Creative Zone – Page 23

Acting On Impulse: It’s What Art’s All About

July 31, 2013 by Lonnie Lardner

(Pic #1) Responding to the urge – with a 10-minute sketch (Neocolor crayons on hotel stationery)

One of my most true passions is to surround myself with great art. Lately, I’ve been doing just that. In fact, because I’ve spent the last several months providing art for corporate clients with prestigious Manhattan addresses, I’ve been totally immersed.

I’ve been prowling through galleries, searching online, ferreting out emerging talent, and getting to know gifted artists I had only recently come to admire. Even riding on the Long Island Railroad, I’ve seen creativity flourish in the graffitied walls alongside equipment yards and railroad tracks. (Pic #2)

(Pic #2) Forget MOMA or MOCA — it’s the LIRR for edgy art.

But still — until last Monday — I was feeling unfulfilled. Like the line from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “Water, Water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” I realized I needed to paint. Something. Anything. NOW. So here we go: a sketch I made in the bathroom of my New York hotel (Pic #1) and a photo I quickly took (angry about the dirty cymbalta window) on a hustling commuter train last week. (Pic#3)

(Pic #3) A smudged window provides a veil of pastel blur for my spontaneous exterior shot on the Long Island Railroad – passing through Jamaica Queens, NY

My inner critic could spend a month telling you what’s wrong with these hasty little pieces, while my inner-child could spend a lifetime telling you what’s right about it. John Lennon had it right: “If art were to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life, and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.”

A sweet reminder. Yes – art is a business, there is an element of commerce, and that’s all good. But for me it also has to be about the 6-year-old girl who begged for an extra 10-minutes before bedtime, because she still had sharp crayons, and there was still room on the paper. That 6-year-old doesn’t have a client, or a budget, or deadlines other than “lights out” — but she loved art with all her soul. It’s good to catch up with her every once in a while.

Breaking Through The Box: The Way Was There All Along

June 6, 2013 by Lonnie Lardner

Finding clarity: abandon what you think you know.

Maybe the main reason I love my husband is that he knows me so well, he always seems to know the perfect thing to say to get me out of whatever creative/mental trap I have put myself in. For the record, he would probably prefer I name a different main reason I love him – at least publicly – but life is full of dissapointments.

Here was my problem. I had a wall space to fill, I really wanted 16 small paintings, but I only had a corporate budget for 12. Using pieces of paper the same size as the paintings (5 x 7-inch acrylics by Father Bill Moore) I started arranging them on my wall at home. Didn’t work. Hated it. No flow. No way to arrange the pieces to make the wall work as one cohesive unit.

Small acrylic paintings by Father Bill Moore, Los Angeles.

So I said to Josh, “I really need 4 more pieces, but it’s not in my budget at this tramadol point. I just can’t make it work with 12.” He knows me well enough to know that I would now obsess on having 16 pieces, and no other solution would crack that obsession. So he said, “Well, if you can’t add 4 more — take 4 away. Do it with 8. Maybe a more sparse design – with less clutter – will work better.”

Suddenly, trying to imagine the space with fewer pieces, opened up the possibilities that I had closed off by my obsessing about the “magical 16.” Within 2 minutes, I found the elusive 12 painting layout. It was there all along, but I couldn’t break through the mental block formed by my preconception that this was a project that needed 16 pieces.

So often the phrase “think outside the box” is interpreted to mean “do something that has never been done before.” The more useful definition for me is literally “think outside the box you have created for yourself.” When I remember that, good things always happen.

Find Your Moment – Improve Your Day

May 27, 2013 by Lonnie Lardner

It’s as easy as stepping outside. (Photo by Josh Kaplan)

I have a confession to make. I was wrong. Totally wrong. When I launched this blog 2 years ago, one of the first posts I wrote was about carving out 10 minutes a day to feed your creative soul.

I got up on my high horse and said that anyone – everyone — could find ten minutes a day to do the thing he or she loved most. I was wrong. I am in the middle of a corporate consulting project that is requiring all my waking hours, and I haven’t painted in weeks.

The work is creative, exciting and satisfying. But I face many hours of pure paperwork, detailed budgets, cost analysis, and insane deadlines. The stuff I hate. And because of those hours hunched over my laptop – inside and alone — I was beginning to go a little ultram nutty.

Then it hit me, I may not have 10 minutes to drag out the paints and create something interesting — but that doesn’t mean I can’t create a little oasis within the confines of the tasks I’m facing.

I grabbed my laptop, my chai tea, my folders, and my cats, and simply moved my headquarters — out to the patio. Suddenly, with the sun shining down, the bougainvillea in bloom, and the cats pitching in, the assignment I was dreading morphed into a little moment of bliss.

I’ve written a lot of posts about the need for artists to change their perspective: turn up into down, whole into parts, black into white. But this little exercise taught me it is just as important to do that with my attitude. By turning my life’s canvas upside down I found underneath it the one thing that always helps: gratitude.

Done preaching – my spreadsheets await.