Are you feeling tired, drained and sluggish a lot of the time? This is a lack of inspiration, not energy. You’ll never be bored with life if you develop your creative powers – this I promise you.
I once did a series of fairly average felt-tip pen abstract drawings which I felt changed my whole outlook on life in a positive way. I became so overwhelmed with happiness with these colourful bits of paper I contacted my two best friends to say I’d achieved something spectacular. Art represents nature because it respects the truth.
Practising art is expansive, challenging, metaphysical and cathartic. In fact, the only major mental health problems very creative people sometimes experience are overthinking or becoming obsessed with doing art because it’s so stimulating. Art changes our perceptions of reality in a 100% positive way by representing the absolute truth – often of nature and landscapes.
If society was made up of a much larger percentage of dedicated artists, not dilettantes, our corrupt Western governments would find it harder to control the masses amid protest rallies and mini-revolutions. Although, a lot less necessary work would also not get done.
Learning how to get good at art exposes your psychological flaws and perseverance it makes you a much better person, increasing your puissance considerably. As personal journeys go, nothing beats a journey into your soul to produce external beauty.
As more and more people struggle to afford holidays in these stringent times, the perfect alternative is to travel in your mind. Art can not only expand your mental horizons but also becomes an excellent record of your maturing progress in life too.
It’s important to know your mind because society tries to brainwash you into believing you are not worth anything when you are. Getting stuck into drawing, painting, sculpture, music, dance, etc, is one of the best ways to find out who you really are. Forget psychotherapy; art can be more revealing and productive.
However, most novices struggle to attain the level of craftsmanship needed to play aesthetic games properly. The art learning process takes time, but naturally, anything worth achieving does. Mastering art is about the same as tennis as far as skill goes, that is until you can reliably hit the ball over the net without skyrocketing it into the stratosphere then you won’t gain much enjoyment at first or hardly any of the considerable benefits of accumulated knowledge.
Accomplished artists generate their own momentum so they never run short of ideas or childlike curiosity. Yet most people fall at the first hurdle and then mistakenly give up because the creative enterprise felt more like a chore than entertainment or the childlike novelty of discovery.
Art is more profound than fun though. Superficial people would do their best to stay away because artistic endeavours have a unique way of exposing vacuous and vain individuals. Plug on through all of your inevitable mistakes and you shall be rewarded with an enthusiastic mindset which rejects materialism and finds joy, pleasure and excitement in everything.
Your manual dexterity, confidence and charisma shall likely increase too as many dormant parts of your brain light up. You will welcome the unexpected as opportunities, not mistakes, and this positivity will start to flow into your life too.
The birth of great art and invention has always come from happy mistakes. To me, the best art has always been successful experimentation with spontaneous skill, rather than using laboured, predictable and derivative visual language. Art should be like a good stir fry: fresh, lively and finished in a flash under the heat of passion.
Absolutely anyone can do art and achieve great results to be very proud of. But the greatest thing about being an artist is you will never feel lonely with art by your side. You will only start your creative journey when you realise our system is built on lies.
Andrew Voller is a psychotherapist and author.
