Throw Me a Rope - It's a Long Way Up

Throw Me a Rope - It's a Long Way Up" - mixed media on paper, 22" x 15".  Ready to frame.  Available here and at Artfinder.

​It is a stellar week here at malarkey central.  The studio is just buzzing with energy and activity as I tidy up all the dangling loose ends before summer travel begins.  Creating often feels like running up hill through waist-high molasses, but lately the muse and I are coasting on a skateboard downhill on a silken road with no bumps in sight.   What?  I am going to raise my arms and scream with delight for every gosh darn minute of this!

Again I am just following the paint, watching what happens and then what happens next.  Trusting my gut and not overthinking the process.

​Why is it so hard to trust our instincts?  It can't be happenstance that this article came to my attention., in which neuroscientist Valerie van Mulukom calls instinct "information processing" and "predictive processing framework."  Whoa!  That sounds a lot like science.  And so it is.

Now I am a sucker for good words, so when she described intuition and subconscious thinking as "under the bonnet of our awareness" I was hooked.  But there are more than high falutin' science terms and well-turned phrases in the article.  Van Mulukom describes how overthinking can be detrimental to our decision making processes.  Now this is just EXACTLY what happens during the creative process, when we stumble into the mindset of trying to control and plan every brushstroke and somehow lose the soul of a painting.

But neither does she recommend we give up our old friend analysis.  Intuitive decision making is great as long as it isn't complicated by cognitive biases like stereotyping or putting our heads in the sand in denial. The link lists a bunch of bias types I wasn't really aware of.  Maybe awareness is part of the fix for that?

Though it may be just my own clustering illusion bias, I take comfort in today's chapter in Mark Nepo's The One Life We're Given in which he writes "...we are drawn to what we need to learn.  Nor is it by accident that authors and artists are drawn to subject matter they need in order to grow."  As I pursue a trust-fall approach with paint, it is nice to think these nuggets of information were dropped along the path just for me.  Or is that a candy-covered cottage in the clearing ahead?  Awwww Hansel, let's just have a few more sweets, shall we?