Free Your Hand And Mind to be a Confident Creative
The other day, I met a man who recently lost his job and related it to the tsunami of the financial crisis that began last year and keeps on going. He’s a highly educated computer scientist and he’s scared because there aren’t many jobs now for people with his expertise. He can’t see the way forward and he’s finding it hard to even imagine there is a way forward.
His predicament made me stop and think. As an artist, I’m used to living more or less comfortably on the edge of uncertainty. Creating art teaches us to envision possibility and to have faith, even when the outcome isn’t fully known.
Creativity
Most of us want positive change for ourselves and for our planet but at the same time, we may feel disempowered, stuck and even afraid. How can we create the life we want? How can we change our world? In art, when we move from a problem to a solution, we take a quantum leap. In one moment, we’re facing the unknown, then, suddenly, we’re in an entirely new place. We’ve stepped sideways. What we need presently to solve our personal and global challenges is to fire up our creativity and leap.
Through teaching, I’ve discovered the simple act of drawing can awaken something in us, whether or not we’re artists. No special talent is necessary. When someone handed us crayons when we were two, we didn’t hesitate. And even if we’ve given it up, we can begin again.
Drawing takes us out of our right-brain, verbal, linear-thinking actions. This is the key to awakening because innovation is seldom the result of linear thinking. We need to elude our worried minds and allow innovation to emerge from the intersection of our individuality and inspiration. Drawing, indeed, the creation of any visual art, captures our full attention, almost effortlessly and takes us to a place where habitual thoughts and feelings fall away. When new thoughts enter, we can clearly see what has real value.
When I began teaching drawing to adults, I saw how many panicked when we began something new. Of course, I was lobbing them challenges, such as making drawings five feet tall, asking them to draw with their eyes closed or just scribble. Curiously, it was scribbling, the simplest form of drawing, that most flummoxed them. I introduced scribbling when a student new to drawing expressed fear about it.
“Okay, let’s begin by just scribbling.” I said, thinking I was making it easy but I saw everyone staring at the blank paper in front of them.
“But how do we do this?” they mused.
“Just lines and squiggles, smudges, anything! Like a two-year-old!” I encouraged.
The group frowned but finally began. We feel inhibited when we don’t know the “right” way or when the results are unpredictable. We’ve been judged and graded on our efforts on all fronts since childhood. Is it any wonder we’ve lost touch with a real sense of freedom and creative confidence? Or that we think the authority lies outside of ourselves? Frequently, we choose to do nothing rather than fail.
To be truly creative, we need to let go of expectations and open to possibility. Often, when we “fail,” we have the opportunity to go somewhere new. This precipice is the very essence of creativity: fashioning something new or discovering previously unseen connections.
Drawing (or any artistic endeavor) teaches us the fundamentals of creative thinking – how to be fully present in the moment, let go of expectations, see what emerges and build on strengths. The muse is always there for us but we’re often so busy and so attached to old ideas that we don’t see it. In the quiet moments, inspiration and insight dart in to take us where we’ve never gone before. We need to follow inspiration without hesitation to create with ease. Our courage to explore will grow with practice and what we discover on the page we can bring back into our lives.
We can make drawing a regular practice, like Yoga or meditation. Drawing, even scribbling, can be something we do in the midst of our day, for fifteen minutes or half an hour, to reconnect with a place of focus and peace and find our creative spark. Drawing can be the pause that refreshes. We’ll improve our drawing skills, of course (practice does make perfect). But, more importantly, we’ll collect ideas. When we sit down to draw, we don’t need to be good; drawing is a humble, even primal, art. It can just be fun.
As problems seem to be multiplying in our world, artists are curiously multiplying as well. Perhaps when the need is great, the urge to create something, anything that is positive also increases. People are realizing there’s an artist within each of us.
Whether we paint, fashion jewelry, plant a community garden or organize a public school initiative – there are many ways to offer up our creativity in a way that inspires solutions. Art keeps power in our hands. We don’t need to wait for politicians to make new laws. For example, a couple of young men I know have started a business where they are paid to pick up recyclable plastics from corporations; it’s both a business and a problem solved. A friend is reshaping vinyl signage into wildly fashionable carry bags for grocery shopping. The man who lost his job will find a way forward though his future may be different from his past. If we are creative, we can radically change how we’ve been engaged in business by envisioning new economic models. We’re all creative and the happiness and confidence we cultivate in ourselves does change the world. So, back to the drawing board!
Cat Bennet is an animator and artist who has exhibited in Boston, New York, Montreal and Tokyo as well as a professional illustrator for more than twenty-five years, whose art has appeared in The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Time Magazine and other publications. She lives in Boston and teaches drawing as a way to meet the true creative self within. She is the author of The Confident Creative, published by Findhorn Press.