Tag: inktober

The Artist’s Way: Week Nine Reflections

Recovering a Sense of Compassion

Happy Sunday and happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving long weekend! If you celebrate, I hope the food is delicious and the festivities are stress-free. This week was another busy one for me- I almost thought I wouldn’t be able to get to The Artist’s Way. But, against all odds, I was able to fit my reading, artist date, and tasks into the weekend.

This week of The Artist’s Way focused on recovering a sense of compassion. In the text, Julia Cameron talked about how, oftentimes, blocked artists unfairly call themselves “lazy” when they’re having issues creating. In reality, they might be struggling with fear: fear of success, fear of failure, fear of abandonment, etc. She warned about blocked artists falling into patterns of “creative U-turns”: self-sabotaging behaviours they employ when they start to achieve creative momentum. Cameron proposed that the cure for fear and self-sabotaging behaviours preventing artists from creating is self-compassion. 

There was also a section in the text where Cameon talked about how enthusiasm, rather than discipline, is the key to an artistic life. To this end, she suggested finding ways to treat creative work as play to foster a sense of joy.

Morning Pages

This week, Cameron invited participants to read through all of the morning pages they’d written over the first eight weeks of the program. This task took me about two days- there was a lot to get through.  I found that, predictably, most of my morning pages were made up of boring, repetitive drivel. This said, there were also some important insights in the pages-most of which I have written about already in previous reflection posts. Re-reading my morning pages also gave me ideas for “next steps’ in my artistic journey. 

Throughout the pages, something I said over and over again in many different ways was that I want to go back to school. This isn’t news to me- I’ve always viewed school (undergraduate studies and law school- NOT high school) as one of the best times in my life. I loved the independence and freedom and the focus on learning and self-development. It’s one of my biggest aspirations to go back to school for a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature, art history or philosophy (a host of subjects I’ve always been interested in, but didn’t study while I was getting my BSc). While I still don’t think going back to university for a BA is in the cards for me (yet?), I’d like to take more courses through the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, where I’ve taken a handful of classes already. 

Reading through my morning pages also made me appreciate just how far I’ve come with The Artist’s Way in general. In the first few weeks of writing morning pages, I verbalized doubts about whether the program would “work for me”. But, as the weeks went by, I undeniably gained creative momentum. Since starting The Artist’s Way, I’ve started a blog and post on it regularly, fixed my DSLR camera and brought it outside to take photos for the first time in years, tried out watercolour painting, drafted a short story, and baked a bunch of new recipes. 

All of this said, when it came down to actually writing my morning pages for this week, I really struggled. There were two days with late entries (where I wrote the pages on my lunch break as opposed to first thing in the morning) and one day where I genuinely forgot to do the pages altogether. As much as I’ve benefited from doing the morning pages, and how interesting it was to read them over, I’m really looking forward to being finished with writing them. 

Artist Date

For my artist date this week, I took myself to the McMichael Art Gallery in Kleinberg. According to the gallery, one third of the McMichael collection comes from First Nations, Metis and Inuit artists. A lot of the pieces that drew my attention were from Indigenous creators. Some notable works included Loon Family (1969) by Norval Morrisseau, Indian Residential School, Leaving the Shallow Graves and Going Home (2022) by Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, and Study for the Sparrow (2021) by Kent Monkman. The latter two pieces spoke to the tragedy of the Indian residential school system in Canada, and they were very powerful. 

I also saw a viewing of Kent Monkman’s short film, Group of Seven Inches (2005) which was actually filmed at the McMichael in 2004. The short film subverts the authority of the white gaze throughout history. It depicts Monkman’s alter-ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, as an Indigenous, two-spirit artist and ethnographer observing and studying white men.

Another notable exhibition was “FISH” by Sandra Brewster. Brewster was born in Toronto, but her parents are from Guyana. Her subjects are dozens of species of fish native to the Essequibo River in Guyana. 

Other Artistic Pursuits

In terms of my artistic endeavours this week, I painted a few more watercolour pictures (but was unable to keep up the INKtober drawing-every-day momentum) and baked a new recipe that I plan to bring to my own family Thanksgiving dinner- banana chocolate chip muffins (even though nothing about this dessert particularly screams “Thanksgiving”).

All in all, despite a slow start, I thought this week went really well! I’m officially into the final quarter of The Artist’s Way, and I’m excited to see what the next three weeks bring. 

Until next week, 

Laura Kate

The Artist’s Way: Week Eight Reflections

Recovering a Sense of Strength

I hope this post finds you well! Here in Toronto, the first week of October has been marked by the last vestiges of summer: despite the changing leaves and cool nights, the days have been sunny and hot. I’m currently writing this from my living room couch; a scented candle and electrolyte drink on the ottoman beside me. I’m trying to wind down (and not fall asleep) following a 15km run this morning.

This week, The Artist’s Way focused on recovering a sense of strength. A lot of the lessons in the text were geared towards professional artists or art students. Julia Cameron talked about how to survive criticism (in good or bad faith) from mentors, academics and audiences more generally. Because I have always considered myself a hobbyist artist and have rarely put my art out into the world for public consumption and critique, a lot of the chapter did not resonate with me. 

There were, however, a few parts of the text that I found interesting. In one section, Cameron pointed out that many people tend to tell themselves that they’re either “too old” or “too young” to make art. On the one hand, we might tell ourselves some variation of: “It’s too late for me to learn how to direct! If I go to film school now, I’ll be forty by the time I graduate!”. On the other hand, we might also say, “I’m too young to learn how to paint! I have to focus on my career- I can take art classes when I retire.” Cameron dismissed these thoughts as excuses we tell ourselves which keep us creatively blocked. As someone who is particularly susceptible to this way of thinking, I’ll try to keep an eye out for it in the future. 

Cameron also discussed pursuing our creative dreams one step at a time. She calls this “filling the form”, or, “taking the next small step instead of skipping ahead to a large one”. An aspiring writer, for example, may dream of publishing a novel. But before she worries about marketing a finished manuscript to an agent, she needs to focus on writing her first draft- one word at a time. This way of thinking prevents us from being daunted by big dreams and focuses our attention instead on smaller, more achievable goals. One of the exercises for this week involved making a concrete plan to achieve our creative goals: thinking about what we can do to work toward them in the next year, in the next month, in the next week, and today.

Artistic Endeavours

I completed my morning pages and tasks for the week, but don’t really have any notable insights or comments to share about them. This week, I focused less on The Artist’s Way program itself, and more on actually creating art. I baked again (though, two recipes I’ve already made before), and painted a handful of watercolour paintings for INKtober. 

INKtober is a month-long art challenge which takes place every October. The challenge invites artists to create and post (primarily on Instagram) art pieces every single day for the entire month. I’ve participated in INKtober a few times in the past- always using the “Peachtober” prompt list created by Sha’an d’Anthes of FurryLittle Peach (as opposed to the official INKtober prompt list). This year, given how busy I’ve been with half-marathon training and The Artist’s Way, I don’t realistically think I’ll be able to paint a picture a day for the entire month. This said, I’d like to get at least a few paintings done. I think it will be a great way to continue experimenting with watercolours and sharing my process online.

For my artist date this week, I spent a quiet afternoon at Mill Pond Park. I brought my journal and some pencil crayons, and ended up spending time walking, drawing and writing. Going outside and spending time in nature seems to be a recurring theme in my artist dates. Perhaps it makes sense that nature features so heavily in my drawings and photographs.  

With love- until next week,

Laura Kate