How Cocooning Helps My Practice

Cocooning is needed by creatives, but I think it’s seldom considered a beneficial part of art practice. The brain needs time to mash up ideas subconsciously, time to percolate various experiences and thoughts in order to generate new ideas. Winter seems to be a natural season for this: a time for the brain to marinate all its juicy creative mish-mash

Book Review: The Making of an Artist

What does it take to make an artist? Is it really a matter of being born with talent or does it take desire, courage and commitment as it says in the title? Or is there something else needed in order to “be an artist”? This book examines the need for formal education as well as the personal qualities required to be an artist.

Walking Makes You More Creative

An Adobe study discovered that people identified more good ideas than bad while walking, and that a residual effect from the walking session gave them more and better ideas while sitting than the control group of all-sitters.

How Cancer Changed My Art, Part Two

Cancer has shown me that I have a choice: I can decide whether or not I want to enjoy the moment or worry because of fear. I don’t have to feel like a victim, I don’t have to give myself excuses for not meeting my artistic expectations, and I don’t need a purpose for making art. I can experience the pure joy of making a mark. Cancer has changed my art.

Walking makes you more creative

a young blonde girl walks on a paved path through a green landscape

It’s true! Adobe did a study with college students, putting them through a bunch of tests to see how walking influenced their creative thinking. Specifically, they looked at “novel” idea creation, meaning ideas that are unusual and/or new, and “unique” idea generation, meaning no one else thought of the same idea. In order to be […]

How Cancer Changed My Art, Part One

Courage is at the root of a doodled plant

During chemo,you don’t see cancer cells dying but you do see healthy cells dying. It makes you feel like you’re killing yourself, like you’re a victim of cancer. Being a victim can pressure you into a mindset that changes the way you do art. This is the first part of my story about how cancer changed my art.