#WIP: Creating without Intent

What is creating without intent? To understand that, let me tell you what creating with intent is for me. Creating with intent is basically having a preconceived idea in your mind and doing everything you can within the parameters of your competency to bring that image to life.

Conversely, creating without intent is where you allow the process to guide you.
In my case, I identify this process specifically with connecting with the Spirit, through listening and opening my heart to His movements as I work on a particular piece. This is both an intuitive and faith based exercise calling for the trust, abandonment and imperfection of a little child. If I am afraid of messing up, or unwilling to totally start all over again (if the occasion calls for it), I realise that I cannot actually flow in this process with the precious Spirit.

Of course there is no premium in either method of creating, as long as I continue to be open and malleable in both.

But in some cases the unthinkable happens - you start off with intent and then it turns out be something without intent by the end of a project. Here's what I mean.

I started off this piece with a desire to paint flowers, and a specific image in my mind. Of course painting flowers is a new skill I am in the process of developing. So I did my due diligence by watching a video of another artist as he created his impression of flowers. Part of being a Spirit taught artist is that while you are always open to learning from others, you also watch for those things in the presentation that jump out to you, things that you feel you can experiment with, and make your own in a new way.

Here's my very short time lapse of laying the original background.

There was a lot of feeling the pigment or finger painting involved. And I totally loved it!

After many hard hours of work, here's a snippet of what I finally came up with.

#WIP: Creating with intent 

(Since I am now aware of the distinct options of creating with and without intent, I will maintain better documentation in the future.)

I was quite pleased with my piece, and so were others, but not totally comfortable. There was this nagging feeling it was somehow incomplete.

Then the unthinkable happened!

I took a sponge of grey and blue oil paint and painted over my work of many hours!.

It was like I couldn't stop myself. I was carried off in a flow that appeared to be so destructive, as it effaced all the hours of hard work in dreaming, planning, and preparing. My left brain was screaming, "STOP!!! PLEASE STOP!! YOU ARE RUINING IT!'

But something more determined than reason led me on, whispering all the time, "Don't be afraid, and don't be limited by what it appears to be, trust Me."

In spite of my reason, now quite beside itself, I continued to lather the grey matter on the beautiful painting.

But a faint representation of the original remained. As I've experimented before on "#WIP 01. 2015: A STORY ABOUT RISK AND REWARD" and following a suggestion by my mom, I rotated the canvas 90 degrees.

From thereon I was caught up in a flow of following one intuitive instruction after another, until my canvas bore something totally different from what I originally started out with.

Here's a shot of what I ended up with.

#WIP:Creating without inten

I am not pleased with this piece.

I am actually moved, and captivated.

I will elaborate about it more, with better images, on my Gallery page at a later date.

Thanks for reading :)

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