The Art of Life is Improvisation

Wednesday. ..
AmyOes.com

Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

Francis of Assisi

childhood amyoes.com

You can say a lot of my work comes from sheer improvisation...

I guess you can call it instinct too.

 Even in the kitchen when I'm cooking...

Although it "improv" doesn't always work as well when it comes to baking...

 Sometimes a formula has a time and a place.

 Like with still lifes...

Although there is a sense of "improv" wondering what all those colors on your palette are going to end up doing...

But with some trust that everything will turn out okay, it will, because you trusted that it would.

Trust is just believing in your instincts.  What evidence do you have that they're wrong until you try and follow them?

 Here's a fun fact - I bet you don't know that Walt Disney was thinking of nature documentaries long fefore National Geographic and Animal Planet.  His first nature film - The Living Desert - barely made it to theatres because nobody thought anyone would be interested.

Walt Disney went ahead and made it anyway, because he trusted his instincts.  And that is the art of improvisation.

 I wrote a bit about the art of improvisation for Sammiches and Psych Meds - you can start reading it here:

We’ve all encountered things in our lives that have gone in different directions than we had hoped or at least anticipated.  It’s what makes us human – living at the mercy of whatever life throws at us.
But that’s the art of life – the improvisation.  That’s where we get to be creative, work with what we’ve got, and sometimes, we end up being pleasantly surprised by what our efforts amount to.

I’ve found that “sometimes” can be “all the time” in three ways:

1.) We can choose to view the “hiccup” in a certain light, seeing the glass as “half-full.”

2.) We can just follow that detoured path and patiently wait, holding onto the idea that things will improve, hoping that eventually the “bigger picture” will come to light. This reminds me of a favorite quote: “Everything will be okay in the end, and if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”

3.) If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.  We can just shrug off what we had anticipated, laugh it off, go with the flow, and surrender to the uncertainty, which is neither good nor bad – just be with it and experience what is rather than what should be  (i.e. “Man plans, God laughs”).

This is what my paintbrush teaches me day after day. I love the feeling of moving around a big glob of paint on a fresh linen canvas and having no idea what to expect.  Sometimes I feel like creating very exact detail…and sometimes I just want to throw some colors around on an empty space.
Painting is just a great exercise for learning how to live.  Or at least, it’s a lesson I need to learn myself day after day.  To have the courage to just start from somewhere – anywhere. To not judge it, and to just keep going, even if you don’t like how it is turning out.

Sometimes you have an image in mind, and you start with that idea.  And sometimes you even stay with that initial idea for a bit.
But when the paint smears, or you blotch something up, or your sleeves get on the paint and smear the nice clean line you just painted, it’s a little frustrating.  But then you just learn to go with it.
And with a bit of patience, and the determination to eventually see it to completion, you’ll get there.
And then sometimes, you start off painting, and you’re on a roll. You feel the adrenaline of creativity jolting through you like a fluid wash of watercolors, and then – HALT – painter’s block.  You have no clue what comes next.

You can read the rest of my article, published on Sammiches & Psych Meds, HERE...
http://www.sammichespsychmeds.com/the-art-of-life-is-improvisation/

Before I Go...

Go ahead and trust your instincts today.  What direction will they move you towards?

 

See you there!