Ugh, getting stuck. Who loves that feeling. There are ghastly times when work hides behind a curtain while fire-fighting and just struggling with being alive is all you can do; it happens, and that’s okay. It takes time to heal and it’ll fade into the background. But what about those other times, when everything is apparently fine and hunky-dory - but the bogeyman comes to visit. He settles into your brain like a bleak, growly fog just when art should be proliferating, and all your efforts get scrunched up and hurled into the bin.
Take heart, that can be a project in itself.
Images, clockwise from top left:
Latifa Echakhch Globus (b) 2007
Martin Creed Work No.88 1995
Ívar Valgardsson Watercolour 2011
John Chamberlain Penthouse #50 1969
Take heart, that can be a project in itself.
Images, clockwise from top left:
Latifa Echakhch Globus (b) 2007
Martin Creed Work No.88 1995
Ívar Valgardsson Watercolour 2011
John Chamberlain Penthouse #50 1969
I have to ‘fess up here, creative block doesn’t really happen to me and I think that’s because I ‘dot around’. That has always been seen as a weakness in my work and has been a fair criticism. It can be seen as a lack of focus or commitment. In the hindsight of (quite a bit of) maturity, I feel the upside to it is that the magpie mentality is like a vaccine against boredom. Constantly gathering new, shiny, sparkly things to light the imagination keeps everything jogging along in the sunshine. (Distraction? I’ll think about that another time).
I say that creative block doesn’t happen to me, but there are still times when I feel sick to my boots with my work and get stuck that way. When it happens, that usually means something’s wrong with it which I’m not getting; the work just looks overblown, overstated, obvious and stale and I just don't want to do it any more.
Thinking about it, I can identify three main causes for getting stuck:
1. Wrong direction
2. Boredom
3. The inner head-critic
I have absolutely no information as to how others get stuck and am quite unqualified to write on the subject, but if just singling out those three particular bogeymen is of any help to you, I’m glad. And soon I might do a show-and-tell on how I wriggle out of it and keep going - if it helps anyone, it’s my pleasure.
I say that creative block doesn’t happen to me, but there are still times when I feel sick to my boots with my work and get stuck that way. When it happens, that usually means something’s wrong with it which I’m not getting; the work just looks overblown, overstated, obvious and stale and I just don't want to do it any more.
Thinking about it, I can identify three main causes for getting stuck:
1. Wrong direction
2. Boredom
3. The inner head-critic
I have absolutely no information as to how others get stuck and am quite unqualified to write on the subject, but if just singling out those three particular bogeymen is of any help to you, I’m glad. And soon I might do a show-and-tell on how I wriggle out of it and keep going - if it helps anyone, it’s my pleasure.
RSS Feed
