How Dreaming Can Lead to Amazing Creative Breakthroughs
Dr. Kelly Neff, The Mind Unleashed / Waking Times How Dreaming Can Lead to Amazing Creative Breakthroughs Dr. Kelly Neff, The Mind Unleashed Waking Times Sometimes people spontaneously generate creative solutions to difficult problems through non-traditional methods, such as through epiphanies, intuitions or dreams. Psychologists use the term Eureka! Effect to describe the process in problem solving when a previously unsolvable puzzle becomes suddenly clear and obvious. While these types of Aha! moments do happen during conscious waking states, the ones that occur in dreams are particularly fascinating. While we sleep, we become connected to the unconscious creative aspects of ourselves. The dream state is an important, vital time where expressions of the self can come through without judgment and flow with clarity and honesty. By gaining access to the unconscious mind, we can begin to pull heavily from intuition and our deeper...
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Finding Your Artistic Voice
By Kerri Williams Photo: Pixabay Finding Your Artistic Voice by Kerri Williams We use tools to create our work, but tools are simply that, tools. They can create, but they can’t express. The expression of our art comes from within, not from the tools of our trade. This brings us to voice. Voice is a little bit of talent and a lot of internal personal expression. But the question is not so much what is our voice, I think deep down we know it, but rather how we find and express our voice. We know what we like, but maybe not quite how to express it. Therefore, imitation becomes the first step to finding our voice. And while imitation is a good start, it’s not what we want. Imitation sorts out our liking and becomes our inspiration to create...
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Question Your Motives for a Deeper Creative Connection
By Kerri Williams Photo: Kerri Williams Question Your Motives for a Deeper Creative Connection by Kerri Williams Have you taken the time to consider why your interests in your craft lie where they do? I started out taking simple photos. Pictures. I did it because I needed the shots for a newsletter. Then I started playing with Photoshop. And while I didn’t do anything elaborate in Photoshop, I did learn the basics and moved onto more intense applications. It started quite innocently. Daring to play with black and white. Messing around with sepia. Then I stepped deeper into the mix. Layers, filters, various software. Suddenly documentation became art. Recently, we had a decent snowfall, and I decided I wanted to make snow photos. When I uploaded them into the computer, I looked at them, and they bored me. There...
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Endings…New Beginnings
By Kerri Williams Photo: Pixabay Endings…New Beginnings by Kerri Williams While your creative journey will never end (at least we hope not), you will experience endings throughout your journey. You’ll reach a certain stage of comfort, a point when doubts and fears subside. You’ll realize that you no longer procrastinate. You’ll work rather than wait for inspiration. You’ll except failures and move on. Many endings. Many good endings. But with every ending, there come new beginnings. New challenges. Every creative will face their own unique set of new beginnings. You might be ready to share your work with the world through public outlets. You might be ready to start selling your work. Maybe you’re moving into a new area of your art form and you’re debating the jump. Maybe you’ve had an artistic style change and you’re not sure...
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Imagination – Access to the Infinite
Zen Gardner, Guest / Waking Times Imagination – Access to the Infinite Zen Gardner, Guest Waking Times It’s amazing how our imagination has been minimized into an idea implying almost random superficial options when it contains the secrets of the Universe. What we appear to imagine is what makes our world the reality it is. It’s not “apart” from anything as they would have us to think. It’s our innate life force at work. That’s why it’s quenched and severely channeled into other influences’ conceptual constructs to suppress our own realizations that might contradict the social narrative, which they know it is, as long as they define it, and hence they utilize it accordingly. Any quick perusal into the world of artistic creativity or sincere investigation into theoretical scientific breakthroughs will verify this fact. Yet for humanity as...
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Receiving Ideas
By Kerri Williams Receiving Ideas by Kerri Williams I don’t know exactly where ideas come from, but when I’m working well ideas just appear. I’ve heard other people say similar things – so it’s one of the ways I know there’s help and guidance out there. It’s just a matter of our figuring out how to receive the ideas or information that are waiting to be heard. – Jim Henson I often think about how I receive my ideas. Some days they come barreling through (I call it the Mad Rush) and other days it’s dead inside. While I love the Mad Rush, it’s the dead days that terrify me. Dead days aren’t really about being without ideas. Ideas are there, they’re always there. Dead days are about listening. Listening to what’s going on around us that are...
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Creative Evolution
By Kerri Williams Photo: Pixabay Creative Evolution by Kerri Williams Creatives first grow, then they evolve. But how do you know when growing turns into evolution? Let’s take a look. You can spend days, months or years growing into your creative self. During that time, you’ll question your creative self confidence and you’ll probably question your worth as a creative. Evolution puts your self confidence in check. You know you have the ability to create whatever it is you want, and if you don’t quite get it, you find ways. You learn. You’re not afraid to make mistakes, and you’re happy to learn from those mistakes. You’ve reached the point of believing in your art, as well as believing in yourself. During the growth phase, you might have spent hours, days or months waiting for inspiration. You knew it...
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The Universe Has Control
By Kerri Williams Photo: Pixabay The Universe Has Control by Kerri Williams Many years ago, at a very low point in my life, I made a sign and hung it on the wall. It simply said: Dear Kerri, The Universe has control. Sincerely, The Universe At the time of the making of this sign, this was not meant as a positive thing. It was quite negative. As in, I had no control in my life and no matter what I wanted or what I did, the Universe would continue to screw me over. That sentiment lasted for about two days. Sometime during day two, as I once again glanced at my little sign, the proverbial light bulb went off over my head and suddenly I was thinking – Oh, the Universe does have control. It knows what it’s...
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Creating Your Creative Identity
By Kerri Williams Photo: Pixabay/organictalks.com Kerri keeps contributing some of her great articles and we want to thank her for that. If you need creativity coaching, contact her, or visit her website at: www.magpistudios.com Creating Your Creative Identity by Kerri Williams Who are you as a creative? Have you thought about that? We put ourselves into what we do, and by doing so, we make it unique. We own it. Sometimes we know why and sometimes it’s just a happy accident that we fall in love with. It’s called style. But have you thought about your style, why you do what you do or where it comes from? Here’s an exercise in thought to help define your creative identity, to understand your style of work. Ask yourself the following questions and take the time to find the...
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Feelings of Lack, “Starving” Artist Myth
Photo: Pixabay Feelings of Lack, “Starving” Artist Myth For centuries, there has been a romantic myth surrounding the starving artist, suffering for her or his craft. I think it’s high time we created a new image of the artist, thriving and prospering. Whether you realize it or not, feelings of lack may be inhibiting you pursuing your dreams. Take some time to journal or speak to your friends and families what beliefs or limitations may be holding you back. Remember, these are not truths, just practiced thoughts. Examining thoughts and beliefs and consciously choosing more supportive thoughts and self-talk are key to making a shift in your experience. If you feel fear around money or success as an artist, seek out positive role models, learn as much as you can about how to thrive and prosper. The rewards of...
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Burned Out? It’s Okay
By Kerri Williams Photo: Pixabay Burned Out? It’s Okay by Kerri Williams At one time or another, you’re going to suffer from creative burnout. That’s okay. It happens. And it usually resolves itself, so let it happen. Creative burnout can come from a number of factors. It could be that your current lifestyle isn’t allowing you to participate creatively. It could be you’ve been working on a project for so long you’re just sick of it. Or your burnout could simply be frustration over not feeling overly creative. There are many factors that go into burnout. You may be able to pinpoint them, but if you can’t, don’t exacerbate the situation by stewing over the burnout. If your creative project allows you the opportunity, take a break to resolve the burnout. This doesn’t mean sitting around and dwelling on...
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Critics – Sit Up and Listen
By Kerri Williams Photo: Pixabay Critics – Sit Up and Listen by Kerri Williams Let’s take a look at critics. Not the inner critic, the one you fight with on a daily basis, but the critics who evaluate your work. There are two types of critics you’ll deal with as a creative – the professional critic (the one who gets paid to evaluate your work) and the inner circle critic (the one you choose to evaluate your work). THE PROFESSIONAL CRITIC As creatives, you can’t avoid the professional critic. They’re out there, reviewing books and art and music and movies and just about anything that may hold an opinion. But don’t be swayed. Critics can serve a purpose. While their job is to share their opinion on what you do, what they say could be valid. Or it...
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Art Heals You
Kara Rane / Wake Up World Photo: Stock.Xchng Art Heals You Kara Rane Wake Up World Upon hearing many children talk about how they would like to participate in an Art class, I decided to offer this experience to them. Living in the Caribbean, I was the owner of a beach-side eatery. Children would naturally gather around while I was outdoors painting murals and signs. They were curious, eager to understand, and fascinated by the act of creating. I wished to involve them, so each day I would set a table beneath a palm tree, and here we would have our Art lesson. Together we would begin to draw, the sound of waves and distant Reggaeton music providing the perfect meditative setting. At first their hyper activity, quarrelsome squabbles, and sugary highs and lows seemed insurmountable. But after a...
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Rules are made to be broken
Written by Kerri Williams Photo: Pixabay Rules are made to be broken by Kerri Williams Let’s talk about rules. Rules abound for good reason. They keep us honest; they keep us true; they protect us. Now let’s turn around and talk about breaking the rules. Often the consequences are grave when rules are broken (of course, the gravity depends on which rule was broken). But today we’re talking about creative rules. Recently, a forum spoke of broken photography rules, which brings us to the purist, and it’s likely that most creative endeavors host a purist. What’s a purist, you ask? A purist is the creative that believes if you venture outside the lines while coloring, you’ve taken the craft and pretty much sullied it. You’ve made it unpure. As an example, we’ll use the world of photography. In the...
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15 Ideas To Break Through Your Creative Limitations
Written by Kerri Williams Photo: Pixabay 15 Ideas To Break Through Your Creative Limitations by Kerri Williams Though one may conquer a thousand times a thousand men in battle, the person who conquers himself is the greatest warrior. – Buddha Creatives. We can be our own worst enemies. We have grand ideas, we often implement those ideas, and often, we let ourselves fall short of those ideas. Why do we do it? Who’s to say. Sometimes it’s a matter of our own self-doubts, our own fears, someone once told us we couldn’t (and we listened), our self-esteem just isn’t what we want it to be. For every creative, there are a hundred reasons. We create our own limitations, and only we hold ourselves back. We know we can achieve greatness…if only. Let’s try to escape our self-imposed limitations....
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Stanka interviewed by Small Designs Magazine
Stanka interviewed by Small Designs Magazine If you want to know who is behind the LadyArtTalk paintings and how it all started, then click to read the interview made with Stanka by Small Designs Magazine. Here’s the link: http://smalldesignes.blogspot.com/2014/03/poetry-on-canvas-lady-art-talk-brings.html Please note that both shops, Etsy for orders from Europe and Fine Art America for orders from the U.S., are now directly accessible through our organictalks.com website under the Print Shop button. ...
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The Zen of Creativity
Written by Kerri Williams Photo: Pixabay/organictalks.com The Zen of Creativity by Kerri Williams Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. You can’t try to do things, you simply must do. – Ray Bradbury Thinking is the enemy. Who would have thought? I have to agree with Bradbury’s statement. Creatives do have a knack for doing. It’s not necessarily that we want to; we have to. It hangs out at the edge of our subconscious, ghost-like, a lost spirit. I’ve personally been stuck in this must do thing for several months now. I’m a writer and I’ve spent the last year writing articles on creativity. It goes well. I don’t think about it; I just do it. I also write fiction. I’ve spent the last year avoiding the novel. But I’ve been spending a great deal of time...
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