Sunday, November 7, 2010

Journals

I've noticed that many creative people keep some type of journal, everything from the traditional "Dear Diary" to gratitude journals to art journals to morning pages. Why?
  • as a place to test ideas
  • as a method to process thoughts and feelings 
  • as a way to record memories that may later be sources of inspiration
  • as a form of meditation.
Consider art journals. Using a theme, "work," "blue," "November," one tears pages out of magazines, cuts words out of newspapers, colors with crayons, glues glitter, writes with markers or pencils and builds around the theme. The sheer spontaneity of the exercise relaxes the Inner Critic and allows for one's true feelings of the moment to come forth. Sometimes what the page expresses is clear to all viewers. 

"Oh, look at the joy!" 
Or "Oh, you really didn't like that job, did you?'"

Other times, the significance of a page isn't even understood by the creator. The creator may be at a loss to explain why that purple turtle ended up as the hat on the little boy. But for some reason, it works. In creating a page of an art journal, even for a little while, there is complete freedom of expression.