Dry pastel crayons

When your art is your work or when you’re blogging about what you create, the spontaneity is easily lost. You want your clients and buyers to be happy and you want to give your blog visitors a valuable experience. Your art becomes an achievement.

Part of you goes about your day thinking “this would make a good blog post” or “now I know how to solve that detail in the commission I’m working on“. Sometimes you feel you’re producing art and regardless of what mood you’re in, the job is due tomorrow. Even though you love your job, it’s partly become an obligation.

When you put your creative life on display or make a living as an artist, it’s easy to loose sight of creating without intention, just for the sheer joy of it.

A blog or an online portfolio can be a creative outlet in itself and a great way to stay motivated and hold yourself accountable for your creative projects. A way to document your creative journey and to connect with others.

On the other hand, blogging takes a lot of time and puts you on a schedule. You can begin blogging for the comments on your blog, and maybe you start looking for validation from your readers, rather than from within yourself. In a time when we seem more busy documenting our lives than living our lives, it takes deliberation to find a peaceful space that hasn’t got anything to do with other people or how they perceive us. To create a space that has nothing to do even with our own expectations.

A creativity lab. So can you plan to be spontaneous? Write your own permission slip? Can you make room for experiments, happy accidents and non-judgemental creativity? Find time and space to change your mindset?

This autumn I’ve reserved Friday afternoons for spontaneous explorations and I promised myself that I wouldn’t display any of the art from these sessions here on my blog. It’s been a process that’s about loosening up, improvising, letting go of expectations, being associative, having fun and allowing art to unfold intuitively. I’ve been working quickly with natural media. Each Friday a new theme and different mediums. The emphasis is on getting into flow rather than stepping back and judging.

I’ve spent time getting messy with acrylics, oils, dry pastels, clay, oil pastels, watercolours, textiles, charcoal and gouache. Working on different types of canvases such as cardboard, different kinds of paper, wood panel and canvas. I’ll admit that after the first two sessions I felt disappointed with the “result”, even though the whole point was to let go of expectations, but after that it’s been much easier to let go, have fun and step into the freedom of playful creating.

Paintbrushes

Palette with acrylics: earth tones

Tags: acrylics, art, blogging, collage, crayons, ease, flow, gouache, ink, natural media, oils, painting, watercolours

Olle Nyman: "Utblick, övre gården" 1931, oil on panel

Here are some paintings by artist Olle Nyman from a trip to Duvnäs Gård, Olle Nyman’s house and studio. His house has now been converted into a museum and exhibits a unique artist’s home with beautiful interiors. There’s something so very inspiring about visiting an artist’s home and studio! The collection of books and art, the artist’s paints, the collection of shells, the sketches, broken pottery for his sculptures… work and life in process.

There’s also a wonderful café, bakery and restaurant, Koloni, that serves food made with organic, fair trade products. You find Koloni in a small whitewashed building that started off as Olle Nyman’s sister’s garage. Kajsa was one of the first women in Sweden who got a driving license and she was very interested in cars!

Olle Nyman: "Lunden 1" 1966-68, oil on canvas

Olle Nyman: Roussillon 11, 1948, oil on canvas

Olle Nyman: Köksbordet, 1980, acrylics on panel

Tags: acrylics, exhibitions, favourite places, museums, natural media, oils