Fear is always circling around in the background of many of the difficult decisions we make, especially in the creative areas of our lives. Whether you are finally ready to put the time aside to make your art for the first time or simply making the decision to paint everything out and start again, a small inkling of Fear is always there.

Understanding or actually recognizing the presence of Fear is half the battle in working with it’s sometimes immobilizing effect upon us. Often along with Fear or at the heart of it, is some measure of Risk. Sometimes the choices that carry both aspects, Fear and Risk together, are ripe with potential change. They might require a significant shift in our thinking. These decisions are the ones that are really worth considering. It feels risky and frightening but sometimes the appropriate answer to questions and decisions that intuitively feel right but are accompanied with a degree of fear and risk, is, more often than not, yes.

What’s interesting about Fear, and subsequently Risk as well, is that these feelings are at their biggest, seemingly most immovable when they are allowed to stay within us, left unattended, a small irritant, like a pea size pebble in a shoe. How long can you walk with this persistent distraction?

It’s not so painful, but at the same time it remains in your consciousness all the while you are walking, and remains so, till at some point down the road you must stop everything, sit down in the middle of the road, pull off your shoe, find it and toss the damn thing out of your life forever. Then and only then can you begin to put everything back together, assemble all the parts and continue down the road unfettered and care free. It’s this difficulty of going “into the fear’ to really stop everything and look at the very thing that is causing the fear that so much of the time prevents us from really making significant changes in our work as well as our lives.

There usually is something, a notion, an idea that is at the root of the fear. Sometimes this is clear, sometimes it is obscured from view, but often it is the very common fear of losing something already obtained in an attempt to acquire something else more suitable in it’s place. This conservatism, this sense that we could lose something at any moment if we veer too far from our comfort zone almost remotely drives our actions.

It doesn’t always have to be the fear of losing something, however, sometimes it can be the fear of gaining something. A dream can come true, but only if the owner of that dream is actually prepared for that eventuality. Finding what you think you have been looking for oddly demands another kind of risk taking and circling around this idea of finally finding what you have been looking for so long is always a small tickle of fear. A very quiet concern that your dream now realized will feel far different in reality than it did when it was your dream and tantalizingly just outside your reach.

If we can look closer, take the time to really understand what it is we are afraid of losing, then this very scrutiny, this pulling out into the light of day, so to speak, of our most cherished fears will in due time diminish them. Often they can be diluted by this truthful introspection so much so that they actually can become smaller, less grandiose than previous felt. The great and powerful OZ, once the curtain of truth was pulled back, was in fact, just a small, diminutive old man, nervously trying to appear bigger and far more menacing than he actually was.

The ides here is that yes, there is sometimes something that is lost, something that is frightening in making a significant change or decision. The happy ending, the rewarding secret in this whole business of Fear and Risk is that more often than not whatever is given away or let go of, will in time be replaced with something of far greater value.

The unimaginable outcomes lay waiting just around the corner, out of sight of everyone but those willing to wander down this new path or course that began with simply taking a Risk.

What’s your experience?

Please leave your comments below.

Curiously,

Nicholas

The other day I spent about 4 hours painting and in the end I felt like I didn’t achieve anything. I went around in circles. I was thinking of so many other things, I couldn’t really drop into it. Of course I know that everyone goes in and out of being focused and productive. I tell this to my students ALL the time. It just is a little harder to see it in myself…somehow I feel I am supposed to be immune to these variations of rhythm and consistency within my practice.

Then I thought of it a different way. Maybe it is NECESSARY to ACHIEVE NOTHING once in awhile? Accomplishing nothing did get me thinking about what in fact I am doing and why I am doing it.

Why is it SO hard sometimes? I am writing today about this subject, sharing my ruminations on this issue BECAUSE I accomplished nothing last Wednesday. I have had several long conversations with friends about this subject. I realize accomplishing nothing has been actually pretty significant for me. I certainly have been thinking about it a lot.

Just sitting in the fact that nothing happened, being OK with the reality that with all my know how, all my experience, all the wonderful materials at my disposal I did nothing much at all is, for me, rather substantial.

It takes me back around to the idea that we are involved in a PRACTICE, not an assembly line, or a marathon where minute per mile splits are yelled out at you as you frantically run past on the way to a singular goal.

Creativity is not like a performance. It is more like a beach where the waters edge is constantly changing. The sea comes up and then goes out. And then miraculously comes in again. It is only apparent if you walk long enough on the beach, consistently show up in your practice, that the natural ebb and flow of your own creativity is revealed.

I see more and more how accomplishing nothing is,in fact, impossible. Maybe we should welcome those days when nothing much at all happens. They just might signify that things are exactly as they should be and in the emptiness, the spaciousness of accomplishing nothing, there will be room for reflection and ultimately an opportunity for something new to occur.

Maybe this is how it is supposed to be. I think it is.

Do you? What is your experience in your practice?

Please leave your comments below.

Curiously,

Nicholas

My mother amazes me. She is tireless and wonderfully feisty. She still lives in the rambling house on an overgrown acre of land that I grew up on. She has an electric chainsaw she uses to cut down trees. She does heavy yard work in her isotoner slippers. Every year to clean the moss off the bricks on her 1000- sq ft patio she, by hand, digs up every brick and turns each one over and puts it back in place making the patio new again. Three years ago she spent a summer single handily building a 40 ft retaining wall for her brick patio. She carried a mountain of sand down 3 flights of stairs in Safeway shopping bags, bit by bit, till she back filled this colossal retaining wall entirely by herself. She has also has mad baking skills. If there is a heaven, they would serve her signature almond cake every afternoon at the angel meet and greet. It is to die for. Literally.

I was talking yesterday to her about her early childhood. She grew up during the war in England. Her mother preferred her elder daughter, the one with the singing and dancing skills. Her mother, who decidedly favored her “pretty” older sister, would often sternly remark to my mother “If you can’t be an ornamental, then at least be useful!”

Can you believe a mother saying this to her own child? It just kills me whenever I hear this story.
As is so often the case with young children who only want to please and be loved by whatever parents they were given, my Mother took this shameful remark as the cold truth. Understandably, she set about being useful seeing as how being pretty was clearly not an option for her.
She can laugh about it now but honestly I think choosing to be useful, although at the time seemed like an unfortunate resigned way to exist, is a pretty good mandate for life.

I originally stumbled upon the practice of helping people through teaching a small, once a year workshop at Esalen , Ca. I noticed that during and for weeks afterwards I was extremely happy. For me, getting out of the studio, working with other people and incessantly talking about what I loved doing was incredibly beneficial.
I have realized a few things the past couple years about being useful and how it relates in the area of personal creativity…

An antidote to the isolation of your own art making is to help others in theirs.
It is virtually impossible to be self absorbed with your own creative struggles when you are helping or teaching other people.
Helping others in their creative process galvanizes and clarifies your own.
Laughter occurs more when you are around other people.

I am tossing out this pretty basic idea in the hopes that it might help spread the word.
Maybe it is time to for you to teach that workshop or class you have imagined?
Maybe call up 3 friends and do an art day.
Try sharing something you are excited about online.

It seems almost a universal principle that if you can be useful to others, sometimes consider people other than yourself, that a fair bit of happiness is sprinkled down upon your head.
My mother has given me many things, but apart from the almond cake, this little truth exemplified by her life centered upon helping others is particularly sweet.

Ornament 12″ x 12″ Oil on Panel 2003

When I was growing up my father owned an advertising agency. As a result he was always involved in something creative. I loved this. I remember sitting on top of the kitchen table as he used those smelly, toxic ( I still LOVE that smell, do you know the one?) felt pens to design logos for his clients. There were no computers back then and coming up with ideas was done simply with pens and paper. Unlike a computer that is designed for one, art supplies spread on top of a kitchen table is much more of an invitation for others to join in. I always drew too.

His background when he was growing up was art and design and so when he did finally retire he started up oil painting again. His work has evolved over the last 20 or so years from representational to abstract. It is such a cool thing to be able share both of our creative journeys whenever we talk. I think both of us have influenced each other.

One of the great things about having a father who was in the creative art field was that he was simply IN a creative art field. This is what he enjoyed doing and he was able to support our family in the process. Luckily for me I was taught to believe that not only could I continue to do art, which was something I loved, but I could make a living doing it. Knowing now what I know and being involved in the process of helping people overcome the many false beliefs around art making as a viable career, I truly see how fortunate I was to be raised with this expectation.
I chose to go to art school because I loved making Art and I never wondered how I was going to make a living once I graduated. I know understand this was in large part to my Father.

I remember being at one of his office parties about a year before going to college. He was talking to someone about where I was going to school and that I was passionate about art. I overheard him sheepishly ask my father, trying not to talk too loud to let me overhear…”Aren’t you a little nervous- I mean, do you really think there is any money in Art?”

To which my Father instantly replied with an air of authority, ( Both my parents are British and are not lacking in having their own opinions) “No I am not worried at all, there is nothing BUT money in Art!”

Looking back I don’t know why or how he came to this conclusion, but it was said with such conviction, that I just figured it was true. Of course, from that point on I just threw out this line at anyone who questioned the viability of my career choice. I have been saying it all my life and now I say it to students who find themselves lingering on the edge of doing something they want to do but are held back because of money worries.

This statement has served me well. Repeating this mantra it has had a self fulfilling prophecy for me. Next time someone from the sidelines nervously asks you about the financial viability of your profession try saying it. It feels good. It has a way of raising the bar. It puts you squarely in the driver’s seat of your extraordinary life.

Over the years I have come to realize why the statement is so powerful. If you do something personal in Art (unique) it and you love it (passion) , I believe with out a doubt, you can make money doing it. Conviction, intention, passion, and authenticity are the underlying forces at work here and when these are aligned they are unstoppable.

Is their really money in Art?

Hell Yes! There is nothing but money in it!

Thanks Dad.

Does this ring true for you? I am curious.
Please leave your comments below.

With conviction,
Nicholas

How do we improve our art? I definitely subscribe to the 10,000 hours of hard work idea. This rule originally proposed in Malcolm Gladwell’s NY Times bestselling book  “Outliers, The Story of Success” suggests that only by practicing 10,000 hours at a specific task you are able to become successful at whatever it is your doing.
I am pretty sure I have worked at art for at least 10,000 hours, however, lately I have begun to realize that possibly there is something more involved in being successful.

I recently led a workshop in Gualala, a small seaside town located along the coast in Northern California. In this workshop we did not do any art. Instead, we engaged in conversations about the feelings of art making. What barriers we each felt in regards to our own art, what works, what doesn’t, etc. For many people, just getting to have a conversation with others about what they were after, what their work that was yet unmade looked and felt like. How does this thing called art fit into each of our lives? What is it exactly for each of us? It all seemed extremely helpful for everyone. We went on hikes and spent an entire afternoon sitting and talking on giant piles of driftwood on an extraordinarily beautiful beach. It was a great weekend filled with a lot of laughter and great food and gorgeous landscape, however, it wasn’t until I returned that I understood the full magnitude of that weekend.

Because the participants of this workshop were  all people in my mentoring program I was able to see some astonishing results several weeks later….

Across the board–every ones work massively improved or took major shifts in that direction.  Many people just painted over previous work, others finally broke through to far more refinement that had eluded them for months previous.  One of my artists actually said that the feeling of that weekend- the spaciousness, the connection she felt in herself and others, coupled with the raw beauty of the place was how she wanted her future work to feel.
As a teacher I work hard to figure out ways of helping others shift and move their work to a place that is more in alignment, and more authentic, however I have never gotten this kind of a result so quickly before. Especially without actually doing art!

So many of us feel, including myself, if only my work was …, if only I could have this kind of success…etc. then I would feel so relieved, so happy. If I can work super hard at changing my career, my art in some particular way, then I will be successful.

What this weekend got me seriously thinking about was how and what I am teaching. Maybe great work comes more as a result of the thinking. Maybe we can take gigantic shifts not only by just working hard but also because we can project how we want our work, our lives really, to feel in the future and then once that is clarified, change our work to match that feeling.

This idea is so beautifully summarized by Martha Beck in her book “Steering by Starlight”  This, for me is a remarkable couple of sentences: “External circumstances do not create feeling states.  Feeling states create external circumstances”

In other words, maybe I have had everything kind of backwards…. the state or desired  feelings we want, so tirelessly sought after by endlessly pushing at whatever it is we do –could maybe simply be achieved way ahead of schedule. Maybe if we can imagine the feeling and actually experience it, know it, recognize it, that then, the work, the art, can more easily BE like this feeling or state of being.

I don’t think I have my head entirely around this yet. I am not even sure it fits in with the subject matter of this blog. I am not even sure I know what I am talking about. However when something wakes me up repeatedly in the middle of the night I know there is something there.

Does anyone  else utilizes this idea, or better understands it in regards to the creative process? Any thoughts would be super helpful for me.

In gratitude, Nicholas W

Today I was working on a large painting. It was mostly white and had tiny black square shapes all over it. It reminded me of a snowy landscape. I was feeling kind of lost, almost as if I was wandering in this enormous white field with black stumps where trees once were. It just felt kind of lonely, open and desolate. I didn’t know what to paint or where to go exactly. I notice that sometimes in my life when I am not sure or clear, this same condition leaks into my art.

So after a good long thought,  I just decided to ask questions instead of trying to come up with answers.

I carved the following questions into the painting:

If you could paint anything what would it look like?

What do you cherish?

When was the last time you dreamt that you were flying?

Are you in love?

What are you afraid of?

When was the last time you couldn’t sleep because you were so excited?

How many times did you laugh out loud today?

When was the last time you cried?

If you could go anywhere, where would you go?

Are you awake?

I don’t exactly know why, but this seemed to help. I definitely don’t know all these answers, but sometimes knowing the right questions to ask can help set you back on the right track.

Walking in the right direction,

Nicholas

I love the quote by the philosopher, poet David Whyte…”Visitation, absence, visitation, absence this is how we learn”  This totally rings true for me. When I come back to work on a painting the following day I have about 45 minutes of objectivity. Things seem more clear and fresh.

Then I tend to slow down. After about an hour and a half, I switch to a new painting. I prefer to jump around. I don’t know if it is impatience with the process or that I am just no longer interested in hours of suffering anymore if the painting is not working and I don’t know how to make it better.. I just wont do it. I think that when you are enjoying yourself you are engaged and this is when especially great work happens. I find that if I just stop, when I come back I usually will find the answer.

I recently heard Bob Moore the founder of Red Mill Natural Foods who is 85 years old give a talk about enthusiasm and passion for business. Most of the audience was half his age. His vitality and enthusiasm around his business was inspiring. In a gesture of unprecedented grace and gratitude he recently handed over his entire business to his dedicated employees.

Among other bits of wisdom regarding business and life,

Bob said “Your  vocation should be your vacation”. I loved this. I don’t think I can hit this all the time in my vocation but still, it is a nice idea to aim for. At least your not going to accept drudgery if that is your benchmark.

Being way more discerning about how I am feeling when I am making my work has made my process more enjoyable and as a result I am getting finished paintings that I like better. It makes sense. It is not a exactly a vacation, but sometimes it feels like for a brief moment or two in the day I am on one. I want this trend to continue.

How do you keep the vacation in your art-making?

See you on the plane,

Nicholas

I just returned from Chris Guillenbaum’s World Domination Summit in Portland Oregon.

The conference was especially remarkable because of this year’s speakers. I especially was moved by Nancy Duarte visually mapping out the worlds greatest speeches, Jia Jiang talking about rejection,  and Danielle La Porte firing up the audience with her search for Desire. This is a remarkable conference that seems to attract super creative people from all over the world. Unconventionality is a theme that runs throughout the conference. The part that seems unconventional had to do with the questions being asked of those attending.

How can we do what we love and also work towards a positive change in the world?

A common theme  of many of the speaker’s talks was this circling back around to the idea of service. Are you going at the end of the day do something that is useful? Yes, of course, we all want to create amazing occupations for ourselves, do meaningful creative work that we are handsomely rewarded for …. but never before had I heard this idea about what you can do for others, come up again and again. One of the tenants of creating viable business is the usability of what you concern yourself with and how relevant it is to others.

I was super busy before leaving for this conference. I had the usual regrets—what was I thinking that I could free up this time to fly off to Portland for some conference I knew so little about? I forgot why I had signed up in the first place so many months before. On the plane I tried to remember that one of the main reasons was so that I possibly could connect with and find other people who also are also interested in the confluence of creativity, communication and passion.

Then somewhere high up in the sky above California I realized I forgot all my business cards.

When the  conference begins, they give you a cool little 4 x 5 blank notepad. Since I didn’t have my business cards I decided to make some on the pages of this notebook. I spent my time in the auditorium, while I was  listening to the speakers, drawing imaginary animals and thoughts. I figured I could at least  tear them out and give them to people with my email scrawled across the bottom as a stand in for a business card.

I actually apologized when I handed out the first couple fake business cards. Very quickly, however, I realized that not only did people not care or want another business card but that they really, really preferred getting a drawing of mine torn out of my WDS notebook. I ended up having quite a stockpile of drawings, so I could actually find the picture that I thought would most perfectly fit my new acquaintance.

The total appreciation people expressed for having this artifact of a few moments of my time really moved me. It certainly made me reconsider my whole approach about what I give people in terms of a business card. It struck me as related in a way to one of the primary themes of the conference…

That sometimes we don’t really need to know what it is that others are going to find valuable in what  we offer or put out in the world. Maybe we shouldn’t try and figure it out ahead of time but rather just start something and see what happens. The important thing is just to begin.

Handing these handmade business cards out to those I met made me reconsider what a business card is and how much value they are capable of holding for others. Handing them out to were some of the best moments of the conference for me.

I am curious. Have you ever started something that others saw more value in than you initially did?

In gratitude,

Nicholas

PS Please leave your comments below. Thanks.

When I was a in high school I took a stained glass class at a local art store. The first project was to make a Tiffany style lampshade. The pattern was basically a pansy repeating floral motif. The instructions said that I could choose any color of glass I wanted.  Seeing as how I was going to be the one doing all the work, and probably  going to be the one to live and look at the project for years to come, I thought this seemed fair. The lampshade turned out ok but took an inordinate amount of time and actually ended up looking a lot like the picture on the lampshade kit box. All that work, and it just seemed like something someone else had made. Sure I had chosen the colors of glass but it was somehow not enough. My next project turned out much better. I made my design from a  Time Magazine cover illustration of Mother Teresa(illustrated by Bob Peak). I redrew all the shapes of her face into ones that I knew I could cut out of glass. This project ended up having literally several hundred pieces in it. I remember having a high school party at my house and several beer-toting kids wandered into my bedroom and saw this half finished project on my table. I never talked too much about art with anyone –for me at that age  it wasn’t something to be particularly proud of, but rather something that I just did privately… A somewhat secret pastime that filled some internal urge I couldn’t shake. read more…

It is July fourth and it just makes me think of red white and blue. This color combination is one of the only ones I don’t particularly like. I don’t exactly know why.

I think it’s because this color combination is no longer available to mean anything other than the USA. If I want that feeling I can use this handy combination of colors. But if not, ( I rarely am going after the feeling of USA) then I have to switch to some other color combination. It is not because I don’t like what these colors represent. It is just limiting to me that they are already taken. read more…