I have often remarked how being engaged with a painting feels to me like some kind of martial combat. Although no one is going to die if the work fails, I nonetheless always feel as if my very survival depends on successfully completing the painting. This is the result of my artistic process being one that relies on risk taking, improvisation, discovery, and not knowing what a picture is going to look like until it is finished. I firmly believe that working this way is the only conduit to true creativity, but the price one pays for working this way is the ever-present risk of failure and the inherent stress that comes with it.
I recently read “The Book of Five Rings” by the 17th century Japanese sword master Miyamoto Musashi. It is a fascinating and inspiring text, which is essentially about the strategy of sword fighting and martial arts in general, but its principles apply to all aspects of life, especially the creative process. The essence of Musashi's teaching is the importance of training and practice outside the context of actual combat, so that the instinctive, split-second decisions that one makes when engaged with an opponent will be the decisions that lead to victory.
Training, study, and practice are the core of any successful creative act; one must be a master of their materials, techniques and the language of their particular form in order to create art. Creative acts are characterized primarily by intuition and spontaneity and reacting to the work as it unfolds. In a similar manner, martial combat is characterized by reacting intuitively to one's opponent. Musashi writes a lot about the importance of "Hyoshi" (usually translated as "cadence") which refers to being engaged with the opponent in a rhythmic way, sensitive to the movement of energy back and forth, and reacting to it in a purely instinctive way, without thinking, and trusting that you have trained thoroughly. Modern psychologists refer to this concept as "flow". When I am engrossed in a painting or drawing, the experience is similar (without, of course, the threat of death!) and I find it necessary to focus and pay attention to the image as it develops. Sometimes I will add a color or mark to a painting or drawing and the image will yield - bending to my actions and revealing new possibilities that might lead to a successful outcome. At other times, the painting will resist and push back, causing me to retreat. My working process usually vacillates between long periods of intense, focused, frenzied activity and periods of simply staring at the image while attempting to figure out what it needs (or leaving the studio in frustration and going for a long walk!). This back and forth is an essential part of the process for me and, although it feels very much like a duel while I am immersed in it, it is a challenge that I ultimately relish.
Admittedly, there are times when these engagements end in defeat - something that I have learned to accept as an inevitable part of the creative process. But when the work is successful, there comes a tremendous sense of accomplishment, which, in the end, makes all of the stress, study, practice, and hard work worthwhile.
