FINDING FREEDOM IN THE CREATIVE PROCESS

OVERVIEW

Finding Freedom through the Creative Process is about the wonderful connection we can make when establishing a mindfulness process and applying it to the creative process. It’s a practice with a two-fold outcome: developing our intuitive awareness and creating meaningful art. Through this mindfulness practice the art will flow primarily from our intuition, enabling the unconscious to reveal rich imagery in a more spontaneous way. All the wonderful practical and technical skills we’ve learned along the way will just function naturally in the background. We won’t let those learned rules of photography and art get in the way of our new way of creating in a more spontaneous way.

CREATING BACKGROUNDS: Creating a new and simple background is a crucial first step when beginning this process as this image will be the foundation upon which all the other work is placed.
LETTING GO OF AN IDEA OR CONCEPT: Next we will learn how to allow the art to unfold without expectations. This is a profound step that requires letting go of pre-conceived ideas and expectations. This is the most important step and basis of the entire process we’ll be working with. This is where you learn to trust your intutition.
BALANCE AND COMPOSITION: The third step is about balance. We examine the space we’ve created, what we are drawn to look at in the image and where we may need to make adjustments. We speak of colors and lines and creating a piece of art that will hold the viewer’s attention.

4. PULLING IT ALTOGETHER: The fourth step is a continuation of Balance. It’s about pulling it altogether to form a cohesive piece of art. This is my favorite and most playful time. The difficult work has been done during the first three steps and now it is time to fine tune it. We look for feelings of completeness as we really examine how we ourselves feel inside this art. We will learn to play with a few more tools such as Hipstamatic or other filters to make a cohesive image.

5. WHAT STORY HAS YOUR IMAGE REVEALED: Last of all, we sit back and study the image, uncovering the insights we’ve created. We may use our own self interpretation, or help from other sources, i.e., Tarot, iChing, psychology, archetypes and/or just your own intuition and knowledge of who you are and what has happened in your life. When you create art this way, it reveals many aspects of ourselves we may be unaware of.