Odyssey
Oil on Canvas
Painting or creating is a long and more often than not an emotional odyssey. The loss of innocence and the forever occurring demands of outside influences unexpectedly take control of your soul before you know it, Leaving you confused, unsettled and directionless.
To get my fellow creative types off of the draining emotional odyssey and back on a life enhancing creative odyssey. I suggest you might start by looking for clues that contributed to your creative conundrum. You may want to start by recognizing and addressing those clues to help you escape the loss of your soul centered creativity.
I have come up with five possible culprits that started the creative slump, but I’m sure you can come up with many more.
- You don’t play anymore. If you stop the innocence of play in yourself you’re done for.
- You are not living in present. If you’re thinking too much about the past or you thinking too much about what tomorrow will bring, you simply are not in your creative now.
- Stress Stress and more Stress I can’t stress this one enough nothing kills creativity as effectively and as quickly as stress whether it be emotional or physical it’s the culprit for just about everything that ails us.
- Too many naysayers in your life. If you don’t have the support of a loved one or group of fellow like minded people you’ll start to doubt yourself. Creativity has a hard time thriving in that environment.
- Thinking all the time about fame and fortune and not focusing on the quality of your creativity. After all you have to be great before you can become great. Let the world find you…cream always surfaces to the top, assuming you work with your own creative muse, and not worry about what everyone else is doing.
- Ok #6 is a bonus because I know you read at least up to here. A troubled heart… this uniquely human feeling will not only rob you of being creative but can lead to depression and make you not fun!!! Love yourself first then people will like you because of the generous joy you share.
Now you ask… So what does this all have to do with the painting entitled Odyssey?
Like virtually all of my paintings they just meander their way onto the canvas, with very little forethought. The real challenge is naming the work and this one found its name before the paint was dry. Not because I had some brilliant epiphany but the strength of the swirling colors encompassing the hopelessly lost squares reminded me that all art by its very nature of being is in itself an odyssey to behold. When one considers the ever present self sabotaging thoughts creative people endure and like all of us humans, lives filled with unpredictable changes it’s the odyssey we live that make us relevant.
And just perhaps makes art so real.
