Art-making materials are the most vibrant things.
Artists sometimes refer to the muse—an apt way to express the relationship and that alchemy that occurs when the materials meet the maker. It's a mysterious bond both abstract yet tangible.
You have a favourite psychologist, right? Mine is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (MEE-hy CHEEK-sent-mee-HAH-yee), who researched creativity (and happiness) for decades; he coined and studied the sports and arts concept flow.
During the flow state—a personally defined goldilocks zone between what we find too easy and too hard—time (and trouble) disappear as we become absorbed in a fulfilling task. In connection with our goals, whatever activity prompts and sustains this zone for us—marathoning or driving race-cars or cake-decorating or sewing or performing on stage or refinishing furniture and so on—Csikszentmihalyi declared that flow "transforms a random walk into a chase."
I find that phrase "random walk" compelling. That's it! For me, art-making is a flow experience, a rapt random walk.
A fitting metaphor, I have learned to value the walk—the process—as much as or more than that elusive product we artists chase. Regardless of my original plans (my goals), the random walk is about getting absorbed, even lost in that flow zone, creating something surprising, unintended, serendipitous... the fluke I sought all along. As in all valuable relationships, this requires trust. Like a soapstone sculptor trusting something hidden within (the seal? the turtle? the fox?) the stone itself, the tools, the muse—they too will provide something vibrant, something more than at first imagined.
Dear friends, what inspires you to find flow?
The thing that makes "the flow" or "the zone" so utterly absorbing and freeing is that it induces us to live completely IN THE MOMENT. That's why everything else falls away and life and experience become immediate. I agree -- it's a wonderful place to be.
ReplyDeleteLosing oneself in the process, whatever it may be, cannot be pursued - it happens almost serendipitously.
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