Dear Reader,
I just ran across the photo I took of this ^painting and was sad. I painted it a few years ago and then painted over the wild spontaneous city because I doubted my initial feeling of absolutely loving it. My partner at the time, told me I should stick to watercolors and I allowed his opinion to influence my feelings toward it. When I saw the photo, I loved it again, but alas, now it's a a kid holding a balloon. [drats]
Art preference is so subjective. What one person rejects, another may adore.
Trusting Our Instincts Comes into Play Two Ways in the Creative Process:
1. If You Like What You've Done... That's Enough!
If you're not sure if you like what you've created, put it away for a week ... or a year and then decide. Often we've forgotten our unreasonable standards and the random opinions of others. and end up appreciating what transpired in the moment.
More than once I've loved something I created and met up with people who didn't. When I stood beside the writing, performance, or art in question because I instinctively thought it was good, I got a huge pay-off because it was not typical, modified, or homogenized; it was distinctive, made others feel something different, and freed people to take risks too.
New approaches are often rejected. The more unique the idea, the more rejection we are likely to receive until the right audience embraces it. Then it is considered ingenious.
2. Go with Your Gut!
In the process, allow your instincts to speak louder than your fears or instructions you've heard from others. Think of the reward in possessing a high degree of spontaneity, where you regularly 'go with your gut feeling' regardless of what others may say or think. It serves you beyond the task at hand, it effects your whole approach to living. Our "gut" is our most wise accessory, it's our intuition.
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. –Carl Jung
Your instinct is the source of your creative genius, your gateway to innovative and inventive ideas, not someone else's rules.
When I painted this, I let go into the wild abandon in the moment. It was cathartic freedom, a process of joyful discovery, better than a ride at the fair.
Thank goodness I snapped a photo of my wild pink city with the quiet white sun before I painted it into extinction. I'm happy we have the technology to capture and savor various stages of our creative process ... and of our wisdom.
"Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks,
breaking rules, making mistakes and having fun." --Mary Lou Cook
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