This week’s reading on “Deeply Seeing” really intrigued me. I am going to school for art and it is a big part of my life. I have grown passionate for ceramics but also draw, paints, and use multimedia. I was interested in what the writer came up with for the creative process for an artist. I have always thought that every artist was unique in how they create their art but I now agree with the author. Formulation, saturation, incubation, inspiration, translation, and integration all come into play as an artist. It finally made sense when he wrote how every artist will spend different amount of time on each step, which brings it to the uniqueness that I was originally thinking about. (76)
He states that the goal of an artist is to reach a state of mind where art flows irresistibly through them. (79). I believe this to be so true. It gets very frustrating when you are not in the right mindset and your creative mind is not flowing well. The author nailed it with calling it “finding the art spirit” I don’t think it has to do with God or anything but it is spiritual in that you connect to something further than just you to create beauty and art.
I found out that my inspiration process is the kind where I just suddenly will get a full-blown image flash in my head, often while I am sleeping as opposed to getting snippets of ideas and finally seeing the rest once I start creating the art. I must sketch all the time to get all the details down before I forget.
I am currently taking my first yoga class this term and just heard about chakras and couple of weeks ago. I became interested learning the connection of the seven chakras to how we as artists reach spirituality through these chakras.
Your response this week was a pleasure to read. This article must have been extremely relatable to you as an artist. Since I am not pursuing art, I had a harder time connecting to what Grey was talking about when he talked about the process of creating artwork. I never realized how long of a process it truly could be, but boy was I wrong. It makes a lot of sense to me that you aren’t going to finish a piece of work unless it is truly what you were imagining. Since I am interested in Business, I applied Grey’s thoughts about inspiration and saw how even when coming up with a business proposal or idea for change you still need that sense of creativity and inspiration to get an idea. Just like you, many times I find myself thinking of ideas while sleeping or on a run. While this isn’t the best time to want ideas, they end up being the best ideas and plans I have accomplished. I love Grey’s last statement of the reading where he says, “deeply seeing the meaning of our art and our lives requires that we open the mystic eye” (106). I think that this directly relates to inspiration and getting in touch with our inner spirit. Would you agree?
You brought up a lot of great points in your discussion and share some similar thoughts and feelings that I had towards this reading. First off I totally agree that every artist is unique in there own way. At first I thought this was just because people see stuff differently in their own regards, therefore we have different inspirations to create art. However, after reading the article and your discussion I realized that there is much more to how we decide to create art, and we go through a process in doing so (formulation, saturation, inspiration, etc). I also know what you mean and how frustrating it can be when you lose your creative juices. A lot of the time this is not an issue but sometimes I will go through a slump where I struggle to let my creative mind flow and seem to lose inspiration. After reading your discussion it seems like you have experienced this too. What are your thoughts on why this happens?
You produced a very good point about “the creative process” and I want share some of my opinions related to this theory. I agree with your point that different artists will engage with “the creative process” differently and they may even skip one or two stages in the progress of creation. In the reading, Grey stated “Not all artists will recognize each phase in their work, and each phase takes its own time, widely varying from work to work.” (Grey, 76) Grey actually used his own experience to explained how he went through each stage in the progress of creation. In my opinion, the most difficult stage that many artists will take a long time to consider is inspiration. In the reading, Grey stated “For, me, pressure is a great catalyst. Important ideas can come at the last minute under a deadline. Often as a painting is coming to completion, I will have to change an entire section because an essential insight suddenly arises.” (Grey, 80) I think that during inspiration stage, the artists need to create their unique ways to deliver their solutions to the audiences. Idea and the way to present the idea are the most important and difficult tasks during this stage. I believe the reason why Grey sometimes will have to change the whole thing is that this stage is one of the basic structure of the entire work.
It was really interesting to hear about the creative process from someone who is actually going to school for art. I know a lot of people in this class have different majors (I, myself am a Journalism student) so to be able to get to know everyone’s unique perspective is great. I was happy to hear about the creative process from an artist’s point of view through the reading and what you have to say about it. It’s fascinating that you get your images in a swift flash. I tend to get mine little by little and just slowly form the entire idea. You did an excellent job of comparing the reading to your own personal experiences. It sounds like you have a lot of spirit as Grey said: “inspiration means access to spirit” (Grey 82) and I think your post really demonstrated you take that to heart.