This morning I’m giving a keynote talk at an Arts & Business workshop at The 204 and co-sponsored by The Cape CDP. I ended up writing two talks. This was the first version, which ultimately felt more like a blog post than a talk. I’ll post the second talk later today.

I recently left the gallery that represented me for the past twelve years. I also worked there for seven years, and became a pretty good gallerist in the process. In many ways my identity got wrapped up in the place because I brought passion to my work as an artist and as a curator. I showed up as my full self — and hopefully most days as my best self. Since leaving, I’ve felt a little lost — like part of my identity has been taken from me. I’ve cycled through possibilities: Should I find representation at a bigger gallery? A smaller gallery? Should I open my own gallery? Should I step away from art making? Should I lean into art making in a new way? Open a school? Everyday I wake up asking myself: what’s next?

This experience catalyzed a process that I’ve often named for students as ‘radical disorientation.’ My immediate impulse, which isn’t very healthy — is to reach for another opportunity to do the same work; to seek security in what I know. Repetition provides a certain kind of safety. I’m trying to resist that impulse. Instead, I’m trying to do another thing I’ve often counseled students to do: to live in the questions. 

The theme of this workshop is exploration. I want to look at that idea in a modest way — how we follow a question as a creative person — and in a bigger way — how we can reinvent ourselves? In my experience, these processes are often linked. 

It’s rare that we’re in control of any organization in which we find ourselves. There are always systems — functional and dysfunctional — that regulate and control what we do. Sometimes this can provide the impetus for creative problem-solving, but it can also become strangling. This certainly happens in workplaces, but it also happens in more informal groups — families,  circles of friends, shared studios… Things change — we grow beyond the aims or the brackets around a group or organization, beyond people who’ve previously been important to us  — and we find ourselves feeling aliened or bored or irrelevant or disrespected or or or…  And we know something has to change. 

I think this is especially true for creative people. Creative practice is primarily about curiosity and problem solving. It’s also because life as an artist reflects a vocation — that is, we’re called to what we do. And that sense of vocation is often greater that the brackets around a career or a job. Bringing my vocation to work has meant bringing the problem-solving modes I use in my studio practice to work. As a visual thinker, I solve problems differently from most of the people with whom I’ve worked — who’ve most often been trained to solve problems through writing, science or math. Those ways of solving problems are often linear — hypothesis to experimentation to conclusion. Visual problems aren’t generally linear. In my own case, I gather information and visualize it on a field in my mind. And I compose the data like I’d compose a painting. Eventually something — often something unexpected —snaps into place. And sometimes it’s sheer poetry.

In school I wasn’t great at assignments when the teacher asked me to ‘show my work.’ On the other hand, the kind of seemingly spontaneous problem solving I do as an adult has served me well in my professional life — sometimes giving me a reputation as a ‘magician.’ Linear thinking asks people to stay within existing sets of knowledge — and build on them through testing. (And, let me say, linear thinking is incredibly important — and a skill I’ve had to learn.) But non-linear problem-solving has helped me take great leaps in my thinking and learning — because it helps me make connections between things that aren’t normally connected. Linear thinking taught me, ‘to never reinvent the wheel.’ But in art school I was told, ‘to succeed, you need to believe the wheel hasn’t been invented.’ 

So, here’s the first lesson I have to share: It’s hard to be a non-linear problem-solver in a linear organization — in a linear world. My artwork is best when I follow my non-linear impulse. I find new things when I connect things that have previously seemed disconnected to me; when I flip my assumptions. This is especially true when I’m working as a painter. When I give myself assignments that upend my previous, established way of working I find something new. It’s how I keep my work alive. No matter what creative form you work in, I urge you to give yourself assignments that will force you to see things in a new way.

Several years ago I was taught by a friend that there’s no noun form of the word ‘curate.’ The term ‘curation’ is a modern bastardization of the language. It’s advertising. One curates. It’s always active. It’s something we do. The term comes from religious communities. A Curate is one who performs pastoral care for the congregation. Curators, in the art sense, care for objects, to be sure  — but more importantly they care for artists. 

Artists need curators. We need people who will care for our development as creators and who care for our work. I’ve often told a story that sounds like a ‘three people walk into a bar joke,’ but it illustrates this point. In graduate school I became frustrated when other painters did studios visits with me. Within ten minutes we’d stop looking at the work and engage in ‘shop talk’ — materials, technique, etc. The easy stuff. The best feedback I ever got in graduate school came from a poet, a rabbi, and an ancient Greek historian. They’re all trained in unpacking images. They cared for the work and for me by looking deeply at what I was doing — both process and product — and reflecting back what they saw.

My second lesson is this: find the people who will care for you. It’s great to find a professional curator who shares my philosophy, but it’s also great to find others who will engage your practice seriously. I don’t mean to imply you need to find a rabbi, there certainly are painters I’ve come to rely on, but don’t fall into the trap of believing that only people who do what you do can be part of your support network. Having other eyes looking at your work — eyes that aren’t laden with the rules of what you do — will help you see where your work is stuck, where new opportunities are peeking through. And they may occasionally ‘give you an assignment’ that will open it all up for you. 

I paint landscapes and people often ask me if I’m a plein air painter. I’m not. I mean, sometimes I do. But I’m primarily a studio painter who spends a lot of time immersed in the landscape. This means, I walk a lot and take the landscape into my body. When I return to the studio, I infuse those embodied experiences into the paintings. When I get stuck, I return to the landscape to experience it more. I repeat this cycle as necessary to make the work. At my best, which isn’t always the case, I’m not so much an observational painter as I am an intuitive painter. I trust what I feel in the landscape as much as what I see. This can be the weather, the angle of the sun, the way things smell, the memories that a place conjures for me, the reaction of the person with whom I’m walking, etc. 

So my third lesson has two parts: 1) your work requires that you be deliberately conscious of your experiences in the world. Become as self-aware as you can. And 2.) You are a holistic being. Your mind, body, and spirit  are not disconnected parts of you. Trusting your intuition is a way of listening to your embodied experience. We’re taught to use the language in our brains to solve problems, but we can think with our whole body. New creativity comes through our bodies when we attend to and listen to all parts of them. And let me be clear, I’m not advocating a new gym routine. Your body is brilliant just as it is. 

So to circle back to where I started, what am I doing next? I’m not sure, but I’m clear that I’m not opening a new gallery. I’m not starting a school. I put together a business plan, had a few wonderful friends offer to invest, and nearly signed a lease. But my body told me I was making a horrible mistake. Talking with a number of generous friends, I came to see that I need to do something more fundamental. I need to rediscover the poetry in my work.

For me, poetry is that thing in an artwork that’s unparaphrasable — that can’t be said in another way. It’s the connection of things previously unconnected. It’s the thing that emerges when I upend my conscious assumptions and when I trust my whole body more than the voices in my head — when I feel beauty. It’s what I meant earlier about living in the questions. And because I’ve been on this path before — although without the conscious insights I’m sharing today — I have faith that my reinvention as an artist will come on the path that seeks poetry. 

Right now, I need to let go of a past that was weighing me down in order to discover who I might become. It feels risky, but exploration is risky. I’ll make mistakes. In the short term I won’t have the same success I’ve had before. But I’m leaning into a process that’s served me well.

To summarize what I’ve been talking about: 

Trust the problem solving methods that have informed your art making. Claim them as valuable even when people say you’re weird. They work dynamically in all parts of life.

Build a supportive community who will look deeply at what you do — and who will ask you generative questions. Make room in your practice for care — both giving and receiving it. Become the curator you need.

Work on your embodied self-awareness. Think with your whole body. Trust what it says.

And I implied this rather than underscoring it: Creative reinvention doesn’t have to come by upending your life. You can achieve transformational growth by giving yourself modest assignments that can help you see differently what you do, how you work, and what your vision is. Asking the unanticipated question can change the world. Invite those questions every day.