How to succeed in a long term relationship with your work.

The longevity of an art practice depends on a number of influences, some of which are inborn and others absorbed from the outside. This interplay between introverted and extroverted states of being is what forms the relationship between an artist and their work. Spiraling outward from a deep-seated point of motivation, the work we make reflects our origin— perhaps even as far back as birth.

Pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott explored the origins of creativity in the relationship between one’s inner and outer worlds. He called this the “intermediate zone”, a space of play and creation that develops as we detach from our mothers.  In his book Playing and Reality, Winnicott speaks of “creative looking” as an adaptation when we realize our mother is not ourself, but rather her own separate entity. With this jarring realization, we as babies begin to look elsewhere in the world for self-recognition. According to this theory, self-recognition is linked to creative looking, and baby artists begin finding themselves in their environment shortly after birth.

Similarly, Philosopher Alva Noë connects the practice of art to our early relationship with our mothers—specifically breastfeeding. He opens his book Strange Tools, Art and Human Nature, remarking on how poorly human babies perform this task. He suggests that perhaps the purpose of suckling milk has more to do with interpersonal bonding than practical feeding. Noë speaks of breast feeding as a practice— an intuitively organized behavior, like art. Beyond the instinct to suckle, and clumsy attempt to do so, the mother and baby eventually find their rhythm and flow. While the practices of art and breastfeeding may not offer direct returns in milk or money, they do promote the bonding and nurturing of the human spirit.

I give these two examples to remind you that your creativity and its expression are inborn and instinctual. You already have a practice with longevity. The question I aim to answer now, is how to keep the relationship between inner and outer worlds flowing for a lifetime. In essence, how can we better suckle on our studios, whatever that may look like, to succeed in a long term relationship with our work.

(This is a by-no-means-exhaustive list which I hope will grow longer as my own art practice does. It is addressed to myself, and to anyone else who may benefit.)

1. Learn your values and meet your core self

Get in touch with what motivates your practice through deep self-assessment. Our core motivations are often related to core wounds. As Glennon Doyle said, “Find what breaks your heart and that will be your purpose.”  By accepting wounds—or heartbreak— as motivation, your practice will connect you to the needs and legacies of the collective. It will be healing.

What’s been left to you from generations past? Art is research, and in the words of clinical psychologist and researcher Beatrice Beebe, “Research is me-search.”

Suggested practices: Morning Pages (Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way), dream recording, therapy, meditation, wandering walks, checking in with your somatic response to your work, focus on your strengths and use them to get where you need to go,  and from The Pack, you might consider Intuitive Art Readings and The Artist ReBirth Cycle.

2. Parts and Partnership

A relationship with your work is a relationship with the multifaceted self. In order to succeed longterm, one must involve all parts of the whole. In the 1980s,  Dr. Richard C. Schwartz developed the IFS (Internal Family Systems) model of psychotherapy. Through this model, he aimed to help his patients integrate the various parts of their personality. IFS categorizes parts into three distinct types: exiles, managers and firefighters.

Exiles are the parts in pain, those that have been wounded in trauma. Managers maintain the status quo. They are highly functioning and super-ego-ish— often over-functioning to handle exiled parts.  Firefighters redirect attention, providing emergency distractions when the exiles break through.

In a relationship with your work, notice which parts of yourself show up when things get uncomfortable. For example, if you’re working on a deadline and anxiety is mounting, do you grind through and forget to eat? That might be your manager. Or perhaps a perceived mistake occurs in a painting and you get super frustrated (an exiled emotion) so you give up and go on Instagram for an hour—that could be your firefighter distracting you. The goal in IFS is to accept each part for the way it tries to help. At the center of the model lies the core self, and the goal of IFS is to maintain that strong center with all parts harmoniously present.

Preceding IFS, Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung spoke of archetypes as a way of acknowledging the multiple parts of self. One in particular, ‘the inner child’, has gained notoriety in popular psychology. The inner child is the part of self that never grows up. This archetype is so necessary in an art practice, as it embodies the states of wonder and imagination. When we get too wound up in what others will think, or a troublesome response to our work, we can easily get into emotional gridlock. In this over-managing of our inner child, we exile the wonder and creativity that grew us into the artists we are. While we can’t let our inner children take total control of our practice, they are key components in maintaining a healthy relationship with our work. Be good to yours.

Suggested reading: Homecoming, by John Bradshaw; No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model, by Richard Schwartz, PhD.

3.  Rupture and repair, AKA “Knowing you’re going to mess up and accepting it”

Much like interpersonal relationships, artists and their work go through cycles of rupture and repair— a combination of ego-feeding flow, and humbling challenges that give us shape. Committing to a long term art practice is an endurance sport, balancing the self between breakdown and breakthrough.

4. Compromise and the ability to pivot

What you want isn’t always what you need and your practice will show you this over and over again. Don’t push too hard at what’s frustrating you. Be willing to yield and find another way.

5. Receptivity

Being receptive is as important as taking action. I like to think of these two states in relation to feminine and masculine energies, which all genders embody. The following excerpt is from a conversation with Jungian analyst Marion Woodman and interviewer Cathie Diamond. When she speaks of of the archetypal unconscious, she is speaking of the parts-of-self that enter us through the collective. In other words, the “collective unconscious”. I will let her words speak for the rest:

Marion: An artist has to be ravished by the archetypal unconscious or there is no art. It’s his (or her) femininity that is ravished by archetypal energy. So the container has to be strong and at the same time very flexible. It has to be able to stretch to receive the power of the archetype but only while the rapture is on. Then when it’s over, the container contracts and the ego takes on its own identity again.

Cathie: And that boundary is clear?

Marion: In true artists it is. They don’t imagine their egos created the work of art. It came through them; they were receptive

Suggested Reading: Conscious Femininity, Interviews with Marion Woodman; Into the Heart of the Feminine, by Massimilla Harris, Ph.D. and Bud Harris, Ph.D.

5. Awareness of cycles

Track yourself.  When we’re talking about the long haul,  there’s plenty of time to notice patterns of energy. Trust when you’re meant to be at rest, and work through demanding periods knowing they won’t last forever.  You are doing it right, wherever in the cycle you are. As the Zen saying goes, “When tired, sleep. When hungry, eat.”  Let it come to you when it wants, and let it ravish you!

6. Organization: Ritual and Habit

Get in the zone with repetition (e.g. a daily or weekly drawing practice). Developing strong, conscious habits is a surefire way to skill, confidence, and creative breakthrough. A consistent practice will help you organize your goals and objectives into manageable sessions, holding you accountable as you venture into the unknown.

Your habits will probably change over time, certainly as you travel through creative cycles, but organizing your time with rituals and habits will hold you show you the things you really want to spend your time with. Habit is a commitment. Additionally, habit forms style and conceptual conviction— it helps us organize our sense of self. In Alva Noë’s words, “Our lives are structured by organization. Art is a practice for bringing our organization into view; in doing this, art reorganizes us.”

Suggested reading: Atomic Habits by James Clear; Emergent Strategy, by Adrienne Maree Brown

Suggested course: Artist ReBirth Cycle

7. Give space, see people

See other people. You can’t get everything you need from your own work. Maintain the extroverted part of yourself that needs socialization with other people and their ideas— not exclusively artists.  Listen to others and let them take you into other realms. Allow yourself to be amused. This will nurture your inner child.

Interdisciplinary artist, Brian Eno, coined the term "scenius,” transferring the idea of creative "genius" from the individual to the scene, or community. In our interconnected, contemporary society, it is no longer possible, or at least no longer assumed that ideas are spontaneously generated. While we have always existed in an interconnected web, the manmade technologies that bind us together, such as the Internet and personal devices, make it all the more obvious.

8. Honesty

Keep your work connected to your truth and maintain an intimate life with it. You are where you are, and getting real with that location is the fastest way to grow. Be brutally honest about where you are and where you desire to be.

In his theory of The Gap, media personality Ira Glass discusses the maddening creative phenomenon wherein a metaphorical gap exists between our current skill set and our taste. As our practice improves our skills, we begin to close that gap, but it takes a longterm commitment to get there.

Suggested watching: Ira Glass, The Gap

10. Patience and faith

Some stones take shape in a matter of days or months, while others take millions of years to materialize. Live long and prosper in the studio!  And remember, a flow state is a space of faith. Be receptive.