What Are Your Cages?
Today I want to address something that has been on my mind a long time, and I think it might resonate with a lot of you.
In my recent explorations, I've talked about how the pillars of my healthy art practice are:
• Intention
• Self-focus
• Devotion
• Honesty
Going forward, I want to get into some of the more nuanced aspects of the way we perceive what it means to be creative because I have found that working with my perception of these things has been instrumental in making big changes in my art practice--essentially taking it from something quite ‘unhealthy’ to something that is growing increasingly stable and vital.
I'm going to start with a relevant quote from another artist that I follow on the new social media platform Threads.
"Style is an ever evolving thing…you can have more than one workset, exploring different approaches. Cohesiveness is good if you're working on a series for a gallery show, but your practice is yours to do with what you will. Perhaps in our social media world we've become overly obsessed with “brand”, but cages are not so easily escaped once we've painted ourselves into one. This is something I've struggled with personally…I have to remind myself that cages have no place in my practice."
Artist, Glenn Hernandez
I ask you, do you also feel the cages?
If so, I want to be a voice that says to you from the outside that there are many cages that threaten to keep our winged brilliance from finding the sky. I'm going to focus in on some really common misperceptions and how they produce our cages.
For me, 4 of the most seemingly inescapable cages have been:
the cage of Consistency
the cage of Perfection
the cage of ‘Arriving’
the cage of Legitimacy
It has taken a lot of inner work, serious honesty, and some bravery on my part to really take a look at these perceptions and also examine their roots in my life. And every moment of it has been entirely worth it.
I'm a firm believer that awareness and the mental practice of presenting new ways of perceiving to our minds not only opens the door to the cage, but can make it dissolve before our very eyes in some cases. Stay tuned for a lively discussion on the illusions or perception distortions that hold us back.
