Creative Spirit Blog July 15, 2025 Get Out of Your Head!

"Peaceful Encounter" Pastel over Watercolor

“If I create from the heart, really everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.”   Marc Chagall

Spontaneity and emotion are so important to a good painting. So often we say, “I don’t have an idea. I don’t know what to do. Nothing inspires me”.  That is when we need to get out of our head and do! We need to learn that if we just start to play around inspiration will find us.

There are times I have nothing, no idea, no motivation, no desire.  I begin to clean my studio and get organized for when that spark of inspiration does come!  As I move around papers and start to file them with similar colors and textures, put pens and markers away, I find myself putting things together and not away, because inspiration finds me.

“Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.”  Pablo Picasso

If we paint without a complete plan or pre-conceived idea, it allows our instincts and emotions to guide our work. This can lead to a more energetic and dynamic finished product. It allows us as artists to express our immediate emotional response to a subject or medium, creating a sense of authenticity in our artwork.

Ruminating, overthinking, or overanalyzing, about what we can do or need to do can be detrimental not only to the creative process, but to life itself.  When we involve ourselves in these behaviors it leads us to increased stress, anxiety, and sometimes even depression.  It can also have a negative effect on our decision making and our overall quality of life.  It creates negative thoughts, doubt in ourselves, and the dreaded "creative block." 

We have all had times in our lives when we had something we had to do that we were not looking forward to doing. Once we got started, however, we found it was not as bad as we thought it would be, and once we were finished, we felt accomplished. Same principle with art. Just start and inspiration will find you.

While some artists fear that spontaneity will lead to an uncontrolled mess, seasoned artists learn to balance this freedom with a degree of structural understanding. We allow for both the wonderful “happy accident” and a unified final vision with a strong composition. By embracing spontaneity, we can unlock a whole new level of creative expression and create artwork that feels authentic and impactful. It’s a delicate balance.

When our paintings, or any creative project, have reached that, “I think it’s done stage” but something just doesn’t feel right; we need to take our time to really figure out what it needs to make it stronger and say what we want it to say.   I like to have a pile of colored paper and string to figure it out.  I can try different colors with the papers, add lines with the string, or change shapes by placing these things on my painting before I commit to the change.  Then I ask myself, would this make it stronger?

Don’t wait for inspiration to find you.  Start working and it will come. We need to allow ourselves to just play and discover what can happen with the materials we use.  Get out of your head and enjoy the process of working with the materials you love.  Carolyn  

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