Sunday, August 14, 2011

Listening to Consonants

The above painting is titled Consonants. It's part of a small series I did about how language feels in my head.  I think a lot about how to help others incorporate creativity into their way of living and this painting (in fact that whole series) illustrates one of the tools of creativity that can be put into practice.
That tool is going into the body for information.
The marks on the canvas are not in themselves consonants. You can't see a p or a k or a w, but you see what consonants feel like to me. The marks are also elements of the written consonants without being the consonants themselves. So the painting grew from an intuitive sense, from a feeling inside me. Artists are credited with mysterious talents, often envied by museum and gallery visitors, but mostly the talent artists have is an expanded sensory awareness and the courage to value and follow that awareness into action.
Everyone gets information from the body. Your stomach growls, you know you're hungry. You yawn, it's time to get some sleep. Now imagine that you start listening more closely to the responses of your body to the world around it. There lies a seed of creativity: curiosity.

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