The 14-Week Painting
Before I became a painter, I thought artists approached their work like I would approach my business in the old days: Decide what you want it to look like at the end and work backwards from there.
I used to look at the stage at my mentor’s annual conference - the bit when they do the success stage and bring you the stories of others to inspire you. My inner conversation would go something like this:
Me: “What do I want my story to be on the success stage next year?”
Me: Gives answer. For example, “I want to stand up there and say I did a six-figure launch.”
Me: “What would you need to do for that to happen?
Me: Figures out the steps by reverse engineering from the end goal.
Me: “Are you up for that?”
Me: Answers yes or no. Nearly always yes.
And then I would.
Year after year. Make the decision. Do the thing. Stand on the success stage and tell the story.
There was fun in the execution and I received much praise and validation, but when I reached each goal, I simply set the next. It was all about the end result (and the praise and validation for achieving said result). Hamster. Wheel.
In 2013 I reached my BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) of $1m in revenue for the year and discovered, much to my shock, that there was nothing there. No angels blew trumpets, no fireworks exploded, no paper wafting down from the skies with “I now grant you eternal peace, security and happiness”, instead…just an internal silence.
And migraines, panic attacks and children I hadn’t spent enough time with.
What to do next? Make another million? I couldn’t see the point.
Fast forward 16 years. Post-menopause. Less oestrogen but more woman than ever before. With a deeper knowing of the intuition that comes now.
Take this painting.
It started out as a blank canvas.
Then one day it was covered in blues and pinks, an expression of, and called, Motherhood.
It sat for a while in the corner of my house, but then I wanted a new canvas to start a new project again so this one got unpainted.
I’m in the Creative Visionary Program at the moment, and our first three weeks were all about opening up to feeling we wanted to be in and simply reaching for a colour and beginning, then picking another and continuing.
Process over product.
This painting began with the feeling of JOY. Intuitively, yellows and pinks were my joy in that moment.
You can see the whole process of how this canvas was begun here in 90 seconds.
Then my JOY got happily carried away:
Then, the next week we learned about value (having different lights and darks across your piece) and I added a big dark bold splash across the canvas and some lighter pinks.
Then we learned about making different marks - each mark to be different than the last - so I changed things up again to bring different size and shapes in.
“That doesn’t look like joy,” said my daughter when I explained what I was doing. She’s right - I’ve lost the feeling. No problem. There’s nothing that can’t have another layer placed right over the top.
(I’ll bring this back to business and goal-setting in a moment)/
This week we move into design and this painting will change again - responding to new information, gained by being in the game (as opposed to trying to figure it out before I step onto the field).
I have NO idea what it will look like by the end of the 14 weeks.
There is no end goal. (Unless the painting itself has one in mind, I’m still making my mind up on that one).
Instead, there is the pleasure of being in the moment of creation and no thought to getting it to look like something I made up in my head.
And there will be something new in the world of form at the end of all this.
As long as I stay in the game.
We will study colour, texture, balance and more over the coming weeks and this painting will change every few days as I experiment with the concepts and integrate them into this one piece.
Just to see if I like it.
Life and business and relationships done more like this, yes, please.
You might want to print this out as a guide for a happy life: 👇
Show up. Try shit. If it feels good, do more of it. If it doesn’t, reverse and try again. Repeat.
Note: I did not say “If you THINK it is good.” Too much room for judgement and the voice of your parents to show up there. Instead, does it FEEL good. When you’re doing it. When you look at it afterwards. That’s your knowing.
Businesses and art and lives are made of layers and layers and layers of repeated experiments, spiralling backwards and forwards to create something that can never be reproduced.
Creating in this way brings a feeling of aliveness to my body and whatever is being created in that moment is imbued with that. That feeling doesn’t come from hitting a big end goal I’m working towards, but NOW in THIS moment, no need to wait.
A built-in guide to a happy life, right there in my body. Born with it. Coming more on line, the older I become.
And you don’t need a 14-week course to bring you fresh inspiration every week. You can simply try writing a line, or a sales page, or putting paint on some paper, or putting some ingredients into a pan and discovering what feels good to you, and doing more of that.
Your head thinks it knows what will feel good (seven-figure income anyone?). Your body knows better. Putting green gold on this painting and standing back to look at it filled me with more joy for more time than seeing the one and all the zeros on my online dashboard. No panic attacks required.
Who knew?
If you’d like to explore your own creative life with me, here’s how we can get together and do this in person:
The Creatrix Day - 11 June or 28 July
For when you’ve had enough of zoom rooms. A one-day in-person creative immersion for twelve women held in a secret garden in Surrey, UK. We’ll spend the day exploring what it actually means to be fully self-expressed, the real version of ourselves, the one that exists beneath the restraint of the good girls we learned to be our whole lives. Using art materials as our medium, we uncover what you truly desire to create, where you hold yourself back, and what becomes possible when you can truly express and give form to what wants to come through you.
And finally, here’s a piece of art to bring the light of spring and summer into your room and a reminder of everything I’ve just shared above:
Mindful. Named after Mary Oliver’s poem of the same name.
Her words reminded me of the very ordinariness of life, the simple things that have brought me joy that I note at the end of each day. In Spring, the buds on the trees, the first daffodils, the sky at sunrise. The colour green. All these simple things are more than enough for the human heart. Available here.
Until next week,
Here’s to your creative life.
Nic x