THE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

I have been thinking about the one thing that I feel is essential to our creative process and emotional resilience as artists. As always when I pose a question to myself like this, information often arrives from places known and unknown. It’s as if I have set an intention, made my request and now the answers are there to be discovered. It’s likely they were always there, I just wasn’t clear about what I was looking for – or how to ask the right question.

And in what I have just shared is a hint to the answer of what is the one essential thing that drives the creative process. But let me tell you more about how I once again realized it’s value.

The past few months I have been obsessed with painting, compelled to work and finding any stolen moment I can to be back in the studio, even if it is to only sit with the pieces I’m working on and look at them. I have just felt really engaged and somehow freed up in ways I haven’t been before. 

You might remember the 30 Day Sketchbook Challenge I gave myself in mid-May, where I committed to making one work in my sketchbook each day for 30 days. I invited my community to join me and it became a rich and activating experience that I thoroughly enjoyed. 

Around Day 19 of the Challenge I started to notice myself becoming attuned to something in this daily practice. What I was connecting with in my sketchbook work was the dialogue that was occurring between the two sketchbook pages. I was working with a two-page spread each day, working on both pages together and allowing the relationship between the pages to guide my process.

I was also writing about my sketchbook practice each day and I often found myself engaged with a question that continually drove my process forward and eventually anchored it to one idea or area of investigation – the dialogue. This question was fuel for this process – the activator, the clarifier and the distiller. That is what good questions do and why they must be a part of our art practice.

As the sketchbook work progressed and I neared the completion of the 30 day commitment, I decided to take this idea of “the dialogue”, which I was still deeply engaged with, and scale that up by beginning a series on panel.

I decided to do 10 paintings, with two panels in dialogue with each other and replicating the process I used in my sketchbook. The panels were 18 x 24 inches, so similar proportions to the sketchbook pages, and not a typical proportion for me to work with. 

Once all the panels were prepared – sealed, primed and mounted with paper – I began to add paint, loosely following the process I used in the sketchbook work. I had plenty of nicely sized collage papers at the ready as well, as they were a big part of the approach I was working with.

All seemed to be going pretty well and I had two panels coming along, with a few layers of paint and collage. Then something happened and I stalled. I had ten panels on the wall, all waiting for me, and I was feeling an all too familiar sense of resistance. 

It was true I hadn’t been working as much due to my commitment to my 12-week online program The Artist Mindset, which had just completed. But the 30 Day Sketchbook Challenge was my re-entry strategy and I felt really ready to dive in now, so what the heck was this? 

Again I brought forward a question to guide myself towards what needed to shift. Of course I knew it was my mindset, but what was going to be the key that would allow me to engage even in the face of resistance?

I’ll admit it took a few days and a couple of more rough starts, in between long days of admin and coaching work, but I found the key question that could guide me forward. It was like a eureka moment for me.

I asked myself, what made it so easy for me to engage with the sketchbook page? What was the quality of the approach I was using there and what was different now as I approached the panels?

The answer was clear. I was monumentalizing the panels, making them more important than the sketchbook pages. I was attaching to and identifying with outcomes and allowing those feelings, when they arrived, to grab a hold of me instead of just letting them pass through me.

I remember taking pictures of the beginning stages of the work and thinking about posting them to Instagram, sharing my progress along the way. Knowing that there was an audience following me, this brought me into a space of feeling I somehow needed these paintings to be super strong. Again, thinking of outcomes and external acceptance, two areas of our thinking that prevent us from risking in our work and that often fire up the walls of resistance.

So I decided not to share in real time, like I did in the 30 day Sketchbook Challenge. but to give myself permission to hold my ground, my sacred space of process, and decided to document the process, to share later, as I am doing now.

I also decided on a key question to work with, one that would bring me back into process and out of outcomes quickly. The question I posed to myself each time I felt resistance arriving around a choice I was making in the work was:

Would I take this action if I was working in my sketchbook?

This simple question was the metric from which I could measure my presence to pure process and detachment from outcomes. I know that in my sketchbook practice, and all that I unpacked from that, I was ruthless in my ability to make decisions, changes, and altering what was already on the page. And while I lost many gorgeous bits along the way, the final results were always better for the risks I took.

The Sketchbook Mindset is the mindset that allowed me to take risks in my work, and all I needed to do was find that one question that would return me to that mindset and I was off and running.

Once that connection was made I became enthralled, curious, and willing to risk BIG time. That made a huge difference for me and the 10 paintings moved along quickly. They are now finished and I have started another series of 10. And what is most notable to me is that even with breaks in between working sessions, that one key question put me just where I need to be with this work.

Here are some images of both the sketchbook work and the new work on panel. In sharing these images I’m hoping you can see the connections between them and that this might give you some ideas around how to move your own work from the Sketchbook to more formal work.  Perhaps asking yourself the right questions can pave the pathway forward to clarity around intention.

Day 19 of the 30 Day Sketchbook Challenge

You can see more images of this body of work on Instagram, both for Insight Creative, where I shared the daily sketchbook work, and Cheryl Taves Art, where I posted the finished paintings in this series, which I am calling the ‘Dialogue Series.’ 

Dialogue no.7 and no.8 | Mixed media on paper mounted on panel | 24x18 inches each

This type of practice of moving from sketchbook to more formal work also invites us to consider how we can generate work from our own work. Can we be the source of our own inspiration? If we posed a clear question around that, what might it be?

Just as we need to be mindful of the quality of our thoughts – checking to see if our thought is supportive or unsupportive for us – the questions we pose to ourselves have power. And that is because of how our brain responds to problem solving. 

Whatever question you ask yourself, your brain sees that as a problem to be solved, becomes engaged and will attempt to answer it. So we can see the importance of choosing those questions wisely. Otherwise our brain will fixate and try to solve a question that isn't helpful for us, and perhaps even damaging.

If our internal dialogue is filled with questions that are unproductive and invite self-criticism like, “Why am I always messing things up?”, or “Why can’t figure out what to do next?”, or even “What am I doing wrong?”, our brain literally tries to answer that with evidence and assertions, searching for untruths which we then adopt as beliefs about ourselves. These beliefs when repeated enough actually can turn into core beliefs – that we then operate from.

If we reframe the questions we ask ourselves – restructuring them to engage our positive, curious nature instead – we get different answers and results that move us towards self-development and growth in our art and our lives.

Working with a question like, “What if have everything I need to make this work?” has a completely different energy to it. Here the question assumes that what we’re engaged with is easy and already within our grasp, and as a result our brain now searches for the answers to how to continually keep it that way.

As you practice the art of working with and crafting good questions for yourself, keep in mind that you first want to place your awareness on the underlying implied tone or energy of the question. Here are some things to consider when working with questions in this way:

Know Where You’re Wanting to End Up

It is helpful if your question contains the desired change or outcome you’re after –  the purpose or intention. If it does, you’ll be heading in the right direction.

For example, take the question “Why can’t I figure this out?” – which is embedded with self-judgement – and change it to “What do I need to know to move forward?”

Craft The Question to Give You Information

Open-ended questions invite curiosity and engagement of the imagination, giving you access to insights you may not have otherwise had. Questions that begin with “how”, “what”, “who”, “why” and “where” are open-ended questions. They invite information, not a “yes” or “no” response. Questions that begin with “would”, “should”, “is”, “are” or “do you think” can all be answered with a yes or a no. These are closed questions and nothing further is needed as a response.

There are Times to Use a Closed Question

Open-ended questions are very important in helping us to explore more deeply, but closed questions – that can only be answered with a “yes” or “no“ – are good when we want to be very clear. If we need to check in with ourselves to see if something is true, feels right, or is in alignment with our purpose, a closed question is the way to get a clear, quick answer. 

For example, in my process with moving from my sketchbook work to panels, I used open-ended questions to connect more deeply with what I was exploring and to help me get to the core idea – the dialogue. Then when I found myself stalled and not able to move forward with the paintings, I again asked open-ended questions to help me clarify what I was doing differently between my panel work and my sketchbook work. This helped me to unpack and connect to the mindset that would be more helpful for me and craft a guiding question that would get me quickly back to where I needed to be. The closed question, “Would I take this action if I was working in my sketchbook?”, which I would answer with a yes or no, then became the guiding question to keep me clear and moving forward in the work.

Follow Up and Dig a Little Deeper

To go even further with your questions you can work with follow-up questions to dig deeper. “And what else?” is a good one to use, but it can also be more specific, like “Why do I think that is true?”or “What more do I know about this?”

Give Yourself Some Time to Respond

If you were asking someone else this question, what would happen if you interrupted their thinking with another question or a comment before they were able to respond? It would likely distract them and they’d lose their train of thought and ability to offer a considered or truthful response. Our own thoughts can be like this, impatient and uncomfortable with the space and silence as your brain is churning away working on the answers. Allowing yourself to sit and wait for the answer can be surprisingly engaging and bring about interesting outcomes.

This way of working with good, well-crafted questions leads to less complicated choices, viable solutions, and replaces the idea that our work or next project needs to be difficult and beyond our abilities, with the possibility of it being easy and attainable, and perhaps even enjoyable. This is reframing a thought pattern or habit by enlisting the powerful problem solving aspects of your brain. It’s a mindset shifting technique on steroids!

So next time you find yourself at an impasse or struggling to move things forward in the way that you’re committed to doing, consider the potent potential of a good question. You may just find this becomes your go-to strategy, helping you to meet your creative work with renewed energy while busting down any walls of resistance.

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