breakTHROUGHArts
a free newsletter for visual artists

Thanks to all who have passed breakTHROUGHArts on to other artists! To share this newsletter with friends who want more creativity in their lives, use your e-mail Forward button. To subscribe or schedule your complimentary coaching hour click: connect@dianreardon.com.

October 2007 Contents

I.  Meandering Paths 
II. Energy Management: Translations from the Psych Research Lab, the Board Room, and the Shrink’s Couch
III. Friends in Print: When you feel like reading
IV. Creative Links
V. Newsletter and Info: Share this newsletter, subscribe, or unsubscribe

I. Meandering Paths
I love learning about the paths that have led artists to their current situations. Especially for mid- and late-life artists, I notice the role of happenchance: unexpected meetings at class reunions, small family bequests that funded a critical piece of equipment, off-the-cuff conversations on a kid’s soccer field that led to a breakthrough commission. Of course, none of these unexpected turning points in artists’ careers would have been fruitful if there had been no plan in place for producing work and introducing it to the world.

One of my clients reaped the benefit of her plan when an unexpected visitor popped into her studio one morning with a great opportunity to exhibit work. Not only had she already logged and photographed the work but pricing, finishing and marketing materials were ready to go along with whatever pieces were chosen. What a smooth transition between having the nuts and bolts from a marketing plan in place and being ready to respond to the unpredicted chance to showcase work!

How much have you done of the basic prep work once the art is made? How far have you come with a photographed inventory, printed material, and all the tools needed to show a piece or conclude or a sale, collect the money and put it in your own art account? I’m reminded of a pianist who, describing why he memorizes the pieces he plays, says that once the notes are in his bones, he feels free to play the piece as if it were an improvisation and connect with the audience in the experience of the moment.

So, also, with visual art. As long as you’re stymied by the batteries running down in your calculator or your printer’s refusal to print labels and artist’s statements, you are not free to engage those who are responding to your art in the moment and your distracted frazzled self provides a less than perfect frame for its viewing.

All the prep work is part of your journey. In reading of contributors’ life paths in the latest issue of Quilting Arts, I was struck by phrases like “…her transformational journey into art.” Artists who are ready to have their work featured in national publications all have meandered their own paths to a readiness to be public with their creativity. And none would have predicted the particular way their work is influencing that of others.

Keep on with your less-than-linear path of creativity and know that, even if the map is blurred, your path is not only your own but can serve as footprints for those you may never meet.
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II. Energy Management: Translations from the Psych Research Lab, the Board Room and the Shrink’s Couch
Crockett, Tom. The Artist Inside: A Spiritual Guide to Cultivating your Creative Self. 2000.

Leaving aside the vast question of what is spiritual and what is not, it is always interesting to me which of my coaching clients bring spiritual dimensions of their lives into their art, which recognize the role their art plays in their spiritual lives, and which do neither.