'If you feel safe in the area you are working in, you're not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you're capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when your feet don't quite touch the bottom, your just about in the right place to do something exciting.'
David Bowie
Do you ever feel blocked with doing very thing that you want to?
It has been like this with this blog. So many times I have written reams just to realise its not quite right, not quite what I want to say. Imposter syndrome was lurking in there somewhere, telling me that no one would be interested in what I say, so many artists blogs out there by people that had been in the profession so much longer than me. Blah blah blah.
But then I realised, like every artist, I have a unique take on things, and this is coloured not just by the beautiful place in which I am lucky enough to live (Cornwall, UK), but also by my 22 year career as a Kinesiologist and life long interest in spiritual practices and law of attraction. I just needed to stop making the excuses, get a little bit out of my depth and not only write but press the publish button.
With so many of my clients I see, it is mindset or old emotional trauma that stands in their way of healing. Even if a health issue has a nutritional or structural cause, often we can self sabotage by not taking the supplements, eating the foods that we know we are sensitive to, or not doing the exercises that would speed the healing of a bad back and prevent it happening again. And the more art marketing or business courses I take it all seems to come back to the same thing ... mindset. And what I have been doing by coming up with excuses about this blog, self sabotaging- you’ve got to laugh.
So I have decided that this is what I want this blog to be about. The mindset and intention behind the painting. So many people go on about the need to let go of the starving artist myth, but other than a vague mention of journaling (which can be amazing if you know where to start) I’ve seen very little (free) information on how to do this.
At the beginning of the year I experimented with different ways of putting positive energy into my paintings and posted them on Instagram as part of my 100 day project. (A global Instagram challenge where you commit to doing something creative every day for 100 days, if you are interested just click this link #100daysofpositivitypaintings). There was a lot of interest and I got some valuable results, some of my best paintings, and some complete failures, but I learnt a lot, (isn’t that always the way when we allow ourselves to experiment?)
I then got distracted with building my website, a couple of large commissions, getting approached by and selling paintings through a well established gallery and doing art courses. All exciting things that a year ago I would never have believed could have of happened.
And I know mindset has been instrumental in helping to make these dreams a reality and through doing my positive paintings project, this is exactly what I had been working on.
So now I want to return to this subject, how art can shift your energy, both in the process of making it but also in the act of looking at an image. And how we can use different creative and energy techniques to shift mindset which works for anyone, not just the artist.
I’ll aim to post fortnightly so I really hope you’ll join me, whether out of interest of all things a bit woo woo, because you want help in shifting your own mindset or just out of the love of uplifting joyful art. I’ll include take away techniques, both creative and energetic that you can use yourself and share my own experiences of using them.
I’ll also be sharing other books, artists, and processes that I have found inspiring and helpful along with my own ongoing explorations.
Because lets face, although this positive mindset stuff is not new to me, it needs ongoing attention and there is always more to learn.