emotional health

The Artists Mind by Kathryn Vercillo – an interview

A Creative Life, art book review, Artist interviews and profiles, artistic inspirations, Authors, books, creative thinking, Emotional health, food for thought, life of the mind, mental health, publications - publishing, reading, Sustainable creativity

My longterm readers know I’ve an interest in both creativity and mental health. When I saw “The Artist’s Mind” by Kathryn Vercillo I had to interview her. Fortunately Kathryn generously responded to my questions about her new book!

Clancy: What are you drinking while we’re chatting? I’m having a dark french roast coffee.

Vercillo: Yum. I am a lifelong coffee drinker with at least a couple of cups every morning, usually heavy on the cream.

Your new book is titled “The Artist’s Mind: the creative lives and mental health of famous artists” What made you think of the intersection of mental health and creativity as a topic to explore?

This is the work that I’ve been doing for a long time, something that grew out of a combination of my lived experience and personal interests. In my late twenties, I fell into a life-threatening depression, which I emerged out of with help from many things including crochet. (Here’s a podcast I recently did about that.) I started writing about the mental health benefits of crochet from my own perspective, hearing about it from others, one thing led to another and I spent about a decade developing an expertise in this area. I had an eight-year-long monthly column called Crochet Heals, I interviewed hundreds of people, and I learned a lot about how crochet specifically and crafting in general is therapeutic for people.

I ended up going to grad school to get a Masters in Psychological Studies. Over time, I became curious about why writing was therapeutic for me in ways that differed from crochet. Although there are many reasons, the primary one was that writing is my job that I get paid for and the monetization of the art changed it therapeutically. (Writing still offers me many benefits; it’s just different.) Another big part was that in depression (which recurs for me despite good treatment) I often go into brain fog and can’t write the way that I’d like to whereas I can still pick up hook and yarn and make something. So, I became curious about how mental health symptoms impact creativity. That’s what I’ve been studying in depth over the past few years and what I’m passionate about continuing to explore.

Why did you want to write a book about this topic as opposed to doing a podcast or a series of YouTube videos?  

Well, the short answer is that I’m a writer 🙂

I actually have been thinking for a while that I want to do a podcast on this topic. I just feel a bit daunted by the technology of getting started. Audio and visuals aren’t my forte so there’s a learning curve there that I haven’t tackled, yet. However, it actually seems really easy to record audio on Substack, so I’m considering starting with a few things here and seeing how that goes.

I think we all have various stages of mental health during a day, a week a year… mental health (baring organic diseases), emotional health is rather like the weather – it has seasons, it changes and is affected by events, whether you slept well or if you’re hungry…so often being mentally healthy and maintaining it becomes about coping, recovery, and learning new thinking skills. So why does your book specifically focus on artists as opposed to say accountants?

I definitely agree with you on that. I also think that all of us are creative to some degree or another. (My go-to post to send people to on Substack is my post We are all artists with mental health experiences …) My book focuses on artists because that’s the particular relationship I’m interested in – “how do these challenges specifically affect people who make art for a living (or for whom it’s a huge portion of their lives?”

I think many of us tend to write the things that we ourselves want answers to, we try to write our way to those answers. Questions around “madness and genius” have always interested me. I read Kay Redfield Jamison’s books, for example, decades ago, with a strong interest in her experiences with bipolar hypo/mania as it relates to creativity. I am always trying to figure out my own relationship with art and mental health. And so I write about it and ask people about it and write more about it.  

Accountants are important people, but I don’t have a particular interest in how mental health impacts them. This is true even in populations where I know that the topic is interesting … for example, mental health in the military has a lot of fascinating aspects and yet it doesn’t tend to draw me in personally (except perhaps in regards to how art, animal therapy, and virtual reality are being utilized in PTSD treatment.)

There’s also a little bit of behind-the-scenes to the book in that I was writing for a website called Sartle on this topic, and we collaborated together to bring this book into existence. So that’s why this book is specifically about famous painters and sculptors from history and not about other art forms. I research and want to further research and write about mental health among writers and poets and filmmakers and performance artists and musicians … This book is just a starting point.

As I read about Joan Miro, Diane Arbus, Jacob Lawrence, Gustave Dore, and several of the other artists in your book I began to notice how often cultural systemic events such as war, racism, intergenerational trauma and poverty impacted the artists mental health – it seemed that it was almost a chicken/egg question as to how much the artist was affected by the cultural time and place in which they lived and how much was personal. Are there ways artists today can creatively respond honestly to the real world without being pulled under by it personally?  

It’s such a big question, isn’t it? One of the goals of my research is to puzzle together some general themes that affect artists with specific mental health conditions in order to offer individual artists some tips, support, and solutions for when challenges impact their art. So, for example, it’s common that depression creates fatigue, which reduces the ability to actually create, and one of the tips I can offer is to find portable, easily-doable art forms that don’t require a lot of set-up (choosing crochet instead of setting up a sewing machine, choosing watercolors and a sketchpad instead of oil paint and a canvas.) This is a pretty general example but the idea is to ultimately come up with a range of solutions for what people face.

I share this as relevant to your bigger question to note that my perspective is that it’s not “bad” that we have mental health experiences that change or impact our creativity. It’s all about figuring out what the impact is for us as individuals and how we want to work with that to make the most out of our art as well as our holistic health. I don’t think we can or should just try to stop all symptoms forever and have some constant peace and happiness where we joyfully create. That doesn’t seem realistic to me.

Just like we can’t separate ourselves from our minds, we can’t really separate ourselves from our experiences in the world. We are going to be impacted, informed, affected, altered, shaped by the intersectional experiences we have related to various aspects of identity and environment. How that impacts each of us differs, but I don’t think we can deny that we’re impacted. So to “creatively respond honestly to the real world without being pulled under by it personally” … I think that’s a matter of figuring out for yourself what the impact is and has been and what you want to do with that moving forward. Some people will want to make the crux of that their life’s work through their art. Some people will want to create art that is as separate from that as possible.

Each person’s experience of the role of art is going to be different. In terms of practical advice to someone who might ask me directly about creating art about difficult topics without being pulled under by it, I would say this:

  • ● Ask yourself honestly (and often) whether creating art is helping or harming your mental health. If there’s harm, how can you mitigate the harm? For example, people who create art to process trauma can heal tremendously but the act can also be triggering. In such a case, pausing the work until it can be done in a therapeutic setting might be wise. Or changing your own setting, your materials, your approach.
  • ● Practice balanced self-care as much as possible. I tend to get really immersed in my writing at the expense of other things if I’m not careful. So, I’m careful to make sure that I get some fresh air and read books just for pleasure and do other things than just dwell on the work.
  • ● Find community. Artists can stay solo so much of the time but it helps a lot to be in community with people who have some of the same experiences or background that you do.

I also wonder how much of a role the availability of or lack of mental healthcare played in the lives of the artists you described… like Basquiat, I can’t help but wonder if he’d had access to a doctor who was not white would he still be painting today? Do you have any thoughts about diversity in mental healthcare? Is it better nowadays?

Oh so interesting that you picked Basquiat. I thought for sure you were about to name one of the artists from further back in history – for example, Richard Dadd who had no access to the kind of medication that sometimes helps people with schizophrenia today. But Basquiat is a great example of a more contemporary individual. And he shows how it’s complicated because it’s not just that he had no person of color as a doctor or therapist but really that there were such few other Black men in the art world then at all.

Is it better now? …

I want to start by acknowledging that I’m a cis-gender white female from a middle class background. So, I work to be aware of diversity issues particularly within the art and mental health fields, but I am limited to some extent by the privilege inherent in my own experience.


With that in mind … I think that it’s better but that we have a long way to go. There’s more representation of different types of diversity among therapists. There’s more training within the field about cultural considerations. And there’s decreasing stigma among many groups that previously tended to avoid therapy because it wasn’t culturally accepted, so more people of diverse backgrounds are benefiting from therapy. With the availability of telehealth, people from diverse backgrounds living across the US may find it easier than before to access mental health services from therapists representative of their own backgrounds. So, yes, it’s better.

But all that being said … a lot of issues still remain. When I personally have looked for a therapist vs. a psychologist vs. a psychiatrist, I have found that a majority of therapists are still white women, psychologists tend to be white men and women, and psychiatrists are mostly white men. That’s my personal experience here in the Bay Area. And when you factor in all of the other levels of intersectionality including income, there’s even more work to do. And then there are niche aspects of this topic – like mental health care (or lack thereof) in prisons which are disproportionately filled with people of color from low-income backgrounds. So, much work left to do …

In my own artistic life I’m aware of the positive changes in my mental health- and in my creative output – by relocating away from a conservative state that actively discriminates against women, LGBTQ and deafness and to a more liberal state where being female, LGBTQ and deaf doesn’t matter. I feel like in my new home there’s a place for my voice and my creativity is welcome. When we were thinking about moving I did wonder how the absence of actively struggling against society would affect my artwork. I was glad that you pointed out in your book that creating art is a way to cope with difficulties. It definitely is! I also think I saw you hint at artists, Yayoi Kusama and Alice Neel to name two, who were also creating art as a way to triumph. Did I really see that? Care to elaborate on art making as a way of coping and as a way of celebrating?

Oh, I think you touch on so many important things here. First of all, I grew up in Tucson and although Arizona is conservative, Tucson is liberal. When I was 26, I moved to San Francisco for no other reason than that I love it here and thrive creatively here. We have our problems (income disparity, a lack of racial/cultural diversity in comparison with large cities like New York) but for the most part it’s obviously a liberal place with opportunities for women, LGBTQ+ support, etc. And I really can’t imagine living somewhere that didn’t offer that.

Your story about your own move made me think of the moves that the artists in the book, and other artists I have researched made, and the impact on their art and mental health. For example, Georgia O’Keeffe had business/art success in New York but the city wasn’t good for her mentally, so she would often leave for quieter places, ultimately relocating to New Mexico. Julia Cameron of The Artist’s Way is another author who writes about dividing her time between those same two places. Yayoi Kusama went to New York to make art but ultimately went back to Japan to inpatient mental health care. I think each artist has to answer for themselves the question of what “place” means to their mental health as well as to their art. For me, I hope to always be in San Francisco, and I believe that it’s good for my art and mental health to be here for many reasons … but it’s also a very expensive city to support myself in with writing and the financial stressors do impact both my mental health and my creativity.

Before moving on, I really want to highlight something else you said here: “I did wonder how the absence of actively struggling against society would affect my artwork.” That’s so interesting and I hope you’ll share more about that in your own writing. My immediate reaction is, “oh we still have plenty to struggle against even here.” My second, more considered, thought is that consciously or subconsciously I think that a lot of artists with mental health challenges worry that without their struggles they aren’t going to create great art. I think this directly relates to the trope of the tortured artist, which is where so much research into the relationship between art and mental health has been over the decades.  

That’s key to what interests me about this topic: would we still be moved to create great art if we weren’t suffering? It’s what historically has been a challenge for a lot of people with bipolar disorder because medication might level them out but then leave them feeling numb and unable to create in the same way … the high of hypomania offers some people a level of creativity that they miss when they don’t have it. I think we’re always struggling with something as humans – whether that’s internal or external or a combination of both. I think that informs the art that we create.  

Okay, so I’m giving a really long-winded answer to your question because I thought your points were so interesting. But what you actually asked about was “art making as a way of coping and as a way of celebrating.” You pointed out Kusama and Neel, two great examples. And I’d argue that to some degree every artist in the book does this. I think it’s the aspect of art that most mental health experts understand as well … art as therapy, art as healing. Life is really hard and making art and even viewing art can be ways to make it less hard, to cope with it, to, as you say, even triumph. Neel’s portraits really celebrate the different people she encountered, something I loved seeing when I visited an exhibit of her work, and her own famous nude self-portrait from her later years really speaks “triumph” to me. She has said that she felt suicidal all her life and yet only had one attempt in her youth and had a decades-long art-making career.

What did you drink while you worked on the manuscript? Did you have “help” from a cat or a dog?

Coffee with cream in the mornings, red wine at night, water when I’d remember that it’s important to drink water 🙂

When I first began the book, I had my dog Katara who really was my soulmate dog, but she passed early on in the writing of it. Before she passed, I had gotten my puppy, Bumi, so I still had him. He’s about 3 and a half now and we have a one year old pup named Kya as well. She’s always trying to “help” with Zoom calls and podcast interviews so I usually have to do those outside of the house 🙂 They’re great, though, and really do help in the sense that they remind me to stop writing sometimes and just be present in the moment with them. They’re rescues from the Korean dog meat trade industry.

Did you do anything- like read or go for walks- to help keep yourself inspired and excited about the topic as you worked?

The topic was then and still is constantly circulating in my brain, and I remain regularly excited about it. But specifically what I did for inspiration while actively working on the book was watch movies related to the artists. It was something that felt less like work than the reading and writing but was still inspiring.  

In normal times I probably would have gone to more art shows and theatre events but I wrote much of it during the pandemic lockdown.  

What was something you learned as a result of your work on this book that’s relevant to your own work as a writer?

It really helped me see my own work as a body of work that’s larger than the one thing I’m writing right at this moment. For each artist, I would really try to look at a big swath of their body of work. From that retrospective perspective, you can see a whole lifetime of work (albeit a short lifetime for a few of the artists.) This is alongside a lifetime of challenges, including for some (but not all) of the artists a lifetime of really challenging mental health symptoms. It reminded me that a life has so many ups and downs, ebbs and flows, summers and winters … and that so does the creative work. So in times when it’s hard for me to write, I remember that what I’m creating is a full body of work, not one article or one book.

What is one of your favorite self-care go-to techniques especially when you were writing this manuscript? What helps you now as you promote your book? Is it the same or different?

Massage. It’s one of the few things I really splurge on regularly. I spend a lot of time sitting at a computer and no matter how much I try to remember to stretch and take breaks and sit up better, I basically always have aching shoulders. So I go get massages fairly regularly. In fact, that was the thing I missed the most in the pandemic

Is there one section or part of your book that feels most satisfying to you, something that really is on target for your topic?

Ooh, good question. Honestly this book feels like just the tip of the iceberg for the research I’m continuing to do. I am satisfied with it in many ways but also see all the things I want to add to the next thing I do. Overall, though, I think what satisfies me more than a specific section is that I was able to bring in a range of different examples of how art helped and hindered different people and how mental health impacted art in many different ways. I hope that this opens up a conversation that goes deeper and broader.

What questions do you wish someone would ask you about your book?

The book went through a lot of changes in the editing process so I wish people would ask what isn’t in the book that I wanted to be in there. Although the answer to that is long and probably requires another book to say it all 🙂 But the short answer to that would be that I included “fun facts” for every chapter that didn’t make it into the final cut.

For example, from the Georgia O’Keeffe chapter:


Fun fact: Georgia O’Keeffe corresponded with a number of other artists with mental health issues. She was an early mentor to Yayoi Kusama who, like her, struggled with anxiety. She corresponded with Andy Warhol who has been suggested to have had a hoarding disorder, which is an anxiety disorder. And when she was in the hospital for depression, Frida Kahlo wrote to her.

Who did the illustrations for your book?

The cover design is by Molly Shields. The illustrations are by Tania Houtzager. And the book design overall is by Danielle D. Farmer. The publisher, Schiffer, organized all of that.

Where can we buy a copy?


On Amazon or from Schiffer … I hope that if you buy one, you find something inspiring in the pages. And if you like what you read, it really does help to leave positive reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.

Thank you Kathryn for writing such a thoughtful and encouraging book! And thank you for taking the time to answer all of my questions!

This post is part of The Artist’s Mind virtual book tour which includes other author interviews, book excerpts, guest posts, giveaways and more. Visit this post to find all of the stops on the tour. The book tour stop just prior to the one here in my blog was at Great Books + Great Minds! Here’s another book tour stop with a wonderful  synopsis titled “Seven Mental Health Lessons from The Artist’s Mind“

Thanks everyone for reading, sharing and commenting! I hope you’ve found it enjoyable. I’ll clear away our coffee cups and see everyone again next Monday!

Take care of your minds this week!

Thinking outside boxes and The Artist’s Mind by Kathryn Vercillo

A Creative Life, artistic inspirations, books, Emotional health, fine art, life of the mind, mental health, reading, sculpture 3d, sketchbook, Sustainable creativity, words and pictures

This week I realized there are many cardboard box color variations. In my studio alone I count 10 different colors of brown box material. So the phrase “Thinking Outside The Box” has been on my mind and I’ve begun a new 8 inch wooden cube sculpture by painting it to look like a cardboard box. In the photo below my in progress sculpture is in the background and in the foreground is a box I’m using as a model for the flap-fold edges. (A different box was the model for the color…)

Here’s some of my thinking: I noticed that many commercial cardboard boxes have writing on them. In my city’s downtown there are murals on the sides of many of the buildings. Some of the murals have stylized text on them. The act of writing things down is a way to think…

So I began thinking “what about creating a character who is painting a mural with lettering on the outside of a cardboard box”?

Below is one of my sketchbook pages related to this project. I chose an elephant character because I also thought of the “memory of an elephant” phrase. That led to thoughts of how both memory and imagination are integral parts of creativity and the ability to think outside the boxes.

I did contemplate a cat character and cat boxes … as you see below my cat made certain I thought of this.

He even pointed out, by rubbing his chin emphatically on the box edge, that his favorite box is lovely shade of brown…

My cat’s chosen box is indeed a very nice brown color – and I do love cats – however I’m going with the elephant character in my artwork for the reasons described above… sorry kitty.

“Humph” pouts the cat.

Anyhoo, in addition to the meanings of particular words and phrases as I’m working on my sculpture I’m thinking about thinking itself; being creative, being logical and utilizing critical thinking skills. Generally I think and read regularly about mental and emotional health for many reasons but chiefly because our brains and thought processes are our main tools for creativity.

Creativity itself can be a tool for good mental health. Yes, there’s a chicken/egg aspect here – but regardless of whichever comes first I want to use my own thinking processes as well as I can. So besides reading philosophy or about mental health whenever I’m reading fiction, biographies and history I’m looking for the thinking, the words and actions over time that led to the events described as well as the responses to those events.

Recently I became aware of a new book “The Artist’s Mind” by Kathryn Vercillo. Because this book is directly on the topic that is on my mind so gosh-darn often I asked the author if I could chat with her about her book and share our conversation publicly. She kindly said yes!

Kathryn Vercillo even sent me a reader’s copy in a mail art envelope that she made! It was a fun touch! As of writing this blog post I’ve read her book and we’ve begun talking! [To somewhat reciprocate her generosity as well as to let her know where I’m coming from I sent her a copy of the book I illustrated for a psychiatrist “Dr. Bob’s Emotional Repair Program First Aid Kit“.]

About the author: Kathryn Vercillo is a full time writer with a master’s degree in psychological studies. She is the owner of Create Me Free, a small business that researches the link between art and mental health in order to educate, inspire and empower artists to achieve financial and creative success while maintaining well being. She is the author of eight books, including Crochet Saved My Life, which is about the health benefits of handcrafting. When not creating, she’s enjoying life in San Francisco with her loved ones and her rescue pups.

We’re talking together about the content of Kathryn’s new book The Artist’s Mind and the many ways artists throughout history dealt with issues in the real world – stressors like illness, poverty, war, racism, bigotry etc – and kept creating their work. Naturally we’re also discussing coping skills artists can use today!

I’m enjoying a front row seat for her virtual book tour – it’s an amazing community effort – and I’m honored to have a backstage pass, so to speak, by getting to do an interview!

I look forward to sharing our finished conversation next Monday Aug 7th!

See you next Monday!

Professional Dogs, puzzles, holiday box and figure ground relationships

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I got my Covid19 booster shot and thought of the relationship between individuals and community. That brought jigsaw puzzles to mind. Quite a number of people were getting vaccinated the same time I was and it got me to thinking of how each one of us fit into the local community in some interlocking way.

After getting the poke I had to stay for 30 minutes to make sure I wasn’t going to have a reaction. Since I was thinking about puzzles I got online and shared some jigsaw puzzles I’ve designed that are on my Zazzle shop.

Puzzles on Clancy’s Zazzle shop – https://www.zazzle.com/collections/puzzles_with_art_by_clancy-119829479077078759

Then, after sharing the puzzles, I kept thinking about the mechanism of human perceptions. When working on a jigsaw one shifts back and forth between looking at the colors and patterns on the puzzle pieces to looking at the shapes of the pieces themselves. Somewhat similarly we – well, most of us – shift back and forth between seeing ourselves as an individual person and seeing ourselves as part of a much larger community.

That got me thinking about optical illusions and the ways design, specifically the design of narratives, the design of governments, can dovetail with our perception mechanisms and our behavior choices in a which comes first the chicken or the egg sense.

I sat in the medical center waiting area trying to remember – without using Google – the name of the guy who did the pioneering work on the perception of figure-ground relationships. I tried to remember the name of the optical illusion that illustrated this figure-ground discovery and the name of what the switch of perception in a figure-ground relationship is called.

I didn’t remember the guy’s name but I did remember the book I had at home that would tell me! So when I got home I looked it up: Edgar Rubin is the guy, a Danish psychologist working in 1915, and Gestalt Switch is the name of the perception change he studied. The book I looked this up in once I got home is called Universal Principles of Design by Lidwell, Holden and Butler.

I felt fine when I got home. My arm was hardly sore. I did feel a bit tired and decided on a day of indulgence. That means spending most of the day reading! My spouse documented the occasion – see below. The next day I was tired and had a slight headache. While I did do some work I mostly read books the next day too.

I’m reading “The Book” by Alan Watts slowly as there is a lot in it to think about. I read, fairly quickly, two wonderful fiction works that pair well with lap blankets, a warm dachshund and hot tea: The Nature Of Fragile Things and A Psalm For The Wild Built. Both of these titles feel like a hug from a dear friend.

Despite both my spouse and I getting our booster shots and being busy rearranging furniture and stuff for workmen to make house repairs I did manage to get some illustrations done for my in progress childrens book project “The Professional Dog”. Here are three together.

Below are closer views of each of these illustrations along with the text line I plan to use in the book.

The Fireman’s dog is a friendly dog.
The Framer’s dog is a famous dog.
The Gallery Owner’s dog is a gallant dog.

I did not have time to do one of my Creativity Chats this week. Also, since one of the home repairs is happening in the kitchen – there are no creative approaches to food that could be discussed or depicted here with glee. (I’m so looking forward to having my kitchen back!)

As I wrote in my last post my 8 inch cube shaped holiday box project for an upcoming exhibit at the Caplan Art Designs gallery is finished except for the final coats of varnish and we’re still waiting for Gallery permission to post publicly about it. Below is my art studio supervisor dachshund waiting very patiently. Mostly.

In addition to jigsaw puzzles and the figure-ground relationship shift of mind I’ve been thinking of how I use that mental shift method with words and images to stimulate my creativity.

For example when I began my holiday box project I listed, in longhand on my legal pad, over 20 items that are square or cube shaped. After making that list I worked in my sketchbook playing with images related to these words. (I’ve posted some of these in a past blog post) Below is a photo of part of my handwritten list – and I trust it doesn’t give too much away. 😁

I’ve also been thinking of figure-ground type shifting we do in other ways: inner life/social life, old/young, self/family, indoors/outdoors, leisure/work, mind/body, survive/thrive… I could go on listing these kinds of interrelated mental shifts but this is enough.

Anyway, of that list of shifts physical and mental health are important to me for both living-well reasons and to my creativity. Also important to me is the topic of doing a really good job of growing old (there’s a wonderful essay by Bertrand Russell here).

The main reason I create my artwork is because it makes me smile. I post publicly because it may give a friend a smile. And my friend Liz Gaffreau recently posted this which in turn made me smile. That’s why we’re here, I think, to love people and to be loved. That may sound somewhat purposeless – but this purposeless loving is the very attitude that leads to being creative, to playing well with oneself and with others.

This blog and my Creativity Chats on my YouTube channel are more of my small efforts to playfully encourage creativity in both myself and others – it’s one of my ways to participate in a creative community. I want the poets, the novelists, the painters, the quilters, the creatives of all kinds to be as well – physically and mentally – as possible. I want this because it is by play, by stories and beauty, that we all will get through difficult times. Mere physical survival is not enough. If I can encourage a poet or novelist to keep writing then perhaps their words will also help someone else keep going. Other writers work certainly helps me keep going. Each effort of creativity is a butterfly effect of sorts.

So, yes, my work feels urgent to me. It’s the shape and color of my jigsaw piece.

Please take good care of yourself this week. See you next Monday.

Dragon, the creativity cat and baby blankets

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In my last post I talked about how I manage art projects and time. I have an heretical approach and I was asked for more details. Here goes:

One of my longtime interests is in how humans think, learn and how to maintain good mental health. I read on the topics often. Here’s a few of my bookshelves full of books on these topics.

I’ve learned that humans tend to learn best by hearing stories or anecdotes or metaphors or allegories. Or by seeing examples or demonstrations. Rarely does a direction “do it like this” get followed. This includes self-directions related to art projects and time management. Even if the direction is followed often the purpose for “doing it like this” is rarely fully understood at the time. This includes self-directions.

Let me tell a story to illustrate what I mean: Once there was a mother, with a very tiny kitchen, who always cut her pot roasts in half before cooking them. She taught her daughter to cook pot roast by explaining and demonstrating. Her daughter grew up and had a daughter of her own. One day the grandmother was visiting. The daughter was in her very large kitchen demonstrating cooking a pot roast to her young daughter. She said proudly “In our family we always cut the roast in half first. Isn’t that right mom?” The grandmother replied “Oh, no! The only reason I cut my roast in half was that I didn’t have a pot or a stove big enough to hold a whole roast!”

Being aware of this attribute of human thought and attention I approach self-directions about my own art projects and time use rather sideways. More details below.

The other interesting thing I’ve learned about human thinking is that good mental health and happiness often happens while we’re busy doing something else. Often with, and for, other people. I think the same is true of creativity.

Similarly when humans feel good about, curious about or interested in something they’re more likely to do it. If we make activities we want to do fun and easier to do it increases the likelihood that they’ll be done.

So I give myself directions about my projects in terms of what I *want* to do rather than what I must do and I accept that I may not fully understand what I’m doing, or why, until after the project is completed. I’m also careful to keep lots of projects in various stages of production so that I’m “busy doing something else” and not as likely to get too focused (and too critical) about one project.

I’ve mentioned it before but my approach to creative projects and time management has it’s roots in a mental health book I illustrated “Dr Bob’s Emotional Repair Program First Aid Kit“. Below are a few of the pages  that relate to what I’m blogging about today.

https://store.bookbaby.com/bookshop/book/index.aspx?bookURL=Dr-Bobs-Emotional-Repair-Program-First-Aid-Kit1

For much of my creative life I have taken these concepts about human thinking/emotional health and applied them to my overall approach to creative projects and time management. It has helped me to consistently get projects done in a sustainable and enjoyable way. I say my approach is heretical because I have known art coaches and art teachers who advocate, for example, “strict discipline to do one thing till it’s done” as if we are machines and I strongly reject that notion. That’s too much like lunging and grabbing at a stray cat. That’s a sure fire way to spook the cat – or the ideas – away!

My approach to creativity is similar to the method for befriending a shy cat.  You see a cat hiding in the bushes and you can’t see enough of the cat to know what breed it is, whether it’s healthy or not or whether it’s wearing a collar. So you get some cat treats and with very slow movements place the treats strategically to coax the cat into visibility. You remove yourself, slowly, to a short distance where you do your best to act as if you’re *not* interested in the cat. With patience the cat will emerge at it’s own pace and you can see it. No lunging and grabbing is necessary on your part!

My morning work in my sketchbook is akin to the cat treats strategically placed. I wake up and I just play with words in my poetry sketchbook or with images in my mixed media sketchbook. I do *not* take these efforts seriously. This is just something fun to do while still half asleep waiting while the coffee percolates. Of course I hope something good will come from this work and often it does but that “good” is to be determined much later. At the time I’m drawing or writing in my sketchbook  I’m thinking of it as a fun gentle way to ease into the day.

I literally keep these sketchbooks handy in my breakfast nook along with a few pens and a small gouache watercolor set. The sketchbooks and the watercolor set are small 3 x 5 inches or so. Seldom have I spent more than 10 minutes on these efforts. You see, I’m busy doing something else besides creating – I’m making breakfast and eating it with my spouse. But I have this regular habit of luring ideas into my sketchbook.

Here’s a few recent sketchbook pages.

When my idea-cat begins to emerge from several weeks of my sketchbook morning work I’ll begin gently, tentatively, feeding and petting the idea. I do this by reading books somewhat related to my idea, by writing about my idea on a legal pad, brainstorming in a what-if-I manner.

Here’s a look at my legal pad list that eventually became my book This Rabbit and here’s my portfolio page about that project including links to blog posts detailing my work process for that project.

After doing enough sketchbook work and legal pad what-if work that I feel I’ve got something, some idea emerging into visibility, I’ll sometimes draw a series of thumbnail drawings on loose paper in color to try different color arrangements. Or perhaps I make a folded paper dummy of a book idea. Perhaps I’ll make larger drawings – redrawing images from my sketchbook onto art paper. I am still just playing around and seeing what could happen.

The intention is to test the idea in my sketchbooks to see if it might become  something more than a sketch in my sketchbook. A bit more time is spent, 20 or 30 mins in this phase of idea attracting. These writings and drawings are kept in a 3 ring binder by topic or perhaps with a tentative working title related to what my idea may become: an art exhibit series? A childrens book? A greeting card??? Things are left very open ended.

Still I am busy doing other things – specifically my main art project of the moment – the binder is just a way to keep all of my notions on a theme handy in one spot.  This is like giving that still shy cat a temporary foster home. This way we’ll keep track of kitty, give it some time to adjust, learn about kitty and see how it goes.

Here’s my shelf of 3 ring binders

Here’s some photos from the 3 ring binder for my currently in progress “How To Draw A Dragon” project. There are several folded paper book dummies, several rewrites of the poem and many drawings.

If a 3 ring binder project collection goes well and the idea begins to show promise – by ‘promise I mean ‘potential to be fun’ – then it may move to the “main project” status. The idea cat has been adopted…however we’re still in the probationary period. Anything could happen. This is where I currently am on my ” How To Draw A Dragon” project.

Here’s a few of the “Dragon” pages I did this week.

A main project has the serious art supplies out for it. It has the studio space devoted to it. Time during a day will be set aside for it, but not an entire day, I mean an hour or two. Time is set aside in a task-oriented way not a from-when-to-when on the clock way. I have a master list of tasks to be done on a main project and each day I pick from 1 to 3 of those tasks and set them as a goal to accomplish that day. That’s the establishing a working rhythm that I spoke of last post.

The main project is taken a tiny bit more seriously as in I will erase and redraw whereas in my sketchbooks, legal pads or binders I’ll leave a drawing however it is. I will also write and rewrite with attention to spelling and grammar on a main project. As I go I’m feeling my way along. The uncertainty is normal. Perhaps my idea cat isn’t ready for such attention. Or perhaps it will thrive on it. We will take it slowly and see. My “How To Draw A Dragon” so far seems to be thriving meaning it is still growing and becoming and I’m having fun with it.

Below is a studio photo showing that “How To Draw A Dragon” is filling my easel and overflowing into nearby surfaces. My art supplies used for this project are left out and handy. I don’t open windows in my studio so no breeze disturbs my papers. If you were to visit my house today we would stay far away from my studio because I have things in a careful order for my projects sake. My cat and dog are trained to not disturb things in my studio. There’s a door to my studio and I use it to remain undisturbed. A main project filling the studio is a tender kitten. I handle gently. I have heard art coaches speak of clearing ones working area at the end of each workday — that’s another area where I heretically scream *nooooo!*

Even with the extra attention given to a main project I carefully keep it fun and playful. I will find ways to “feed” a project- to feed my unconscious mind – for example by reading books related to the topic I’m making art about. For my current How To Draw A Dragon project I’m reading about creativity – about creating poetry in particular- and the interplay between our left brains and right brains, between our inner adult selves and our inner child selves. The topical reading is kept up for a duration of a project as it helps with my focus and fun. I simply cannot stress this enough *keep a project fun* and the project will likely get finished.

Another helpful way I keep going on a main project is that I *dedicate* the project to someone – I give the project a purpose, a reason for being (something *not* related to money or fame). I give it something beyond myself. The person or people I dedicate my work to often never know. But I am busy making my main project *for* somebody. During this pandemic openly dedicating works, or embedding symbols a friend might recognize, has been a fun way to stay in touch.

Here’s the dedication page for my Dragon book. Dedications for my fine art most often just happens in my mind.

It may be that I work on something as a main project for a while and it stalls. The stall could happen at the 3 ring binder stage or earlier in the sketchbook stage. A project may fluidly move back and forth between these three stages over a lengthy time period. This is another part of my business of art/creative heresy – I think this fluidity is perfectly normal and fine! Uncertainty is okay! I see it as part of the creative process, part of the ways a creative mind (and a subconscious mind) naturally works. Human brains are not linear machines! This is another reason I work on multiple projects – one stalls and I shift attention to another until the stalled one wants attention again.

Very carefully as I’m in the process of making artwork I avoid any sweeping declarative statements, to myself or anyone else, like “this is dumb” or “this is awesome”. I use moderate language statements, if a statement is needed and I can’t avoid it, I’ll say something like “so far so good” or “it’s a fun challenge”. To make a hard sweeping definitive declaration like “this is horrible” is to force a still-in-progress project into a labled pigeon hole. What may not work as a painting might be a good greeting card. I don’t know yet! When a project is in process I may think I am making X only to discover when I’ve finished that I’ve made Y instead. I deliberately leave linguistic and mental room for such progress! (See my pot roast story above) Harsh declarations make it hard to extract a project from the dispair/elation and continue. It makes it harder to allow a work to change from a painting to a greeting card. I prefer to leave room for discovering and being surprised by what a project becomes. It’s more fun that way. I would no more force an art project to become something than I would force a stray cat to accept a grooming before feeding it and earning its trust.

Here’s more from Dr Bob about being careful about self talk.

https://store.bookbaby.com/bookshop/book/index.aspx?bookURL=Dr-Bobs-Emotional-Repair-Program-First-Aid-Kit1

The tendency all humans have to take things too seriously- even obsessively – is another reason why I deliberately have multiple projects at various stages. One main studio project -or possibly two main projects- at a time but several other projects are being developed in my sketchbooks, legal pads and binders. This helps me not be too “precious” about any one of them. I work on something a while then stop working *while it’s still fun* and do something else. I find it helpful to try to stop working before I am too fatigued, while I’m still interested or enjoying my work and then move on to something else.

So I am always busy “doing something else” which allows my idea-cats space to breathe without micro-attention. This method allows my subconscious mind to work on my projects. I can trust that my inner voice will say “oh, let’s work on this!” when the next part of my idea is ripe. I can trust that I will keep returning to a project until it is finished.

When a main studio project is finished there is usually another project in a binder that’s developed enough that it’s ready for attention at my easel. No force to finish or start a project is needed. No strictness. No machine-like “discipline”. Knowing and accepting the way human minds are naturally has worked well for me. I work with my brain not against it. I am just playing around with topics that interest me. Like most real life fur covered cats I can trust that my idea-cats will tell me when it’s dinner time.

Speaking of dinner. The outstanding dinner of the week was broccoli pasta. I was out of fettuccine so I used short noodles but the recipe in my Favorites So Far kitchen sketchbook is still yummy!

https://www.blurb.com/b/9759759-favorites-so-far

Earlier this year I was asked to make some gender neutral fabric designs and put them on my Spoonflower shop so someone could get fabric with my designs and sew some bibs and blankets for a new baby.

Here’s a photo of me working at that time on the fabric pattern.

Here’s the finished original art

This week I was given, by the person who had requested the fabric patterns, pictures of some of the finished baby things they’ve made and permission to post about them! It was lovely having something fun like this to post about as my Dragon project is still becoming and is in the gawky teenage stage and camera shy.

Where I tend to run out of time in a day is the social media promotion thing. And frankly there are times, especially when I’m busy, that I’d rather just do my art projects than talk about them. But talking about them is necessary and most of the time I enjoy doing it so… Anyway, I really appreciate it when people share what I post or when someone sends me photos of themselves with my fine art or artist books or share photos of what they sewed with my fabric designs! It helps and is such fun to see!

Anyway, here’s the photos of a burp cloth and a few blankets my friend created with my fabrics! They turned out so well!! The sewing is marvelous!

Hope this description of how I manage my art projects and deal with time was interesting and even helpful to you as you do your own creative projects! Have a creative week and I’ll see you next Monday.

Of odd hats flowers and books

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I’m practicing household surrealism as I work towards fine art exhibits later this year. Ordinary objects and plants are sources of inspiration.

Here’s a few sketchbook pages in which I’m playfully combining hats and plants.

Below are some primrose flowers a friend gave us. They sat on my table and I drew them and photographed them.

The flowers eventually became part of a hat in an acrylic painting I’ve titled “Of Sense”.

“Of Sense” – by Clancy- 10 x 8 inches- acrylic and collage on board

In my new series of artworks for exhibits at Burnt Bridge Cellars and Caplan Art Designs I’m using a bit of collage. The collage elements come from my old falling apart copy of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”.

I replaced that old Austen book with a newer intact copy. I’m enjoying my Austen collection. Just like a writer constructs a bibliography for a book being written I tend to have a bibliography behind my fine art exhibits. Jane Austen’s prominent in this year’s art bibliography … I plan to talk more about that in coming posts.

My sketchbooks also reveal what’s on my mind – and I’ll post pages from them too. My sketchbook pages in this post have quotes about dealing with emotions. Jane Austen’s work is about emotions and the social comedy of dealing with ones own emotions or reading the emotions of other people. So I’ve been thinking about that…

My most recent published sketchbook “Another Sketchbook” is a prequel to my current sketchbook and fine art series. You can see it here. Spoiler alert: it’s lots of drawings about books and cultivating one’s mental life.

It’s nothing new for me to be as fully my odd self as possible – in fact I’m doing this as I work towards my new fine art exhibits – but I saw this image below on Austin Kleon‘s Instagram – and I thought heck yes. So I’m going to continue to be odd with household things for a while as I contemplate emotional health and Jane Austen out loud – so to speak.

If you haven’t seen Austin Kleon’s books, blog or newsletter it’s worth a look.

My recent children’s book “This Rabbit” has been read over 11 thousand times on Storyberries.com as of this writing! Wow! Thank you! 🤗 And yes, I plan to make more kids books … as one of my followers you’ll be the first to know. But for a while there’ll be odd household surrealism from me in this space and I hope you enjoy it.

See you next Monday? Stay weird and know that you’re loved by the universe.

the eggplant technique of creativity

A Creative Life, art techniques, artist book, artistic inspirations, author illustrator, food in art, graphic narrative, illustration, mental health, story, Sustainable creativity, visual story, visual thinking, words and pictures

“Feelings are guides not gods” is a phrase from “Dr. Bob’s Emotional Repair Program First Aid Kit”, the new print version I’m currently working on. The concept is illustrated by this story:

EggplantSM

Here’s some text from the book related to the artwork: “Do you think that feelings keep you from doing things? More good news – they don’t! We’ve all done many things we didn’t feel like doing – such as going to school or work when we didn’t feel like it – which proves that: Feelings don’t keep us from doing things. Moreover, when you do that thing you feel scared to do, you are nourishing your courage…… Remember, you are responsible for your feelings not responsible to them.” (see the Eggplant story above)

Cultivating and maintaining a high level of Emotional Intelligence is essential to well-being (and creativity). Good mental health is about more than just the absence of mental illness – it is the presence of good coping skills, being able to self-regulate, to see feelings as a guide whether the feelings are your own or someone else’s. (Btw: there’s a good article about teaching Emotional Intelligence here.)

I’ve found Dr. Bob’s concept of “feelings are guides not gods” applies to creativity, and the creative life, as well. Whether or not I feel a particular way doesn’t have to affect whether or not I make my artwork. My feelings are not a “god” to be obeyed. If it’s time to work in the studio, however short or long the time-to-work I’ve allotted is, off I go to my creative work no matter how happy, sad or inspired I feel at the moment.

Where I use my feelings as a “guide” is when I’m out in the world on the lookout for possible art-topics. I keep my inner eye open for things that capture my curiosity and my imagination. Then I keep a list of those things and my feelings related to them in my sketchbooks for future art-making. My use of this “feelings as guide” technique has helped me create many helpful guidebooks, so to speak, for my own creative life.  I find it a sustainable creative practice.

All that aside I’d like to add that eggplant can, once in a while, be a very good vegetable – especially as eggplant parmesan.