Tag Archives: creativity

Bringing Creativity to Everything. Even the Sticky Stuff.

Posted on by

Especially the Sticky Stuff.

Is it wise to incorporate a copyright statement on your blog?
I was badly bitten during the success of my first book, ‘Great Housewives of Art’. Oh. I will have to share a couple of the images so you know what I’m talking about. How about three then?

Mrs Renoir cleans the oven from 'Great Housewives of Art' (HarperCollins, Viking Penguin, Doubleday)

Mrs Renoir cleans the oven
from ‘Great Housewives of Art’
(HarperCollins, Viking Penguin, Doubleday)

Mrs Gauguin has a tupperware party from 'Great Housewives of Art' (HarperCollins, Viking Penguin, Doubleday)

Mrs Gauguin has a tupperware party
from ‘Great Housewives of Art’
(HarperCollins, Viking Penguin, Doubleday)

Mrs Picasson dusts the mantelpiece from 'Great Housewives of Art' (HarperCollins, Viking Penguin, Doubleday)

Mrs Picasson dusts the mantelpiece
from ‘Great Housewives of Art’
(HarperCollins, Viking Penguin, Doubleday)

 

Rather large success led to rather large rip-offs. But even thinking about this topic makes my stomach squirm with grey nausea.
Breathe, Sally, breathe.
I would love to live in a

Continue reading →

Is this OK? A bit of trumpet blowing?

Posted on by

The wonderful Val Andrews interviewed me.

Via the miracle of Skype, we chatted intimately across the miles and miles of ocean between Australia and England.

Talking of oceans, Val sails a proud boat of creativity. She paints, prints, writes, mentors.
Her book, ‘Art for Happiness – finding your creative process and using it’ comes highly recommended.

So now for the tricky bit.
Is it OK to share the interview with you? Do I dare?
Am I blowing my own trumpet? Well, yes, I guess. 
I tentatively make my brassy sounds in the hope that they…

do be do be daa daa…

might inspire and fire your own creativity, whether it’s in a Big Band Glen Miller parp parpeedoo way, or a little lone trumpet on a soulful pink hill fweee way.

Let yourself express your unique YOUness.

Interview with a Creativity Coach & Art Therapist

Here’s the link to Val’s website

and to the interview on her blog.

Continue reading →

The Joyful Art of Grieving

Posted on by

Joy? Grief? Huh? How do these fit together?

Let’s look at Hiromi Tango’s work.

Hiromi Tango

Nature/Nurture (Green) 2015
Hiromi Tango
neon and mixed media

This wondrous, brave artist threads together

loss, wool and plastic

to create vivid sculptural installations.

Her current Sydney exhibition, Fluorescence, encapsulates Tango’s grief for her

Continue reading →

From POG to BLOG in forty years

Posted on by

A Creative Source Story….

I am sixteen. I sit on the beige 1970s oval rug in the family room, with my sister and my best friend.  We are surrounded by pencils, paper, Perkins Paste,scissors and magazines such as POL.   

POL is supercool, stylish. I dream of living among its pages; of being tall, slender, popular, with a floppy crocheted hat.

We cut the title from its glossy cover page.   

With the substitution of a mere letter, we invent… POG.

 

POG

POG

We design, laugh, arrange, laugh, cut, laugh, paste, laugh, rearrange. Oh. And laugh.

We don’t know it, but

Continue reading →

What if you don’t like your picture (in art or in life)?

Posted on by

You could ditch it, rip it up, scribble over it…you could adapt adapt adapt.

What if there’s a gulf between the astoundingly beautiful vision in your head and the muck that’s appearing on the canvas? This is The Gap.    

Creativity lives in The Gap.

If you keep going, you have two fundamental choices.

  1. Keep trying to make your picture (or life) resemble the perfection of your imaginings. This likely leads to a wrestling match with your Inner Critic, your art-esteem, your materials, your existing picture (or life).

    and/or you could…

  2. Adapt adapt adapt. Follow your brush or gesture or what’s already appeared. Surrender to the Art of Emergence. Trust the process and the flow of your picture (or life). This option is far easier said than done. It goes against the grain of all we’re taught in our outcome-driven, get-it-right-or-die dominant culture.

Neither of these choices is right or wrong. Much art-making (and life) is a dance between Continue reading →

Listen for Life’s Artbeat

Posted on by

Last week at Sydney Writers Festival, I fell under the spell of the graceful being that is Ben Okri.

He said

Writing requires listening – very deep listening – to the world, to other people, to oneself.

I agree.

An artist pays attention, gives attention, tunes in to the tree roots level of the material that calls. The fine hairs that live on your sensitive artist antennae waggle around on your head, picking up creativity fodder.

This listening is a quality of presence. We attend, consciously and unconsciously. It’s as much about receiving as it is about doing; about input as well as output. The in-breath as well as the out-breath.

Can you allow yourself a pause – for ten seconds – for two minutes?

In order to l-i-s-t-e-n?

Listening (though someone said I should call it Glistening. Because of the sparkly bits)

Listening
(though someone said I should call it Glistening. Because of the sparkly bits)

The Creative Love Exchange

Posted on by

What is it? It’s when you stand in the flow of giving and receiving, feeling creatively alive. And it’s win-win-win.

You do something you love

You share it with others

They benefit – sometimes way beyond your reckoning

You receive the glow

You do more of what you love

One Leaf is Many Leaves

One Leaf is Many Leaves

I was sorrowful. It was the week of the Anzac centenary, destructive storms around Sydney, the execution of two of the Bali Nine and… the Nepal earthquake. Working as an art therapist in aged care, I see more Nepalese people than I ever did before in my sheltered Sydney world. They offer intimate personal care to the frail elderly here, while their families are suffering severely back home in the hills. A tough call.

I gave myself creative space – art-making time. I reached for the grey, allowing paint and tears to flow. I gave myself permission to not know, to not know how these pictures would turn out or IF they would turn into anything in particular.

grey wash of paint and tears

Painting, weeping, following the brush of my heart …. eventually, I noticed shapes and forms emerging.

A guitar appeared in one picture. Wraith-like figures appeared in another.

a wraith there

The paintings became more defined, more present. Crying stopped and thinking began. What if I were to bring gold and white decorations to the images? What if I could put them for sale on Facebook and donate the full proceeds to earthquake survivors?

But what if the paintings are no good? I don’t usually show my raw work so soon after creating it. What if no-one likes this idea? What if it’s crass to mix money and Facebook friends? Continue reading →

Top Two Tried-and-true Creativity Guidelines

Posted on by

Gentle

Yes – I believe there are two Creativity Guidelines at the heart and core of the matter. 

I’ve been suggesting them in Art and Soul groups for about twenty years. Every now and then I look to the sky thoughtfully, pondering their validity. Do they still resonate? Do they help? I find they stand the test of (such thorough, scientific) scrutiny.

And here they are….drumroll….

  1. Breathe

  2. Be kind to yourself

That’s it. The good news is that breathing and being kind to yourself are simple. The not-so-good news is that they are difficult. Believe me. Like a lot of Art and Soul suggestions, these pointers arise from my own bitter, breathless, breathstopping, breathfull, self-savage, self-snippety, self-compassionate experience.

Try them. While writing, arting, gardening, mosaic-ing, singing, creatively relating, see if you can become conscious of your breath. For one split second. Continue reading →

Blogbirth – Three Baby Elephants or Ten Million Microbes

Posted on by

It’s been a long pregnancy.

In the time it takes for maybe three baby elephants, five whales or ten million microbes to be born, this blog has been gestating.

Why so long?

Desire and fear in equal measure. Let’s have a quick lesson in the Physics of Creativity According to Sally Swain.

Often as we come closer to fulfilling a burning dream, to honouring our creative yearnings, to saying YES to our authentic, alive, tingling selves, there’s a backlash. The equal weight of fear kicks in. It can be a tidal wave of doubt demons or the quiet ooze of avoidance and excuses. E might equal mc squared; I wouldn’t really know. But I do know that over twenty years’ experience of working and playing with my own creative process and that of others reveals that the Great Stultification can equal the surge of Creative Life Force. Continue reading →