Creating a sacred space in your art practice

Do you sometimes feel a kind of inner pressure to perform in your drawings and paintings – and in your creative practice? A feeling that everything you make, must be gold standard and ready to be shown to the world.

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I surely know that feeling very well. But to cultivate the pure joy of creating, I also know that it is very important to find ways to work towards a more non-precious approach to creativity.

I think that it’s important to remember that our practice of being an artist, is something much deeper than the physical results. It is about being as much as it is about creating.  In my mind being a creative person, one who feels as an artist, in a deeper sense, means having the urge to express yourself through art. Like drawing and painting as well as other creative disciplines.

To make art blissfully, regularly and for the long haul, it is important to lovingly cultivate a habit of going deep into your own sacred space, where there is no judgement and no spectators. Where you can do whatever you want, making space for a spectrum of creativity, where you can practice your art in different manners.

What do I mean by spectrum? As an artist, I have many sides of myself, in terms of the actual expression of art, the actual time I sit drawing and painting. Sometimes I am very much in performance mode, I know I must concentrate and perform, and not make mistakes. That’s mainly when I work on larger pieces, could be small or big pieces I know will be send off into public space. They will be seen by strangers who are going to judge them and all that. When I work on these pieces, of course I’m more in performance mode and I know there’s not much room for mistakes.

Off course mistakes can be happy creative mistakes and that’s another end of the spectrum. Just me drawing or painting whatever I like, it’s much more like being in a state of being. Like if you want to take a walk, just to feel yourself putting one foot in front of the other, feeling the wind in your hair, feeling the Sun on your nose and just coming home to yourself. Then you can say ah that was a nice walk, and you should allow yourself that experience in your artmaking also, at least some of the time.

I want to remind you to sit down regularly and do what I like to call sketching, no matter if it’s in painting, drawing, with color or just graphite, charcoal or whatever. Just sketching. I like the word sketching, because sketching makes me remember that I need to have a growth layer in my art practice. Where I’m just experimenting, letting my mind loose trying off different things, and just experience the being of making art, that’s so important. Sometimes when you intentionally create from that space, things work out well.

But you have to be innocent, you have to start that up with an innocent mind, you don’t go to it and say, okay I’m going to be very casual, but still I want a good result. That’s in the middle of the spectrum, but sometimes you let it go, just sit down and let the pencil or brush run loose and see how things go. That makes a nurturing growth layer and takes off the pressure. The sketching practice is important because so many good things come from it. It gives more joy in your art making, so remember how to thrive in your space as an artist, try having different things

going, performance mode, that in the middle and time to just draw or paint for the sake of doing it.

Maybe you show these things, only to people who understands, and they will find it cool. But when you make them like that, they are not going to be judged by people outside of your creative space or your creative community. Here it can be really beneficial to be part of an artist circle of likeminded creatives. Here is where I love to share and see mutual sharings from my art students in Art Soul Living Creative Academy and Drawing Magic Secrets.

The elephant painting in the illustration above, “Kindred Spirits – Elephant”  was recorded as a lesson for my Art Soul Living – Creative Academy

That was just my thoughts for today. It’s something being brought up often in my life as an art teacher. That we have this perfectionistic pressure inside of us, but we don’t have to answer to it all the time.

So, I’m giving you permission to just sit down and do something fun. To be in the state of drawing or painting and let go and see what happens.

Here´s to a happy creative time, just creating for the sake of joy!

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