Week #6: Catalyst Week
In Week Six I think about the qualities of metal
and the power of the human hand in artmaking.
Color: Orange
Element: Metal
"Use the mind like a sharp knife - to cut the things it was meant for. Otherwise it will become dull and weak.
Don’t cut rocks, sticks, and bricks with a sharp knife. Don’t use your mind on worries and anxiety that have no use.
- Lion’s Roar Magazine
Orange Gray, oil on canvas, by Leo Kenney
A Magnetic Force
Metal is the element of human intervention.
It is formed deep in the earth, through fire, water, stone.
But it emerges as a catalyst - literally and figuratively - for creating culture and art on our planet.
Metal also attracts and repels.
It represents the magnetic force - and helps us attract our ideas, our tribe, our audience, our Polestar or North Star that work for us - and repel the ideas, thoughts, clients, collectors, people that don’t serve us.
Metal changes at different temperatures, and takes time to settle into its final form.
As artists, we can learn from this - by making one thing, and letting it sit and “cool down” - to settle into itself, while we work on something else.
Catalyst Week Inspiration:
Choose a thought to guide your week (this can change, and you can borrow mine!)
Mine for Catalyst Week was: “I follow my Polestar = I stay focused on my goal.”
Spend “Catalyst Time” with yourself to integrate, solidify your ideas: My work is a catalyst for people’s creative and personal growth.”
AGAIN: Envision your project, this time imagine it as an alchemist’s laboratory. How does your work TRANSFORM your viewer into a new, better version of themselves - does it bring understanding? does it encourage new thoughts? does it bring joy or serenity? Does it inspire creativity?
Imagine yourself walking through your show like you are in a big museum. How could you take your project to the next level to give it that “museum quality” feeling?
What would Barbara Hepworth do? (WWBHD): Be inspired by smart historic art mentors. If you don’t know Dame Barbara Hepworth, look up her gorgeous metal, wood and stone sculptures. She lived in St. Ives, Cornwall, England.
Take a coffee break and sit quietly, find calmness. Center and ground yourself, like a tree. We NEED that during CATALYST Week, too!
Let’s Create This
Alchemy Together!
I’m developing a new coaching program focusing on mindset & the creative process: Threshold based on Nature’s elemental forces & the color wheel to support & transform your creative process! Sign up to hear more about it:
Make sure to watch your inbox for:
Threshold
Dive deep into your creative work
through my
8 Creative Elements ProcessSet and get to an important creative goal
(this could be painting, writing, blog, even marketing - remember, selling is storytelling.)Get inspired by Nature & Art History
We’ll look at a lot of art,
including images from the 40 galleries and museums I visited last year, all over Europe.Bring New Energy to your Creative Process
in a supportive, small group setting (no more than 8 people in each cohort)
Episode #2:
Why Metaphor Matters
Big 3 Ideas from this episode:
Matisse’s Red Studio - how it developed, and how it changed the way we think about space and art.
What do we make? Meaning, with metaphor as our tool.
How Art Thinks
