Kreativität Archive - KünstlerSeele

Start ugly!

Almost every artist knows this: you start your painting carefully, perhaps with a precise preliminary drawing, at first you are quite enthusiastic about the result, but the more colour you apply, the ‘worse’ it gets! Right up to the stage where you are convinced that you have completely ruined the painting and it is best to destroy it or put it in the corner. This is where many unfinished pictures that have one thing in common often gather: They are in their puberty, as I like to call it, their ‘ugly stage’. Awkward, gangly, shrill, disharmonious, pimples, bad-tempered, out of proportion, and arms and legs that are too long.

Normally, every picture goes through an ugly phase like this. Many people give up right then - but you have to ‘close your eyes and go for it’! Now you are where it can only get better! Just like in real life, problems have piled up on your canvas that need to be solved. You can ask yourself ‘are the colours right, what doesn't harmonise and why, is the composition ok? What might I need to change about the perspective, the proportions?’Now you've reached the stage where you have to take a step back and get a better overview. At the beginning, you are often so absorbed in the creative process that you become blind, i.e. you can no longer see even the most obvious mistakes.

When I realised this, I decided one day that it would be best to already start with an ugly painting. I simply left out the thorough preliminary drawing, only created the rough areas of the motif and worked my way from ugly to beautiful. But above all from simple to complex.

In doing so, I realised that I could capture the proportions much better than with a precise preliminary drawing. And I actually enjoy painting this way more. This may be because I create the inevitable problems straight away and can start solving them straight away. But that's my own personal ‘why’. Why do I paint? Everyone has a different answer. For some unknown reason, I have realised that I find it fascinating to solve problems and make things better and better. Turning old into new. I would also rather renovate an old house than build a brand new one. In fact, I would be totally overwhelmed. Too many options, too many decisions. But creating something new from something that already exists is fun for me. You already have a framework within which you have to operate. The more dilapidated the house, the more satisfying it is to make something beautiful out of it. I also love the story of the ugly duckling, in which the initially ugly duckling later turns out to be a georgeous swan. That may have something to do with it.

I now know when a picture is finished for me: when there are no more problems to solve! 

Because theoretically, you can always change something in a picture, but it doesn't always necessarily get better or worse - usually just ‘different’. So you have to decide when it's the right time to stop.

And you also have to have the courage to leave some ‘mistakes’ as they are. They are part of the life of the work of art. Because it was created by human hands. It has grown up like this, it tells the story of its creation. I have already discovered so many mistakes in old masterpieces! Because nothing and nobody is flawless, at least nothing naturally created. Aren't people with small blemishes much more interesting than flawless beauties that you quickly get tired of?

So I have defined a new goal for myself: I paint (and solve ‘’problems) until I can accept the picture as it is. Like accepting your child as it is. With all its quirks and shortcomings. And you no longer care what other people might think.

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Creative Power

What distinguishes humans from other living beings?

Quite clearly – it's creative power.

No other living being is capable of willfully and permanently creating something new and unprecedented.

Art and artistic creation are the impulses of every human being, enabling expression of the inexpressible, of suffering and joy, of strength and longing.

Creation does not come from the head, it comes from the heart or rather from the soul. Yes, our soul paints, pastes, mashes and plays, creates the stuff that dreams are made of.

All people have inner images – as diverse as people are on the outside. Paint a picture every day – and no two will be the same or even identical. Not even your own will be identical, let alone those of other people.

There is nothing more individual than your inner pictures, your very own creative power. So there is no better or worse – only DIFFERENT.

We learned in our childhood that ‘being different’ is dangerous and ostracizes us. But the truth is that life needs us to be different. A jigsaw puzzle has lots of unique pieces, no two are the same, otherwise there would be chaos. Each piece has its place and if just one is missing, the whole puzzle is worthless. Everyone’s picture contributes to the overall picture. So no one should complain about their expression, their being this way and no other. After all, that’s exactly where their value lies for the whole.

That’s why you shouldn’t compare yourself to anyone. If you try to be someone else, you’ll ruin the puzzle, destroy the overall picture – because the other person already exists, but your place would remain empty in the future!

So be happy about the way you are, about your very individual way of expressing yourself. (HA)

Genius or Scenius?

Today, while driving down into the valley through the damp clouds, I listened to an interview by Geoff Goins with Austin Kleon (the author of ‘Steal Like An Artist’) which wided my view in the metaphorical sense. What I took away from it: first the sentence “There is no creation in isolation” combined with his view that there are no […]

What does he mean by this? In his view, there are no highly or less highly gifted people, but every creative person needs appropriate support from her environment in order to be able to do ‘good creative work’ or any creative work at all. Mozart or Beethoven were born into an appropriate environment. He calls this a ‘scene’, so he calls people who have this support a scenius instead of a genius. I found this thought quite exciting, because I often wondered why some people “just make it”, usually still with ease, and others get nowhere. Although they are not worse or less talented. Often even more. This could be at least one explanation.

Accordingly, I personally am neither a genius nor a scenius :-) – like probably most of us. However, lately I’m trying more and more to do only what brings me joy when doing creative things and not to look so much at the “perfect” result. That’s easier said than done, though. But I notice very clearly in the end result whether it was forced, so to speak, or whether it went easily from my hand full of joy. Forced work always has something stiff and lifeless about it, no matter how technically perfect it may be. I am therefore no longer surprised that artists who can paint technically perfect pictures suddenly want to paint like children again. How about you?