PARADOXICAL THINKING

If I were to ask you to simultaneously pour every ounce of yourself – your skillful abilities, your emotions, intellectual concepts, your truth as you understand it – into your creative work, while remaining in a state of neutral detachment during the process and uninvested in its success, would you find that difficult? I think most of us would. And yet, it is what is asked of an artist as they make their work, along with embodying many other conflicting states of being.

Art-making is filled with paradoxes – seemingly contrary or conflicting actions that often defy reason, but can lead to truthful unexpected discoveries. It’s when we understand the challenge this presents for us that we can hone a skill set for negotiating these sticky places present in our craft.

Without this awareness we overlay exceptions and mythical beliefs about art-making that are simply not true and cause us unnecessary struggle. Learning to accept the paradoxical aspects of art-making prepares us for the deep work of managing the discomfort that inevitably arrives, and helps us to go the distance.

With knowledge we are empowered and more able to adapt to what is required of us. So let’s talk about some of these paradoxes and why they are important to embrace in our art-making. 

Here are a few that I encounter in my own process and with artists I work with:

• Be all in – fully committed and authentic in your work – but at the same time get out of your own way. Know what part of yourself needs to be in and what part needs to step away.
  
  
  

• Move into the unknown without any idea of where you might be headed, but hold an intention for your work at the same time. And if you have a really clear idea for your work, execute that idea while still allowing for chance and intuition to play a role, keeping your work fresh and alive.
  
  
  

• While you may begin your creative work with a plan, an idea or intention, you must be willing to let the work have its way and let go of that initial idea if something else arrives. Hold intentions lightly.
  

• Face a multitude of choices and decisions in nearly every moment of the creative process – some that can be hugely consequential to the work you’re making. But don’t let that generate anxiety for you, just make those choices. And don’t feel any pressure around that.
  

• At every stage of your work, you need to be willing to risk greatly. Even if you have invested tons of materials and numerous hours of your time, you have to be willing to sacrifice the whole of your work for its development – to move it towards greatness.
  

• Accept that most of your work won’t be deemed by yourself or others as great – it might be good, or sometimes just okay, and at other times a complete failure. As you pursue the vision for your work – striving for that greatness – you need to accepted that most of your work won’t get there. But don’t let that discourage you, as that is a sure way to never get there.
  
  
  

• Be willing to embrace failure even when you feel intense resistance to that idea. In fact, true innovation only occurs when failure is an expected result of the process. Through failure comes discovery and invention. Befriend your resistance to failure and make it a part of your creative process.
  
  
  

• Make your work for yourself first and foremost. Create with authority and autonomy, buffering yourself from being swayed by the art buyers or the market, but then share your work with collectors and gallerists and hope they like it enough to purchase or exhibit it.
  
  
  

• Your work feels deeply personal, an extension of yourself, an expression of your truth or an important statement that needs to be shared. And if others don’t like it, accept that they are not your audience and don’t take their rejection of your work personally. While your work is an extension of you, it isn’t you. Separate yourself from your work, but be fully engaged with it.
  
  
  

• Spend time in isolation, learning to trust your own counsel, while recognizing that you need to receive feedback and have fruitful discussion around your work. Feedback helps you to see it more clearly, but you shouldn’t let it sidetrack you – only take what is valuable for you, and you should know what that is.
  
  
  

• When making your work, don’t think too much, but know that every action you take has an impact and can change the course of your work. Set this heavy concern aside while working, using your discernment to know when is the right time to think.
  
  
  

• Create from your centre – grounded and focussed – but also with abandon, letting yourself be free. Use your emotions as fuel, but don’t be emotional about the process or the results.
  
  
  

• Recognize that chaos and order can co-exist and you are often moving between these two places. Know which state you need in your work and when.
  

• Music needs to be heard, writing needs to be read, and art needs to be seen. But when is the right time to share your art with the world and how do you do that? And what if you’re introverted, shy and uncomfortable with being seen? How do you overcome all that to act on this essential stage of art-making – the sharing of your work?

I could go on, as there are so many paradoxes to art-making, but I think you get the idea and perhaps you have even thought of a few of your own as you’re reading or listening to this. I find it helpful to write about them, uncovering them in my process. Somehow identifying them allows me to understand more fully what is required of me as I make my work. That way I can build in strategies to assist me in navigating these conflicting aspects of the creative process.

And here is the gem in all this effortful negotiation – working with paradoxes invites in discovery and trains us to be adaptive, curious and resilient. These are mindset skills that artists need to employ to be successful in their work.

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, the ancient Greeks were well aware that a paradox can take us outside our usual way of thinking. They combined the prefix para meaning “beyond” or “outside of” with the verb dokein meaning “to think”, forming the Greek word paradoxos, an adjective that means “contrary to expectation”.

So a paradox moves us elsewhere – outside of conventional thinking and into new thought. It essentially provides our brains with a conundrum to contemplate, which likely occupies a part of our brain that employs logic and reason, allowing the creative part of our brain to free associate and generate ideas and possibilities yet unknown to us.

As artists we need to do more of this type of thinking – outside of our usual way. We actually want to embrace the paradoxical aspects of our chosen craft for all that they can offer us. All too often we fight against the very thing that is in service to our ingenuity, our creative vision, and our ability to execute that vision. 

When we insist on a roadmap or a set of clear guidelines for how to get from where we are to where we want to be, we have already closed ourselves off from the genius of paradoxical thinking. It’s as if we haven’t truly harnessed what art-making is about – endless and expansive questioning. 

It’s through this experience of working with questions, paradoxes, and ambiguous parameters that we become equipped as artists. Learning to engage with the process of asking good, well-crafted questions is essential, and will help you to negotiate the space from which your work is generated from.

Next month I’ll expand further on how to work with questions in your art-making, letting them inform your process and guide you towards clarity when you’re needing that. But also how to use questions to invite discovery and unexpected outcomes – cozying up to the essential, evocative, paradoxical thinking that you may have been avoiding in the past. 

But for now, notice the paradoxes when they are present for you. Consider the list I’ve provided here and perhaps add some of your own. By identifying the paradoxes you’re faced with and that are inherent in your creative work, you’ll already be setting yourself up for a new way to engage with them – moving yourself from avoidance of what feels uncomfortable to becoming curious, intrigued, and ready for a new way of thinking. 

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