Intuitive Art Sessions
September 7, 2023
I’m on week three of intuitive art sessions with my artist friend Tricia and let me say they are one of the best things happening to me right now. I met Tricia at a craft fair in July and reached out to spend more time with her. She was warm, inviting, and giving, and I knew I needed to spend more time with her.
The beauty is that she wants to hang out with me too. We’ve been meeting weekly ever since. The premise of our meetings is to pick a question to ask ourselves and let the drawings give us the answer. I used to do this type of intuitive art three years ago at the start of the pandemic; this art form taught me that creativity is alive, and you can ask it anything. It will answer.
In our first session, we asked: What’s holding me back? In our second session, we asked: What are you insecure about? Each session produces a drawing that serves as a snapshot of where we are at creatively.
Week 1 revealed that I need a little “push to start” to get projects going. In the image above, the tilted woman on the left-hand side is my current self struggling to stay up; she’s like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The three characters on the left are there trying to help her out, each one representing an elemental version of myself:
My adult self – the person right next to the tilted woman
My child self – right behind the adult
My Bostonian self – the ghost at the bottom left
Looking back at the first week’s question (“What’s holding me back?”), I think the answer may be that my overthinking is what holds me back; the more time I have to think about why I should/shouldn’t do something, the more my overthinking digs its heels in.
The antidote may be to act on things when I think of them. This approach has worked in the past and has helped me do things without too much thought since I’m doing it on a whim.
Week 2 revealed that I’m feeling overwhelmed by internal/external expectations of being an artist online. The tangled-up blob in the center of the page is me surrounded by a larger circle representing other artists.
There is a gap between the two circles, which makes me feel secluded and apart from the larger group. I feel like a little fish in a big pond, the person at the edge of the party not fitting in.
I’ve told Tricia time and again that I’m struggling to get my Etsy shop started. Although it began as a “fun” project, I’m stuck in the weeds about how to go about it and can’t seem to move. It is a mountain instead of a molehill.
“The way you speak about Etsy,” said Tricia at the end of our art session, “makes it seem like you think starting your Etsy is going to solve all your problems. It’s not.”
She encouraged me by saying that I need to let myself get immersed in the journey and not in the end goal. I pictured myself in a wide river not holding on to anything, just letting the current take me.
Let yourself get immersed in the journey. What does that look like?