Balancing Your Creative Behavior

This topic has been a red-hot potato for me as of late. 30 years ago I started my painting career and there’s a lot that went on to get me to this point in that career.

Hell, there was a ton of creative stuff that went on to get me to the start of that career. But now thirty years later, my life of writing demands to be heard. It is telling my painting to be quiet and wait its turn.

I have never had a problem with being creative. A creative block has just never been an issue. I have stuff in me and it’s expressively coming out of me one way or the other or I’ll explode. Such is my behavior and the potent energy within. I don’t try to force that energy to become a painting when it wants to be words or playing guitar and now the ukulele, which is another story altogether! Creative energy needs proper expressive direction or it will blow the manhole covers off trying to escape. Your job as an artist is to feed it when it's hungry and take it on a walk when it gets playful or antsy. But it is equally important to walk it in the direction it wants to go. Wrangling it by the neck only pisses it off.

Make sure if your art is going to walk your creativity through a door, that it’s the right door to walk it through. The one that delivers art and not a frustrated mess. Understand your creative behavior. Don’t just work on technique, work on you!

Live an artful life,
Tom