Trust the Process: An Artist's Guide to Letting Go
Shaun McNiff
Language: English
Pages: 210
ISBN: 1570623570
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Whether in painting, poetry, performance, music, dance, or life, there is an intelligence working in every situation. This force is the primary carrier of creation.
If we trust it and follow its natural movement, it will astound us with its ability to find a way through problems—and even make creative use of our mistakes and failures.
There is a magic to this process that cannot be controlled by the ego. Somehow it always finds the way to the place where you need to be, and a destination you never could have known in advance.
When everything seems as if it is hopeless and going nowhere . . . trust the process.
area of greatest creative inhibition as an adult. In just about every other creative pursuit I recall my parents giving reinforcement. I was rarely told that I was doing something wrong, which was the case with my singing. My experience, along with my conversations with adult artists, reveals that the quality of childhood exposures to creativity has a major impact on expressiveness later in life. On the other hand, I am not advocating early, stressful, advanced training in the arts for children,
instinctively. Don’t hesitate or hold back an urge. Fill the surface with as much activity and elaboration as you can, and don’t worry about making pictures that look bizarre. You might find that personal symbols and your own unique designs will emerge from this free play. When you find something that you like, repeat it in another picture and build upon it. This is how style and personally distinct artistic contents emerge. Play becomes a mode of experimentation and emergence. For too long
things unto themselves rather than approaching marks in a painting or drawing as representations of something else. The expressions of nature can be especially inspiring and influential if you begin to make art in this way. Ponder the changing configurations made by the sea in the hardened forms of sand below the high tide line. Find other nature markings and reflect upon their aesthetic qualities—lines made by water moving through dirt, ripples and configurations on water made by wind, the
differences between the creative expression of adults and children. As the Zen teachers say: when you eat, eat; when you walk, walk. When children paint, they paint with all of their being. Adults tend to think too much about what they are doing and ultimately get caught in the restrictions of the controlling mind. Don’t be afraid of appearing childlike as you express yourself. Realize that the notion of the “inner child” may be a defense against childlike aspects that you do not exercise or
eye and ear realize that you are cooperating with the expressive material. Work together as partners. Let it tell you what it needs, what it can do, what it cannot accept. The most sophisticated and sensitive critic exists somewhere between you and the art materials, within the interplay of the creative process. What does the expression say to you as you make it? Does the stone speak to you as you arrange it in your garden? Do the stones that you have already placed call out for particular