Last fall, I started something I called “Creativity Practice,” I made a practice of doing one creative thing a day and posting it on Instagram.
Over the course of the practice, I began to ask myself, ‘Why am I making this project?’ The answers were sometimes like this:
I’m making this:
• because so&so will like it.
• so more people will follow me.
• because it piggybacks onto so&so’s very popular idea.
• because I have a great hashtag for it.
• because it celebrates a holiday that people will be posting about.
All of these reasons were based on what others would think of my post.
That is fine; considering the audience is an important part of writing/creating for an audience. However, at a certain point in my practice I wasn’t trying to please an audience. I was trying to uncover truth.
That’s where art for its own sake comes in. When I make art for art’s sake, I make it for only myself. And when I get into the meditative state of creation, the state of making art for my own desire, or fun, or need, or self-expression, I ignore the “inner critic.” And when I am able ignore that inner critic*, I can get to a place of truth.
The truth in that quiet place might be simple or mundane, realizations like, “Oh! My cupboards will make so much more sense if all the snacks are in one place!” or, “Oh, I’m getting mad that so&so is so angry, but really, I’M SO ANGRY!” or, “I don’t WANT to get better at figure drawing, I don’t care about realism that much.”
Or, the truth could be deep truth. Occasionally, through pure, creative expression, I resolve into the divine, creative center of myself. My body, mind, and spirit’s core balance point. Or circle, or sphere. Or maybe it’s a vertical line, like Barnett Newman’s “zips” or the vertical path of kundalini energy. Mostly it’s a feeling, a beautiful, unattached but deeply connected warm feeling, a peaceful, glowing calm.
Whether or not I get to that central equilibrium in any one particular sitting doesn’t much matter. Plus, the second I get attached to “getting to” central equilibrium, it’s un-get-to-able.
The point is movement. Creating art for art’s sake fosters movement, the ink on the paper, the brush in the water, the moving flow of ideas and colors, hand and eye, thoughts and breath. Instead of stagnation, blocks, bottlenecks, paralysis– all troublesome for artists, I get movement. The movement could be up or down, in or out, forward or back, the direction might not matter either…
Movement in any direction is the creation of something that hasn’t existed before. And, as artists, isn’t that what we are here to do?
*(Sometimes I am not able to ignore the inner critic. I do my best to accept that and keep going.)
Michelle Folk Johnson 