Artists Passion

How does the artist give her or himself time wherein to develop patience, build tolerance toward their lack of knowing—a place in the process of our working to create that the masters come to embrace?

On a higher level, how does the artist come to see, accept, that time given to doing what seems nothing is part and parcel of the creative process if the work is to reflect the uniqueness of the work itself, as well as that special touch with which we, the author and creator, has endowed it?

Laying the brush upon the easel, stepping back, and considering the image one is drawing. Abandoning the computer, and permitting a story to ferment as you, the author, take a walk through the hills. Or giving yourself a month to read and savor a book of poems, or perhaps work on a painting. Choosing to learn a new piece of music. Activities like these, and more fertilize, our works toward blossoming, and nurture them into fruition.

Time spent working in other art forms that are not primary focus teach us, everyone, not just artists, to slow down an effort to speed up. Refinement of our ability to wait and see, to linger in the purgatory of realizing only half the drawing, one third of the story, how the music sounds in our heads, yet not under the expression of our fingers—allows us to forget what it was we were ever trying to do and reclaim it with a greater vengeance.

Actor, Jeremy Northam, said in an interview of the actors and actresses in the movie, Gosford Park, that “…an actor/actress’s job is to learn his or her lines to then forget them.” In this way the actor or actress brings the character alive, imbuing director and screenwriter’s creation, the personage, with a sense of humanness.

Our works need time to work to simmer in the silent stillness of our hands. We, the artists and magicians of the unseen brought into touch, vision and sound, need time to forget ourselves, and who we are in between projects. We must lose recollection of the purpose of our lives, if only for a moment.

For in this moment where memory temporarily recedes from consciousness, the wellspring of imagination that resides in our unconscious steps forth. We are energized—forced to return to our work, and do it again. With greater fervor we regain and reclaim ourselves, give rise to a new identity, one rooted in the unconscious memories of all that we have experienced in this life, and those of times past. Our recent and distant creations settle into clarity of our memories.

A new creation emerges, fulminant and brimming with the unique qualities of the present–a moment wherein we are reborn, resuscitated for having not only created, but skipped a breath, and in so doing stepped back, exhibited a moment of patience, reviewed not only the work, but realized who we are, and how this all began.