Listening to a podcast this morning, I heard US artist Flora Bowley refer to that middle, often difficult time in a painting’s development as its adolescent phase. In this moment it is not sure what it is going to become. It is still searching for itself. It can be the time when we, as artists, are tempted to abandon the effort, when nothing seems to gel and the elements of the work are disparate and disconnected. Sometimes it can appear that all is lost. Perseverance and the ever-present problem-solving, though, are often successful at getting through the mire and, with luck, a resolved work emerges.

The progression of a painting, and particularly the idea of an adolescent phase, seems to be applicable to so many things, not least the career of an aspiring artist. I think the adolescent phase is possibly where I am – beyond the foetal and childhood stages but not yet fully settled and completely formed. It could certainly be argued that the work of artists is never settled, nor their career ever completely formed, but there is certainly a strength that comes from experience, command of technique and style and a degree of confidence in one’s capability – tentative adulthood, if you like.

I don’t intend to imply that an adolescent phase in life or any other endeavour is a bad thing. Rather, it is the time for experimenting, seeking, wandering and wondering, testing and learning. Without it, our adulthood in any arena would be a hollow thing. So let’s embrace our adolescences. I will embrace mine. Rather than longing for whatever is next I’ll enjoy the freedom and, no doubt, next will just turn up when it, and I, am ready.

Until later,

Kirsten

One thing I have learned from painting is that nothing is one colour.

By the time you take into consideration the light hitting an object, the shadows, reflected hues, variations in the surface, imperfections, curves and angles, the desire to create shape and form using warm and cool options and the sometime need to break up large, possibly distracting, areas there can be many colours that make up each subject and its component parts.

Nothing is as simple as it may seem at first. We need to observe carefully to discern what it is we need to do to create a realistic or engaging piece of art. Even in abstract varieties, combinations and, at times, contrasts are essential. They say painting is as much looking as it is applying media to a surface. We need to study the subject or study the work. Indeed, we need to do both.

The transfer of all of this to wider life is, perhaps, obvious and it may be labouring the point to explain. Suffice to say, I need to remember that things are more complex than I may think at first. What we ‘know’ may not be the entire truth. Just as a flower stem never appears as a single green, I must assume that no person, situation, relationship or interaction is of a singular nature either.

A bit philosophical today. Must be the coffee.

Until later,

Kirsten

A while ago I had a significant gym habit. It had many positive side-effects. I have just started up again after a lay-off of eighteen months and the method I used to sustain my exercise regime is flooding back to mind.

Back then, I simply made a choice about my question. I stopped asking myself ‘will I go today?’ Instead, I asked ‘what will I do when I get there?’ As this became routine, I had often driven to the gym and begun warming up before I had really noticed.

Seth Godin, whom I mention periodically, recently told us that he had written a blog post every day for eleven years. He talks about the way ‘commitment turns into a practice, and the practice into a habit.’ I felt chuffed to discover that he had a similar type of self talk to me – asking not ‘should I blog tomorrow’, but ‘what will tomorrow’s blog say?’

There are habits I need to get into, particularly with regard to my time in the art studio. Changing my questioning can obviously help. Not that I aspire to paint every day for eleven years, or blog, or exercise, but I can certainly achieve greater consistency than I currently display.

Not ‘will I?’, but ‘what will I?’

Until later,

Kirsten

My blog is dislocated.

Its normal position has been disturbed. It has been ‘disrupted’ and ‘moved from its proper place or position’.

Despite my previous blog ‘Location, location, location’, I underestimated how much my writing relied on the ‘right’ conditions: a removal from normal life and the daily distractions, solitude within a peopled environment, anonymity and the sense of the setting being something special.

Since returning from the Adelaide sojourn, the conditions aren’t right any more. My table at home is too low, my music is too rocky or slow or absent, other jobs compete for attention or inertia takes over completely. It is hard to think, to turn over ideas, to stretch into new thoughts in totally familiar surroundings with well worn patterns of behaviour

I am writing at the moment from a cafe fifty kilometres from home on my way to a more distant place. Clearly it is not practical to come here each time I want to put something down. My challenge is to recreate, or to create anew, those freeing combinations of elements that allow the blog to exist.

Never fear. The blog will live on. I will search, think laterally, and find a new niche.

Here’s to those niches that we all treasure that allow us to do our best work.

Kirsten

I am mid-immersion. Like soaking in a warm bath up to your neck or plunging into the ocean and, more, knowing that the experience won’t be complete until the cold water creeps through your hair and massages your scalp, it is full in its commitment and rewards with a feeling of weightlessness.

I am in Halls Gap, Victoria, in the midst of six days of drawing workshop with Sydney artist, Jody Graham. Like those other immersions, it is wholly consuming and rewards with an intellectual buoyancy. Time becomes unimportant as the rich mixture of excitement, fear, amazement, disappointment, pleasure, questioning and satisfaction tangles around desperate learning.

There are three hundred of us here, all for various reasons, with various aptitudes and studying in various classes. Each has their own degree of immersion that suits. For me, it is a total plunge and an entire recharge. Being surrounded by like minds and being fed information and tasks to stretch my practice sustains for many months after the immersion is complete. Indeed, some new thinking become incorporated into the vision and may last forever.

There are many types of immersion. Some may not be so positive. I am unspeakably fortunate, however, to be able to experience this type and at this time.

With gratitude,

Kirsten

Focus can be a noun. The focus. That element which captures our attention. The centre of interest or activity. It can be that place you look at most in a painting from where all else derives. It can be the end goal, or the smaller intermediate goals, in an undertaking. It can be the nucleus of community or personal life.

Focus can be a verb. To focus. To pay particular attention to. To concentrate one’s efforts towards an endpoint. To put other things out of mind and operate in a single direction. It can be maintaining a sharpness of image. It can be what you do when you are determined to achieve a task.

When we are striving, we need to pinpoint the focus first. Then we need to focus to realise completion. The more determinedly we can do those two things the more successful our work will be. Sometimes the focus changes and, certainly, the intensity to which we focus can waver. The more clarity we can have about what and how, though, and our adaptability to any changes, makes our progress more satisfying and more likely to finish where we hope.

Focus, the noun, and focus, the verb, go hand in hand. I guess that’s why they are the same word. It is, however, good to think of them separately to ensure that both get their due.

Until later.

Kirsten

… or not.

Recently, I have written a small handful of emails that took a great deal of courage. They were emails that ‘put myself out there’ as the saying goes. I took a breath, girded my loins and pressed send, or ‘yikes’ as I like to think of it, and sat back to wait.

I’ve heard nothing back. Not an acceptance or a query, not even a rejection. Just nothing. We’ve all experienced that and it’s annoying. But maybe, as well as being annoying, it also hurts a little bit.

There is something about the unequal investment in the subject that makes the absence of a response difficult, especially when the initial approach has been challenging. Our not insignificant effort has been ummatched. There is a hollowness, a lingering unfinished-ness. It’s like putting all one’s energy into pushing something that turns out to have no substance – one stumbles forward and perhaps feels foolish. We can feel undervalued, even experience shame for making contact in the first place.

Non-acknowledgement is obviously part of our life in this day and age. It’s important that we learn, or strive, to weather it and not let it drive our future behaviour. ‘Courage in the face of adversity!’ has been the cry in the past. Now we need courage in the face of nothing.

Until later,

Kirsten

Today, I am writing from a different place. I have become accustomed, for better or worse, to writing during my morning coffee at my favourite little café in Lockleys. This is a habit I have allowed myself during our short sojourn in the city but one that I probably should break when we return home to the real world! Today though, even while still being in Adelaide, events have conspired to keep me from my mostly-daily haven.

So will the change of location change the way I write? The world over, there are poets, authors, painters, readers, employees, students, musicians and the like who have carved themselves a space and time and a specific set of conditions in which to do their best work. Certainly, we all need to be flexible, in whatever endeavour we involve ourselves, but there is probably a personal, optimal climate for each of us to reach the ‘good stuff’. Whether this is a quarantined home office, a music room, a dedicated studio, a bustling workplace or a silent library we all have a preferred way of working, for the most part anyway.

Today, I feel out of my ‘inspiration place’. I feel a bit disjointed and perhaps words that, on occasion, come somewhat easily are a bit harder to coax out. It’s important to me, though, that I push on. I will need to find a new setting in which to write in a few weeks anyway so perhaps this is the beginning. I’ll collect the essential elements of my creative ‘happy place’ and reassemble them somewhere else or, even better, in several places.

So what is your best location? Where is it that the finest is drawn from you? What place provides the freedom-security-input matrix, or whatever, that potentially brings out your excellence in your field? Maybe you’ve found it. Maybe you’re still unsure. Keep an eye out. It may become evident.

Until later,

Kirsten

There’s usually a direction. Generally, we have at least some vague idea of an endpoint we want to, need to, or are going to reach. Sometimes we have a very strong idea and this can be an important motivator. Some work at a high level when the demand is urgent. Some like to pace themselves. Whichever way one tends to operate, though, a finished product or ticked-off achievement can be a powerful driver.

There are times, however, when we’re plugging along and realise that, at best, there is no clear goal, at worst, no point. I am, at the moment, thinking about my own creative ups and downs but I am sure there are many, if not most, aspects of life where this can happen. We usually function best when we are going somewhere. Drifting can be demoralising and result in limited output.

So, in the midst of one of these times of no clear target to work towards, I have come up with a new way to approach the daily process of creation. I am now thinking to myself: when an opportunity arises, what will I wish I had done? With that on board, instead of seeming like I’m painting for no reason, it is easier to see this quiet period as a chance to work on technique, build the portfolio and be ready to say a bold YES when something crops up.

We don’t always need to be striving. I am a great supporter of down time. In our work, though, a glow in the distance, or even an imagined glow in the distance, can make us step forward with more purpose.

Until later,

Kirsten

I used to have a friend who worked on the theory that the more jokes he told, the more likely it was that one would be funny. Now, to be fair, he was a pretty humorous guy so obviously he had a fairly high-percentage success rate. His theory, no matter how self-deprecating and amusing in itself, was something that stuck with me.

Seth Godin (marketing guru), whom I’ve mentioned before, recently wrote a blog advocating the generation of as many bad ideas as possible as this would, as a sideline, increase the production of good ideas as well. Echoes of my friend’s theory, here.

These ideas certainly apply to the creative arts. I think they probably apply to all sorts of aspects of life, too, in whatever arena one works or plays. It is hard, I believe, to give those bad ideas voice or to allow them to see the light of day, especially when time is short, money is tied up in resources, or our sense of value is seemingly dependent on the good ideas. Allowing ourselves to produce bad ideas, however, may lead to that childlike freedom that we often talk about with envy in the arts and perhaps elsewhere.

I think it probably takes practice to break down the self-censoring that we have developed over so many years. The details of that practice will depend on the area of life that we are dealing with. I am going to try harder, though. Goodness knows what will result, and perhaps I will end up with more disasters that end up as scrap paper, but it might be worth seeing what comes out along with the dross!

Until later,

Kirsten

I have been doing a spot of editing and proofreading – not that I am specifically trained in that area but, having been a teacher of English, I have something to offer. As I undertook the stages of the task, it struck me how similar the process was to that of painting.

When looking at a first draft of a written document it is structure, flow and basic sense that is the focus. It is broad brushstroke stuff: ideas, essential information, the overall picture. As time and the work continues, the focus narrows. We begin to look in a closer way at how elements fit together, how they lead the reader from one idea to the next, how sense is crafted by the choice of words. Finally it is the detail that takes our attention. Punctuation, repetition, typing errors and any moments lacking clarity come under the microscope. Then when, as they say, the Is are dotted and the Ts are crossed, we may begin to call the work complete.

And so it goes with painting and, although the receiver of the information is looking rather than reading, the process can be the same. Broad brushstrokes, quite literally this time, set out a framework. Decisions are made about what information we want to convey, what image or impression we want to create and what the viewer might think and feel in response to this burgeoning work. Later, we look more closely – perhaps at colour, at shape, at any elements that don’t contribute to the whole that we can either remove or modify. The brush may be medium-sized now, less basic and more considered. Finally, we begin to look at what might be wrong – parts that annoy, sections that stand out unpleasantly because of emptiness or busy-ness, – and we concentrate on those detailed marks that make the work look balanced, cared for and, eventually, finished.

This is not true for all artists, of course, or even all art. It is, however, one approach that can lead to the same freedom and energy in a painting as it can in writing. Both of these are the creation of a whole entity via steps and stages. There will be a time where they are messy (and perhaps unappealing) but with love and care they will coalesce into something pleasing for a reader or a viewer.

Until later,

Kirsten

Good is the enemy of great. So said James C. “Jim” Collins, American author, consultant and lecturer in business fields.

Now, let’s be clear: far be it from me to insist on greatness, or the unending pursuit of it. That road is hard. I just thought it was an interesting concept.

That good-ness can interrupt the striving for greatness seems to make sense now that someone has pointed it out. Feeling that something is adequate, or pleasing, or even fabulous, is likely to end the process of searching and stretching. People talk about the last 2% as being what separates the good from the great. How on earth one achieves that last 2% is something I’ve yet to discover, but that’s OK.

Greatness and the last 2% are ideas that apply to art. Of course, it’s all so subjective and unmeasurable. Perhaps they can be applied, for us mere mortals at least, to the work and effort involved. Maybe the last 2% in that realm leads to a more significant chance of greatness overall.

And let’s face it. Very few people achieve greatness. A focus on it as the only worthy outcome is probably fraught. But one can maintain a greatness of honesty, display a greatness of attitude, chase down a greatness in personal relationships. Maybe these are things that we can aim for and perhaps they are no less valuable than greatness in a particular field?

Until later,

Kirsten

Momentum can be defined as the impetus gained by a moving object, or the force of an object in motion that keeps an event developing after it has started. Momentum, in our lives, keeps us going once we’ve put in the effort to start, or built up a regular practice; when we’ve ‘got moving’. It can take a little while to build up but can be a fabulous asset once established.

For me, momentum is crucial, especially in this time of flux when I am away from my permanent studio. Each painting session requires the set-up of equipment, the work itself, and then the packing away of materials. Momentum is what keeps it all rolling along at times when the procedure seems a little too much. The daily routine, the satisfaction of seeing pieces progress, the unquestioning undertaking of those requirements to get going are a result of momentum and, in turn, contribute to the further creation of that force for future days.

For many reasons, however, momentum can be lost. That force, that subtle drive to continue, can dwindle or disappear altogether. When this happens, the conquering of inertia (another, not so fabulous, physical phenomenon!) becomes more difficult. For me, it becomes much harder to start, to go through the process of getting ready and to break through the resistance to attack the blank piece of paper.

My past few weeks, with their travel, distraction, dislocation (in the most delightful way) and, simply, not having the complete artistic wherewithal on board, have played havoc with my momentum. I have returned to home base with desire but lacking drive to overcome the perceived obstacles to work.

But I need to remember that I have built momentum before and I can do it again. A deliberate rebuilding of the daily practice, no matter how small or how short-lived and a reminder to myself that the setting up probably, in reality, only takes 20 minutes and allows for an almost unlimited period of enjoyment, intrigue and satisfaction (one hopes!) are the tools that will coalesce into the valuable momentum, that force that ‘keeps the events developing’.

That’s my task. That’s the requirement. I’ll keep you posted.

Kirsten

…. but don’t forget to listen to the answers.

Perfect and timely advice, brought to my attention by Mark McGuinness, poet and creative coach, in his blog at lateralaction.com.

Too often I ask and move on too quickly, or ask just to make a point, to criticise or to express frustration. McGuinness encourages us to ask and then listen, even if we don’t agree with or immediately understand the answer. That’s how we move forward.

And perhaps answers will crop up in unexpected places. Hopefully I’ll find out!

Until later,

Kirsten

I have had a warm reminder that, no matter the time, it is certainly possible for years to slip away and connections remain as they were decades earlier. And distance can be merely an inconvenience, not a preventative to special friendships. I feel very fortunate to have been so warmly welcomed on my recent road trip and I am inspired again to retain investment in relationships. They are worth it, they are life-giving and they are what make our day-to-day existence rich.