I love how this one felt to do. Even though I have no idea what it is. If I had to identify it I would say that it looks kind of organic- like a flower or plant from another planet. But it was very absorbing and relaxing to create it.

I do enjoy letting the pencils or brushes just lead me. It really is fun and takes the pressure off tremendously to not have to TRY to make my drawings represent anything real. If I were actually attempting to paint a specific flower.... like a rose or a tulip... I would have way too many opportunities to be worried that it wasn't turning out exactly right. Whereas if I am painting or drawing something that doesn't even exist on this reality plane no one can tell me I'm doing it wrong... unless one of those aliens from that other planet happens to show up here one day!!

And painting and drawing like this always feels like true creation to me because I'm actually making something that has never existed before!! How cool is that!!

I have the great good fortune to be surrounded by many, many amazingly creative people. People that are bursting with creative energy and ideas, talent and enthusiasm. Friends and colleagues who are living wondrously creative lives and by their example are serving as a creative catalyst and an inspiration for me and everyone who knows them. They spark me with a wondrous sense of creative possibility. Their unflagging devotion to the goddess of creativity is a source of heartfelt encouragement and an ongoing blessing in my life.

I admire and respect these people tremendously.

And most of the time I feel like I am a member in good standing of the "live your life creatively" club. That I belong and am one of them.

Most of the time.

Oh oh...Where did all my friends go?

But there are other times when I feel very much on the outside. Like I've been cast out. Excluded. I don't quite measure up. In those moments it looks like those friends are rapidly passing me by. Leaving me behind.

Maybe they are getting more attention. Or coming up with more brilliant ideas. Or actually manifesting things that I have been dragging my feet around for longer than I care to admit.

During these periods those people in my life who are usually angels of creative light mutate into denizens of discouragement and darkness. They turn on me. They undergo a frightening transformation into demons and monsters who torture me with their brilliance. They laugh at me from their lofty pinnacles of originality and genius. They turn their back on me as they frolic together in the land of ease and creative flow.

But of course, they haven't changed at all. They are still the same lovely and generous souls they always were. The only thing that has changed is a certain frothing neural activity in the dark corners of my brain that looks and sounds like "You're just not good enough, talented enough, creative enough."

The only demon that has wormed it's way into my psyche is not a person at all but a painful state of mind that I know only too well.

I have been unceremoniously abducted into the anti-creative netherworld and swallowed up by the demon of ( drum roll please)... toxic comparison.

Comparison is not the devil...except when it is.

Comparison isn't inherently a negative thing. Comparison is simply a process of differentiation. It's acknowledging how one thing is unlike another.  When it becomes deadly is when that differentiation carries a value judgment with it. It's saying that not only are these two things not the same but one is inherently better than the other. It's creating a system of hierarchy. Which includes things like scarcity and competition.

When applied to creativity it leads to the assumption is that there's only so much creative goodness to go around. That some people got it and some don't. When you are in the jaws of that particular demon you are utterly convinced that you are for sure someone who DON'T... got it. And that way of thinking can lead to a whole world of psychological hurt and  trouble.

If you keep your eyes closed and your mouth shut you'll have no trouble painting at all.

In a recent blog post I talked about how I ask that my intuitive painting students not make any comments on each others work, which includes positive comments, because what we are doing is trying to refrain from judgment and a judgment is a judgment even if it's a positive one.

But another reason that I ask people to refrain from saying nice things about each others work is because of a phenomenon that I call "painter envy" that regularly happens in the studio when people paint together in a group. Of course they invariably look around at each others paintings. And they start comparing. And not in the value neutral way of simply noticing how each person is uniquely themselves.

Oh no. This kind of comparison looks and sounds like "Oh my god. Look at how beautiful that painting is. She really knows HOW to paint a bird. My birds always look like dead, scrawny chickens no matter how hard I try. And I have no color sense at all. I'm positively ADDICTED to fluorescent orange and everyone knows that is just a hideous, stupid color. Her colors are so ELEGANT and refined and flow together so well.  I can't believe I still paint like a 4 year old after all this time. She obviously came out of the womb knowing how to paint and draw. I can't even......"  and on and on.

This is another BIG reason I ask people not to make comments. Since the comparison is going on in people's minds anyway... since they are already trying to convince themselves that their creative expression is deficient or wanting in some way... hearing a positive comment about someone else's painting when no one has said anything to them just underscores the belief that theirs just doesn't measure up.

If someone says something nice about Nancy's painting then Jill automatically assumes that hers is a piece of crap. And vice versa. So not saying anything at all is a way to help create an atmosphere where we are not throwing gasoline on that particular raging fire.

My friends are back but my creativity is taking a break for a while.

When we are pinned to the ground by the toxic comparison demon it effectively stops our true creativity dead in its tracks. To be creative we need to feel safe. And valued. We need to feel like our creativity is good enough just as it is.

Without that confidence and trust in ourselves we tend to shrink and hide. We tend to find ourselves feeling blocked and stuck and paralyzed. The creative ideas just don't flow. The creative river goes deep underground to a place where we can't find a way to access it's limitless creative goodness. And we can totally convince ourselves that it's dried up and gone forever.

I find that I am the most vulnerable to the negative comparison blues when I'm already feeling low or sad or scared about something else in my life. When I'm feeling overwhelmed or stressed, tired or drained I don't have the resources necessary to put that particular demon in perspective.

So when I sit down and try to do something creative and the words won't come or the paint is not flowing joyfully onto the paper, when it looks like my artsy friends have all of a sudden attained creative rockstar status and left me behind in a heap of dejected inadequacy, I try to remember that what I need at that moment is some kindness. And a cup of tea. Maybe a nap. Or a good cry.

And to also try and remember that this too shall pass. My feeling of being a creative has-been is not anywhere near the truth and is no reflection at all on my intrinsic creative worth. It's just that I'm at a low ebb of my creative cycle. And what I really need is to curl up with a good trashy book and let someone else do the creative heavy lifting for a while.

And maybe take another nap.

This is another one of my pieces that I did with colored pencils which are a total godsend because they are so easy to just whip out and use when I don't have a lot of space or time to set up my paints.

First of all, I have no idea what this drawing is about. It's totally mysterious to me. It's definitely one of those images that comes from someplace in my psyche where my dreams live. And I really love it when that happens. It feels like I'm tapped into some other dimension where things don't always make very much rational or logical sense.

I am enchanted by the feeling that I get when something like this comes through me. I totally dig the element of surprise. It's like I have no control whatsoever and because I am not trying to hold onto control something that I could never have even thought of is born through my trusting in my creative process. I'm simply channeling or downloading an image from some place other than my normal, every day brain.

I also have to be very careful to allow paintings or drawings like this to just be what they are without second guessing why certain things are appearing.

For example, the dead rat that is held in the beings left hand kind of freaked me out. I wouldn't necessarily have chosen that as an image I would want to portray because I have all kinds of weird and negative associations with rats. But this is one of those times I have to remember that when I am creating from an intuitive place, what shows up is really none of my business.

My job is to just keep my hand moving and surrender to the creative flow.

Today's a busy day...in fact it's going to be a busy weekend. I'm co-facilitating a new workshop with a friend of mine we're calling Death Rehearsal: A Playfully Reverent Exploration and Artful Preparation For the Final Curtain Call where we will be using creativity to explore our feelings about death and dying. I know it sounds like it could be morbid, but it's really not. First of all, we're planning some really COOL creative exercises, including painting a cardboard casket together as a group. And we'll be writing and dancing and making music. And we actually anticipate laughing quite a bit.

And even though I also think it's going to be pretty intense I am hoping that I will get some sense of that spiritual truth that knowing we are going to die, someday, and facing that knowing head on can actually allow me to be more fully alive now. I'll let you know how it goes.

So a lot of my creative energy is going into creating the workshop. And I'm also planning on taking some photos of the art projects I'll be making during the workshop. Which of course I can post here as my creative every day commitment.

In the meantime, I was able to take a few minutes and make this little sunburst doodle sketch.Which is a pretty cheery little thing considering I'm going to be spending the weekend hanging out with the Grim Reaper!!

Whenever I am painting or drawing I often don't start out with any particular idea. I just start moving the brush or the pencils and let the drawing or the painting  lead me. It's relaxing and nerve wracking at the same time to create in this way. Relaxing because the pressure is off. I don't have to worry about performance anxiety since it's not really "me" doing it anyway. I'm just following where the brush or pencils are taking me. So I can't take any responsibility or blame for what shows up.

It's nerve wracking because I never know what the heck is going to happen. Oftentimes I'll be in the middle of something and thinking to myself "Now where in heaven's name is THIS thing going." And believe me, a lot of weird stuff shows up in my artwork.

This particular drawing is a case in point. I have no idea why this woman is headless. And I certainly don't know where the dress came from. It looks to me like a cross between one of those push up bra sundresses women wore in the 50's and something out of an old space age cartoon series I used to watch as a kid called the Jetsons.... which I'm sure most of you reading this blog will never have heard of because it's a cartoon about the future but it was on the air in the stone age of my childhood!

It's a good reminder that I don't have to understand some thing in order to create it. And that it's enough to just have fun and to play and to create a totally meaningless piece of artwork!