Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.
-- Ray Bradbury

All of my best paintings have one thing in common - I didn't make them. 

I mean obviously I held the brushes and applied the paint but I didn't plan them and I didn't design them. I simply recognised them when they appeared and stopped painting at just the right time. 

You might think this statement applies only to abstract painting but I found exactly the same thing when I was painting portraits. The best paintings came about when I stopped trying to drive the car. 

If you remember, I talked last week about how we know very little. And yet how we still try to control everything with our little pea brains. It's nuts when you think about it!

I was reminded of this simple fact again this week when I got into my head while working on a painting. I won't show you the painting here because I've decided to record a class for Art Tribe about this topic. I will show the painting at its various stages, and explain exactly why and how it went wrong each time. Then I'll film myself finding my way with it again, because I do know how to do that - I just often forget!

How can I describe the way my best paintings happen? 

It's as if my mind is blank, but my body is fully engaged. I am having fun with the paint - and maybe with collage materials. I am not thinking about design or colour or whether there is a focal point, or whether there is enough contrast throughout the piece and I am definitely not thinking about finishing it. I might be listening to music and I am probably moving between several paintings and maybe even a few sketchbooks. At regular intervals I step back and look at what is happening on the various wooden panels. And sometimes, I see it - right there in front of me. A painting. A painting that captures something about how I'm feeling or have felt, or how I'm seeing or have seen. It's not something I can put into words (which is why I need paint, I suppose). Often a title drops into my mind at this point. There may be tweaks I want to make, just to clarify or emphasise certain parts - and these subtle changes can take quite a long time - but on the whole, it's already done. It arrived and I was simply the open conduit that allowed it to come into being.

Does that sound a bit daft? Well, let's contrast that with when things go wrong. In these cases, I've often become focused on one painting. I have seen something exciting in it, and have decided to build a painting around that idea or colour or thing. But this is a premature decision - the whole painting isn't singing to me yet. Now, fixated on this premature idea,  I employ all my tricks to bring the painting to a conclusion. I set large shapes against small, or bright colours against muted neutrals. I add line-work. I create some subtle colour shifts with glazing. And yet nothing is coming together how it should. It's as though I have a patient on a hospital gurney and I'm using those machines to try and start the heart. This is happening because I've lost touch with my creative flow - I wasn't an open conduit so much as I was a conductor, trying to make the painting do my bidding. As a result, it's as small and unimpressive as my little brain.

I think this is our greatest challenge as artists. I think we have to continually battle our own ego and our desire to "know best" so that we can stay open to that universal creative flow that wants to come through all of us. It will call different things from each of us - for you it might be a realistic floral painting and for me a wild abstract, but it will always call something that is true to our authentic selves.  And in that way, it help us to know ourselves a little better each time.

I have my own practices that help me get back into that flow, which includes working on several things at once, using unusual tools, painting or drawing with my eyes closed, deliberately trying to make bad things ... the list goes on. The specifics are not as important as the intention, which is to remove my thinking mind from the process so that my intuition can get on with receiving the transmissions and making the work.

Or as Raymond Bradbury says in the quote I began with: "thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things."

If you'd like to see the class I mentioned, it will be coming to Art Tribe in May. The price to join us is currently £20 a month, but that entry price will be increasing significantly in a few weeks. So if you want to see that class, plus upcoming classes on composition (March) and painting with mixed media in layers (April), join now! You will then lock in your membership rate at £20 and it won't go up as long as you remain a member. Plus you get 30 days free to try it out and you can cancel if you don't like it.

If you're already a member, stay tuned for news of the exciting content changes I promised. I'll be sharing that in March!

A quick note: I know I keep banging on about this change, but I really don't want anyone to miss out on the lower price.  No matter how many times you mention something, there's always someone who didn't catch the message but I want to try and avoid any of you having to pay more than you have to.