My Creative Practice

How are you creative?

✍️ prompt 2163

My creative practice is an ongoing maternal act: observing, attending to, and nurturing my surroundings. Inspiration presents itself as an offering. I remain curious, and it arrives each day. Modern distractions are disregarded to facilitate awareness.

I marvel at the magnificent beauty of mundane moments while I observe from afar or in a car. Two people on a shady patio are gesticulating passionately while engrossed in intimate conversation between sips of coffee. A pollinator feasts ravenously in a meadow of native wildflowers. Cars are lined up along an otherwise empty beach, occupants, separate but together, warm and watching a frigid winter sunset. Three middle-school age children pump their bike pedals as late afternoon sunlight filters through the branches of trees, creating cool shadows on the pavement beneath. Precious presents like these take me aback. l then take back a picture–or many–of the scene. With more references I can immerse myself later in the sensory experience I beheld, but I am quick and subtle when interactive body language is the subject.

“Creative juice” is a silly concept I take seriously. I sketch in pen, every mark a receipt for a movement with no opportunity for an erasure that could potentially slow the flow of inspiration. Imperfections awaken the alive spirit of mark making and a sketch’s purpose is to familiarize myself with form. 

During the sketch, I solve the story I would like to tell: which features to bring in and which to omit from my collection of reference photos. I solve for value and consider Edgar Payne’s Composition of Outdoor Painting in determining the emotion I would like to evoke. I frequently use thrifted canvas panels, so I will sand and prime the canvas as needed to prepare for painting.

After value, form and surface are solved, my favorite puzzle is addressed: color. Saturation is increased in depictions of everyday interactions: adding brilliant hues to emphasize the splendor and sacredness of symbiosis in natural, urban, and suburban settings. A hyperpigmented acrylic underpainting correlates with my color story, using contrasting colors beneath those I would like to appear most vivid. I use my sketch as a reference to paint boundaries of forms with ultramarine blue. 

Then, oil paints are mixed. A limited palette of white with cool and warm versions of red, yellow and blue create a kaleidoscope of colors. I mosaic small yet thick daubs, side by side, with luscious texture. Paints are blended and layered minimally once on the canvas. Music and movement are integral to this stage. I rhythmically step toward and back from the work to energetically apply playful, loose brushwork: each stroke evidence of a moment of lived joy.

I believe that minute moments have the potential to carry lofty ideas. Much of what fills modern life is diluted, polluted, and commodified versions of basic needs and yearnings. Through my work, I ponder: what is the root of humanity when enculturation and spectacle are stripped? How can we reconnect to ancient wisdom and basic human needs, rather than products and lifestyles we are sold? How can we honor the places we dwell and recreate a mutually beneficial relationship to Earth?