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Get Out of the Creative Desert

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How do we replenish ourselves as artists? As writers? As creative human beings?

When our reserve of energy and inventiveness are depleted, when our desire for innovation and experimentation runs low and our passion for creative expression is a barren desert and we have nothing left to give: what then?

How do we revive these qualities in our lives so that ideas flow, inspiration rains and our creative selves flourish?

For myself, I have discovered that creativity breeds creativity. Art breeds art. Just as in life, kindness begets kindness and love multiplies itself in an environment of love.

I know all too well the desert of the artistic soul. It is the last place I want to be. Fortunately, by understanding that creativity begets creativity, I have enjoyed staying in the place of creative flow.

I find myself presently in a ramped up artistic season of my life. I am Artist in Residence at Harcourt House, have many exhibitions of my artwork (photography, sculpture, mixed media) upcoming and have recently completed a memoir, novella and am currently in the midst of writing a full length novel.

Arizona Desert Flowers
Photograph copyright Alexis Marie Chute

It is a good time. My mind is ripe with ideas. My writing inspires my artwork, my art incites poetry, my poetry evolves into my photographic practice. The love I feel from my clients (and their joy at receiving their portraits) creates a warm fuzzy feeling that keeps me chipper as I work in the isolation of my art studio or pound the keyboard writing during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).

Creativity begetting even more creativity seems to be a magical state that I find myself within and it brings an artful mindset into every area of my life. It is as if I am not only an artist, period. Or a mother, period. Or a wife, period. I am an artist of all these things and they all play an important role.

I have come to believe that if you want to increase your creativity in an area where you are stuck (a.k.a. writer’s block or the equivalent for other artist types), try shifting gears and let the artist in you come out in some other fashion. I bet you will experience a breakthrough in not only the first area but both.

CREATIVITY BREEDS CREATIVITY

This is my goal and I am finding it wonderfully exciting. In every area of my life I am choosing to include my passions and challenging myself to be creative as an artist / writer / photographer / designer / mother / human being without boundaries.

The result: My life is now richer and riper with meaning.

Arizona Desert Flower
Photograph copyright Alexis Marie Chute

The Quiet Rebuild

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This post was first seen on my blog Wanted Chosen Planned as it relates to the rebuilding of my life after the loss of my son Zachary. I featured it there to encourage those who have lost a child to experiment with art (of all kinds: painting, photography, journal writing, etc.) as a means to find healing. I re-post it here as my hope for this blog is to bolster the weary creative spirit within us and to turn our frustration, fear, and failure into the artwork and creative writing that we were born to bring forth. 

“The Quiet Rebuild” © Alexis Marie Chute, Wood Sculpture 2012

I have been making sculpture although I am not primarily a sculptural artist. I find the use of my hands in the tactile nature of my recent artwork very soothing. My art has been focusing on the idea that we create our understanding of the world in many ways. When my son Zachary died, my world crashed down. Like a forest burn by fire, I was brought to ash, literally. It is fitting that my artwork uses wood, both natural and manmade. I find this particular piece, “Quiet Rebuild” particularly therapeutic to look at. It reminds me of where I am at, rebuilding my life in a different time, a simpler, basic time where my expectations of the world have been brought into check.

I rebuild my life and my understanding of the world from the burnt forest, atop a humble piece of wood. What I make of my life at this stage is truly of my own invention and each fragment of my understanding of the world comes together in an awkward balance but feels right in the face of everything I have endured.

Art is a personal and unique expression. It may not bring you the answers you search for but it can help you understand the questions you are asking. I encourage you to experiment, play and create like a child. Healing often does not arrive in the way we expect.

“The Quiet Rebuild” – When death comes and takes, it changes us who live. When we see this life as it is, the impermanence of all we hold dear and yet our ability to continue on, to love and value what truly matters, then we rebuild our soul with these lessons, changed yet whole.