I work on basswood. It’s the best wood for carving, because of its fine grain and degree of softness for chisels.
I use blocks of basswood, that have been carefully milled smooth, as canvases for my carved paintings. I plan with positive and negative spaces a lot, because what is in relief gets ink rolled and painted on it, and what’s carved away gets a different treatment and does not.
I also have a special technique that helps me get inspired.
Embracing the “Art Nap”
When beginning a new painting, I look at others’ art and often take an “art nap.” I get in bed with the lights off as if I were about to sleep, but instead of sleeping, I relax deeply and think about colors, technical processes, layers, and expressing ideas and emotions in the ways that make sense to me and my inspiration.
Almost always, after about an hour, I have something that’s firing my creativity and I make sketches. After this preliminary work, I’m ready to dive into art deliciousness. I commit to the first strokes carving into the basswood, and then I work as if I am one with the art. I’m having a beautiful conversation with what my eyes see and create.
I know I can manipulate my process, but it’s certainly not easy! I can destroy the work if I’m not careful. This is a challenge that is not too hard, but not too easy either. I lose track of time, my attention is crystal clear, and I feel alive! Have you had a delectable experience doing something that made you feel alive?
Finding Flow
In the 1970’s, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian-American psychologist, was studying people’s choice to give up material goods for the elusive experience of performing enjoyable acts. He coined the term “flow,” which could be understood as “being in the zone,” of being fully engaged in an activity that is vivid and bright. It’s when we lose ourselves in the moment.
Quoting Dr. Jud Brewer’s current therapy module “Finding Our Flow” in his online app Unwinding Anxiety, a flow experience has the following characteristics:
- Concentration focused and grounded in the present moment.
- The merging of action and awareness.
- A loss of reflective self-consciousness.
- A sense that one can deal with whatever arises in a given situation because one’s practice has become a form of implicit embodied knowledge.
- One’s subjective experience of time is altered, such that the present is continuously unfolding.
- An experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding.
Flow can be found in any experience that has these characteristics, such as playing music, writing, working on projects, doing athletics, or performing.
Dr. Brewer notes that the part of the brain that’s activated when we think about anxious and fearful stories about ourselves, the posterior cingulate cortex, gets quiet in flow, as it does in meditation. To quote Csikszentmihalyi:
“In principle any skill or discipline one can master on one’s own will serve: meditation and prayer if one is so inclined.”
He continues:
“The important thing, however, is the attitude toward these disciplines. If one prays in order to be holy, or exercises to develop strong pectoral muscles, or learns to be knowledgeable, then a great deal of the benefit is lost. The important thing is to enjoy the activity for its own sake, and to know that what matters is not the result, but the control one’s acquiring over one’s attention.”
The more we look for flow, the more it eludes us. We cannot look for an external reward – that won’t work. We have to drop the goal and focus on the process!
The Process of Art
The process of art is something that I’m keenly interested in helping others engage with. I led a couple of workshops with a colleague, Christine Merritt, who focused on spiritual meditations, as I focused on artwork meditations during Advent, and later for Lent.
The participants were “co-creators with God” as they carved basswood woodblocks for black ink woodblock prints on white paper. Each participant created unique variations on chosen themes of Christmas trees, a bird on a branch, or a Madonna and Child. During the wrap-up, several participants shared that their time of spiritual guidance brought about great peace and deep happiness connecting to the art process.
We experienced artistic flow together as a group!
Adding Flow to Your Life
So, how do we bring more flow more often into our lives? We’ll know it when we are in an activity that produces the opposite of self-consciousness, fear, and anxiety: an activity of curiosity and joy that we get lost in!
Flow brings many health benefits by helping us have hope and resilience during life’s sometimes ponderous physical, mental, and spiritual challenges and difficulties. My day job helps support my art habit, because I live for experiencing artistic flow.
As in my case with art, perhaps your own flow experiences can light the way to more meaning and purpose in your life.
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