I began my Intentional Creativity painting project in January 2015 with the intention to work on it for an entire year. At long last, in the energy of the full moon on Christmas day, I completed my painting! What a journey it has been, the painting and the year!
For each month of 2015 I had a new question to contemplate. I would work on a layer of painting in response to that month’s inquiry. Once I completed that painting layer, I would sit down with my journal and ask the painting to “speak to me”.
If you would like to read the blog post where I offer instructions for how to set up an intentional creativity art project and more about my experience during the first several months, Click HERE.
As I pause to reflect upon all that has come to pass this year, I see the many-layered experiences reflected in the layers of my painting…… Just as there were many layers to the creative process itself!!!
OUR LIVES ARE OUR CREATIVE PROJECTS!!!
As we stand on the threshold of a New Year, many of us are setting new creative intentions for 2016. I offer the following list of insights I take away from my overall experience of the creative process itself as reminders about the path ahead.
1. The first step (paint stroke) into the unknown (blank canvas) can often be the hardest. So take heart! The beginning of each new phase of your creative process may require a leap of faith, sometimes small and sometimes great!
2. In the beginning of learning a new skill or way of being that will be required to accomplish your creation, it’s helpful to have a teacher who you can initially copy or role model until you get your bearings and develop some fundamental skills. Reaching out for guidance and support is highly beneficial and encouraged!
3. You may encounter resistance when you are about to begin a new layer or take a next step in your life creation process. If allowed to take over, resistance can stall the creative process and thus it can feel more challenging to begin again. Remind yourself that resistance is meaningful and an important experience. Dancing with resistance is part of the creative process!
4. Fear of making a mistake or failing somehow is often at the root of resistance. And yet, most often, mistakes become the fertile ground for innovation. Surrendering control opens the door to new possibilities beyond your current patterns, knowledge and capacity.
5. The creative project doesn’t have to look good to be good… often there are surprising or unattractive or messy stages that are necessary foundations for the evolution of future beauty or success.
6. The creative process has a timing of its own. For instance, I wanted my painting to be finished for several weeks before it finally came to that moment where it was finally complete. And, even as I write this, I know that my Muse could decide that there is even still another layer to go. I must give up the need to control.
7. Sometimes the creative process comes to a stand still because it needs time to gestate. Trusting that all is well, even when nothing seems to be happening, is another act of faith along the path of conscious creativity.
8. Once we have taken our leap of faith and are moving effortlessly in a flow of inspired action, our Soul takes over and uses our human capacities as the instrument to bring forth the creation. This state can be so joyful. Time disappears, we become the expression and the outcome no longer matters. In this state, we experience fulfillment to simply be in the creative river of movement. Eventually what once was a blank canvas becomes a painting or a dream becomes a reality.
My “Messenger of Light” painting journey revealed these insights paint stroke by paint stroke. As I stand back now and behold how it all came together in harmony in the end, I am in awe!
Your life is your creative journey. What new creation will you begin this New Year?
Can you imagine yourself standing back at the end of 2016 to behold how it all came together in the end?
