Welcome to Mind Your Practice. I’m Beth Pickens and in this episode I invite you back to your practice, returning over and over again.
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THIS EPISODE'S HOMEWORK:
This episode’s homework is about living the principle that your art matters.
In the next week, I want you to write a letter to your creative practice as a whole, all of the work you’ve ever made and all the work you will make. I want you, in the letter, to express your gratitude for what your practice has done for your life and the way it’s helped you. You can make a list. You can send a gushing email. You can make a drawing. You can write a proper Victorian love letter with a fountain pen.
Next, I want you to clear out one more hour than you would usually commit to art making. Give yourself one more hour. If you’ve been giving yourself zero hours in recent weeks, then you can use this as an opportunity to go from zero to 1.
Finally, I want you to make a list of at least 20 artists who have made work that has been deeply meaningful to you. Any discipline, living and dead, anywhere across place and time. Celebrities, anonymous artists, someone you know and love. List all their names. Pick one of these and write them a love letter for their art. Tell them all about what you loved and why and what their work has meant to you. If you can and the person is living, send the letter to them.
And, please, tell me how it goes.
Mind Your Practice is produced by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. You can find out more about her practice at carolynpennypackerriggs.com
Our show icon is made by Jess Cuevas.
Ep. 8: Start Again
Welcome to Mind Your Practice. I’m Beth Pickens and in this episode I invite you back to your practice, returning over and over again.
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Hello artists. Inevitably, from time to time, your creative practice will feel like a place to which you don’t want or know how to return. Artists become alienated from their projects and practices. For real, it happens all the time. And it can happen to anyone regardless of what kind of art you make or how long you’ve been at it. When you find yourself distanced from your work, it doesn’t mean that you’re not an artist. It just means you are a human artist.
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Your creative practice is a home. Like any home, it can feel many different ways. It can feel comfortable, stifling, healing, threatening, familiar, unwelcoming, cozy, safe, or alien. Sometimes the places where we seek refuge provide it and sometimes they make us feel weird.
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Just about every artist I know has felt avoidant of or estranged from their creative work. I think about it this way, the whole world wants to pull you away from your art practice through distractions, emergencies, and the millions of things a person seems to have to do in a modern life. And you, too, will pull yourself away from your practice. Life happens. Illness, chaos, limerence, death, weather, elections, violence, mood disorders, children, financial insecurity, season 2 of Love Island and its daily episodes. The short break from your practice can start to feast on itself, expanding like a mold, and the days become weeks which become a month or two and you feel super guilty. The fear-based voices creep in: am I even an artist? Why am I paying for that studio? If I were for real I’d want to dive back in. Am I fooling myself that I’ll finish that book or that record or that documentary? That misguided interior voice gets louder, making it harder to return to your work, which makes you feel worse, and the cycle begets itself.
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Artists, I have some wonderful news. Your practice is not leaving you. Your creative work is always there for you, waiting - nonjudgmentally - for your return. Every single day is an invitation back to yourself as an artist. You can come home to your art anytime.
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Since the pandemic began, I’ve developed a deeper understanding of how fortunate you are to be an artist. You have this whole extra entity inside of you, a tool, a gift, a bonus way of being and knowing, that helps you navigate every life experience, including the bottomless calamity of the year 2020. In the Jewish tradition, it’s said that on Shabbat, every week, we have an extra soul. When my rabbi announces this, I always think of artists, who I think spend their lifetime with an extra soul. I believe you are gifted with an extra sensitivity, a parallel narrative, another way of being that travels with you through the arc of your life.
Your artist self, your creative work, is available to you anytime you decide to return to it.
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Ok, let’s talk about your homework. I call this the Start Again homework and it’s especially for those of you who are feeling alienated from your practice. Today, on the very day you listen to this episode, maybe even as soon as you finish listening, spend 15 minutes on the creative work you’re avoiding. No more than 15 minutes and no less. Set a timer. Repeat this for the next 3 days. Why so short? To keep it manageable. We can do something for 15 minutes that we couldn’t face doing for an hour, let alone a day. Also, the 15 minutes may leave you feeling interested, maybe even hungry for more. Good, we want to stoke that desire.
Next, I want you to pick out some of your favorite art from across discipline and genre - music, paintings, novels, dances, poems, sounds, videos, anything and everything - and spend some time with one piece every day for the next week. Write down your plan - list the works you’ll focus on and one by one make your way through them. Immerse yourself in work that wakes you up and stirs up some feelings.
Finally, I want you to conjure up the artists who made all that work. I want you to imagine what they will tell you about your work and how to proceed. Maybe you even know some of them, in which case you can just ask. Regardless, bring them into your mind and gather their answers. They all have answers for you.
Let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear from you.
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Thanks for listening to Mind Your Practice and be sure to subscribe so you get all the bonus episodes coming your way. If you are an artist who likes to be told what to do, I am more than happy to boss you around through email and social media. You can find me on Instagram at @bethpickensconsulting and join my mailing list on my website bethpickens.com. Thanks for listening and keep making art.
Mind Your Practice is created by Beth Pickens and Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.