Like most creative types I have an ongoing love affair with art supplies. It still thrills me no end to go into an art store and walk up and down the aisles looking at the multitudinous tubes and colors of paint, fondling the different sizes and types of brushes, inhaling the scent of the waxy oil pastels and flipping through art sketchbooks large and small,full of empty, white,virginal paper and that delicious sense of creative promise.

And I don't stop with just looking and browsing. I shop and I buy and I collect....multitudes and piles of creative gear. Between my home and my painting studio where I teach my classes I probably have enough stuff where I could open up a shop myself.

I love these things with an unholy passion and it makes me insanely happy to be surrounded by so much artistic possibility.

But I have a dirty little secret and a still unhealed wound around my creative collection of art paraphernalia.

The scary, spectacular journal.

A number of years ago one of my students gave me a gorgeous journal that she had made by hand. It has a soft, green suede cover, subtle purple stitching on the spine, a beaded strap that wraps around the outside to keep it closed and it opens onto creamy, thick paper with artfully torn and distressed edges. This journal is a true work of art, created with love and inspiration.

And in all the years that I have had it I have opened it a few times. I have caressed the buttery suede and pressed that rich, luscious paper to my face. But I have never, EVER put one mark on any of those pages.

The darn thing is so exquisite that it intimidates me. I'm afraid that I can't live up to it. Because it is so lovely in and of itself I feel like I can only put something in it if that something is superb and spectacular.

Goddess forbid I mar those perfect pages with a laundry list of ongoing whines about the difficulties in my life. What if I begin a collage and and get unwanted glue all over that luxuriant, wondrous paper? Or I begin to paint and instead of the hoped for masterpiece what appears is all weird and trite and juvenile?

So I don't do anything at all. I have this beautiful journal stored in a pile with a bunch of other beautiful journals all waiting for that day when I feel I am worthy enough to put something in them. And up to this point that day has yet to come.

At least I'm not the only one.

The really sad news is that I am not alone. I can't tell you how many people have confessed to me that they have drawers, closets, ROOMS filled with art supplies. That they will occasionally go and visit their ever growing paint collection or reams of gorgeous fabric and experience a certain kind of wistful pleasure that these things exist. But something holds them back from actually squirting the paint onto a palette or getting out the shears and cutting into that shimmering bolt of silk.

These clean tubes and empty sketchbooks speak to endless creative possibilities and potentials. Having all these amazing supplies ready and waiting for you is like being at that point in the creative journey when anything can happen.

And it gets way, way worse when the supplies themselves are expensive. If people who have never painted before start out by buying themselves high end oil paints and stretched canvases I'd be willing to bet that those objects will never, ever get used. The things themselves have become too precious. These paints and paper are like hoarded treasures that in and of themselves become cherished and adored.

If you have sprung for art materials that have cost you a lot of money that means you have to create a painting that you can at least feel proud enough to hang in your living room if not the San Francisco MOMA!

So what happens for a lot of people is that they get kind of stuck in this potential phase.

I hate it when perfectionism is so darn sneaky.

I think that this holding back is an unacknowledged form of perfectionism. Those paint tubes are just so CLEAN and unsullied. That uncut fabric is so beautiful and rich and whole. That green suede journal is a jewel just as it is. All of these creative accouterments are in a flawless and perfect state. And there's just NO guarantee that when you start using your art stuff that you're not going to completely mess things up!

When you start really utilizing those gorgeous treasures you have no idea what you're going to end up with. It might be something you absolutely hate... or something that you feel disappointed in or ashamed of.

And that's what holds people back.

It's that fear of being confronted with something less than perfect. Less than ideal. So the paints stay all nice and cozied up in their shiny little paint skins and and the fantasy stays alive that someday....  at some point in the future ..... those art supplies will eventually become art.

Mess is not a four letter word... well it is but.... oh never mind.

When you go into a working artists studio you see very few unopened containers of paint. Most of those tubes are half squeezed, twisted, cracked and covered with paint themselves. They are often in a jumble somewhere, not lined up and color co-ordinated!

To be creative you have to be willing to make a mess. And to sometimes make a very BIG mess. One of the things that I love about my painting studio is the sense that it's OK to lose control there. It's a place where artistic chaos reigns.

That is one of the main reasons that I use kids paint and paper in my painting classes. People are much more willing to experiment and try things and make mistakes when the supplies themselves are not demanding something more.

Ultimately that fantasy of perfection ends up being pretty empty. Eventually that gorgeous paper in the journal will get moldy and yellowed and the paint tubes will end up only getting dried out and gathering dust. And your creative life will forever be on hold as you worship at the shrine of "someday art."

I've been under a spell..... who knew?

So I don't know about you, but I am ready to break that paralyzing spell that has been keeping me and my creative juiciness in its clutches for way too long now. I'm going to start USING that outrageous green journal. Today.

I have no idea what's going to happen, but hey, isn't that exactly the point? And I would love to hear from any of you as you take the risk of unearthing your treasure trove of too precious materials out from cold storage and start making some art!

Wrecking Journals Can Be Fun

This post has been partly inspired by the amazing Jamie Ridler over at Jamie Ridler Studios. She has been hosting something she calls The Next Chapter where she chooses a book on creativity and a bunch of women bloggers read the book together and write posts about their experience.

The book she is "hosting" right now is call Wreck This Journal by Keri Smith and even though this post is not about that particular book ( at least right now) I am offering these musings in the spirit of journal wrecking everywhere!

My First Podcast!

I have also been interviewed about my take on the creative process by the lovely Danny Hobson who is the director of the fabulous Arts and Healing Network which is a comprehensive online resource for art, healing and creativity practitioners from all over the country and the world.

She made me feel so comfortable and at ease during the interview process that I sound like I even know what I am talking about! You can listen to that interview, which is in the form of a podcast, by clicking here.

I have a friend who is a musician. And more than anything else he wants to write his own songs and eventually put them together on a CD. But it's not really happening. So he is in that particular type of artists hell where the creative longing is terribly insistent but the creative manifestation is stalled.

He's complained to me a number of times about how miserably stuck he is and because I am a professional believer in the gifts of others and cannot ever keep my nose out of anybody's creative business, especially when there is massive suffering involved, I poked and prodded a bit. And I discovered that he is not really as stuck as he thinks. At least not all the time.

This guy grew up in a suburban middle class family, went to an Ivy League college and has  worked his whole life in the white collar corporate world. Yet when he sits down to write songs he has discovered that he has an alter ego as a scruffy, country western type dude who drives a beat up old Ford Black Galaxy and hangs out in little hole in the wall saloons.

And even though he is happily married, in his songs he's constantly getting involved with a crazy and elusive woman who is always frustrating him and sometimes breaking his heart.

His songs scare him partly because they don't make any sense. Who is this guy in the Ford Galaxy? Who is this mysterious and wildly unpredictable woman and why is she torturing him? These songs and characters don't fit with his self image and how he sees himself and more importantly how his family has always seen him. 

His songs are quirky and kind of dark and twisted and full of emotional angst. His family is pragmatically cheerful, strongly academic and scientific and would be horrified to see their son as this wandering itinerant poet full of sardonic attitudes about life and love.

So he keeps trying to get his songs to conform to who he thinks he is and more importantly who he thinks he should be. He is afraid that if he puts his brooding intensity out in the world he will be rejected or humiliated. He is trying to force himself into the mold that he thinks will garner him the greatest external approval.

But his "nice" songs have no energy or juice, for him or for anyone else. So he feels stuck in his creative process much of the time and is only really creatively on fire when the scruffy, broody Ford dude takes over. Then the words and music flow.

In other words he is only stuck when he is second guessing what his creative muse is so generously offering him.

In my intuitive painting classes I am always encouraging people to be spontaneous as they paint and to trust their first impulses. I talk about the concept of radical self acceptance which means practicing trying to welcome everything that comes out of the brush with some sense of curiosity and compassion. Which is ridiculously hard for most people because we are trained to think that whatever wants to come out of us is not any good by virtue of the fact that we have created it. 

When our creativity is really humming along, when we experience it as the most alive and powerful, it's coming from an essential place inside of us. Our creativity is an opportunity to tell our truth, to authentically express ourselves , to be real and honest and transparent and vulnerable.

But that means we have to risk being ourselves and to risk that other people might not like who we are or understand where we are coming from. Even if you don't identify yourself as an artist, when you are exposing yourself through your creativity you are putting yourself on stage. And you are looking for a response. Every time you put your creativity out into the world you are taking on the role of performer and every performer wants a reaction. And they want that response to be applause and acclaim not rotten tomatoes or worse yet a response that is no response at all.

The worst thing imaginable to any creative type is the blank stare or the quizzical "huh" or even worse, someone saying something that is superficially nice because they don't know what else to say.

We are performing our whole lives by putting on a show of what we think will get us the most noticed and loved. And it often starts in our families where we are pigeonholed and pegged to be a certain way. Some part of us that the family can understand or feel comfortable with ends up getting all the attention.

Suzy is the smart one. Matt is the artist. Karen is overly sensitive. Tim is going to end up in a federal penitentiary one day. George is good with his hands. And we live our lives acting out these scripts because it's what has been sanctioned. It's how we are seen and so it becomes the way that we see ourselves. 

But when we allow our creativity free rein, long hidden aspects of our many layered inner selves often start banging on the door demanding to be let out of the closet. And it's in these secret, wacky, stuffed away parts of who we are that a lot of passion and energy resides.

Our creativity is interested in us becoming whole human beings. It wants us to  stop living such a small and narrow life. Acting out that same darned, tired and tattered, one sided and unidimensional script that we were given as children is just plain no fun and boring. It's old. It's been done. Over and over again. And the last thing that the creativity goddess wants for us is to be bored senseless by a life of going around and around the same ancient, well worn grooves in our psyche.

So the next time you find yourself stalled at a creative roadblock take a moment to ask the following question "Who is it that you are trying to please? What status quo are you busily trying to maintain?"

And finally, who is your creative alter ego equivalent of the Ford Galaxy dude and when are you finally going to let him or her out to play?

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If you are needing some help and support to get back on speaking terms with your creative muse come and join me and a bunch of other cool creative types for my next Painting From The Wild Heart workshop which will be held at my Creative Juices Arts studio in Oakland, CA.

The dates are June 26-28 and it starts on Friday at 6 PM and ends on Sunday at 4 PM. It costs the ridiculously low price of $265 which includes morning snacks, lunch both days and dinner on Saturday night.