A few weeks ago, I wrote about art and psychology. I explained that I believe the two are inspeparable - that we can't talk about art-making without getting into psychology. One person objected to this, and challenged me quite strongly. She asked "what are your qualifications?"  I suppose she meant academic qualifications,to which the answer is none!

But I've been working with artists now since 2018 and since that time, over 150,000 people have taken my annual free workshop, about 7,000 have taken my paid course, and around 8,000 have belonged to my membership group Art Tribe. That's a LOT of artists!

Those artists have taught me so much, and the biggest lesson of all is that our art and our lives are intertwined. I first heard this from Nick Wilton when I took his CVP course, but I don't think I fully digested it back then. It was only when I really dove into my own teaching that I finally got it. People come into an art course like mine thinking they have an art problem - but it's almost always much more than that.

I can use myself as an example. I am a classic overthinker. I analyse everything. I could ruminate for England in the Olympics! For many years, I analysed and "logic-ed" my way through life. I rarely thought about intuition, let alone used it. I didn't trust anything that didn't come with stats and evidence.

And of course, I brought all this into the studio. I tried to think my way into being an artist. I journaled about art and examined paintings I loved, and developed concepts, and nonce of it resulted in anything I liked.

Over time, I slowly learned that my intuition knew better than my brain. Paintings worked better when I gave my thoughts a rest and went with my gut. And when paintings went wrong, it was usually because I had got too 'thinky.'

And as I began to trust my intuition in my art, I also began to trust it in life. 

I made seemingly rash decisions based solely on gut instinct and guess what - these turned out to be the right things. My course "Find Your Joy" was one of these gut decisions and it changed my life. After years of trying to think my way to success, my intuition led me there in a flash. 

And I see this same pattern play out with my students. if someone is tight and tense about their paintings, I know they are also tight and tense about other situations in their life. If a person is afraid to 'waste' paint, I can bet that they also deny themselves other so-called 'indulgences.' And if someone is anxious about getting their paintings 'right,' I know they also experience fear of failure in other walks of life.

We simply can't be one person outside the studio and another when we step in. So either we bring our real life selves to the canvas and repeat our usual behaviours OR we change our real life selves because our art has led the way. 

So if I am ever struggling with my art, I have to ask 'where else does this pattern show up in my life?" and "can I change it?"

I've been thinking a lot about this lately and I offer this up as something for you to consider too. Art really can be our guide, but we first have to see what's happening and then we can make the necessary changes.