The Art of Playful Experimentation

If there is one thing that an Artist usually excels at above most other talents is the ability to play.   We love to have fun, let loose and live that Wonderland experience to the max.  As children our imagination is our gateway to our creative side as we smear, splash and bang away at our creative play.  Picasso said that “All children are born Artists, it’s staying that way that is the challenge”.  Those of us that nurture our Right Brain see the world in a bright Kaleidoscope of wonder that can express both our happiest and darkest experiences.

We are usually fairly proficient at experimentation as well, boldly trying out our ideas without worry, unless of course we start to think that we have found “Our true Voice”.  Once we think we have reached that point, where it all just falls into place and happens.  We abandon that very thing that got us there, experimentation.  We often are so sure that this is it; the holy grail of our ability that we become enslaved to that “style”.   We stop doing anything that does not look, sound or follow that “True Voice”.  Soon the enslavement leads to complacent behavior and the child artist inside us starts to die.

Often our motivation is an honest one.  We are making money at what we are doing; we must be true to our following or if we change we may lose our hard won audience.  These are all good reasons for thinking twice before changing what you are doing but lousy reasons for abandoning “Play”. 

Our journey as an Artist should be to serve only one master and that is our playful Creative Soul.  This Creative Soul should be your only concern; not the payday, the Galleries or the Concert stage.  Only your Creative Soul is important because when you deprive your Soul of the very thing that feeds and nourishes it unpleasant stuff can happen. 

What sort of “stuff” you ask?   It could be as benign as a loss of interest in what you do or it could be a deep unrest that is dragging you down.  It could also be as severe as a depression that paralyzes your very ability you are trying to preserve.  Just remember that there is hope to get you out of this and that is experimental play.  Play like you’re in Kindergarten again; sing silly songs, paint without a brush or dance to the Tella Tubbies silly music.  Whatever puts you into that playful place and once you are there start to experiment with anything and everything you do.  Have fun creating after all if it isn’t fun, why are you bothering to do it? 

If you are really stuck and forget how to play spend time with a 5 year old child they will show you how it’s done, better still a whole room full of 5 year olds and ask them to paint, sing and dance with you, abandon all your rules and pre-set belief system and just have fun.  Fun is the magic elixir that gives life to the Creative Soul, so play on!

Have a wonderful Holiday Season and see you back here in the New Year!

Sandra Taylor Hedges

Working through the Junk in the Brain

On occasion I find myself in a place where I am going nowhere fast. This is when my brain is cluttered with too much Junk.  You know what I mean, the stuff you are already working on, bills to be paid on time, meetings to attend; the worst of them all, thousands of ideas for another project and the phone is ringing.  Your brain is so cluttered with all of these ideas and facts that it seems to go into stall mode.  This is very much like when your computer freezes up for some reason and just blinks at you. 

Like your computer sometimes the only solution is to shut it down and reboot it up.  If only it was that simple to do with our brain.  Unfortunately we have to do the same process but in a different way and that is what I like to refer to as a Pajama Day.  A day when you do basically nothing but relax, of course you don’t have to be in your pajamas you could wear whatever suits your mood.  Another way of looking at it is playing “Hooky” or “Skipping School” whatever you call it the idea is you take a one day vacation from your life.

You don’t have to stay at home but I would recommend that if you go somewhere go where no one will find you, leave your phone at home or in the car and only call back those that are leaving life and death messages.  Change your answer machine to say you are out of town or in meetings all day and will be checking your messages later and will only reply to emergency calls.  It is okay to not be available to everyone’s whims for a day once in a while.

Our society has made it almost impossible to be alone with our thoughts.  Smart phones and tablets computers have taken away our ability to leave the office at the office.  We are too available to people who want to talk to us and that gives us no time to sit quietly and reflect on our Art and our life.  This down time is essential to the Artist’s ability to be creative because when those thousands of ideas flood our brain we need to sit quietly and look at them and put them into some kind of order.

Ideally one day a week for down time would be our goal, however if we can’t guarantee that to our schedule then look at small amounts of time in the morning or evening and then perhaps a day a month.  I know many artists who wake up early in the morning and sit with a coffee and write down their ideas and things to do.  They believe that this helps them to sort out priorities and to capture their ideas for projects before they are lost in the clutter of their brain.  Others believe in meditation.  They spend twenty minutes once or twice a day to help their minds to focus on clearing the junk away.  Of course both of these require discipline of which I am not very good at so that is why, if you are like me, I advocate for the Pajama Day method.

Whatever your solution the important thing is to take time to relax your mind and sort out what you should to do from what others want you to do.  Take time to look at all your great ideas for your art and give them the consideration they deserve.  Take time to go for a walk and smell the flowers and by the way don’t forget to wear your slippers.

Art and Newton’s Third law

A long time ago back in the late 1970’s early 80’s there was a buzz going around of a new type of thinking it was called Psycho-cybernetics.  The guru of the day was a fellow called Bob Proctor, Bob by the way is still giving lectures on this subject under the name “THE SECRET”, change your thinking and change your life. 

Tony Robbins reworked the message back then as well calling it  NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) simply put if you do the things that successful people do it will only follow that you too will be successful.   

The Canadian equivalent of these two is a man named Brian Tracy, who was originally from Newfoundland, his message is looking at your brain as a super-conductive computer that can be programmed to higher achievement using the Power of Attraction or you become what you think about Most of the time. 

The message they all share is a fancy tap dance around a physical law of the Universe called Newton’s Third Law:

Newton’s Third Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction

 

Here opposite does not mean if you are being positive a negative thing will happen, rather if you put your energy and intention out to the world, the world will respond back.  The amount of return on this output depends on Newton’s Second Law:

     Newton’s Second Law: Force on an object = mass x acceleration

 

In everyday language, the more you try with strong intention the greater the return back.

 

There is no magic to these ideas, no special education required or doctorate needed.  All you need is Action.  Universal laws are just that Universal, they affect everything in the Universe.  Every particle of your being is hardwired to follow these laws.  As a matter of fact every law of Physics we humans have discovered also applies to you; it’s the way the Creator designed it. 

Sales people for large or small companies live by these principles and use them to make themselves successful, rich or both, so why then aren’t we, the Artists of the world, doing the same? I say this in a general way because although there are many successful Artists of all disciplines the majority of us are working away doing what we do for little to no money.

I believe that we are individually and collectively still believing that the mystique of the starving artists is the model we should follow.  Perhaps we, on some level, feel that a rich Artist is a contradiction in itself.  To be true to your art is to suffer for it, and maybe if we are lucky we will be noticed after we are dead.  Well, I am here to tell you that is a load of Crap!  We are what the greatest Civilizations are made of, Paintings, Sculpture, Music, Theatre and Writing.  We are more than just doodlers and strummers, we are the very essence of what rises us above all other creatures on this planet.  What a beautiful responsibility!

So you better believe that you deserve all the success and riches that come with such a responsibility after all think about what they pay the Prime Minister of Canada and he just runs a country, we have been given the task of changing the world for the better.

If you don’t care to change a thing about your present situation that’s ok too, but if you want to live well and not merely survive then stay tuned I will share with you some of “THE SECRETS” of success as told by those that did it.

Collective Assignment: Everyday say out loud to yourself or others that “All Artists deserve to make lots of Money”

Perhaps, if we can change the vibration that follows us about being poor to being deserving the world will change with us.

Sandra Taylor Hedges

The Tao of Being an Artist

The Buddhist philosophy is one of reaching a state of Tao or balance this is based on the idea that there are opposites that are always in affect around us. Opposites such as good and bad; light and dark; positive and negative or even Yin and Yang, these states of being are always surrounding us and within us.  Once a balance has been achieved both in the world and more importantly within ourselves we reach Tao which translated mean simply, The Path.

If you are an artist or know one then you know that we are often in extreme states of positive and negative often within not only the same day but the same hour.  Reaching this state of balance is not as difficult as you may think just close your eyes for a moment and think of a time that you were busy creating your art.  In that moment when you were writing, composing, dancing or painting you were in a place of Tao.  You were not aware of time or hunger or other people around you.  You were in a state of complete balance; time and space were one and you, for that moment, were both inside and outside of your personal reality, in a phrase you were “One with the Universe”.

If only we could stay there in that perfect place of creativity.  If only we were always as at peace as we are in that moment.  Unfortunately we can rarely stay there for more than a few hours at a time but those few moments or hours can make the world of difference to both you and those around you.  It can also make the difference of being able to cope or not with the demands of the world, and man can it be demanding!  We are under pressure all the time; pressure if we are  not making money at our art; pressure if we are to fulfill commitments for performances or commissions; pressure to follow the agenda others set out for us.  All of this pressure can throw you into a tailspin and you will land in what I call the Blank Zone.  The Blank Zone is the equivalent to the Sargasso Sea, the place in the ocean where there is no wind and if sailors were trapped there they could just float around for days going nowhere slowly.  You all know the place.  This is when you sit with that blank sheet of paper or canvas in front of you with nothing coming out or you may as well have two left feet or fingers as far as the music or dancing you are doing.  Your brain is buzzing with all the “Stuff” that is happening that has nothing to do with your art. 

This is where a moment of meditation is needed, just sit quietly, if you are inside go outside for a moment and sit quietly and listen to the sounds around you.  Focus on the noisy traffic or the twittering birds, take a few deep breaths slowly in and out and allow your body to relax.  Let your hands go loose, your eyes close and just breathe.  Once you are feeling relaxed think about the art you are trying to create, see yourself making it, see the mood or colour of it.  The moment you have a clear vision in your mind get up and go back to creating your art.  You have reached the state of Tao; the path to creativity. 

Lock the door, turn off your phone and computer and make your art.  Take all the time you can without interruption and you will create something truly glorious.

The Rules for Painting and Life

 Years ago when I starting going to college and taking workshops I discovered that each teacher I encountered had a set of
beliefs or rules that they expected the students to follow and to deviate from these rules would be met with a firm reprimand.  The strange thing was often one teacher’s rules contradicted another’s which became quite a challenge to keep
them all straight when it came to handing in assignments.  As a result I came up with a set of rules of my own which I will share with you.

I introduce all of my students to these rules and encourage them to embrace them above all the previous rules they may
have heard before. They go like this:

 Rule #1 – There are No Rules! Just really good advice.

 It almost sounds crazy to have a list of rules and the first rule is that there are none. In actuality we are a society made up of
 many rules from the moment we wake up until we close our eyes to sleep. We are expected to be able to perform  certain tasks and to follow rules for acceptable behaviour either in public or alone; we almost need to give ourselves permission to let go of the need for them. Hence rule number one.  
 
Rule number one is more than just words it should be your mantra.  Everything you are taught or shown as to how to do this or that, must be tested and if it works for you great, if it doesn’t forget it.  The one thing that stops progressive thinking is caring about all the rules.  So if we take the rest of the rules on the list into consideration we can look at everything we learn about creativity as really good advice that may or may not apply to you.

 Rule #2 – If it works, keep doing it.

 Rule #3 – If it doesn’t work, stop doing
it.

 Rule #4 – Get a second opinion

 Rule #5 – Knowledge doesn’t guarantee
  results

 Rule
#6 – Creativity needs the company of
Creativity

 Rule #7 – Challenge yourself and you will
grow

 Rule #8 – Creativity needs exercise
  daily

 Rule #9 – If you think you know it all, sorry you don’t! There
is always more to learn.

Rule #10 – Believe in your Dreams

 These rules have been the philosophy behind my weekly columns and foundation behind my upcoming book. So in the weeks that follow you may see where these ten rules may be the focus of each column.  I welcome your feedback and thoughts and encourage you to not only adopt these rules for yourself but to add a few more of your own to keep you from getting off track when it comes to your creative self.