especially fun with a friend!)
7. Write down your dreams. It's a whole other world of adventure... Dreamland is Playland!

I remember calling friends after school and saying, "Can you play?" (I'd wait while they asked their mom)... then off we'd go to build a fort, play Snow Queen or Ice Capades... or maybe just hang-out in the back garden and talk about what we were going to be when we grew up.

‘When I grow up I want to be a little boy.’ ~ Joseph Heller

What do you want to be when you grow up? Can you play?

Being an Open Channel

In Julia Cameron's book 'The Right to Write' she says, "In a sense, our creativity is none of our business. It is a given, not something to be aspired to. It is a natural function of the soul." One of her tools in the book is what she calls guided writing or "channeled writing". We need to step aside and let the "Great Creator" work through us. It's about setting paintbrush to canvas, or pen to paper, and becoming an open channel to the flow of creativity.

So how do we do that? How do we tap into that flow? You can start by simply writing down every idea that comes into your head. I keep a journal at my bedside so I can write down my thoughts as they come to me. This is where I write my morning pages. I also keep an idea book with me always. I never know when an idea will strike. Sometimes I have to pull over in my car to write something down. (I use traffic jams to my advantage!).

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of 'Eat, Pray, Love', gave a great TED talk on how we can nurture our creativity. She said in ancient Greece and Rome people believed that creativity was this divine spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source. I love how she describes American Ruth Stone's experience of "writing" a poem - she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape and would "run like hell" from the fields where she was working, to get to her house so she could write it down before it rumbled on past her like a thunderstorm...

So keep an idea book beside you and when you suddenly find yourself wide awake from some brilliant idea that came to you in a dream, you can capture it onto the page. And when you are at a red light or stuck in traffic, you can use it to your advantage... Ideas have a way of disappearing as fast as they come. Once you begin to write everything down, you'll be amazed at how the ideas begin to flow. It opens the channel.

To quote Julia Cameron again, "Writing is about getting something down, not about thinking something up."