Intuitive Painting and the Wild Ride of Risk and Change

But when you take the chance and paint the scary thing you regain your freedom. The block just disappears. You are back to trusting your creative energy and connected again to what is fun and satisfying and enlivening. You are back in touch with that sense of adventure and possibility and curiosity. You are filled with the anticipation that comes when you don’t exactly know what’s around the next corner but you are excited and curious to find out.

 When you find yourself in the grips of the fear around ruining something you can start to intervene in that process by asking yourself the question, “What am I really afraid of?” Because no matter what you may fervently believe, it is actually not possible to ruin a painting! To ruin something means to utterly destroy it and unless you have torn the painting up and thrown it away, as long as you continue to paint, you are not ruining anything. You may not immediately like what you are painting, you may feel puzzled or scared, frustrated or disappointed, you may want to tear your hair out, but when you are having an adventure these experiences are just part of the terrain.

 The creative process is an exercise in learning to become more fluid and flexible. To become more like water and less like stone. What you want to try and cultivate is a kind of “bring it on” attitude around your painting process. To become a painting warrior and to cultivate courage in the face of what often seems like certain creative doom. And to remember that you can fully expect to “ruin” your painting any number of times before your painting is complete. You can learn to embrace this apprehension about ruining something and even begin to welcome it when you keep in mind that this fear is always a harbinger of creative change. And that change is the lifeblood of the creative process. So next time you are at your easel you can let the painting gods know that you are ready for whatever they might have in store for you by cheerfully reciting the following mantra which is “Ruin it early. Ruin it often!”

By Chris Zydel