Creative Collaboration

As I wrote about in a previous post The Creative Breath, I have come to the understanding that my paintings are not my own. With many years of practice I have learned the tools and techniques necessary to communicate increasingly complex ideas which appear to come from my mind. However, that’s only half true. While my personal style of painting is my own, (my style which is driven by my individual spirit) the real magic of the work is not mine. It’s God’s.

In my own experience, when I sit down to paint and check my ego at the door and create from a place of pure spontaneity and intuition, I get the best results. When I try to take control of the painting, I’m lucky if I finish it because the process feels labored and uninspired.

Creation is a collaborative effort. Divine soul and our own spirit, with all of our own direct experience of life, work together in a collaboration which may manifest as a song, or a painting, or a helicopter. And so we collaborate with God. We dance with God, we paint with God, we feel and react to the divine music we hear in our heart and do our best to translate and let it out into existence in its most free and beautiful form.

So we are collaborating with God. But God is also collaborating with us. That is to say that perhaps God has an agenda for us. The Divine needs us to create the world that it has only dreamed of. Like I said in The Creative Breath, I believe that creativity comes from outside of us and that in a way we are being used to translate and create for God: the conscious energy force behind all living things. What if plants have a creative spirit but can’t create directly so they communicate their ideas to us telepathically and we do the creating for them?! You’re welcome to run with that thought experiment.

There’s a second layer to divine collaboration and that’s the way that multiple people come together for a single goal, such as playing music together or to invent more complex technologies. The saxophone was created by a dreamer and inventor, but first alloys and the tools to machine the alloy needed to be created, and a system of musical order needed to be established before the saxophone could exist. Most things in our world are the result of a long progression of inventions which slowly make more complex operations and technologies possible.

Direct collaboration with another creative is especially tasty. Making music and art with other people is a fascinating dance that involves listening to our own heart while also making space for the others you are creating with. To do this successfully requires you to check your ego and fully give in to the process of creating something from nothing.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with other painters to make a painting. Sometimes we are working on the canvas at the same time, while other times we may take turns. Sometimes an artist will want their brushstrokes to be untouched so that there is more separation between the two or more artists, while other times we have total freedom to move about and work the canvas as we see fit for the good of the whole. This second method is my favorite way to approach a creative collaboration and it can become a playful push and pull this way, working with the other artists spirit and magic. I love it.

A collaboration I made with Portland artist, Danny Stephens. 2022-2023. Neither of us would have made anything like this on our own, it took both of us working together to create a new flavor of communication. *SOLD

Working with another artist can teach us a lot about our own process and it can teach us new tricks when we study the way another artist likes to work. There is no right way to make a painting. We can often get stuck in our own way of doing things. That’s fine, nothing wrong with that, but it can be refreshing to challenge our automatic ways by observing and adjusting to another creative’s ways. Whether they are literally teaching us how they do something or we are just observing them, it’s a rewarding experience to spend intimate time working with another artist.

This has never been so clear when witnessing how musicians work together to create songs. They’re playing off of each other, sometimes making rapid adjustment to their playing when they feel a change in the ebb and flow of the whole band. Sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic. How incredible it is to witness something like this live with a group of musicians that really know how to collaborate.

So in a nutshell I feel the best way to get into the creative zone and produce great work, whether it’s solo or with others is to fully trust the process and get out of the way of yourself. I know this is easier said than done but it’s true. Take a deep breath, check your ego, open your imagination to the endless realm of possibilities and just begin. The rest will come naturally as you work. As Picaso said, “Inspiration will find you, but it has to find you working.”