Had to kick off Monday, which is usually serious and somewhat daunting, with a light-hearted, whimsical concoction of seeming nonsense! :) As I mentioned in a recent post, I love to put together unrelated things to see what kind of story I can tell, and this was just exactly one of those kinds of paintings. I absolutely love when paintings happen like this, and even more tickled when they somehow 'work'. I'm not entirely sure how or why, but to me, this one works. Why do roller skates on the bottom of a soup can with a tiny rabbit and carrot on top make sense? I don't know but, they do, and now you have caught a glimpse inside of my brain. :)
I have taught art to children ages 6-18 and the biggest setback and difficulty I findis that most people tend to censor themselves when they are trying to come up with ideas for what they will next create. People tell themselves "this is stupid", "its already been done", "I can't possibly do that", I don't know how, or that doesn't make sense. And then they believe that B.S... Here is the secret, most important piece of advice I can give you if you are an artist struggling with ideas. Don't Censor Yourself. If you are sitting in front of a blank canvas and have convinced yourself that you have no ideas, you most likely don't realize that you are actually censoring yourself unconsciously. In reality, hundreds of ideas probably were bubbling up, but possibly before you barely caught sight of them, your mean old ego smacked them back down into the recesses of your imagination under the pretense of one of those lies I stated above.
One of the most important gifts I have given myself as an artist was permission to let my ideas flow, no matter how strange, impossible or improbable they seem. If my brain thought it, then it is a true expression of me, and who am I to censor it? And even better, maybe the ideas that surface in my mind's eye are a true expression of a larger creative consciousness of which I am able to access, just because I listen and don't censor. (wouldn't that be cool?)
So this post became a lot more personal than I thought it would. I thought it was going to be silly and kind of funny. But I am very serious when I say that the best thing you can do for yourself as an artist is to believe in the ideas you have and allow them to come without censoring them.. follow them and explore where they take you. I promise you, you will never lack for ideas again!
Namaste and Carrot Soup.
Please see below for a recipe for real Carrot Soup which looks simply divine!
