Creative Inspirations for the Inner Artist

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Perhaps you are one of those people whose thoughts float through your brain in a gentle flow, causing you no distress, allowing you to proceed through your day on a current of peace and contentment. How I envy you, I think.

My brain seems stuffed full of thoughts like a raging torrent pouring over the dam in a dangerous, glittering, falling cascade. It is as though the keeper of the dam, the calm and silent figure who stands by with a wrench that perfectly fits the giant cog wheels that close the dam gates, decided to go out for a sandwich, then had to have a cup of coffee and then, hey, it’s only fifteen minutes until the end of the shift, went on home and forgot to return. Where the wrench went is anybody's guess.

So every day I awaken to a brain that is already busy with thoughts, plans, must-do lists, really-should-do lists, litter boxes that need cleaning, floors that need mopping, flower beds that need weeding, books that need reading, entry forms to be filled out, photographs that should have been taken weeks ago and on and on. And where on this list is the art that needs making?

I ask myself that all the time. For me, making art requires a wrench; the gates must be closed down, the flow of thoughts must be slowed. I have made art in anger, in sadness, in bliss and everything in between. But the moment of creation, for me, always requires a blank space when the cascade of thoughts is stilled. Then I can approach my materials and my subject with the attention they deserve.

Wouldn't it be nice if all that was required to make art was an act of will – stop thinking! But an act of will is like trying to turn the cog wheels without a wrench. Your hand moves, but nothing happens.

So, I do what any self-respecting woman would do. I hand myself a wrench, and I go to work. For fifteen minutes I do one of these things: Go for a walk and try to see three things I didn’t see yesterday; read from a book about an artist I admire; do yoga; mop the floor; listen to the first two songs of a favorite CD.

Or, most logically, I go to my studio and I sew something, anything, or go to the basement and heat the beeswax and stand and look carefully at the sculptures lined up waiting for the final touches. The torrent of thoughts slows, carrying away with it all the shoulds and woulds of daily life, and trickles to a stop. I carefully set the wrench aside in a place where I can find it again, and I settle down to work.