Your choice of creative fuels:

Rocket fuel or sludge.  Your call.

You get rocket fuel from clearing the blocks in your system that are building up sludge and blocking the way.  You get sludge from continuing to do the same things in the same way when it is clear they are not serving your wellbeing.

We are echoed back what we put out in the world.

If you put out kindness and compassion and genuineness this is what you will attract to you.  If you put out anger and bitterness well you become like a magnet for this because you are stating to the world this is what you are expecting.   Your call.  Your choice.

Now by my saying this am I saying you should stuff down your emotions? Absolutely not.  Many times creating from that place helps to put a fence around it.  Let it buck around like a broncho and then it will eventually settle down.  But you don't have to get on top of the bucking broncho.  You just create a container for it and let it go.  Your art can help you to explore the edges of your frustrations.  Can honour them. And then release them.

The trick is to identify how you want to feel.  What would make your fuel burn clearer.  Because really there are two sides to emotions.  Those that feed us energy and those that eventually drain our energy.  Test the emotion that is coming up.  Give it a container (in a photograph...through writing...in a painting).  Then ask yourself if this emotion is lifting your energy or draining.  If it is lifting it wonderful.  Celebrate that.  If it is draining.  Give it a container.  Honour it.  And ask what would need to happen for this to be transmuted into something that energizes you.

 

Equanimity - Connecting inside and connecting outside

So this week we are all about being present and feeling what is here to feel.   It is about the sensualness that is our art. It is about understanding how our needs impact our emotions.  So there is a lot to cover.

HeArtivist Content - Emotional Presence in Yourself and your Art

Why do I teach the HeArtivist content?  Because it has the potential to help you become a more balanced consistently creative artist but it also helps to infuse your art with your magic.  The more balanced you are in the 7 areas the fewer blocks there are to your creative flow.  And also the more power and energy available to enter your art.

When you are experiencing a period of imbalance, your energy can easily be siphoned away from your art or you become numb to the details and the emotional content of what you are creating. Our job as artists is to feel the highs and lows and the middling and translate them at our will into our work.

If you want your creations to stand the test of time, you will need to take your emotion and transfer it into the viewer.  That may simply be awe at the beauty of what you see, or a conflicting emotion captured in a single frame.

This week our work together will focus on identifying our needs and understanding what happens when those needs are met or not met.  This will give you infinite fodder for emotional content in your imagery.

Free Writing

The Full Emotional Fluency writing technique can be found here.

My recipe for good mental health is to use this technique daily.

Carve the time for self-care and give yourself at least 20 minutes daily to clear your creative river of emotional boulders.  Think about it this way.  Suppressed emotions are like rocks being thrown into your creative flow.  They build up over time.  Trauma drops big boulders into your creative flow.  This method allows you to slowly clear the rocks and eventually push the big ones out of the way.  If you develop this habit as a young person your creative flow will stay strong and you will keep your power no matter what life throws at you.  So if you do nothing else that I suggest.  Please see what you can do to develop this habit.

Here are quick links to the pages you need to print out or refer to after you have done your free writing

 

Camera Techniques + Post