
Sometimes the best you can do is:
- Name it
- Call attention to it
- Identify the trauma, underneath the anxiety
You cannot win a battle if you are not honest about what you are up against.
Jon Stewart’s Irresistible (2020, Film)
A Psychotherapist's Work-in-Process
Sometimes the best you can do is:
You cannot win a battle if you are not honest about what you are up against.
Jon Stewart’s Irresistible (2020, Film)
A compost heap is basically rotted down food scraps or organic rubbish used in gardening to fertilise soil. In Neil Gaiman’s MasterClass on writing (the Art of Storytelling), he encouraged viewers to gather sources of inspiration through the apt metaphor of the compost heap.
“And I think it’s really important for a writer to have a compost heap. Everything you read, things that you write, the things that you listen to, people you encounter – they can all go on the compost heap. And they will rot down. And out of them grow beautiful stories.”
Neil Gaiman
I have found the following ways helpful in growing my compost heap:
(Source material: The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron)
(Source material: Commonplace Books and Reading in Georgian England by David Allan & How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens)
“Images generate stories, imaginal dialogue, and other forms of artistic expression, but they also act directly on our bodies, minds and senses.”
Shaun McNiff
(Source material: The Red Book: Liber Novus by C. G. Jung)
Hopefully the aforementioned sources would help you grow your compost heap as it has for me. Cheers to a journey toward bolstering creative synthesis!
Enjoy the harvest.
Ideas are the seeds of creative imagination.
The things that we do in service of an idea generate new ideas, and the process goes on and on. And sometimes we fail and have to start again.
Shaun McNiff, Trust the Process (1998)
These seeds exist in our minds and its partnership with the physical qualities of art-making result in the act of creation. Oftentimes, we can grow frustrated when our initial expression doesn’t look like our ideas. This is a great opportunity for creative problem solving; according to Shaun McNiff, this is a process of give and take – it is a building process. He encourages us to keep at it, to trust the process and access the energies of creative movement.
What I have found especially helpful in bypassing my punitive “inner critic” and cognitive rigidity is to heed McNiff’s advice of repeating a spontaneous gesture (i.e. Circles). Having had the privilege of attending his workshop in 2017, a few of his words stood out for me: “What drives you most crazy, is what you have to learn the most”, “Art in service of the soul”, “Simple is deep”.
…we can never do the same picture twice. Repetition encourages reverie and letting go.
Shaun McNiff, Trust the Process (1998)
As I paint the same circular gesture over and over, it changes as I use new colours; quieting the inner critic and entering a state of calm. I am reminded to be flexible and open to new influences that we experience through the creative process and that important results are not always immediate.
“The creative process requires the active participation of the artist over a period of time.”
Shaun McNiff, Trust the Process (1998)
Pastels
Ever so often, I shall challenge myself to explore/master a new art medium. If readers have any experience in any of these media and would like to share tips, insights or have ideas for me to delve deeper into, feel free to reach out!
In the coming months, my medium of choice to experiment with is Pastel (hard and soft) in all its powdery glory.
Pastels are resistive enough that it affords control, yet it also offers a tactile component with capacities for layering, blending and some level of mess.
A discussion of the psychodynamic concepts of transference and countertransference may also be applied to materials and media; in that art materials may be viewed as a metaphor for food as they provide a tangible form of emotional sustenance, and within art psychotherapy the therapist providing these materials may be seen as the parent who “feeds”, nurture or is/isn’t good enough. The characteristics and quality of materials and processes may also be linked with object relations theory and ego development in what Arthur Robbins terms Psychoaesthetics.
Much and more may be gleaned from the medium we choose to work with alone, and to that end, time to satiate our creative soul.
The goal of this website is to allow creativity to flow without judgement or expectation – to trust the process and share this journey.
Prima Materia serves as a base to cultivating my visual, reflective practice.
Hopefully, it inspires you to take that “dangerous (albeit exciting) leap” toward a creative practice for deeper insight and self-care.
“The Italians have a wonderful phrase, ‘Salto Mortale’, the dangerous leap, the leap into the void. The fear we get in the pit of our stomach before we commit, fear that it’s not going to work out. It’s too soon. I am not ready. And so we wait…”
Seth Godin