This is Part 2 of a two-part series about the challenges inherent in creative beginnings. You can read “Beginnings, Part 1” here.
Be receptive to your own rhythms and visions. There’s lots of free advice out there about most anything you’d like to begin. Saturate yourself with as much research as you can. Then adapt what works. Create an approach that honors your idiosyncratic style of accomplishing things. More
Recently, I rented a movie about the painter Jackson Pollock. Ed Harris directs and stars in this masterful rendering of both the pain and genius of the postwar artist’s life and work. Upon viewing Pollock’s deceptively simple paintings for the first time, many have exclaimed: “That’s art?!! My three year old could do that!”
As the movie unfolds, we witness how creative work that might be dismissed as “unsophisticated” is actually the product of a deeply complex process. A powerful scene, in which the artist accidentally knocks over a can of paint, dramatizes Pollock’s discovery of his trademark painting technique known as “drip.” It is his reaction to the mishap that defines him as a creator. More