To stay fresh in textile arts, I like to spend time reading about and doing pastel drawings and paintings. This week I have been going through the painting blog of Nancy Reyner who has a wonderful idea for shaking your creativity loose.

“Turn Up the Volume on the Inner Voice
I discovered an easy and surprisingly beneficial painting warm-up exercise. This 20 minute exercise, performed daily for one month (or even less) will do wonders for increasing your creativity, getting rid of artistic blocks, and finding new styles or shifting your work. I came up with this after reading ‘Writing Down the Bones’ by Natalie Goldberg, a popular book for writers to increase their writing and creative abilities. Natalie suggested that writers should ‘clear their head’ by filling notebooks, and write in a stream of consciousness fashion, by writing without thinking, very directly, and not editing. I decided to transform this freestyle writing exercise to something that would work for painters. This is how it works: First get a pile of inexpensive painting surfaces that don’t feel precious to you. I gessoed some scraps of canvas that I had lying around. Gessoed sheets of paper, or cardboard work well too. Just don’t get too small in size. My scraps were actually around 16′ x 20′. The night before you start set everything up for painting so that you can just jump right in without any preparations. Pick a time, preferably first thing in the morning, and stick to a schedule for a length of time. Pick what works for you,perhaps trying one week to see how it goes, but you need at least 5 days in a row to make a good assessment. Make a commitment to acting out your very first thought. Now here is the key. Your first thought is the inner voice. Your second thought is the ‘parent’. We are so accustomed to paying attention to the second voice that the first is sometimes faint and barely there. This exercise will strengthen that first voice, sometimes called the ‘inner child’. I like using the phrase ‘first voice’ better or I feel like I am in therapy.”

Go to her blog and read the full entry. You may recognize yourself in her tale of shaking free. Reyner also has a new book, Acrylic Revolution, which I’ve ordered and am eagerly awaiting the postman’s delivery!