Photo by Pia Walker, Copyright © Attaining Creativity 2008   

I have been wanting to draw a lemon tree for a while. I tried to look through photographs on the web, in magazines, even at some lemon trees in my neighborhood. Once I settled on its shape, I did a quick sketch, in pencil. I think that because I knew that this would not be the final piece, I felt more relaxed and in the end, I was so happy with my sketch (colored oddly enough in lime green marker) that I felt like I had to give the sketch a name.

Before I could fully think it through, I wrote “My Lemon Tree.” And then I found myself staring at those words, but in particular at the word MY. I hadn’t drawn my small, weak lemon tree from my garden, yet it was MY lemon tree. The pressure of the pencil, the shape of the leaves, the details on the tree trunk, those were all my decisions. And then I fully realized why I was so wound up with this word, so happy.

This was my vision, my realization. Unlike any work or project that I had completed in a corporate workplace, this truly was mine, MY. In how many instances can that truly be said?

Sometimes we do labors of love, of art, but we compromise ourselves. In years past, I have designed greeting cards in a lower cost bracket, so that my handmade cards would not seem too pricey. And while it is always a good idea to have different price levels to offer consumers, I was doing it merely to gain customers. And my designs showed it. I wasn’t really into them and I put very little effort into actually being creative.

In throwing myself into this journey to attaining creativity, I have of course read a lot, tried to find mentors, the whole works (before I got so excited I just had to jump in). In the interviews of all the successful artists that I have found so far, all of them say, without a doubt, to not compromise simply to sell. In their attempts to find a paying audience they had tried different things, to no success! It was only when they put all of that aside, and simply created for their joy and for what they stood for, that they found success and that customers found them.

And so I’m taking the power of MY creative powers, of MY own view of the world, and moving forward. I have, since written my first blog, wavered in that journey. I thought that my work would remain in the abstract arena, which at times seemed too difficult, since how do you explain to someone the power of a simple red canvas? I had heard it say that abstract artists are sort of like conmen – they need to convince the viewer of something.

And although I tried different styles and worked out some creations that were “cute,” they were not truly pushing my spirit. Instead of continuing on my journey to attaining creativity, which is supposed to be filled with finding out who I truly am, I was finding myself along the path that I had wanted to leave behind: the path of simplicity, of wanting to please others, of doing what is expected of me and no more.

So I dare you to label something of yours MY – and see how much power it gives you.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 1:09 am and is filed under Attaining creativity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.