Category: Creativity

When I am doing a painting, I always make sure a put one irritating thing in it. One eye a little too big or lips a little off, or ears too high on the head. I do this to make it human. No face is symmetrical, so it will make you feel odd to see one that is.

That goes for more than faces. When I decorate a room I do the same thing. Rooms that interior designers do are many times perfect and cold. You dont want to live in them. They have no energy. But one or two quirky things in it can make it feel welcoming. It also adds interest. Your eye will go to the off thing immediately. Dont move it , enjoy it, it lets the room and painting breathe. Take that wild lamp out of the room and the room sighs and waits for something else interesting to come in so it can sing again. This is one area in life we do not have to have everything matching and perfect.

You want to love your paintings and rooms and photographs- put that one odd thing in and you will see them come alive.

We moved our big bed into a tiny room. It is only 8 feet wide and 14 feet long. very small and it has short ceilings. My challenge is to make this the sweetest room in the house.

I bought a lamp from McKenzie Childs that is way wild. Lots of colors and a parrot and a big rock and amazingly unusual lampshade. When I first bought this lamp I thought how wild it is. Everyone who looked at it at first laughed and said how amazing it was or how ugly it was. Now months later after they are used to it they have been changed by it. It is no longer wild-bad but wild-wonderful. Now other lamps seem boring compared to it. Even my mother, who laughed out loud when I first got it, now loves it. I mean loves it because it gives her joy.

I am telling you this lamp story because that is the way we are, We hate anything new and we cannot see it at first. People thought the Eiffel Tower was ugly when it was first built. They were horrified.  That is how it goes with new things. Do not give up if people hate your work at first. They have to grow into it sometimes. This is true of enormously great new works. You need time to accustom your eyes to new things.

I think I should acknowledge when I have the best life in the whole world.

I am so fortunate to be an artist. I spend all day being with my wildest thoughts and putting them down on canvas and people really respond to them, and I sell a lot, and the more I do the more I can do.  So I would pretty much say I am as close to heaven as anybody can get. It was worth the years and years of painting till I got it right. It was worth every last drop of sweat and struggle. It is more than worth it because lets face it, everybody has to sweat and struggle anyway. Not everybody gets a massive pay-off though.

This is my new goal, sell everything I paint and give gobs of money to other people who are not as extremely fortunate as me. That is how the world works:  if It gives you a lot you better give back twice as much. I am going to write a book and illustrate it. It will be a creativity book for children and adults who want to think like a child again. and be free to be who they uniquely are.

I got a smelly candle and put it in my car now my whole car smells like total luxury. In pursuit of new ways to get luxury into my paintings I am spreading it all over my house. Why not have romantic tiny lights in the bedroom and gauze with beads in the windows and fresh roses on the table and huge leopard pillows to fall into. Why not have velvet everything?

Elaborate Luxurious and Delicious is the motto for this month. Don’t you think thick persian carpets are good to walk on and sink your toes into? Yes yes Yes. Mirrors with big gold frames and sparkly crystal shimmering in the windows. Don’t you think a canary should be singing too and some other sweet music wafting? yes Yes yes! And the whole house smells like flowers and yang yang.

Any time you hear “Now you have to be open minded about this,” means that this will be hard to imagine. I think that is a good way to start your day. Most of us go through the motions of living most of the day. I spend my whole life thinking about being creative and I will have a tendency to do this too.

But a creative person and a creative way of living is always open minded ready to receive new information that might be better than before. Once you have the basics down”what is true” the rest is changeable. God does not change, but then God is way way way way way bigger than we are and He doesn’t have to change and grow as He is infinity. We are not infinity so we have to have an open mind to grow grow grow grow.
A good exercise for looking at this concept it to question why you do anything. Could you do it better? Even getting up in the morning can be an adventure and you can do it differently and then you might see something else differently and realize something else etc etc. If youjump out of bed and go for a run in the dark morning that might be different. If you wake up and pray for an hour that might be different. If you get up and call someone you haven’t talked to in a long time that might be different. Anything you do will jog you an open mind because it is awakened. Open Awake Alive.

All good things.