The War of Art, Cutting Up Art to Make New Art

I have been reading "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield and it is blowing me away. It came to me at the perfect time as I stand perched on the precipice of artistic exploration and excavation. For the last few years I have felt this incredible longing to give up painting what I know my audience and galleries  want in order to explore the deeper aspects of my creative roots. I want to paint from the source and not from my brain, struggling to paint what others want me to paint. Unfortunately I have only had the courage to do this occasionally and not to any great depth.  Steven Pressfield calls this "Resistance" and says it is the artists opponent in the war of art. He says “The professional (artist) tackles the project that will make him stretch. He takes on the assignment that will bear him into uncharted waters, compel him to explore unconscious parts of himself.” Wow! That is exactly where I want to be right now.

This spurred me to go through everything in my studio, reorganizing and getting rid of all the stuff I am no longer using to make room for this process of exploration and creative connection to Source. I found all kinds of treasures while cleaning out the nooks and crannies of my studio. I found piles of old partially finished paintings that I didn't have the heart to throw out so I decided that I would commit to spending an hour or so each morning in the studio cutting up my old, abandoned paintings and making collages out of them. I think it will be a great morning meditation and warm up exercise. Below is collage number 1.

While cleaning out some drawers I came across a collection of wooden knobs I had painted a few years ago. I had painted a bunch of these for our kitchen when we lived in Corinth and then I did up a couple of batches for orders. This batch got packed away and was forgotten until now.

 

 Tomorrow I have to mount and matt a custom silk painting I just finished but before that I plan to work on collage number 2. ;~)