bulbs go off in peoples minds when I make the statement that creativity and skill are two very different things.
That skill is something you learn and that anyone CAN learn if you are willing to devote the time to developing it, but that our creativity is effortless and innate , a gift given to us by spirit.
Intuitive process art is about valuing the inner over the outer. What you feel is more important than how it looks. Your internal experience is what counts, not the external product. The innermost private world of your feeling landscape and the expression of that inner life is the highest priority. If you feel excited, engaged, energized and compelled as you are painting, that is enough. What it looks like doesn't really matter. This concept is extremely hard for most people to get. The attachment, verging on compulsion, to focus on the external is very deeply wired in us. It is so unconscious, and so much a part of our intrinsic world view, that initially we can't see it for what it is, which is just one more belief system.
We unquestioningly accept the voice in our minds that says, "I literally CANNOT feel satisfied, engaged and happy if my artwork doesn't look the way I want it to look." This profound split between the internal and the external is part of the western mindset where it almost feels like heresy to say that what we feel has value just because we feel it.
If you learn to listen, you can get valuable messages from your insides. There is magic there and an abundance of wisdom and intuitive guidance. If you let go of control there are wild rides through internal landscapes of incredible complexity and richness that feed you in ways that just focusing on external presentation never can. You have a natural expression that doesn't need to be trained. It doesn't need to be polished, controlled, cleaned up and made presentable. It is good enough, more than good enough, just as it is. Trusting your own unique and spontaneous style and giving it room to live and breathe, can lead to profound experiences of healing, of trusting yourself and of trusting life, unlike anything that can happen when you grasp so tightly for control.
You cannot rely upon the accomplished, well-trained and ultimately well-behaved aspect of yourself to lead you anywhere new. That domesticated part of you will only take you down well-trodden paths that lead to places that you've already been a hundred times before. But the wild, unexplored, unfamiliar places inside of you are where things begin to get interesting. If you let go of control and let anything happen, what will be revealed? Some passion, some hunger, some wildness may show through. Some long suppressed aspect of yourself that has been kept in the chains in the dungeon of your psyche may break through into the light of day. Can you risk it? Are you willing to give it a try?
Using counseling, astrology and the expressive arts, Chris Zydel has worked with hundreds of people over 28 years, to help them joyfully grow and expand into their
full creative potential.