MAPPING THE FLOW…..the creative highway
My poor husband has been bent over his computer all weekend. 
Something is dreadfully wrong and neither of us know how to fix it. Several calls to a recommended “techie” but no call back yet. Summer weekends and we figure he must be at the beach. My husband, God bless, is not really very computer literate…but he makes up for it in tenacity! Yesterday we were discussing the possibility of changing browsers…thinking that that might cure the problem …and he thought that the internet browser was Google. I proceeded to explain to him, not that I know SO much, that the browser was Internet Explorer or Safari which is the highway on which we travel throughout web and it takes us to sites like Google, Yahoo, and such. I hung on to the idea of “highways” that enable our flow. ….or like our veins that carry and distribute our blood throughout our bodies. Then I began to think about the “flow” of our creative juices….where they originate and how they travel.
For myself, I know the “mechanism” very well. Firstly, just the smell alone of oil paint ignites me (it always has, even as a small girl). Not only in my own studio…but anywhere else…particularly if it is unexpected. When I’m ready to paint, or if I see something that I want to paint, or even moreso, when I watch my students painting, I get a tugging or pulling feeling in my arms. Not heavy or tired, more like a hard-to-describe vibration/tug. Kind of like when a nursing mother hears a baby cry and her milk begins to flow. Then I look at my subject. Then my brush grabs the paint and begins to move on the canvas. Then I respond to that move and then the next…and then the next …and so on. I can actually clearly define this path…from my eyes to chest/heart …then down my arm to my hand…then brush…and onto the canvas. My brain is not a part of this flow. After I paint/respond for a while, my brain comes into play with evaluating and editing.
I recently came across a quote from the artist/illustrator, Wendy MacNaughton. I heard my own words echoed…about drawing and painting. It’s all so intrinsic and physiologic. Please click link below and enjoy!
https://soundcloud.com/brainpicker/wendy-macnaughton-on-drawing
TAMMRA SIGLER - Artist 