Recharging Creativity ... Mine

     I am not excused from losing my Umph in my studio or between me and pen and paper. I am not excused from not bringing forth and asserting my creative drive  - my log jams between me and creativity are my doing - no person or thing is to blame.  Nope, I am just as human as the next human standing in line for inspiration. Some days I feel as if I am waiting for a special, unique, ordinary moment to move and inspire me. I feel like I wait for that something inside but that something remains elusive, just out of reach. In these moments of feeling flat within, I know I really need my creative switch flipped on along with the dam busted so my personal generative current flows unobstructed - again. I openly admit to experiencing days filled with long moments of sitting and staring at all my artsy, crafty objects/items/supplies and seeing absolutely nothing.  I walk into my gardens void of motivation, unable or unwilling to decide whether to weed or not to weed, or to gently till the earth or not, and the thought of dragging a hose is just too much to consider. I can't see zip or zilch  or zippo or crapo! I am unable and perhaps disinclined to see anything that is inspiring - the world looks flat! I can't make a decision about making a line or how to shade or choose a color or where to make a cut or whether to turn on my wood burners or even pick up a watering can ... I feel frozen inside. In those moments, the moments void of inspiration, where I have lost my creative battery's charge all I know is I am not flowing and glowing and expressing my metaphorical language of celebrating life. I feel heavy inside. I feel like stagnate water - still and murky. I sense my personal seconds slip through my life opportunities untouched and unused and we all know we can't bank our unused seconds, minutes, hours, and days!  Darn it!

What to do? In these empty moments I slowly move toward what I know is my personal anti-creativity antidote. When I become aware I am in the midst of a creative blockage (obvious by my lack of creativity!) I go soak in a wonderful hot bath imbued with herbs and salts.

(Photo by David Mesplé ... Submerged Within Ones Element)

     I soak - I relax. I embrace the sensual wetness of and the tingly sensation of salty water which is perfectly too hot and that hotness creates steamy air that envelops my soul. I submerge my body beneath liquid beauty letting the water's fluid body hold me ... I become weightless. I become void of physical sensation, void of the experience of my heavy body.  I let go and I let my awareness of lightness of being remove the blocks between me and myself. As the salts penetrate my pores and the gentle aromatics of the herbs penetrate my senses I release my physical and mental tensions letting the steamy hot water seduce my subconscious into exposing my pools of creativity and allow the opening of the flood gates. Gates open, soul open, mind open, heart open, the flow of my imagination begins to once again speak loudly to my conscious mind - I feel my switch within flip back on. I feel my creative juices moving, flowing, rushing, like a swift river carrying me back to where I forgot I was.  By the time I am done soaking in the hot fragrant water I am filled with wonderful imagery. I feel renewed. I have story after story speaking to me begging me to take down dictation notes to preserve all the nuances of characters from my past and I see color and shadows and lines and textures and designs and my plants also chime in, beckoning me to come play.  I recharge my creativity submerged within.

Hugs, 

Maryanne

A Joyful Creation

Collage Owning My Creativity/My Power by Maryanne Mesple

"This collage is me embracing the flower of life. I own every single petal. I own every twisting root. I own every part of who I am. I know I deserve all the joys life holds for each of us. I celebrate in expressing my soul through my art and I own my birthright of Power in a way that only God, The Goddess, The Intelligent Universe understands. I joyfully create and I am filled with gratitude." My statement of submission of this collage to those who were sharing my experience. I am grateful for being pulled up and out of my hardened shell of denial of my love of translating what I see inside to an outside experience.

Reconnecting to my creative side is a long journey for me. A journey through over grown paths deep inside my heart and paths hidden in the convolutions of gray matter. Through the years I let my heart and soul become overgrown with a seriousness that built a wall between my self and me. Sounds a bit odd but in truth I gave up so much of my creative spark opting to experience the world through the eyes of an analytical left brained linear thinking entity and demoted my creative adventures to inconsequential events that just happened now and then ... like 70 gourds that desperately needed to be rubbed and cleaned and etched and painted :-) I am out of the left brained closet and taking up residence in my whole brain ... or at least giving myself permission to be and express who and what I am without any apologies. 

I don't collage that much, but through the course of creating 11 in three months I fanned my spark of passion for art into a wonderfully warm flame. There are so many venues for any of us to give life to our creative side. We can do collage, paint, draw, make beads, sculpt, garden, cook, sing, dance, laugh, be silly and just give wildly delicious and messy expression to all the joy we feel or all the angst we are bogged down in.

 Free hand drawing of a design onto a gourd bowl that I am currently playing with.

I am wild and all over the place. I am cutting out images for another collage. I am drawing my twisty vines onto a gourd for a beautiful soul in California. I am cutting strips of paper for paper beads and I am starting my garden. I am exploding!

Strips of paper that will become beads.

I can't look at anything without wondering what I can make with it or how I can enhance it. I see myself as a work of art also and feel giddy about all the wonderful creative expressions I can wear or how I can reshape my body or how I can enhance my eyes and hair and the list goes on. I stopped lying to myself and everyone else about jewelery, the lie that I don't really like it. I have claimed to not like the 'stuff' too much but now I want to be a musical instrument when my body moves. I want my bangle bracelets to bangle around and my rings to clink. I want my beads to decorate my body and tell those who look upon me that I am a walking work of art :-)

A sample of my beads made from magazine paper.

Life is art ... have I not heard that statement before? I like the statement; Creative Expression gives joy to Life and gives expression to our natural inclination to create, to make, to manifest. We all take joy in being a force that produces something of beauty; even if that beauty is green and growing or diced up and sauteing in a pan. Beauty expressed gives life to our heart and soul and makes our minutes here on this big beautiful globe all the more interesting. 

The start of something big and beautiful and delicious.

And so I sow my many seeds into fertile soil. I tend to my seedlings and provide what is necessary for the seeds to burst open letting their creative spark create. I feel like one of my seeds in one of my peat pots. I feel the warmth and moisture of creativity. I am a Joyful Creation.

Hugs,

Maryanne