Where to find Caitlin:

• Instagram
• Website
• Facebook
• Caitlin is based in Perth Creative Exchange
• Caitlin’s Dissertation

Content warnings: The discussion includes cancer, death of a loved one, grief, disability, surgery, medications, chronic mental illness, and suicide.

Where to find Caitlin:

• Instagram
• Website
• Facebook
• Caitlin is based in Perth Creative Exchange

The video in question can be found here

Alex revisits this 2024 episode where he takes aim at the evils and excesses of art speak via Tolstoy, Artificial Intelligence, and the science of Bullshit.

• Artspeak. The Bullshit Language of Art
• ChatGPT is Bullshit
• On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt
• What is Art? by Leo Tolstoy. This is a PDF of the original text.

• Buy your books from bookshop.org
• Fantasy Art Techniques by Boris Vallejo (Paper Tiger, 1 85028 005 3/978-1850280064)
• Jenny Saville - The Anatomy of Painting (National Portrait Gallery, 978-1-85514-594-8)

More episodes of The Confusion Matrix can be found on YoutTube wherever you get your podcast.

• Fake Alex created using Riverside
• Sad music by Surprising_Media

Come chat to me on Bluesky

https://paulinetait.com

Instagram

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poet/ann-mackinnon/

• keithbroomfield.com
• YouTube
• Bluesky
• Instgram

Val’s website

Notes

• The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes
• More info on Mary Shelley’s scary sojourn
• More info on Panizzon and the genesis of Ritalin

You might want to listen to the earlier episode on Gen AI and creativity first: https://aami.alexloveless.co.uk/therapeutic-outlet-ai-will-not-replace-you/

Also, remember to subscribe to my substack for even more content: https://artagainstmentalillness.substack.com/

Best listened to after parts 1 and 2 of this series, which were helpfully recapped in the last episode of this podcast!

By way of Aesop’s fable, The Ass and the Lion’s Skin, Alex explores the nature of identity, and how we all, especially autistics, wear a mask from time to time to hide our true selves. He discusses the indelible marks that doing so imposes on our future selves, how this leaks out into our art, and why donkeys are awesome.

• Alex Andreou’s Podyssey

Whimsical music courtesy of BackgroundMusicForVideos on Pixabay

Alex chats with Owen Moxey about the dauntingly wide world, both fantasy and real-life, of table top gaming, and how rediscovering Warhammer miniature painting helped him navigate the physical and psychological challenges of successive diagnoses of Functional neurological disorder, autism and ADHD.

Alex wonders the Scottish countryside and laments the lack of recognition for illustrators and fantastical artists, despite their significant contributions to art and culture.

Alex christens a new type of episodes called “Walking Therapy”, despite the fact that several episodes of the kind have already been published. In this episode he discusses the wide range of styles and approaches to drawing he observed in a workshop for kids, and ponders why this early diversity doesn’t seem to carry through to the commercial art world.

Alex takes a dreamy stroll through the woods and discusses how listening to challenging music like Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier can be beneficial to creativity, why finishing things is not that important, and why your destination is not the point of your journey.

Alex pays tribute to the legend that was Ozzy Osbourne and the lessons that we can learn from his incredible life and work in our journey of creativity and mental wellness.

Alex reads his short book of art and verse, “The Fall”, a raw depiction of a recent mental health crisis and its effect on him and those around him. Content warning: this episode contains references to depression, anxiety, panic, autistic meltdowns and shutdown, suicide, and likely some other mental illness related stuff, and in a higher dose than usual. Consider yourself warned.

A link to download a PDF copy of The Fall can be found here. If anyone is interested in a physical copy of The Fall, contact me via one of the social apps listed on that website (Facebook or Bluesky are likely to get my attention the quickest) and if enough folks request, I will get it listed to buy.

In stark contrast to the barely controlled chaos of part 1, Alex gets chill and takes us on a windy wonder through the Scottish countryside and extols the virtues of getting away from your daily grind, freeing your mind and finding new stimulus to fuel your creative journey. Be forewarned, the sound quality on some of this is a bit rough, so apologies in advance!

Alex recounts a recent experience where the appearance of a honey bee swarm lead to the sale of an artwork.

• The eatery mentioned in the episode

Alex chats to Tom Langlands and Lesley Buchan Donald about their ambitious projects to get the Perthshire public creating, writing and performing. We hear the story of how they found each other and forged their creative partnership, engaging and energising the community to help them deliver their stunning theatre shows, and giving a platform to all ages and abilities to share their creative outpourings. Lesley discusses using the power of creativity as a therapy for Parkinson’s and as a welcome alternative to her prior, stressed out vet’s existence, and we discuss using Auchterarder’s rich history to bind it all together.

For updates on Tom and Lesley’s activities and events:

• Stanzalone Facebook Page
• Auchterader Picturehouse CREW Facebook Page

Alex has been distracted, big time. This is the story of failing to get things done, getting insulted by a belligerent AI, and having to set priorities or risk total logjam. Part one is a noirish parable of fall from grace. Coming soon, part two is all about redemption.

Alex talks to Peter Laisen, founder of the charity Auchterarder Picturehouse CREW, about creativity in the community, inspiring the young and old to get involved, the challenges and motivations of restoring an Art Deco period cinema, and how to make a big difference from small starts.

Alex recounts his recent life changes, muses on hope, change and laptop stands all while tussles with a malignant, omniscient AI Alex. Spooky!

Alex introduces his new cover image and intro track and takes us on a journey through their creation, meandering through the creative commons, via the enchanted lands of the Amen Break before falling into the foetid swamp of copyright to learn that sharing is indeed caring. Amen!

• The full track of Poor Me Blues by Edna Hicks
• A brilliant introduction to the Amen Break and its inmportance to music
• A beat by beat breakdown of the Amen Break
• Tim Harford’s Cautionary Tales on the tragix story of Men at Work

Alex goes deep, discussing the role of novelty and scarcity in art, how beauty emerges from complexity, and how diversity is essential for creativity to exist. The question is, how does all that relate to Lego, James Joyce, sports cars, John Carpenter’s The Thing, and perms.

Alex introduces his new podcast Creative Squares where he and Mark Burden discuss the intersection between art, science, maths and technology. In episode 1 they discuss the fascinating concept of the Golden Ratio, exploring its significance in art, nature, and mathematics. They delve into the Fibonacci sequence and its relationship to the Golden Ratio, questioning whether these compositional paradigms represent a true aesthetic beauty or merely a conformity that limits creativity.

Alex discusses how attention is the most valuable commodity in the world and asks whether you are using yours wisely.

Alex talks to comedy improv artist Jen DeHaan about the transformative power of improvisational comedy

From his studio Alex discusses the importance of understanding your own learning style and recounts his own experiences of learning how to learn.

Alex, while discovering he’s really not a closet fan of romance literature, finds that there is a certain magic to doing one thing really well, through a journey via identity crisis and Barbara Cartland.

Alex talks to artist Caitlin Hanna, about grief, mental health, and neurodiversity. Caitlin discusses her art as therapy, creating zines, and the challenges of emotional expression in art.

Content warnings: The discussion includes cancer, death of a loved one, grief, disability, surgery, medications, chronic mental illness, and suicide.

Where to find Caitlin:

• Instagram
• Website
• Facebook
• Caitlin is based in Perth Creative Exchange

Alex discusses his approach to 2025 and most definitely doesn’t make any New Year’s resolutions. He rants quite a lot but also says lots of nice, calming things too.

A video version of this episode is available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/TjvTZtxikYM

Alex talks to Rob Parkinson aka The Painting Nomad about his epic artistic odysseys across the UK, flat horizon deficiently, the healing powers of the great outdoors, and using art to fund the nomadic lifestyle.

Find Rob at:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Etsy

Alex revisits the first 6 months, 25 episodes and 495 minutes of the podcast. In part 2 Alex recaps and remembers the remaining episodes of 2024 and tells us of his outlook for 2025.

Alex talks about the intersection between art, science, maths and technology with artist Mark Burden. In this eclectic chat they discuss Alan Turing, AI, beauty in the mundane, art across multiple mediums, the metaphysics of walking, Christmas cards and how he used art to help recover from burnout.

The video version of this can be found on you tube here.

Find Mark at:

• Instagram
• Website

Alex revisits the first 6 months, 25 episodes and 495 minutes of the podcast. In part one he recounts the circumstances that lead to him starting the podcast, and revisits the first 9 episodes.

Transcript

So I’m going to do something a little different today. This podcast has been going for just over six months now. My first episode was published on May 28th this year. And my last episode was episode number 25. We are coming up to Christmas and the New Year, or the holidays as the Americans would call it. And I figured this would be a good opportunity to pause and do a bit of a retrospective. So I’m going to go back through the history of this podcast, if you can call it history, after six months of existence. And I’m going to go back to the beginning and go through each episode and talk about what I covered in that episode and why I covered it and what my thinking was. And just work my way through right till now and try and give everyone a bit of an update on what’s going on, what’s happened, what happened since then. This is partially by way of bringing everyone up to speed who perhaps hasn’t listened to my historical episodes, so they don’t have to, although I urge that you do. And partly just as a reminder as to what I’ve been talking about and as much for myself as anyone else. And to try and tie this first era of my podcast together and really mark it as a bit of a landmark. And so before I get into individual episodes, it’s worth me talking a little bit about why I started this podcast in the first place. So back in November last year, I lost my job. I was made redundant. I was very positive about this. And it seemed like being given a bit of money to go and do something else was an essentially positive thing since I wasn’t particularly happy with the job that I was doing in the company that I was in. And that’s something I’ll maybe come back to another day. But I launched myself with a good friend and colleague of mine who was made redundant at the same time onto the job market where we tried to start up a little consultancy doing what we do without really having realized that we were doing so in probably the most hostile economic and trading conditions for what we do, that there has been in quite some time. So we largely failed. We spent a good four months trying to find clients and almost doing so and ultimately failing and money started to run out. And it had become clear to us that we were trying to do something which perhaps was just timed very poorly. And this had a very, very profound effect on my mental health, both the stresses of trying to do what we were trying to do and the quickly dwindling finances. And I had a pretty major mental health episode in I guess February this year. And that really hit me. And it took me a little while to figure out really what was going on and to admit to myself that I had had a pretty major breakdown. And I had to sort of remove myself from my daily doings and try and heal myself. But of course, the money was still being spent. We still need to eat. I still have a family, mortgage and bills to pay. And so I really didn’t feel like I was able to stop. And so I’ve got two sides to my world. I’ve got my day job, which is as a data scientist or an analyst, or at least it used to be. And I have my art. And so I sort of lent into my art, knowing for a while that it was a good therapeutic outlet for me. This isn’t a new concept to me. I originally restarted making art again in my forties as a part of a portfolio of treatments for mental health issues caused by unrecognized neurodivergence. I’m autistic and ADHD. And so I launched myself back into my art and was sort of trying to see if I could eke some money out on that side to varying levels of success. I had a very, very successful commission earlier this year. It was a massive lifeline to us financially. But ultimately, the same financial conditions, economic conditions that led to us being unemployed were dampening people’s likelihood of buying art. So that side of things really wasn’t particularly successful outside of this one commission. So my mental health, although was variable, was ultimately stuck in the low ebb. And I couldn’t recover because my situation just wasn’t changing. And I got caught in a sort of doom spiral that led to me not really feeling like I could get out of that. Anxiety perpetuates anxiety, doom perpetuates doom. And when you start to think, well, why am I so depressed or worried about life? And sort of look around you and then find out lots of reasons why you should be. Whether those reasons are real or significant enough is not really important to the depressed brain. The worst thing is coming up for air and noting that the world is still a complete mess. And the externalities in terms of what’s going on in the world at the moment didn’t help either. So anyway, in April this year, I don’t remember the decision to decide to make a podcast. It’s just ultimately one of many special interests that I’ve acquired through the years. Being all DHD, I tend to cycle through projects. And so something will catch my eye and take my interest. And I’ve almost launched myself into it without even noticing that I’ve done so. And so I clearly got, I remember one day not having thought about a podcast and then some point later having this idea that I wanted to have a podcast and that it was going to be about mental illness and art and art therapy. And I really don’t remember having much of an idea of what that would mean. But my original idea was that I would make art. I would sit there painting or drawing or whatever while talking about art and mental health and maybe as a sort of video thing as well. And I realized very quickly that doing that meant a lot of sort of extraneous noise that wasn’t particularly pleasant to listen to. And also half the time I would just stop doing what I was doing and start monologuing into the microphone without actually making any art. It seemed a bit superfluous. And so there was a couple of episodes I did early on that got binned. Although one of them is on my YouTube channel, it’s called My Story, which is me just sitting there in front of a piece of art talking about my journey. That’s called My Journey. And I realized that they weren’t really up to scratch. I didn’t want to launch a podcast that was out of the starting blocks, that ramshackle. So I invested in a condenser mic, a decent enough one to record it. And I started again and I sort of took what I’d learned from the first couple of aborted attempts and just launched into this. Welcome to my podcast. I’m recording from my garden studio. So you might hear some birds around me. Hopefully this is first of many episodes of my podcast. We’re going to talk about beginnings today. I love starting things. For example, podcasts. I’m not so good at finishing, but I don’t really intend to finish this. Hopefully this is an ongoing thing. Since then it’s gone through quite a few different iterations. I’ve tried out lots of ideas and experimented with lots of formats. And actually most of them I’ve just sort of stuck with coming back to them and reprising various different formats and approaches. And I’ve covered quite an array of subject matters. Although I have a list of ideas and subject areas I want to cover angles on subject areas. And I’m not even close to being through that yet. I don’t think I ever will be. I can just go out walking of a day at the moment and I’ll come up with several more and half the time I even forget to write them down. So I’m not going to run out of material anytime soon. I’ve had reasonable success getting people to listen to this and they say it takes a while to build up a podcast, maybe a year. And I’ve only been doing this for about over six months. And I think I’m doing pretty well. I have a fair amount of listeners and hopefully that will grow. But I’ve really, really enjoyed doing this. And for me, keeping a project like this up for six months is nothing short of astounding. And goes to the core of the fact that this type of thing is an itch that I need to scratch. I like to talk, but I’m not a brilliant conversationalist because I really like to talk. I’m your classic autistic monologuer. And this really gives me an opportunity to do that and to do that in a format that suits me and that I can talk about the things that I want to talk about. But I built a podcast centered around two of my main interests or two of the things that are most important in my life, art and mental illness. My classification of art is pretty broad. I get to talk about lots of different stuff that I love, which isn’t just, you know, paintings or whatever. It’s music and movies and TV and stuff like that. And I’m really talking to anyone doing anything creative. I like creative people. I like creative things. So as far as I can tell, because I’m a very precious individual, I’m still committed to this. And I’m still excited by this and I can intend to keep doing it. But maybe I will, maybe I won’t. You can never really tell with me and my life circumstances could change for the better or God forbid for the worst. I’ll update you on my situation as we go along, as it’s relevant to the arc of this podcast. But I do think this will probably read a little bit like a story. And I’ll try not to dwell too much on any one thing. But I’m going to go through it. I’m at least 10 minutes into this already and haven’t even started with the episodes. So I should just get on with that. So episode one, May the 28th, 2024, titled Beginnings. I’ll start by acknowledging my intro for this podcast. I don’t really like it. It was created fairly quickly without much thought because I realized I needed something at the beginning and that music is some sort of royalty free music that I found on whatever app I was using at that point. I’m fine with what it says. I don’t particularly like the way that it sounds and I’ll probably replace it at some point, but I have no idea what I want to replace it with. So I’ll leave it as it is for the moment. Episode one, I was really just finding my feet here. I talk about beginning a podcast, but also beginning artworks, beginning projects, beginning any creative enterprise. And I introduce the concept of therapeutic value of art and I go into something I should really revisit, which is procrastination. So instead of talking about starting things, I’m talking about why you might not start things. And I think this is one of the most important factors in terms of people getting into or continuing creative pursuits. Is it getting started is often the hardest thing, especially if you’ve got out of the flow or you’ve never done it before, or you’re nervous or you’re trepidatious or whatever. It’s really hard to get moving. And so I’ve got an episode here on acknowledging procrastination as one of the main barriers and setting it up as a, to a certain degree, a trauma response in terms of being fearful of starting. And then I also talk about things like creative block and then general noise of modern life. I talk a bit about my neurodivergence, my studio, how I’ve set it up so I can just get moving onto things. So removing barriers from, from getting started, having your stuff around you is a concept I’ll come back to quite a lot. Now it’s worth bearing in mind that I am, I’m in a bit of a fugue state at the moment. I’ve just finished a really big commission that was really amazing and creative and some of the best work I’ve ever done. And I’ve sort of stopped and so much of my creative energy and my time went into that. But I didn’t stop. I didn’t. I immediately started making new canvases. I immediately started playing around and just making a mess. And I took some old ideas that I had and I just started playing around with them and shoving them on canvases and they’re not very good. And I’m looking at one now thinking, ah, it’s actually okay. It’s fine. And maybe I’ll pick it up later today or maybe I’m just going to stick it aside, but that’s just fine. And I almost look forward to that moment when I get back to it. And then I go a bit into my history, which I won’t go too much into today. There’s plenty of that out there. In these early days, I was a lot more practically focused. I feel I got a lot more philosophical as things went along and that’s less of an editorial choice on my part and more just a natural outpouring of who I am as a human. I think a lot. I’m a deeply, I’d like to say philosophical person, but I don’t spend a lot of time reading philosophy. I think a lot about the nature of existence and so on. And also things like the value of art and the pursuit of aesthetics and things like that. And it’s going to come spilling out. I think I set out my stool as being deeply sort of introspective and open about my personal problems and struggles. And I think that’s absolutely central to the core thesis of this podcast is that people will relate to that. People don’t want to be patronized and told by some psychiatrist about the way that they’re feeling from someone who’s probably got little to no experience of it. People respond and empathize with stories, especially when those stories reflect their own experience. And people will recognize where those stories are concocted or genuine. And therefore you need to be honest about your health problems so that people can empathize and relate and feel less alone and excluded. And this is especially important for mental health problems. I have a propensity to overshare. That’s not always a good thing, but from the perspective of this particular endeavor, it’s a bit of a superpower. I have to just get used to the fact that there’s no barrier between my brain and my mouth. And I’ve learned to a degree to make that work for me. And this podcast is to a degree a reflection of that. Oh, and I talk a bit in here about bringing your whole self to the process. This is a bit of a weird and complex one. And it’s not a hill I’m going to die on because I feel like I’ve contradicted this a bit in later episodes. But if a barrier to starting is this need to somehow come out and start spewing out your authenticity onto a canvas or whatever, that’s just nonsense. It doesn’t really work that way. Creativity is incremental. And you can’t expect to turn up with your whole self, with your whole concentration and spill out the authentic you from day one. It just doesn’t work like that. You’re spilling out your authentic you from day one, whether you want to or not. It just comes out in dribs and drabs on gushes and dribbles when the conditions are right to do so. And if you turn up to your easel and you’re not quite feeling it and you stick a podcast on or whatever, and your only sort of part there, that can actually set up the best conditions for letting things just flow through whatever it takes to get you to relax and just get on with it. And so pretty much my whole time in my workshop, my studio, I have podcasts on or audio books and stuff. And I’m only really half tuned into them, but I’m really bad at doing one thing at a time. I’m very easily distracted. So it actually helps me. If that’s me not bringing my whole self to the process, then so be it. I’m good with that. But to be honest, that particular aspect is part of my whole self. So why would I not do it? I’m going to move on to the next episodes. So this is episode two, May 29th process. And this is the most arguably the most important part of my core thesis, which is that the end point is not the point. The point is everything that happens in between when you start and when you finish and everything that happens all the other times too, that this is not about a single piece. This is not about a technique. This is not about a visit to your studio. This is about everything that you do. But assuming you actually make some art at some point in the future, you’re in the process of making that art right now, even if you’re sitting on the bog. The point is that any of the process is all of the process. And since you can’t produce that work of artistic genius without having eaten, then eating was part of that process. Zen Buddhists take this concept really seriously to the point where Zen’s primary text, Master Dogen’s Shobo Gendo, contains lengthy chapters on eating, getting dressed and going to the toilet. The value of art and creativity as a therapeutic outlet is that it’s not showing this lovely landscape that you painted to people that’s going to make all the difference. That’s just one event. It’s actually the whole thing. And if you never show your work to anyone, then that’s all good because you’re missing out on something there, I believe. But really it’s been the process of making that, that did the job. It’s the time in front of your ears or the time you’ve spent outdoors with your camera or whatever it is that you do, with your instrument, with your piano or your guitar. Those are the bits that are the therapeutic bits. And it’s all about this process, about having a framework within which you can do these things and experience them while they’re happening. And you should be really trying to sort of enjoy that process. Every single part of that journey is important and you should consider it so. Because otherwise you’re sitting there thinking, oh, I’m really impatient to get going. When you could just be sitting there thinking, well, I’m actually going, right? This is good. I’m doing the work that I need to do to treat my mental health. This thing that seems quite menial and boring is just another part of the process and it’s all wonderful. So I go into Zen in quite a bit in this episode. And this is a Zen Buddhism is a concept I come back to a lot because it’s been really important in terms of my understanding of this particular concept around process. So I’ve revisited quite a lot and I’m going to revisit it again. I’m really sorry if you don’t like it, but this is who I am. I talk a bit about tidying my studio, which is one of the other themes that I come back to, which is although at the moment my studio is like a bomb site, I periodically tie it up, tidy it up as a bit of a reset. And I really enjoyed that part of the process, even though I’m not the sort of person that particularly enjoys tidying things up. I love tidying my studio, but I don’t do it a lot. I used to think that this is because I’m lazy, which is sort of the case. I am a bit, but I’m also usually quite busy and prioritise making art, assuming that the studio isn’t too messy to do that. But these days I like to think that I save it for the special occasions when I’ve really got the time to appreciate it. And having a tidy studio is such a gift, so much so that it’s often been an impetus to make more cool stuff once it’s tidy. When you think about it like that, it’s obvious that tidying the studio is part of the creative process, not an impediment to it. What we’re saying here is that the process and the product are the same thing, which makes sense when you think about it. The process is right there on the canvas or the page or the camera, along with all the other bits of you from your life experiences and stuff you experienced that day and all the other things you were thinking about at the time. So if you listen to any historical episode that I’ve made, is this my best episode? I don’t really know. Probably not. Is it the one that sets out the stall for what this podcast is really about? Yes, this one, even more so than episode one. Episode two on process is really at the absolute heart of my whole thesis around art as therapy. So let’s move on. Episode three, June the 4th, 2024. It’s called Perfectionism. Back in the early days, I really liked the idea of these one word titles that are really to the point. I started off only doing this, but these short titles don’t necessarily resonate with people because they don’t know what you’re talking about. I buy that. But also the algorithms need more fodder to understand who and where to direct people’s attention. So almost everything that gets published, it’s going to find itself in some sort of algorithmic selection will optimize the title because it’s one of the key ingredients in terms of driving both visibility in searches and driving attention and click throughs or whatever it is you’re after. And I know this, I’ve been working in digital marketing for decades. Perfectionism is a huge barrier, I think, to people, especially when they’re starting out. The angle I take on this one is that perfectionism is essentially judging yourself by someone else’s standards. I think people like me, autistic people and other neurodivergent subtypes can be quite bad at taking criticism. And we are people pleasers. And through a life of underlying sort of trauma through dealing with neurotypical society and all its weirdness and getting stuff wrong all the time, we tend to be quite fastidious on trying to get things right because it’s not pleasant when someone criticizes something you’ve done. So what is perfectionism? In the context of the creative process, maybe it’s easy to define what it’s not. The opposite of perfectionism is knowing when to stop, knowing when a piece of art is finished, ready to ship. One of the most important skills you learn as a creator is knowing when to stop, when to stand back and say that’s enough. It’s not as easy as you might think. Sometimes, but very rarely, a work is obviously finished, just as you conceived it to be, done. This has never happened to me, not least because I don’t plan my works, they just tend to emerge. So the idea of done is a little more fluid. In terms of trying to emulate someone else, all you’re doing is setting yourself up for a failure because you’re not them. You cannot produce what they produce because you are not them. You don’t have their brains, you don’t have their life, their materials, you don’t have all of this. You’re going to fail, unless of course you’re a forger, but that’s a slightly different conversation. But it leads to some pretty destructive behaviours and possibly is the one thing that causes people just starting out down this creative journey to bail out and to give up because they feel like they can’t achieve something that they shouldn’t be trying to achieve anyway. But understand this, the only opinion that really matters is your own. Other people tend to tell you things that you want to hear for all the nicest possible of reasons. That earlier supposed masterwork might well just be an average early work that found the right eyes. After all, Bob Ross has a lot of fans, but did you really want to get off the bus at his stop and stay there forever? Even if you did produce an actual item of genius, that was then and this is now. And did we not talk already about art being all about the process? Move on, your life may depend on it. Whatever form your perfectionism takes is always destructive and rarely leads to actual good works. Usually it leads to flat, finicky, emotionally stunted works or just an overworked brown mess that gets discarded or even worse, no work at all. And it always, always leads to misery and disillusionment. Perfectionism is an evasive animal that prefers not to be seen but hides in plain sight. It is a rationality masquerading as common sense. You should always just focus on what you’re doing right now and judge it on its own merits and just go with your instincts. Moving on, episode four, sharing, June the 10th, 2024. This is about, or this is why my one word titles don’t work because sharing doesn’t really mean a whole lot and I talk here about exhibiting or showing your work. I’d start off a bit talking about Emily Dickinson here, a poet who only published 10 poems in her lifetime but actually wrote hundreds and is now considered one of the most important poets of all time. She’s an amazing poet. If you’d like that stuff at all, I would advise you to go look it up. But she didn’t want to publish her work. It didn’t seem necessary to her and when she did so, they didn’t treat her work with the respect it deserved. So she didn’t bother but her sister found it all and published it to the world. The point here is that you don’t have to show your work. You don’t have to share it with people to experience the therapeutic value. But I then go on to argue that if you feel that you can at all, you really should because this stuff is so important and art brings people together. Showing your art to other people is a really important and valuable part of the whole feedback cycle and driving feelings of self-worth. Yes, I was still exhausted and broken. In some ways, the worst was still to come as my situation in the real world continued to worsen. But I faced that stuff down with renewed strength because I felt like I mattered. These are the building blocks of recovery and this time a recovery that took a lot less time than it usually would. And those little threads of positivity I spun spread and created a web, some of which I could see via the positive repercussions of that event, and others that I knew would be there because I knew that any sliver of hope in my world made a difference and so any little glimmer of positivity I can create in another’s world must create ripples of positivity that spread. Even if they only spread a little way, they matter. Small things matter. Every little gift counteracts a small hurt. Every sliver of light, no matter how small, gives someone who is suffering a reason to carry on. And as an artist, you’re in the privileged position to be able to create such moments by doing something that you love. This is what we exist for as artists that are out there and sharing our stuff. We are helping change the world in some little way, or maybe even some big way. And so I spent this episode urging you to show your work. This is one of the ones where I get quite deep into some of my problems and how starting to exhibit my work really helped lift me out of my various holes that I found myself in. Also how for me sharing my art, exhibiting is a way of connecting with people in a way as an artistic person I struggle to do because people come and talk to me about something I want to talk about. And that’s really important for me. It’s allowed me to build a community. It’s allowed me to build an audience. It’s allowed me to talk to people I would almost certainly never have done so. And meeting so many different diverse people, doing so many different diverse things and so many interesting lives. And it’s really enriched my life and this has happened. And I just wouldn’t have done all of that otherwise. So I make an impassioned plea to show your work, but also if you don’t want to, don’t put yourself out there if you’re the sort of person that’s not going to benefit from it. Okay, so sharing number five, space. This is another bad title. Space is about making sure that you have the space in your life to create. And this is both in terms of space in the more literal sense, i.e. do you have a room or an end of a kitchen table or something that you can use regularly and with impunity to create. And then also in terms of time, do you have the space in your calendar on a regular basis to create. And this is a bit harder and less obvious than it sounds. And I think we’ve always got something we’re supposed to be doing. But if you don’t take some time in your life to do something that allows you to wind down and relax, you’re going to make yourself ill. So that could just be watching the TV. It could be time with your kids. It could be walking the dog or playing with your dog or your pets. It could be any number of things, but we talk about art here. And it’s almost especially hard to find time to be creative because you do need to set aside a certain amount of time. Having a dog is really useful because you have to walk it at least a couple of times a day, which gets you outside. And if you’re the sort of person like me who likes to be outside, it’s good to have a reason that’s pretty much unassailable. I have to walk the dog, so I have to go outside. It’s not quite the same with art. Why are you buggering off now? Well, I want to go and do some painting, but you’ve got to do the chores. Well, OK, OK, I’ll do the painting after the chores and then you don’t get the time where you’re too tired and you can easily completely slip out of the habit because it becomes something in your life that simply isn’t necessary and thus gets pushed aside. The more busy that your life gets and the more you’re getting sucked into your mobile phone and doom scrolling or dopamine hunting on whatever game you’re playing. And suddenly there’s no time for creativity anymore. If you’re serious about building art into your life, then you need to be more purposeful about this. It’s best to create some time in your schedule, preferably at the same time every day or whichever days of the week makes sense and book these out. Arrange with anyone concerned that you’ll be completely out of commission for that time. No questions asked. Not best efforts. Not unless something comes up. That time must be sacrosanct and respected, especially by you. Find some space where others can’t easily barge in and own it. Even when you don’t really feel like it, you go and do something because this is my time because the moment that you or anyone else starts to feel like that time is optional, it will disappear, right? So you’ve got to go and do it. You’ve got to use that time and having it scheduled in your diary means that everyone knows what’s going on and no one has any reason to disagree with you buggering off and doing this because this is what you’ve agreed and get the people around you to agree that you can do it. It’s a really, really important point. Now, it doesn’t mean you can’t go off and do it other times. If you can find the time, if you can sneak off or you’ve just got some free time, it’s just simply making the space in your diary so you can do it at all times and you can continue it. Because if you’re anything like me, if for one reason or another I have to take a week or two’s break, I sometimes find it very difficult to get back into it at all. So make the time, make the space. Right, episode six, experimentation. This was one of my unscripted monologues. Most of these episodes are scripted. You can really tell the difference and you can tell that this one isn’t scripted because I go, yeah, sort of like and all these things all the time. Whereas my scripted ones, I write a script, I read it, I try and make it sound as little like I’m reading a script as possible, but I cut out any, you know, half the lines get said twice because I don’t read them properly or I get stuck in almost mental, I get completely jammed up. And there are certain things, certain types of alliteration that I find it almost impossible to say. It takes me about 20 bloody attempts. So then I have to go through and edit them, which takes ages. If I really want to get my point across and make it specifically, me monologuing like this, I’ll often miss stuff or think that I’ve said stuff in a coherent way, but really haven’t. And I think that I can really undermine my own points. So if I’ve got something really very specific to say, and I want to make sure that point gets across our script, but this was the point where I started. This is episode six experimentation, June 23rd. I pretty much I had an idea of what I wanted to say, and then I just monologued it. And I started off talking about Radiohead and how I listened to a podcast about them, how they use experimentation as part of their recording and writing process. I think my general point here was around how experimentation is important to the artistic process and the creative process. So things are kept fresh for both you and for your audience. And so that you’re pushing yourself forward and you’re trying new things and the process doesn’t get boring or repetitive. And even if you feel like you’ve got to produce a fairly standardized output, because that’s your product and you’re a business, you need to build time in your schedule to just play around. And that’s where the real fun happens. And it’s where even as a sort of fairly standardized product, you do need to evolve it over time. You do need to keep it up with the times a bit. It’s like Apple releasing a new iPhone every year, just to keep up with the technology advances, but also so people have got something new to buy, something different to buy, especially for your regular customers. So I think I make an impassioned case for experimenting a lot here, both from an artistic perspective and also from a mental health perspective. Yes, you do need to be a better writer, a better poet, a better painter. Yes, you do need to get better at playing guitar or the piano or the violin. Yes, you do need to practice and yes, you do need to do the drudgery, the boring practice at times. But most of the time, that’s where, as I explained in my earlier episodes, is that’s the most important part. That moment where you’re laying down another scale over and over again, where you’re practicing the same piece of music, where you can just suddenly meander off and find some creativity in your motions and your movements and your muscle memory, where you can lose yourself in the music, that little trigger, that little extra thing that allowed you to meander off and do something different. These are the most important parts of the creative process. These are the most important parts to the therapeutic value of creation and artistry and excellence. And so you should embrace the practice, but always look for those moments to jump off and run with them. Episode number seven, stories. So this was July the first, 2024. So this was an episode where I get a bit more personal. Ultimately, it’s about telling stories through art, but particularly your stories and how stories are important to convey meaning and information in culture. Stories resonate with people in ways that just giving them information or brow beating them or whatever don’t. And I talk a little bit about storytellers, but really the backbone of this one is me recounting my story in two different ways. One that sounds all quite positive and almost like a linear journey between my childhood and where I am now. And leaving out really all of the tough bits that tell the actual story. It feels a little bit like a fairly happy, comfortable journey from kids to artists via life and travel and marriage and family. Once upon a time, there was a teenage boy. He was awkward and odd and kind of shy. He had a friend who was kind of odd like him, whose house he would go around to watch fascinated as he drew bizarre pictures of vampires, zombies and superheroes. It was all a bit Stephen King. Anyway, the boy was enthralled. He wanted to do the same. He also wanted to make stuff like the stuff he saw around him, like posters, all that sci-fi stuff that was everywhere in the early 1980s by illustrators such as Drew Struzan who did all of that amazing Spielberg stuff, as well as those incredible Iron Maiden album covers by Derek Riggs. He started making his own pictures, initially like his friend, then trying to copy all the other incredible stuff he saw around him. And then I recount it again from the point of view of really what was driving that, which is a string of difficult circumstances and troubled existence and mental health episodes and so on. And pretty much all of the major plot points in my journey were driven by extremely harrowing and prolonged mental health issues and things like bullying, being bullied while I was at school and death of my father and all sorts of things. And how that and that manifest through my art and how I tell my story. It might not be linear, it might not be obvious, but there is a story there. The man sits in his car staring blankly at the office of a technology giant, his employer, beset with feelings of dread and utter hopelessness. He had a job that many would be envious of, paying eye-watering sums of money, yet he felt worthless. The idea of getting out of the car and walking into that office filled him with horror, just like it had the day before and the day before that. Rewind to a few years before that. The man sits by a swimming pool in Crete. His kids splash carelessly before him, his wife dozes contentedly beside him. Everything seems idyllic. He can’t understand why he feels so miserable. Rewind to some point in the mid 80s. The boy is writhing in absolute terror as his so-called friends, one holding each of his limbs, suspend him over the storm drain. They told him that the evil zombie Arthur Grimstike lived down there and that he would launch a spear out at the boy and kill him. This was not the first time this had happened and it wouldn’t be the last. Stephen King’s novel It hadn’t been released yet. It didn’t matter to the boy. He was terrified anyway. And it can be seen, and I could probably line up my works in such a way, that they broadly represent the epochs in my life. And they would tell a story to me and I really don’t know if that works for anyone else. I think it probably was after this that I wrote a book of sorts. I set out to write almost like a brochure, I guess, for my work so that I’d have it just on PDF so that people could download on my website and get a taster for what I’d do and maybe it’s something I could use to stimulate newsletter signups. And what I ended up doing was writing, taking some of my favorite of my works throughout my period as an artist and writing what I just thought were my thoughts and some sort of loose story. I didn’t think about them as poems, but it was pointed out to me after I published this that they are poems. So I guess I take that and some people have said they think they’re pretty decent. I’m not a poet and I don’t claim to be so. That the progression of that book is called The Fall and you can download it on my website if you sign up to the newsletter, alexloveless.co.uk. It’s quite a sad, dark story of my sort of recent struggles and the story of my last sort of year that I’ve recounted some of and sort of bringing in multiple different characters, many of which just are avatars for me and talking about how it feels to be in a situation like this. And hopefully leaving it on a slightly more hopeful note, although things were going to get worse after I did that. You know, it’s available to go and look at, but that’s me telling my story. It’s coming out all over the place and my story is important to me and I’ll come back to the idea that you niche yourself into all of your artworks in a later episode. And date, July the 7th, my first therapeutic outlet is called Therapeutic Outlet. AI will not replace you. These are the ones where I say I’m not going to script anything. I’m just going to talk about what’s on my mind. And at this point, AI was a lot on my mind. It’s been a very big talking point across the media and across society for a good year now because you’ve got these language models and image models that can create some quite impressive stuff with very little prompting. And it’s got the creative world flipping out because, and quite rightly because these models were trained on their work and can produce work that’s at least superficially like theirs and perhaps superficially enough that people will accept it or just completely ignore their work because they’ve got something that’s roughly like it over here and it’s cheaper or freely available. And people are freaking out about this and that creativity is doomed from a human perspective because AIs can do it. Now I could monologue on this one for hours and I do come back to it from time to time. I’m not sure if this is something people really want to talk about or for me to talk about, but it’s quite central to my existence since a large part of why I find myself out of a job is because my profession as a data analyst, as a data scientist is one of those jobs that I didn’t realize but I now understand it has been largely already kiboshed by AI because people think they can do analysis themselves by typing some words into chat GBT or whatever, which to some extent is true but I’m not going to go into why I don’t believe that is a really a sensible way of doing things but that’s not for this podcast. AI is impressive and I use it myself forms of AI in terms of some of my digital art and some of the source material for my physical art, not quite in the same way as using Dali or Mid-Journey to produce fully finished AI art. I use it as a home-grown AI to do a very specific thing that I find very very satisfying. I’m not against using AI as part of the creative process I’ve used it increasingly to help me make sense of my growing body of text information, i.e. the transcripts for these episodes, my notes, my research. It’s really useful for helping me do research and pulling that stuff together and then consolidating it and so on. So I’ve got a lot to say on AI because it’s very very central to my existence even though I’ve got some serious problems with it in terms of its efficacy but there’s a moral element here with regards to how bad it is for the environment and so on. So it’s a knife edge, it’s a really difficult area given what I do for a living and on both sides of my life, on professional and the art side, it poses a constant sort of internal battle for me. So I’m not going to bang on about it. My point here in this episode is you’re not going to be replaced because and I might come back to this particular point from a slightly different angle which is that art is culture, culture is created by humans. Computers can’t create culture. Humans can create things using computers and help make that culture. Culture can choose, a culture of humans can choose to take the outputs of AIs and make that their favorite culture but that’s still humans creating culture. So does that mean that creative jobs are at risk and creative industries are at risk? Absolutely yes. Does that mean that creative thinking and the source of creativity coming from humans stops and it only comes from machines? No that’s ludicrous. Machines can’t create culture, only humans can create culture. You know just think about the fact that when photography first came about in the late 19th century people thought that that meant the pictorial arts were dead, that painting was a finished art because why would I want to paint a picture of that woman there when I can just take a photo of her and to an extent it sort of did kill off the strongly pictorial representational art to the absolute benefit of the art world as a whole. Initially the photography world was aping the classical art world and then the classical art world moved into impressionism, post-impressionism, expressionism, abstract expressionism into all forms of mad abstraction and the art world and the art discipline got richer because of it. Right next episode breaking the rules this is episode number nine July 14th. I love this one I remember writing this while sitting on the floor in an airport I can’t remember I was going I think I’d been down to London and I was on my way home and I was in quite good spirits because I’d had a really good time and I went down to see my sister and she had a party and it had been fun I got a bit of a break from the grind of my existence it cost me almost no money to get there and I stayed in her spare room so it was a cheap journey and so I mean I was talking about rebellion with this one about you know the fact that you’re expected to do things or you think you’re expected to do things in a certain way there’s one right way to do these things or what a small number of right ways to do any given thing and how that’s really antithetical to the spirit of art and doesn’t really matter what you do because art culture or human culture changes around you and so one minute you’re supposed to do this and the next minute you’re really not supposed to do this and it’s really hard to keep up and therefore the idea that there are rules that are somehow sacrosanct and not changing with time is nonsense and so I make a plea to experiment here and to do whatever it is you want to break the rules to do something different and you know if you’re doing what everyone else is doing then how are you going to stand out how is anyone ever going to notice you? If repetition is the death of art then uniqueness is its beating heart. Art thrives on novelty. Art requires novelty. Just try and record the radio heads on without permission and see what happens. I dare you. And you know what stifles novelty? Rules. Bloody rules. In fact it’s arguable that rules exist specifically to curb novelty. The game of chess wouldn’t be much fun for anyone if people only followed the rules that they liked. I sort of knew this was going to be a long episode and I mean I’m not even halfway through and so I’m going to stop and I may just publish this and do this in two parts but I guess we’ll see how we go. So I’m going to stop there. The next episode is suffering for art which is a pretty deep and dark one and I don’t want to rush that so I’m going to take a break now and I’ll see you on the other side. It does occur to me that creating things that are unbalanced if it gives the viewer a slightly uncomfortable feeling and in some ways that’s mission accomplished but I have to like the things I make because that’s how I know when they’re finished and when things are out of kilter when they’re not balanced I very much struggle to ignore that. So I always end up meddling because it’s like an itch you got a scratch or like a stain on the carpet or something that just bugs you it’s irritating I don’t want that there I’m going to go and clean it off and so that’s what happens I meddle and sometimes that’s for the better and sometimes it’s really really not.

Alex takes aim at the evils and excesses of art speak via Tolstoy, Artificial Intelligence, and the science of Bullshit.

• Artspeak. The Bullshit Language of Art
• ChatGPT is Bullshit
• On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt
• What is Art? by Leo Tolstoy. This is a PDF of the original text.

Transcript

I’ve got a fun challenge for you. I’m going to read to you two excepts of descriptions of works of art. Your challenge is to guess who the artist is in each case.

Descriptions number one:

The juxtaposition of the saturated hues—an ethereal crimson juxtaposed against a somber umber—invites a dialectical engagement with the viewer’s psyche, invoking a liminal space that oscillates between the corporeal and the metaphysical. This chromatic dichotomy serves not merely as a visual stimulus but as a conduit for existential contemplation, prompting an introspective traversal through the labyrinthine corridors of the subconscious.

Well that was bracing. On to description number two:

The compositional structure, characterized by a harmonious juxtaposition of verdant hues and cerulean skies, evokes a sense of serene equilibrium, yet it is precisely this equilibrium that invites a critical examination of the artist’s intentionality. The brushstrokes, while ostensibly gestural, reveal a paradoxical tension between the immediacy of expression and the calculated precision of execution.

Heady stuff. Maybe pause this and take a minute to think about it. To consider the nuances and observations within each paragraph. Go back and listen again. Really bathe in them. Really think.

So whaddaya think? Number one sounds like an abstract piece. Something based on fields of colour. Gotta be someone like Mark Rothcko with his giant serene squares, right?

Number two? Serene verdant skies? Gestural yet calculated? Constable maybe? JMW Tuner perchance?

What did you guess? Don’t tell me, I don’t care. I know who these relate to. If, for the first one, you guessed Rothcko, then you were totally correct. Well done. A big tick with a letter “A” with a star next to it.

And if you guessed Constable or Turner for the second one, then -fail klaxon-. You’re not only a bit wrong. You’re wrong right off the edge of the canvas and on to the floor. The second description was of a work by none other than the afro-adorning king of serene painterly schmaltz - Bob Ross. He of the Joy of Painting off the telly. The guy that conjures up formulaic woodland scenes using nothing but the power of his mind and a giant palette.

Maybe Bob is your idea of the panacea of fine art. But I think most would disagree, not least the type of people who would write a description like that above. So who would write such a thing?

It won’t surprise anyone to discover that both descriptions were written by ChatGPT, lord of the chatbot AIs. The prompt I used was:

write a critique of a Bob Ross painting using the most incomprehensible and pretentious art speak possible

And that’s what it came back with. Just for the sake of balance, here’s a description of Ross’s work from Google’s Gemini AI:

The almost aggressively uniform application of pigment speaks to a deep-seated fear of the unpredictable, a desperate attempt to control the chaotic flux of the creative process. The resulting effect, while superficially pleasing, ultimately exposes a profound ontological insecurity, a yearning for a stable, immutable reality that is, of course, fundamentally unattainable.

What does this tell us about how art is portrayed in the art world?

1. It’s usually impenetrable, pretentious gobbledygook that seems aimed at alienating the reader
2. It’s so ubiquitous and homogeneous that two (and I assume any) dumb AIs designed to regurgitate text stolen from the web can reproduce it convincingly and in basically the same language and even using basically the same words
3. It can be used to describe any work in pseudo-academic terms that render its use meaningless
4. It’s called Art Speak, and I hate it!

Yay for me for cutting right to the chase for a change!

Why am I talking about Art Speak? Well, I was actually researching for the next article in my “How to be creative” series which is to be about the tension between mastery and creativity. The research process tends to lead my ever-inquisitive squirrel brain down many a rabbit hole. This particular rabbit hole lead me to a bunch of books, websites and articles about various artists and I was forcefully reminded why I am not an art scholar.

I plan to do a whole episode on art books sometimes soon. I own lots of art books, and I love them. I’d buy more but I lack the space and the money. But if I hate art speak, why do I own so many art books? Very simply: it’s about the pictures. I very rarely read any of the accompanying text because I find it arduous to the point of physical pain.

I’ve never been good at reading. As a kid I really struggled and didn’t read a novel cover to cover until my early 20s. When presented with a field of text, by brain just sort of seizes up. I’ve since learned that is likely down to a combination of my ADHD lack of patience as well as, it seems, unrecognised dyslexia. I can read, but I tire of it quickly and rarely finish whole books, even when I’m interested in the subject. It takes too long, is too taxing and I just move on.

So I like writing that it concise, clear, uncomplicated and meaningful. This is not a matter of taste, it is a matter of necessity. So needless to say that the verbal excesses of writers like of Jane Austen, or the wilfully-never-getting-to-any-pointery or Proust and Joyce are not near the top of my literary picks list.

Conversely, I find science speak generally easy to understand. Can gobble up whole wikipedia pages without much stress. I like science fictions writing for it’s breadth of ideas and general lack of flowery prose. To repeat, I don’t have a problem with expressive or complicated language, I simply can’t parse it. Shakespeare is a complete no-go zone for me.

So imagine what happens when I try and earnestly consume some art speak. Fuses start to blow immediately. It causes me something like physical pain. Not only is it overly redundant, convoluted, bloated and unintelligible, it also contains almost no useful information. It’s a literary abomination.

Here’s a real example that I found in one of the books in my beloved collection, found pretty much at random:

his use of delicate colour, treated more often in terms of nuances and assonances rather than of contrasts, together with cobweb-like graphics that seem to irrigate the whole surface of the canvas. The split between drawing and colour, which becomes increasingly subtle the more in the same work both elements alternately predominate as if in a musical composition with a dominant tone at each moment, provided thus a new solution to the eternal dilemma of content and form.

I can barely even say it, let alone understand what it’s waffling on about! That was from a book about the work of Chinese abstract painter Zao Wou-Ki, oen of the few abstract painters that I really love. I genuiniely want to tear out those pages so I’m only left with the glorious pictures.

Art speak is an abomination.

Don’t take my word for it. In his 2021 paper, Artspeak. The Bullshit Language of Art, Pascal Unbehaun makes the following observations

1. Artspeak sounds bloated and preposterous.
2. Many texts strongly resemble each other.
3. They seem to be only loosely related to the artwork in question.
4. The content appears incoherent and obscure.
5. Texts feel like they might be auto-generated by an algorithm

I’d already constructed my AI examples and the basic structure of my argument when stumbled across this paper. I almost spat my soy latte across the room. I thought it was just me that thought this way!

As a minor, but important aside, it should be noted that Unbehaun is not being profane or flippant when he uses the word “bullshit”. It’s actually an accepted scientific adjective.

In his 2005 book “On Bullshit”, American philosopher Harry Frankfurt argues that bullshit is a distinct phenomenon from lying. He postulates that while lying involves a deliberate attempt to deceive by stating something known to be false, bullshit is characterised by a lack of concern for truth.

Bullshitters are not primarily interested in whether their statements are true or false; rather, they are focused on creating an impression, often of competence or authority.

So basically it’s the old maxim that “anything stated with sufficient convictions may as well be the truth to most people”.

As an aside to the aside, given that I started off this episode with some texts generated using ChatGPT, it’s amusing to note that Large Language Models’ propensity to assert bullshit by way of “hallucinations” has not gone unnoticed. In their 2024 paper “ChatGPT is bullshit” Michael Townsen Hicks, James Humphries and Joe Slater build on Frankfurt’s ideas to suggest that:

insofar as both lying and hallucinating require some concern with the truth of their statement…LLMs are simply not designed to accurately represent the way the world is, but rather to give the impression that this is what they’re doing

They go on to coin two new terms. Quote:

We draw a distinction between two sorts of bullshit, which we call ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ bullshit, where the former requires an active attempt to deceive the reader or listener as to the nature of the enterprise, and the latter only requires a lack of concern for truth.  We argue that at minimum, the outputs of LLMs like ChatGPT are soft bullshit.

It’s hard to disagree. I’ll put links to these books and papers in the show notes. You should definitely check them out. They are mercifully free of bullshit.

Back to the matter in hand. It should be obvious how the term bullshit applies to art speak.

So what is art speak exactly and why does it exist?

I asked ChatGPT to explain it to me like I was a 5 year old, and here’s what it said:

Imagine you’re playing with LEGO, and you build a really cool spaceship. But instead of saying “I built a spaceship!”, you say something like, “My construction utilizes interdimensional spatial vectors to explore the deconstruction of traditional aeronautical paradigms.”

Which I think pretty much encapsulates it. Using convoluted and overly-intellectualised language to describe something. Seeming to say something profound, but failing to really say anything at all.

Such language can be found in art gallery brochures, art journals, pamphlets and magazines anywhere you go in the world. Every art student has their art speak blurb which eruditely explains their unparalleled approach to whatever artistic form they chose.

So we are expected to accept that an artwork was channelled from the deepest recesses of the artists soul via the medium of culture, while also being a deeply considered, reflective study on the interplay between dark and light as a deeply considered philosophical commentary on the nature of sentient existence. All with a straight face.

Most artists that I’ve ever come across are intuitive individuals. It comes with the territory. Yes, bodies of work can develop underlying philosophical narratives and commentaries, as can individual works. But does that 5 meter wide abstract work of planar colour really reflect the banality of war? Most people will simply look at it and think to themselves “I like that colour”. And since most art is intuitive in nature it’s unlikely that the artists was thinking about the horrors of war while painting it, except, I suppose, if they were in a war zone when they made it, rather than a warehouse studio in New York.

I suspect that the majority of such descriptions were dreamt up after the fact by the artist or their agent or a gallery owner in an attempt to project some depth on something that is largely aesthetic in nature. I don’t have a problem with this. I just wish that:

a) The art community was honest about this, and, b) they would do it in a less bloody unintelligible and alienating way.

But that’s precisely the point isn’t it? The hoi poloi are supposed to feel alienated and patronised by such texts. It’s a thinly veiled strategy to gatekeep by using faux-intellectualism. This keep the art fraternity exclusive and gives wealthy art buyer something to feel clever about at dinner parties.

In short, it really has nothing to do with the art at all. It’s a parasitic cultural meme that perpetuates itself by taking over the mind of the those exposed to it and turns them into eloquent sounding drones.

Leo Tolstoy doesn’t mince his words on this subject. This is the bloke who wrote War and Peace, the book that, by cultural convention, all other works of text are not, had to say about art criticism.

Quote:

The artist, if a real artist, has by his work transmitted to others the feeling he experienced. What is there, then, to explain?

If a work be good as art, then the feeling expressed by the artist—be it moral or immoral—transmits itself to other people. If transmitted to others, then they feel it, and all interpretations are superfluous. If the work does not infect people, no explanation can make it contagious. An artist’s work cannot be interpreted. Had it been possible to explain in words what he wished to convey, the artist would have expressed himself in words. He expressed it by his art, only because the feeling he experienced could not be otherwise transmitted. The interpretation of works of art by words only indicates that the interpreter is himself incapable of feeling the infection of art.

The quote, from his 1897 book What is Art?, not only says that art cannot by definition, be explained, but that anyone who tries to do so if singularly incapable of appreciating that art! Don’t hold back Leo!

He goes on to say:

As soon as art became, not art for the whole people but for a rich class, it became a profession; as soon as it became a profession, methods were devised to teach it; people who chose this profession of art began to learn these methods, and thus professional schools sprang up: classes of rhetoric or literature in the public schools, academies for painting, conservatoires for music, schools for dramatic art.

In these schools art is taught! But art is the transmission to others of a special feeling experienced by the artist. How can this be taught in schools?

Tolstoy received nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906 so he knows his stuff, although I doubt he was without his critics, so no doubt there’s some sour grapes fermenting somewhere in there.

It’s a surprisingly lucid and accessible book given its subject matter and time of writing. I’ll definitely be returning to it.

Many of his views on this stuff really resonates with me. Which is kind of ironic since I’ve never read any of his fiction, and given my distaste for long texts, it’s likely I never will. I could never understand the existence of art schools and have always struggled to not only understand art criticism itself, but why it exists at all, at least in the predominant form.

Art is about feeling. And feelings are hard to convey. It’s why so many people rely on it, either by the production or consumption of art, to communicate and experience emotions. In most cases, that job is done the moment the viewer sees the artwork. If it fails to elicit some emotional response from the viewer it’s either bad art, or just not something that resonates with that viewer. As I said before, you cannot simply divorce the artwork from the artist, and context really matters. So some informations about the artist that made the item and the context surrounding this, may well enhance the impact of the piece. But this is exactly that, context. You can just use normal human language to do that. There’s no need for pseudo-intellectual drivel.

Many, if not most, artworks are self-explanatory, and/or are in no way improved by convoluted explanations. This goes for titles too. In some cases, the title of a piece is integral to the artist’s interpretation of the work - need and example here - but it’s often not necessary, and many artists don’t name artworks at all. I see a lovely seascape watercolour, it’s nice to know that it’s the harbour at Padstow in Cornwall, especially if you happen to be located there at the time, but it’s not essential.

But then, delicate landscape watercolours aren’t the types of artworks given the art speak treatment, are they? It’s usually abstract, supposed think-pieces or room sized installations. They need explaining because they need to justify their existence. They need it to justify the price tag.

Understand that I’m neither denigrating contemporary or modern art here, or the thousands of galleries organisations that power the real art industry, or the publications and institutions that support artists, heritage and history.

To be honest, I’m not even sure I’m denigrating the people writing this drivel. I just wish it would go away. I wish the prevailing conventions and consensus of how to talk about art would sod off.

I’m also not suggesting that all writing on art is bullshit, just that the art world is particularly acceptable to it.

This is not a small niggle. As you might have noticed, I take the broadest possible interpretation of what constitutes art and creativity due to my conviction that the production and consumption of art is vital to a functional society and one of the most effective means of managing mental health. My intention is to be as inclusive as possible. If your creativity drives you to make stop motion animation with models made of horse dung, then good on you! As I said in my episode on identity in art, you need to pour yourself, the essence of you, into your art for it to be fulfilling and to come across as authentic to the viewer.

How are you are you going to feel free to express yourself in the way that you need to if you feel compelled to describe it in terms that bear no meaningful relationship to it?

How is writing a bunch of pretentious waffle going to make you seem more authentic? It’s likely to do the opposite. And all the while fuelling imposter syndrome. If these are not the words that describe how you fell about your own work, then aren’t they a lie? A misrepresentation?

What concerns me is how this type of language leads truly creative people to feel they have no place in the artistic community. To think that you need to have been to art school to create wonderful things. You might worry that if everyone thinks and speaks like this and that you’ll be ridiculed if you show your art to anyone who professes knows what they’re talking about. You might convince yourself that this mindless babble actually represents what art is, and how artists think.

You might conclude that you need to make works that can be spoken of with such words. You might decide just not to bother at all.

None of this is the case. The art world needs you, an artist, or you an art lover, but it most definitely does not need these outriders and hangers on. You’ll know a genuine art professional, a genuine art enthusiast when you meet them precisely because they don’t communicate their thoughts like this.

Many artists do feel compelled, or are expected to produce this type of hollow prose when displaying their works. You may have little choice other than to do so in certain circumstances. In such cases, do what you have to. But don’t kid yourself that in any way elevates your work. In reality, the opposite may be true. Either way, I can recommend not wasting your time carefully crafting such nonsense. Just get ChatGPT or Google Gemini to do it for you, as we’ve seen, they’re very good at it.

And indeed, on the latter point, I do wonder if professions that involve producing art speak will find their days doing so numbered. I don’t consider this to be a good thing - less people working in the art industry seems like an inherently bad thing to me - so I do hope anyone that this unseats finds another role in the industry.

There’s as ever, a lot more going on here, not least in terms of understanding the value and purpose and criticism in the wider sense. I’m using sweeping statements and general allusions here to make my point, and likely including talented, passionate individuals doing great things for the artistic community. But I think that those folks likely feel the same way as me anyway.

How, then, should you talk about your or anyone else’s work? Well, how do you talk about anything else? How do you talk about that simply incredible pizza you ate last night? How do you explain to someone why you thought the novel you just finished was so amazing? Simple, you find the words that come naturally to you, and you use those. You try your best to match you word and phrase choice to the person that you’re talking to. If they are an experienced art practitioner, or a seasoned art lover, then perhaps you can be a bit more flowery and use some words like “juxtaposition” and “dichotomy”. To anyone else you might say something like “I saw Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières and I just couldn’t stop staring at it. It made me feel so emotional.”

Conversely you could say:

The juxtaposition of industrial elements with the natural landscape subtly underscores the burgeoning tension between urban expansion and pastoral retreat

But then, you might get a blank look, but at least you’ll sound clever. Your choice.

Alex discusses the abstract painting he’s working on, and the wonders of the process of using and observing natural processes when creating artworks.

A slightly longer version of this with visuals is available on YouTube.

Alex chats to fellow artist Sharon Milton about her incredible career as one of the most senior members of the Scottish police force, meeting Barack Obama, recovery from cancer, guns, Arctic expeditions and how creativity helped her escape, rehab and prehab. It was an honour and a privilege to have Sharon recount her incredible and inspiring story.

Sharon’s bio

Contact

Contact Sharon: clola.art@gmail.com

Follow Sharon:

• Threads
• Instagram
• Facebook

Professional

Sharon Milton is a distinguished former police officer who has made significant contributions to law enforcement in the UK, particularly in Scotland. She began her policing career in August 1994 with Avon and Somerset Police before transferring to Grampian Police in February 1997, where she spent the majority of her career. Milton is celebrated for her pioneering role as Moray’s first female divisional commander, a position in which she demonstrated exceptional leadership and crisis management skills, notably during the emergency response to the widespread flooding in Moray in September 2009.

Throughout her career, Milton has been a trailblazer for women in policing, balancing her professional responsibilities with her role as a mother. She has been an advocate for gender equality within the police force, highlighting the increasing presence of women in senior roles. Her career is marked by several notable achievements, including her involvement in policing the G8 Summit and her leadership in establishing the Aberdeen Division within Police Scotland.

Milton’s career reached a pinnacle when she was promoted to chief superintendent in 2016, a period during which she also faced personal challenges, including a diagnosis of stage-three breast cancer. Demonstrating resilience, she successfully underwent treatment and later participated in the Arctic Challenge, a cross-country skiing marathon, raising over £15,000 for a breast cancer charity.

One of her most significant professional accomplishments was leading the police protective security arrangements for COP26, the largest security event ever held in Britain. Her meticulous planning and leadership ensured the safety of over 120 world leaders, including US President Barrack Obama, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, during the event.

In recognition of her outstanding service, Sharon Milton was awarded the King’s Police Medal, an accolade reserved for those with a specially distinguished record in police services of conspicuous merit. Her career is a testament to her dedication, leadership, and commitment to public service, making her a respected figure in the field of law enforcement.

Artist

KPM BSc Hons Sharon obtained O-level art whilst at school, but otherwise has received no formal training. Sharon started painting watercolours about 20 years ago as a means to relax alongside a demanding full time job. She is self taught from books and YouTube tutorials. During 2016, Sharon was diagnosed with cancer and had a period of prolonged treatment and recovery, during which she focused on her art and its therapeutic benefit. She produced botanical watercolour paintings and sold these to

raise over £20,000 for the cancer charity ‘walkthewalk’. Sharon retired from a career in the Police in 2022, and since. that time had enjoyed spending more time painting. Her current passion is painting old wood and metal structures - ‘rusty locks’ and the Scottish coast, skies and lochs! Sharon is currrently working predominantly in Pastels.

Sharon lives in Auchterarder, with her partner.

Transcript

Alex discusses the intricate dance between ego and identity in art, exploring how self-expression shapes both creator and audience. Through Frida Kahlo’s lens, he delves into the misunderstood relationship between art and self, challenging the notion of narcissism in creativity.

Transcript

The two Fridas sit on a bench, their hands clasped tightly. Left Frida, we’ll call her European Frida, is wearing a high-necked European-style wedding dress. Right Frida, Mexican Frida, wears a Tehuana dress, traditional to her Mexican heritage.

Both Fridas hearts are visible. Mexican Frida’s heart appears healthy whilst European Frida’s seems damaged, broken perhaps, and can be seen through a hole ripped in the breast of her dress. In her right hand, European Frida holds surgical forceps that have cut a major blood vessel from her heart, it leaks blood onto her wedding dress. Both hearts are linked by a single blood vessel. Mexican Frida holds a miniature portrait of her ex-husband, Mexican artist, Diego Rivera from whom she had recently divorced. A blood vessel connects to this portrait. Her dress is intact and clean.

Both Fridas stare resolutely at the viewer, seemingly defiant, yet, European Frida seems paler, diminished, frailer.

The painting The Two Fridas by iconic Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is awash with autobiographical symbolism. It conveys duality, as well as both symmetry and asymmetry. Strength and weakness, European and Mexican. It is redolent with pain from her divorce from her husband, but resolute and forthright in challenging that pain.

The artwork tells a tale of sorrow, but solidarity with ones self. Kahlo admitted it expressed her desperation and loneliness with the separation from Diego. But still she shows solidarity with herself, tender and comforting yet proud and supportive.

Of the 143 paintings that Kahlo produced in her lifetime, 55 were self portraits of some form, all depicting similarly expositional and confessional themes, exposing her personal life, political views, and her chronic and crippling health problems. She is famously quoted as saying “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.”

Here’s me rounding off episode 7 of this podcast, in which I talked about telling stories with art:

Paste clip.

I have a suspicion that Kahlo was autistic. We relate to others by relating ourselves. She was showing us herself so that we might better understand ourselves.

I’m not going to talk much about autism here, but it does highlight and aspect of the arts that is perhaps poorly understood, and by being so, often leads to artists hampering their own progress and stifling the ability of art to heal. That is Ego.

Narcissus was a mythological Greek dude who was ridiculously attractive. We was shown his own reflection in a pool of water by the Goddess of retribution Nemesis. This was the first time he’s ever seen himself in all his hotness. On seeing his delectable visage he immediately falls in love with himself and can’t tear his beautiful eyes away. Depending on which version of the myth you’re reading he either falls into the pool and drowns or wastes away. On the plus side, the gods posthumously transformed him to a flower that grows by the water’s edge.

Psychological diagnostic bible the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders aka DSM states the first criteria of narcissistic personality disorder as:

A grandiose sense of self-importance

Narcissism is a real thing as anyone who pays attention to the incessant ranting of Donald Trump will know. But would you call Frida Kahlo narcissistic? How about Vincent van Gough who produced 36 self-portraits? Or Rembrandt who produced nearly 80 self-portraits?

I talk about myself and my own journey a lot in this podcast. That’s partly because, this is me, this is my life, I started up a podcast about mental health and art because these are two things that are, for one reason or another, really important to me. But just as importantly, I want to help other people and one of the best ways to do that is to share your own stories so that others can empathise. It can help people with similar struggles to rationalise their own situations, or at the very least to feel like they’re not alone.

I don’t mind the sound of my voice. I’ve got used to it over the years and I do like the things I say, I like the things I write. And as I’ve said many times on this podcast, the reason you know that you’re producing good work is because you like it. And if you like it, then someone else is going to like it. But maybe this all comes across as a bit narcissistic. But we are all the stars of our own movie. And, whether or not you’ve got a planet size ego, you are the centre of your own universe. And through everything you’ve experienced; left your childhood home, found love, a career, had kids, one way or the other, you’re still viewing it from your perspective. It’s the only point of view that you’ve got. The best you can try to do is understand and rationalise and empathise with someone else’s situation.

Where our situations cross over, where we have aspects of our lives that overlap with a similar aspect of other people’s lives, then we can relate on that level and communicate and hopefully help each other out, or at least understand and empathise. Talking about yourself is important. It’s why therapy is such a big industry. You don’t have to have a big ego for that to be the case.

This is a podcast about art. And whether you are a creator or a consumer art is inherently personal and subjective.

I’ve talked before about how, when you share an artwork with the world, you let go of it and it takes on a life and meaning of its own. It’s not yours any more. The experience of it belongs to the viewer. It’s not really about you any more. But when you created it, it was. And from your perspective, it always will be.

As a creator it’s not unusual to find yourself in situation where someone sees a work you made and says something like, “I interpret this as a really cheerful, serene and affirming work” and you look at it and go, “no, mate, I was miserable when I made that. That was, like, the worst part of my life.” There’s always going to be some level of disconnect between you and your audience. And that’s just the nature of the beast.

But whether or not you communicate your motivations or the meaning behind a work of art, whether or not that’s understood or relatable by the people who viewed that art, you had those motivations. And you chose the subject, you chose the narrative, you chose the colours, the framing, you chose the length, the size, you chose the medium and the where and the when to show it. And all of those are very personal to you. It might just be personal to your life situation at the moment. Maybe you had to show it at that specific moment because that was the only time the exhibitions space was available. Maybe you painted a blue picture because that was the only colour of paint you had left. Maybe you made that haunting think-piece because you were at that moment, well, haunted.

All art is autobiographical, whether you want it to be or not. You may choose to try and obfuscate your true self or your true nature in your works, but that choice is autobiographical in itself.

The same is true for any act of creation by humans, be it a mathematical proof or the development of new technology or baking a loaf of bread. We put a flavour of ourselves in everything that we do.

Every one of note in culture is of note because of the choices that they’ve made based on the type of person they are, given the opportunities they were given. Our world centres around humans and humans have their stories and those stories all contribute to whatever impact that human has on the world. Be it, a tragic infant who never made it to their first birthday to someone who lived to 110 years old. In both instances, they made a fundamental impact on the world, the people around them, for better or for worse, and created reverberations that will be felt across people, communities and across time.

You might argue that, say, a documentary photographer or a realist landscape painter or a nature illustrator have a responsibility to transmit the subject honestly and accurately. To ultimately be invisible. Which they may well do. But in all these cases they still had to choose the subject, the framing, the rendering. And depending on how important they are within their field, they might be more important than their subject anyway.

The idea that a work of art is of the same value independently of the knowledge of who the creator is doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Say you owned a beautiful landscape painting that was given to you or you found at a car boot sale or something. You love it, but you don’t have that much attachment to it. It cost you a tenner or whatever. When you move house it just got chucked in the back of the van, and it’s seen its fair share of splatter of beverages from children or drunk uncles. What then if you, in a whim took it to the Antiques Roadshow only to discover that this is, in fact, a long-lost Constable. Auction value of a million quid plus. You’re saying that that painting hasn’t gone up in your estimation? That you don’t suddenly see details and flourishes in it that you didn’t see before? That you don’t start treating it reverently and with great care?

Identity matters in art. The very idea that Jimi Hendrix touched a particular guitar can exponentially increase its value. Andy Warhol never even set foot in the same room as many of the works of art attributed to him yet they still sell for tens of thousands. What matters is that he chose to depict those soup tins. The soup tins weren’t the point. The point was Warhol and his message. You can’t help but get in the way of your subject. The subject is only the subject because you made it so.

And this is a concept I’ve touched upon before and will likely do so many times again. The idea that you can separate an artwork from the artist and have it hold the same meaning and value is ridiculous. Art is created by humans as a means to interact with other humans. For a human interaction to occur there needs to be two sides to that communication. Despite how incredibly human like chatbots are getting, most people can tell when they’re talking to one, and would prefer to be talking to a real human in any case. Art is culture happens between and among humans. Not machines and humans. Not dolphins and humans. Not dogs and humans. Yes creation can have inherent beauty, worth, craftsmanship, but when that is disembodied from the person who created it it loses a large part of its meaning and therefore its cultural value. An artwork without an artist is just an object. Do you honestly think that Marcel Duchamp’s urinal would have the same cultural meaning if we didn’t know who put it there? What value are Banksy’s murals until we know that it was him who painted them?

This doesn’t mean that your creations are worthless until you share them. You still love them, they just carry no cultural currency. This also doesn’t mean that if you are largely unknown that your art is similarly valueless. Your art has value and utility to 100% of its existing audience. The same rules apply. If your painting turns up at a jumble sale without a signature, and a diehard fans sees it and is unable to attribute it to you, then they will view it of lower value.

So let me repeat: Everything you do, everything you create is, to at least some degree, about you. This doesn’t mean that all art is narcissistic. Quite the opposite. Rather than taking all the attention, you’re giving a piece of you away. If someone unknown to you experiences your creation in a book or at a gallery or in a theatre and you’re not there to suck up the accolades, or the derision for that matter, then your ego simply isn’t part of the equation. Most artists tend to be self-deprecating anyway, and therefore get slightly twitchy of someone hungrily consuming their art, especially if the artwork is quite personal, because the idea can feel like a violation. And many of us have nightmares about champagne sipping socialite art-establishment snobs delightfully denigrating our loved creations. Far from being an ego trip, at best its a terrifying ego rollercoaster and at worst ego destruction.

So not only can you not extract yourself from your art, it’s pretty essential that you are, to some degree at least, on show. And far from being narcissistic, in most cases the act is selfless to a destructive degree.

You should embrace this reality or at least accept it and not feel shy when your art expresses something directly about you. Celebrate that. Art is a means of communication. It is about conveying your experiences, vision, thoughts, your feelings, your point of view and worldview and communicating it to other people in some form.

So you’re out and about and you see something cool, like a stunning view, or an interesting happening, or some landmark. You take a picture with your phone, and send it to a friend, or share it on social saying look at the cool thing that I just saw. Maybe you strike a pose and make it a selfie. That act in itself is an act of creation. Because the act of creation itself is an act of choice. You choose what to photograph or video, you choose what to paint, you choose how to paint it, you choose what story to tell, how you tell and whether to put yourself in it.

This is just what we do. We as humans want, need to communicate with other humans. We want to tell people about our experiences, our successes, our landmarks, our nice lunch. No one really cares about that poorly framed photo of the Taj Mahal, they care that you took it because you were there looking hot in both senses of the word.

In fact, your humanity and your presence in your history, your life, your reputation, your influence, the colour of your skin, your height, the tone of your voice, these are all things that send signals to other humans about you and the thing that you’re conveying. And it’s inescapable. You can try and change that. But there’s only so far you can go with this.

Your communications, your interface with the world is your identity. Some choose to expose and mediate that via selfies and 30 second videos. Some choose to paint a bowl of fruit that took them weeks to create. Some dance. Some write erotic fan fiction about vampires.

The intersection of who you are as a person, and how you choose to portray yourself defines your message and how it’s perceived. This doesn’t always go to plan, Vanilla Ice springs to mind. But it is what it is. And it is you. Some folks gonna like that, some don’t.

Maybe you like what I make, how I present myself to the world. Maybe you don’t. I hope you do. But it’s not a prerequisite. This is just me. I do what I do. If you don’t like it, don’t listen.

At some point, I figured out that I’m fairly articulate and I’m very open with my own experiences, almost pathologically so. And I’ve used that both to my detriment and to my benefit. And starting up this podcast was a recognition of that. Despite the fact that I was odd and barely articulate when I was a kid, I’ve learned how to communicate pretty well. And therefore, in terms of carrying message by the medium of talking to people who are not in the same physical space as me, I am quite well placed. And part of that is me talking autobiographically. It’s a recognition of the part of myself that knows stuff, and likes to talk. And because of the way that I say things, people are inclined to listen and derive value from the things I say. At least I hope so.

Either way, this is how I choose to portray myself and is as much an expression of my creative identity as my paintings are.

I’ve got a bit of a ritual. Every year I make a submission to Portrait Artist of the Year. For those listeners not in the UK, this is a TV show where artists attempt to portray a celebrity sitter in 4 hours. It’s a pretty big thing for the UK arts community. To enter you submit a self-portrait. Five or six years ago I thought I was in with a chance. I paint people pretty well. So I made a self-portrait, a pretty good one, and submitted for judging. I was, of course, rejected. As I have been every year since. It’s become a bit of a grim annual ritual, but It’s been responsible for me producing 6 or 7 self-portraits that document my journey as both an artist and an individual through the intervening years. Before I started this podcast it was the closest thing I had to a diary. Each painting is distinct in style, reflecting my approach at that time. Each reflects my interests and obsessions of the time. Each shows me changing, ever so slightly, as a human.

And this, of course, was why Kahlo, Rembrandt, van Gough and many, many other artists produced self-portraits. No, not because they wanted to be on some reality TV show. But to explicitly document their journey in the way that they knew best how to do so.

But, of course, neither they nor I needed those self-portraits. I already have a document of my progression as an artist. It’s called all my other artworks. The self-portraits are among the least interesting of my works. Paradoxically, I find it difficult and uncomfortable depicting myself with any level of honesty or clarity. I just don’t think about myself as an entity in the real world. I don’t live out there, looking in. I live in here looking out. I have no idea how people see me, or how I would see myself were I able to step outside of myself for a while. The Alex that you are listening to now, and the Alex in those self-portraits is no more the real me than the Alex that turns up at job interviews or the one that lurks around awkwardly at his own art exhibitions. If, for whatever bizarre reason, you want a glimpse inside the mind of the real me, you have to look at my work as a whole. Like a giant quilt of outputs and experiences that will continue to expand until I keel over or find a more profitable hobby.

As is my habit, I’ve got a bit meta here, since I’m being autobiographical in an attempt to justify the autobiographic nature of my own work in an attempt to explain the autobiographic nature of creativity itself. All the while trying to convince you that I’m not a raving egomaniac. And maybe I am. But aren’t we all?

Of course the irony of all this talk about putting yourself on display being narcissistic, is that whereas most artists feel like imposters, narcissist are fakers who don’t have the capacity to realise that they’re imposters. In any arena, especially in the modern attention economy, the higher echelons are crammed with chancers and gobshites that have no real business being there, and have crowded out those that do. They make the most noise, dominating attention and discourse keeping everyone else out of contention. It’s arguable that professional art is at or near the top of the list of arenas crammed with narcissistic charlatans. I’d say that it was at the top, but the tech industry seems to have zoomed past in spectacular fashion.

This is a fact of the world, and the prevalence of chancers ebb and flows. What’s more frustrating is that true artists broadcast their authenticity whether they like it or not, and the consumer will pick up on it in a second if they try and grab a bit more limelight by compromising their individuality. It’s both a frustration and a compliment that true creatives are held to a higher standard. With great power comes great responsibility, but maybe small bank balances.

And as I’ve alluded to, the opposite of narcissism is imposter syndrome. It’s a subject that is a close companion to the subjects covered here. It’s such a big part of an artists daily existence that I think it’s worth at least a whole episode. So although it’s a natural progression to this conversation, I’ll leave that one for another day.

So what’s my point with all of this? Don’t be afraid to let you leak or even gush out into your work, because you’re going to whether you want to or not. You don’t have to repeatedly paint yourself like Frida Kahlo, or make yourself a living artwork like Yoko Ono or David Bowie. But if you try to remove yourself from your art, then you’re not only making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself but you’re also leaching out the most important bit, and the bit that everyone wants to see: you.

Worse, by trying to crowd yourself out of the process, the process will likely feel forced and artificial and will inevitably be less fulfilling. This can easily lead to frustration and fuel imposter syndrome. None of this bodes well for the therapeutic value of art. It’s also worth noting that you are not a fixed entity, and you will change over time. I covered this quite a bit in my episode on finding your voice. As you change, so should your voice, otherwise you’ll find yourself editing the real you out of your art anyway.

So make sure you’re there, now and always. It’s neither vain nor narcissistic to do so, in fact it’s necessary.

So you do you in all your glorious technicolour, and bollocks to the haters.

I’m off to record my first interview episode this afternoon. Hopefully that goes well and I will share it with y’all. Really looking forward to that. In the meantime, please like, review and share this podcast. Follow me on BlueSky alexlovelessartist.bsky.social. Support me on Patreon at patreon.com/alexloveless. I’m currently unemployed and making this podcast costs me money and a lot, so every little helps.

Thanks again and I’ll be back soon.

Art Takes are a new flavour of episode where we listen to Alex while at work in his studio. In this episode Alex is working on an organic abstract artwork using fluid paints while musing on mindfulness, process, chaos, the nature of colour, technique, composition and loads more.

Transcript

I’ve taken to recording pretty much any thought that comes into my head and that includes when I’m wandering around my studio working on artworks and thinking about things and getting ideas and and so I’ve got a few of these recordings and I thought maybe I’d share them as a bit of an insight into my creative process and how I think about things in real time. This particular one seems quite relevant to various of the subjects I’ve covered in recent months including process, flow states, mindfulness and various other things and I give a bit of insight into my actual working processes and materials that I use and this is really what my brain does when I’m engaged in the creative process. It was recorded using my headphone mic so the sound quality isn’t amazing. Somewhere in the middle of it I had to cut out a whole bit where I used a hair dryer and therefore you couldn’t hear me at all and I don’t really know what I was thinking talking over a hair dryer. There’s lots of sort of shushing sounds which is me using my spray bottle to wet the canvas that I’m working on. So I hope you can ignore those and you can hear what I’m saying and you find this interesting. See you again soon for a proper episode.

One of my favourite things to do is to use a combination of water and acrylic inks and drip them, splash them and let them flow across the canvas. I say it like it’s one of my favourite things to do as a technique. I really love the effects that it makes but also I really love watching it. It’s enthralling watching colours mix and merge and take unexpected paths across a canvas and sometimes I’ll have done something to the canvas to encourage that. Sometimes I just let the inks and the water do their work so I’ll drip some water in a certain, drip some ink in certain place or maybe I’ll wet the canvas first in places then I will drip some ink in various bits and usually sort of angle the canvas and let it drip but only a slight angle because I don’t want it to drip down too fast and what I like is that as it drips it leaves a sort of trail of much thinner liquid behind it and that sort of dries a different rate and you know as a colour drips down the canvas it often merges with other colours I put on there and so you get organic mixing of colours as it traverses the canvas creating little trails of ephemeral pigment and then when it dries it has a sort of like what you see with watercolour around the edges you get these little concentrated hard edges that I find absolutely beautiful and enthralling. I think watercolour is a little bit too delicate from my sensibilities and my general approach so I don’t do a lot of it but I spend a fair amount of time trying to achieve the sort of same effects you can get on watercolour with acrylic paints on canvases and sometimes I win sometimes I don’t. It’s even better when you’ve got some texture on the canvas that could be some collage but it could also be like I’ve got some modelling gel on here that’s been dried some of it quite thick in various sort of semi-organic patterns and the paint is finding its way in and through the grooves and finding strange paths, strange organic paths down the canvas. Obviously it’s falling down in the ridges between the paint strokes leaving this sort of pattern to emerge. As it slowly drips down the paint the inks run out of momentum and they start to dry up so I spray a bit more sort of towards the top which allows more of the you know more ink to flow down and maybe if it’s getting very light I’ll add a bit more ink. Well I try not to get involved with where the paint is going because I often think that nature’s a better artist than I am and I should just stop meddling but I find it hard to do so. I find this process so mindful and generally just sort of absorbing and fascinating and I’m no expert on fluid dynamics or anything like that but maybe I should be. Maybe I need to find out more so I can create some more fun with these canvases. Yeah it’s hard hard not to meddle but then you do meddle like I’m doing right now which I really shouldn’t be and sometimes it makes things better sometimes it makes it worse but most times it’s acrylic paint so you can just paint over it and start again and use what you’ve created to you know create somewhat of a bit of a different effect sometimes or you know I don’t like to throw things away and I don’t like to waste beautiful things that are beautiful organic patterns that have been created on a canvas. My phone’s got quite a good macro lens on it so I sometimes get close up photos of these little creations although it’s quite hard to do given the lighting. So right now I’ve got this abstract piece that I’m allowing the paint to find its way down. Some of it’s exactly what I was hoping and some of it isn’t and you sort of have to take a decision look lots of little decisions on the fly as to you know how to react to that but I’m not averse to playing around a bit and especially since I didn’t know where this was going anyway I’m not too bothered if it goes a bit weird and also as I do this I get ideas I try and create a fair amount of chaos around me at any given point in time because when I do something like this and something different happens to what usually happens because you know I’ve I’ve treated the canvas slightly differently or different pattern different mediums and so on and so something happens and maybe it doesn’t suit this particular piece but I can then use that or use what I learned from this to to create something new and interesting it doesn’t always work it’s not always profitable but I think the other thing I’ve got going on here is since I I don’t really know how to conceive of abstract paintings letting nature do its thing gives me hints and points directions for me into how to progress and and try different things and this is sort of the same way that I use like my AI and neural network to uh to ideate for me as well as create artworks so sometimes I’m like oh I really wish you’d point in this direction and I’ll I’ll try and give it a little bit of help um I’ll be careful because sometimes you know be careful what you wish for there you go I’ve got a little stream going down here now it’s beautiful look at that that’s amazing one of the main problems with this approach is that because it takes it’s quite wet as a wet as the paints are wet and the inks are wet some of the patterns that emerge as it’s flowing um pretty much dissipate as you let it dry because the paints just continue to sort of mix into each other even if you lie it down flat then it’s a bit of a shame but I’ve tried various ways to fix these beautiful patterns and you know one obvious way is to try and dry it you know use a hairdryer or something and it’s going to uh it’s going to move the paint around um which is which is not what I want um I sort of just sort of let nature do its thing one of the things that was what this is doing at the moment which is something I’m sort of less fond of is that um it’s not symmetrical and I like things to be even it doesn’t have to be symmetrical it just has to have I like things to be balanced they’re the yin and yang thing it does occur to me that creating things that are unbalanced if it gives the viewer a slightly uncomfortable feeling and in some ways that’s mission accomplished but I have to like the things I make because that’s how I know when they’re finished and when things are out of kilter when they’re not balanced I I very much struggle to ignore that um so I always end up meddling because it’s like an itch you got a scratch or like a stain on the carpet or something that just bugs you it’s irritating I don’t want that they’re gonna go and clean it off and so that’s what happens I meddle and sometimes that’s for the better and sometimes it’s really really not and who knows where this one’s gonna go but I’m lacking a bit of balance here but I guess one way to approach that is that you know you’ve got a bit of unbalance going on this side that you can try and coerce it to create a bit more weight down the other side to even out a bit and uh that’s what I’m going to do now there’s a nice little ridge here that I can see if I can get this paint to drip down yeah balance is important to me um even though I don’t suppose I leave the leader particularly balanced life but I think my artistic brain my autistic brain likes likes order it likes things to be in the right place I think part of that is symmetry and balance and I’m fine with that um but it can get a bit annoying feeling like I have to always make things just so but then also my autistic brain likes weird stuff I like strange compositions as long as they feel balanced to my brain maybe no one else can see what I think of as balance but um I can see it so now I just sprayed this with some really dark gloomy blacky bluey browny color and it’s dulled everything down and I don’t think I have a problem with that because I quite want this piece to be quite dark whatever it is so I’m sort of okay with that but then you know I’ll probably come in tomorrow see what it looks like and think to myself yeah that’s not that’s not staying like that uh and then just paint it all out and start again I’ve done that so many times but then it sort of gives you opportunities to experiment some more I know that’s one of the reasons I work with acrylic paint is so you know you can just scratch it and start again I’m good with that and as long as I’m not throwing away things that are actually good then I’m fairly easy with this stuff and really that’s always bang on about anyway it’s all about the process anyway uh for me and therefore strictly speaking if I paint stuff out and start again then you know it’s two for the price of one I’ve just got to be careful just not to get rid of stuff that people might actually like and you know might want to buy I’ve got the preference for building things up in layers even if it doesn’t actually fundamentally agree with my constitution I like the effects you can get by putting lots of glazes on because the colors underneath shine through and it gives really complex uh unpredictable and quite beguiling effects rather than just sort of mixing fields of color you know this bit’s got to be green and this bit’s got to be blue I like to sort of create an illusion of of depth of of lots of colors because that’s what the world around this looks like there’s no such thing as a thing that’s just blue it’s it’s just reflecting you know all sorts of colors it’s just primarily blue and it all depends on how much sheen or gloss it’s got on it and you know the shade of blue and and of course if it if it’s blue uh this it’s the color that it’s reflecting most of which means the one thing it isn’t is blue uh it’s every other color and so I sort of um I like to try and reflect the fact that excuse the pun that uh that everything is all the colors and there’s always any surface that you go and look at be it a tabletop or someone’s skin on their face or their hands it’s all different colors all reflecting lots of different things and I like to accentuate those colors I like to celebrate color so my works tend to be quite vibrant um for the better or for the worse anyway that’s probably enough for now

In this second episode of the Your Brain on Art series, Alex discusses Zen, how meditation and mindfulness can aid mental wellness and what this says about flow states and the creative process.

Show Notes

• Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
• Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Zen and Dogen’s Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye
• The Joy of Painting With Bob Ross
• Fjorback, L. O.; Arendt, M.; Ornbøl, E.; Fink, P.; Walach, H. (2011). “Mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials”. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. 124 (2): 102–119. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0447.2011.01704.x
• McMindfulness
• Mindlessness: The Corruption of Mindfulness in a Culture of Narcissism

Transcript

“Calmness of mind does not mean you should stop your activity. Real calmness should be found in activity itself. We say, “It is easy to have calmness in inactivity, it is hard to have calmness in activity, but calmness in activity is true calmness.” ― Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

“Real wisdom is the ability to understand the incredible extent to which you bullshit yourself every single moment of every day.” ― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen’s Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

Zen Buddhists set a lot of stock in sitting still. The word Zen itself derives from the Chinese word chan and basically means “meditation”. Zen Buddhists’ refer to meditation as zazen, which translates to “Sitting Zen” or “sitting meditation”. To them, the act of sitting and shutting up is the very act of engaging with the universe, of interfacing with infinity, communing with God. When you practise zazen you are at one with all beings, in fact you are all beings.

Meditation in the Zen sense means hitting the pause button on your body and mind. Taking some time to free your mind of the thoughts that bind us to reality with all its prickly, sticky messiness. When you meditate properly, you are not thinking “no thoughts”, you are simply not thinking, you are just being.

But you don’t have to sit still to achieve this. According to Zen, you are in zazen at all times. You are always at one with the universe. It’s just that when you’re out and about in the big wide world, drinking coffee, and tapping manically at your phone giving someone a sick burn on the socials, you are unable to recognise this. You’re too busy with petty distractions. Only when you sit down, shut up, and clear your mind for a few moments, can you experience true reality. But reality sits quietly in the background while you exist in your state of perpetual delusion, you just have to stop ruminating on that weird comment your friend made yesterday, and notice what’s going on right now. This is often referred to as mindfulness, and it’s a word that been so used and abused over recent years as to be meaningless.

But it does have meaning. It means you are present. Ideally in the purist sense. This is something that you should practise as much as possible, commune with the universe wherever possible as we shall see, it’s good for the body and mind, but for those of us who suffer chronic mental illness, its value and purpose is much more practical and arguably more essential.

To understand why this is we need to rewind a bit to the glorious neuroscience of the prior episode of this series.

So, if you listened to part one of this series you might remember that I talked about homoeostasis. If you don’t remember this, then that may mean that you didn’t listen to part one, therefore you probably should go and do that, since otherwise this episode probably won’t make much sense.

So homoeostasis is concept of a system being in equilibrium, the system in this case being your nervous system, and by extension, your body, the whole of you. I talked about the fact that when you are suffering from mental illnesses such as chronic anxiety and depression, your nervous system has got stuck in a panic state that I referred to as “bad homoeostasis”. Perhaps I made this sound like this means you’re in a state where your body cannot achieve equilibrium, but this is not quite the case. You are in equilibrium, just an undesirable one.

You see, your nervous system doesn’t really have a preferred state, just that its state is appropriate for the environment. It takes its cue for this from your what your senses perceive about the environment, and what those signals mean, and what they might mean for your future state. The brain is essentially a prediction machine, and this is a concept that I’m going to return to a lot in future. Your mind has a model of the world as perceived by you, and makes predictions about future states, usually the most imminent future states. Essentially it makes some assumptions, based on past experience, about what might happen next. So if you walk into your bedroom, your brain’s model has this room containing a bed before you enter. If instead of a bed there is a large pile of Lego bricks where your bed should be, then you’ll experience surprise, which is what happens when events in reality don’t match the range of events our brains consider probable. If, instead you walk into your bedroom and see your bed merely strewn with Lego pieces, you will still be surprised, but much less so, since in this scenario you have kids who have Lego and the habit of playing with said Lego in places you’d rather they didn’t. Conversely, if you walked into that room and were presented with vast vistas of sand dunes with giant sand worms battling space craft, you’d be very surprised indeed. Unless that is, that you have a giant screen in your bedroom and someone is in there watching Dune.

Your nervous system sets its equilibrium to whatever state suits your environment. If you live in a war zone, your nervous system is likely to be permanently in fight or flight mode, since you could encounter guns and bombs and any number of nasty things at any moment. If you’re sitting on your sofa binge-watching episodes of The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross with his soothing tones and strangely alluring afro, then your nervous system will be in rest and digest mode. All this is exactly as it should be. Being stuck in fight or flight mode is likely an optimal response to being in a war zone, since being ready to flee is arguably the optimal state for such situations. Yes being constantly stressed is bad, but being captured, maimed or dead are all arguably worse.

The problem arises when the inverse happens. Attempting to loaf on your sofa, you find that Bob Ross’s soothing tones do nothing to calm your brain, because your brain is not thinking about oil painting, it’s obsessing about that snarky emails you sent yesterday. You’re fidgety, biting your nails, looking through the TV, and you have a knot in your stomach. You’re in fight or flight mode, and now you come to think of it, you’ve been that way for a while now. When was the last time you were actually able to sit in front of the TV and relax? Your nervous system has found an equilibrium that is inappropriate to your surroundings.

This problem arises because all reactions to all situations happen in your head. You don’t have to be afraid of the tiger salivating in your general direction, but its helpful to be so. Your nervous system has deep seated understanding that this is bad, even when the tiger is at the other side of some sturdy bars. Not being afraid is a bad thing. But maybe you’re a tiger tamer, and you’re not afraid. That confidence may or may not be founded in reality, but one way or another you’re not stressed in a situation where perhaps your should be. It’s all in the head. You see, your nervous system responds to how you perceive the environment, which is not always a realistic, or even a vaguely appropriate perception.

Therefore, while you sit there obsessing about that job interview that’s 4 days away, your nervous system earnestly responds to your trepidation by triggering fight or flight. Not in 4 days time, but now, while Bob is putting some detailing on that tree. It doesn’t care that there’s no tiger, the fear is real, because you think it’s real. Therefore your nervous system responds accordingly by increasing your levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline and cortisol and you feel wired and worried. Bob Ross fades into the background while you sit and fret and doomscroll to take your mind off of it.

As I said in the last episode, anxiety begets anxiety, and once your body gets in that state, if you don’t remove the perceived threat, in this case the ruminations, then it will stay in stress mode and likely find some more stuff to worry about.

So unless you’re in the war zone, or confronted with the giant, salivating feline, then the solution to your problem resides in your head. Bob Ross’s hair might not help much, but following his lead might. Well, maybe don’t follow his lead too much.

In short, you gotta stop thinking the bad thoughts. Easy, right? Well, if it were, you wouldn’t be staring at the ceiling at 3am thinking them, would you? But this is where mindfulness comes back into play and, by extension, you guessed it, art!

Let me paint another picture. A forest or bush fire is burning its way to a town, increasing in intensity as it finds more fuel, and creating desolation in its wake. Frantic fire crews turn up, and some of them go dump some water at the advancing front. Another group heads a few miles towards the town. Here they start clearing trees and foliage in a line parallel to the advancing fire. They might even use fire to do this. Why? You’re probably aware that this is a fire break. They create a strip of land free of flammable material wide enough so that no flames can cross it, so that when the fire reaches it, it cannot advance, and hopefully peters out. Maybe the fire makes it across, but you slow it down for a while, calm it down a bit by starving it of fuel, and it gives the firefighters a chance to make another fire break, which will slow it down further. If you do this enough, you’re hopefully able to stop the fire entirely.

The flames are your anxious thoughts, and the fire break is some activity that creates a gap in the path of these thoughts which stops them dead in their tracks. Doing so once will help a little, but doing so regularly could stop the surge entirely. To extend the analogy, medicines such as anti-depressants, which we spoke about in the last episode, are like the fire crew with the water hoses on the front line of the blaze. They hold the anxiety at bay so that you can do what’s needed, in this case, create some more fire breaks.

And what are some good ways to create that fire break? Meditation, mindfulness and…creativity. I can hear you breath an audible sigh of relief as I finally get to the point!

A full explanation of what mindfulness is and how to achieve it, is outside of the scope of this particular discussion, but here’s a quick recap.

According to Wikipedia:

“Mindfulness is the cognitive skill, usually developed through meditation, of sustaining meta-attentive awareness towards the contents of one’s own mind in the present moment.”

Well that’s pretty clear right?

Put more simply, but perhaps less succinctly, mindfulness is the state of being mentally present in the now. This involves progressively disassociating your minds processes from the thoughts within. This sounds a bit contradictory, since it seems to most of us that our mind and our thoughts are the same thing. But most of what happens in our brain and body happens without us noticing, for example, you fled from the tiger before you even had time to consider your predicament. Thoughts are just one facet of human cognition. Therefore it’s not so bizarre to consider relegating those thoughts to the cheap seats and watching the real game unencumbered.

The best known approach to achieving this is via meditation. Which usually involves sitting still and focussing on something specific, commonly your breath, or perhaps a meaningless phrase, sometimes called a mantra. But there are many other ways to achieve this, for example using apps like Headspace, having another person guide you through it and yoga.

Mindfulness has its roots in Buddhist and Hindu traditions, but there’s a whole industry that’s sprung around it now, that’s saturated with chancers and charlatans to the point where psychologist Thomas Joiner is quoted as suggesting that modern mindfulness meditation has been “corrupted” for commercial gain by self-help celebrities, and suggests that it encourages unhealthy narcissistic and self-obsessed mindsets, while American clinical psychologist Jeremey Safran dubbed it “McMindfulness”.

However, the effectiveness of mindfulness has a long history of research, some more robust than others, but there is a general consensus seems to be that it is an effective means of managing a large spectrum of psychological conditions. Neurological studies have indicated that over time it can actually change the structure of the brains suggesting that " Grey matter concentrations in brain regions that regulate emotion, self-referential processing, learning and memory processes have shown changes in density”.

Some studies have suggested that regular practise of mindfulness focussed activities increase mindfulness in general, meaning that you are more mindful when participating in any other activity. And it has been found to be very effective in the treatment of ruminant thoughts and consistent anxiety. Not only does it provide the fire break effect I’ve described, but the overall effect can make it easier to combat these type of thoughts at other times.

Once you cut off those unhelpful thoughts, you starve them of fuel, your nervous system can start dialling back its panic response. Less of the fight or flight neurochemicals are released such as adrenaline and cortisol, and more rest and digest neurochemicals such as serotonin and GABA are released. You might slip back into your anxious state soon after the mindful activity but as you regularly repeat it, like our repeated fire breaks, you start to find those thoughts lowering in volume and frequency. This is the process of your nervous system finding a more appropriate equilibrium. Since it was the unhelpful thoughts that were causing you to be stuck in fight or flight mode, discontinuing them allows you to exit that state. Your nervous system finds a new equilibrium in a calmer state. Good homoeostasis!

I’ve practised meditation on and off for a couple of decades now, and have certainly felt the benefits in terms of recognising unhelpful thoughts and shooing them away. But with a family, work, chores, social life and all the other fun stuff we pass out time with, finding time, space and peace to meditate can be troublesome. If you can combine mindfulness with another activity that helps you create a state of focus and calm, then mindful states can often be easier to achieve.

When I started making art again more seriously around seven years ago, I found even less time for mindfulness. However, once I’d found my groove in the creative realm, I started to notice that I was achieving states of focus when in front of my easel that resembled meditation, and left me feeling similarly relaxed and balanced. Time would fall away and my thoughts seemed to stop. I would be making decisions, applying techniques, adjusting, improving, but all without seeming to notice doing so, and without thinking about anything else either. I seemed to be on autopilot.

This is very common with creatives and adjacent practices like musicians. You hear a writer saying something like “the words just seemed to flow through me, like I was just a conduit”. This is what mindfulness is - being present, or perhaps just being. And I’ve talked about it before. The state of focus you get into when you’re fully absorbed in the creative process. It’s called “flow” and it’s the state that most if not all creators spend their time trying to achieve.

I frequently achieve it writing these episodes, including this one. I started off this series assuming that this was going to be a single episode. Thanks in part to flow, I’m in the process of realising that this probably needs to roll on to yet another episode. By just letting my thoughts flow I realise that I had a lot more to say on this subject than I had previously thought. This is just another effect of such states - when you get out of the way of your subconscious, when you stop trying to force yourself to think, to create, it can just spill out naturally, and you’ll be surprised what you can achieve. Another aspect of flow is the desire to just keep going. To surf that wave for as long as possible.

However, I need to get off an give you all a break. I’ve got other things I’m supposed to be doing, and the longer the episode, the more time and effort it takes to record and produce. And all that stuff is much less mindful!

I’ve been promising an episode on flow since I first started this podcast, and now it looks as if I might finally get to it. I think this is me committing to it, and as I’ve said before, I hate disappointing people. Will it be the next episode I release? Maybe, maybe not. You’ll just have to turn up and find out.

I’d also like to expand my thoughts on the probabilistic brain and how this relates to the creation and consumptions of art, movies, TV, music and the arts in general. That may also get included in the next episode. Or maybe there will be a fourth part. I know, the suspense is killing you.

One last thing. Having documented my departure from Twitter in the last episode, I’ve just joined X-nemesis BlueSky, which seems like a much nicer place. My handle is AlexLovelessArtist. I’ve quite chatty on there at times, you have been warned. Once you’ve followed me on there, please go through and like and repost any or all of my posts if you would be so kind. This stuff really helps new people find me. Thanks!

See you soon!

Alex gets mental and physical in the bumper first episode on his series that seeks to illuminate the biological and psychological causes of mental illness and the reasons why art can help treat and prevent it. In this episode he discusses the causes of the epidemic of mental illness we see in society at the moment, offers some insight onto the mechanisms leading to this, and discusses how various treatments help us.

Transcript

We’re used to getting what we want in the modern Western world. And I don’t mean by that the Ferrari, and the hot spouse. I mean, when we want a big greasy burger with all the toppings, we go out the house and we get one and I’ll take a thick shake and a large fries with that thank you very much. When we want to get smashed, we’ll just go buy some beers, or go to the pub and get smashed. If we want a week long trail of debauchery on the south coast of Spain, just go do it, no problem.

When you want to see what your friends are doing, grab your phone, go take a look. You’ll probably find them on a week long trail of debauchery in the south of Spain. In fact, doing so was probably the very thing that led you to decide to want to go on a week long trail of debauchery in the south of Spain in the first place. You do this because you can, because fun and tasty and cool things are available and they’re relatively cheap, although perhaps not as cheap as they used to be. But for those of us with a bit of disposable income there’s nothing really stopping you. Your world’s full of people doing what they feel like and having all, or at least many of, the things they want. Some people have more than you and some people have less.

This perceived social imbalance causes us to be constantly alert to our status in the world. What we have and what we don’t, things we do and things we don’t do, how people view us, for better and for worse. It comes at as almost uninterupted stream via little glowing rectangles that we keep in our pockets or bags. This tends to leave us with a feeling that we’re missing something, or lacking something, all the time. Therefore you go eat a big burger, you go get smashed out of your skull in a pub, you go on holiday to the south of Spain…where you spend all the time looking at your phone only to find your that best friend’s on holiday in the Seychelles or climbing Mount Everest or something equally enviable or impressive. So there you are, experiencing the very thing you craved, yet feeling at deficit as stare at your lukewarm, murky-looking pina colada in a crowded Spanish bar full of other Brits with sunburn, swearing and singing crappy football chants too loudly. And so this cycle of stimulation and deflation, the boom and bust of getting and having but still wanting more, continues. The desire and envy screw keeps ratcheting and no end ever seems in sight. So you just focus on the nest shiny thing. You keep consuming in the hopes that one day you’ll have your fill, and can relax by your private pool in your private villa somewhere away from all the riff raff sharing picture perfect photos of yourself and making everyone else envious.

In the west in particular, this has become the societal norm. A feature, maybe even requisite, of unrestrained capitalism. This has led to some pretty malign results from a societal perspective with ever rising rates of anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses which have become an epidemic of discontent, despair and self-loathing. No one’s quite sure what to do about it.

I try to do my bit to alleviate the symptoms of this societal dysfunction, and I guess the causes too. That’s why this podcast exists. It’s why I tend to be painfully open about my struggles with mental illness - it’s good to talk, and it’s good to share. It’s also good to create. And I hope this podcast encourages people to create, and helps them do so. As per the core thesis of this podcast, I believe the act of creation is one of the most effective means of treatment and prevention of mental illness.

And one of the main reasons I think this is precisely because it helps relieve some of the pressure of this perma-hostile environment. The process at work that lead us to these unhealthy cycles are the same ones that can actually reprieve us from them. We can blame big business, technology, social media, celebrities, and capitalism for all of this, but the root of it is in your head, driven by complex machinery designed to keep us alive in a complex, peril-filled world. If you understand a little about that machinery, it might help you understand why these destructive cycles exist. It also gives us a clue about how to tackle them.

So as much as I’ve yapped on about the therapeutic value of the creative process on here, I’ve said very little about why I believe this to be the case. Therefore I’m going to delve a little into psychology, neuroscience, physiology and try to explain how this all fits together, why we get mentally ill and how creativity helps remedy and prevent this. I’ll put this in the context of other approaches to managing mental health, and I’ll try not to get too in the weeds. Because weeds there are. Lots of them.

Now, big disclaimer. I’m not a psychology, psychiatric or medical professional. I have informally studied these areas quite a bit in my quest to understand my own brain, but I’m far from an expert. Everything I say here should be taken with a level of caution, and should in no way be taken to constitute advice. That said, I’m going to try and be as accurate as possible. If any of this resonates, then please go do your own research, and/or consult a medical professional before taking any action. If you are the latter and you spot anything inaccurate or misleading in here, then feel free to drop me a line and let me know and I will endeavour to set things straight.

Right, enough of disclaimers, on with the show.

When we think about human mind, we think of it a computer, perhaps with a ghost in the machine called the soul, but we’re going to sidestep that debate for the moment. This computer takes in information about the world around us via our senses, decides how to react to whatever new information is coming in, and sends signals to the rest of our body to take some action. So when you round the corner on your way to the shop to pick up some milk and see a tiger malevolently staring you down, your brain tells your body to flee back from whence you came hoping frantically that someone more tasty-looking passes it’s eyeline before it give chase to you. A very logical course of action given the circumstances.

On the other hand, especially when it comes to interactions with other humans, and to an extent, the animal kingdom, the experience of the brain’s functions appear fundamentally emotional and not like a computer at all. So when the rounding the same corner the next day you see Condescending Karen Almighty Gatekeeper of Taste and Decorum has spotted you and is traversing the road for today’s barrage of passive aggression, you feel suddenly panicked, especially since you left the house in your sofa clothes. Part of your brain is telling you to run away, just like when you spotted the tiger. Which isn’t so logical.

These two characterisations of the brain seem at odds - one one hand, mechanical and logical, on the other hand emotional and sometimes irrational. But these two aspects of the brain aren’t separate at all, they all part of the same set of processes, they’re just different aspects of the same machine. Think of it like, say, a camera, which, these days anyway, both takes photos and displays them. You can either think of them as separate functions or just part of the requisite functionality of the device.

They are not distinct. We are not a computer sitting atop a doing machine, like a human driving a car. The thinking machine we call the brain is simply the main component of a complex thinking-feeling-doing machine called the nervous system.

So when Condescending Karen traverses the road and you feel that general sense of unease and mild panic, a complex stream of processes are work that’s driven by a machine that sees it’s primary process as keeping you alive and well and free of conversations with self-important school mums. The nervous system is usually very good at this, but sometimes, like any machine, it goes wrong. Mostly this happens briefly, as we react to the ever changing world around us. But sometimes it goes wrong and stays wrong for long periods. When this happens, we experience what is known as mental illness, a term that encompasses a broad array of conditions. But of the purposes of this conversation assume I’m referring to the category of mental illness that mainly affects emotions, such as anxiety, depression, panic, all that fun stuff.

It’s worth getting a little bit technical for a bit, and define some terms and concepts that we’ll be referring to quite a bit for the rest of this and future episodes. Don’t worry, I’m going to try and keep things high level.

The human nervous system is a complex biological network responsible for regulating bodily functions, processing information, and allowing communication between different parts of the body. It consists of two main parts: the central nervous system, which includes the brain and spinal cord, and the peripheral nervous system, which connects the central nervous system to the rest of the body.

The autonomic nervous system is a part of the peripheral nervous system that controls involuntary functions, such as heart rate and digestion. It has two main branches: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

The sympathetic nervous system is often called the “fight or flight” system, preparing the body to respond to threats. It boosts heart rate and redirects blood to muscles, mainly through the release of noradrenaline and adrenaline. This helps us react quickly in stressful situations such as the tiger incident. It’s the “don’t think just do” system.

On the other hand, the parasympathetic nervous system promotes relaxation and recovery, known as the “rest and digest” system. It slows the heart rate and enhances digestion.

Together, the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems maintain balance in the body. This state of balance is sometimes called homoeostasis, a word that derived from Greek and translates roughly to “the same as standing still”. This is a term I’m going to refer to quite a lot.

Paradoxically, given that many mental health issues arise from our cognition, the thoughts we think, conditions such as chronic anxiety and depression happen when the autonomic nervous system, the non-thinking bit, gets stuck in panic mode. States of affairs that we are aware of, cause malfunctions in the system we’re largely not aware of. But the ultimate cause of this mental malaise is what I call “bad homoeostasis”. Your autonomic nervous system can’t balance itself. To understand why this happens, we need to introduce what will become a very familiar term: neurochemicals, most specifically neurotransmitters and hormones.

The things that we refer to as nerves are actually called neurons. These are the wires of the nervous system, transmitting signals using electrical impulses throughout the brain and body. When a signal reaches the end of a neuron, it releases chemicals called, neurotransmitters. These neurotransmitters cross tiny gaps known as synapses to communicate with other neurons, influencing everything from our movements and senses to our moods, thoughts, and behaviours. For instance, serotonin helps regulate mood, while dopamine is linked to pleasure and reward, oxytocin is involve with social interactions and Acetylcholine aids movement.

What I’ve actually done thus far, and will continue doing is mixing up neurotransmitters - serotonin, Acetylcholine and dopamine - and hormones - oxytocin. For the purpose of this conversation, the difference doesn’t really matter, but basically, the neurotransmitters are manufactured and mainly by the nervous system, while hormones are made by the endocrine system, where stuff like insulin is made, and tend to be responsible for carrying out the commands of the nervous system. From here on, I’m going to ignore the distinction for the most part.

Since the nervous system runs on impulses transmitted by brain chemicals, those chemicals play a pivotal role in the working, or lack thereof, of the nervous system. Depending on what’s going on in your environment, different neurochemicals are created and released that trigger physical and emotional reactions. So when you’re being chased by that tiger, you’ve got lots of the neurochemicals adrenaline and noradrenaline exciting all the functions associated with prioritising fight or flight functions such as heart rate, alertness, deprioritising digestions, and triggering your bodies cooling system, and you start to sweat.

To simplify, perhaps grossly, but in service of getting my point across, the neurochemicals come in 2 main flavours:

• Those that rev us up, sometimes called stimulants, such as dopamine, adrenaline and noradrenaline
• Those that chill us out, such as serotonin and Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid aka GABA

I say this is a gross simplification, because the purpose and action of these chemicals complex and each one has various purposes in addition to their affect on mood and behaviour, for example serotonin plays a role in digestion. Their action may also affect people differently. For example for folks like me with ADHD, supplementing our levels of the stimulant dopamine, via medication or by drinking coffee, can actually make us drowsy and lethargic - the opposite to the way it affects most people. This is because dopamine is implicated in our reward seeking behaviours. ADHD brains like mine lack, or poorly regulate, dopamine therefore ADHD people are constantly seeking rewards usually via stimulating situations or activities. When you give us dopamine, this emulates getting that reward, and we can finally chill out. Having larger doses of dopamine, however, will put us in double speed mode similarly to everyone else.

All mood altering drugs do their thing by altering the amounts and actions of these chemicals in our bodies. This is includes coffee which increases dopamine, and reduces the sleep hormone adenosine, speed which increases dopamine and noradrenaline, alcohol alters dopamine and GABA levels, acid which, among other things, boosts serotonin.

In those times where you’re not being chased by a murderous feline or are “e"ed up to the eyeballs at a rave, your body’s job is to keep all these chemicals in an optimal balance - homoeostasis. But it’s not always able to do this, and sometimes this equilibrium get completely disrupted.

So imagine if Condescending Karen followed you around all day every day droning of about how smart her darling, Gucci adorned offspring are. Just once or twice a week would be just about bearable, but constantly? She’s not a threat per se, but you’re constantly on edge in case you say the wrong thing and suddenly all the other parents are giving you funny looks. Since she’s always lurking, your sympathetic nervous system rarely disengages. Even when you find moments of peace, your nervous system can’t full recover. When fight or flight is triggered, your body releases the hormone cortisol, which is sometimes called the “stress hormone”. This is the hormone responsible for putting your body in panic mode. It takes a while for cortisol to clear from your system. Therefore if you get stressed again too soon after getting a break, you never really “wind down”. Anxiety breeds anxiety, and fight or flight mode makes you hyper-aware of threats, which means you start to see them everywhere - a comment someone makes, an unusual meeting called at work, a strange pain in your belly - which in turn causes your body to release more cortisol. If you can’t get a proper break, you can get stuck in an anxiety doom loop, so even if Karen retreats permanently to her gated community, you may not be able to break the cycle. This is when chronic anxiety and depression rear their ugly heads.

This is why I sometimes call these illnesses “bad homoeostasis”. Your nervous system has lost its ability to reassert the equilibrium its usually so good at maintaining.

The Karen situation is a little contrived, although I’m sure we all know someone like that. But it’s really just a metaphor for much more common situations that also lead to these bad outcomes. You may have a patronising acquaintance, but maybe it’s sustained stress at work, illness of a loved one, new baby. It doesn’t even have to be something life changing, a noisy neighbour, a broken leg, not being able to do some activity that you love, can all cause your system to go haywire if experienced over a long period. For us autistics, just dealing with day to day activities and routine human interactions tends to set off our fight or flight response, and therefore we are considerably more prone to these types of stress related, chronic conditions.

One of the reasons that these conditions are so widespread relates to the theme that I started this episode off by talking about. Societal pressures and the anxieties these cause are nothing new, but thanks to more recent technological advances, they are much more present and more problematically, they are pretty much perpetually present. This is exactly like the Karen following you around everywhere. Every time your phone chirps, you get a little dopamine bump and you log on to see what’s happening. You find yourself on Facebook or Insta or Snapchat, and society, Karen and all her sycophantic cronies, elbow in. This, of course, is purely figurative, but that’s not how your subconscious sees it. No one, well hopefully no one, is peering back out at you, but you feel seen, observed. Since most people never turn off of leave the presence of their phone, this feeling never goes away.

We’re not designed for this. Our homes are a refuge because that’s where we shelter from the day to day dramas and etiquette of society. It’s somewhere you can wear something comfortable but ugly, forego any sort of grooming and loaf on the couch watching Adam Sandler films. Society doesn’t belong here, but there it is, leaking out at you from that little glowing rectangle. Therefore you never really relax. That respite is not a luxury, most of us simply can’t function properly without it. Having your phone constantly there is like deliberately putting grit in your bed! This is bad enough when that constant imposition is just passive, but particularly among the younger generations, this impingement goes far beyond every day dramas and into direct and unavoidable harassment, sometimes with tragic consequences. Smart phones have a so many benefits, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that those benefits are more than balanced by their down sides.

If you find yourself suffering from chronic anxiety, then that little rectangle is not likely to be much comfort, and many of the people it allows to protrude into your life will be less than sympathetic to your plight. Not everyone understands or is willing to have sympathy, especially when they’re on the other end of a wire.

Mental illness is just like any other type of illness. It has causes and treatments. However there’s an odd but pervasive stigma around mental illness that seeks to make us believe it’s all imagined and therefore the sufferer can “just pull themselves together”, “snap out off it” or “cheer up”. But mental illness is never imagined, and people can’t just pull themselves together any more than someone with dysentery can just get on with eating and give the toilet a break.

So once you got yourself some bad homoeostasis, how you return yourself to equilibrium - how do you treat mental illness? It’s outside of the scope of this podcast and my expertise to go into any great depths here. All I really want to do is talk about why the major forms of treatment work, in the broadest possible sense, because it gives us a clue as to why art is such a valuable therapeutic pursuit.

For out purposes I’m going to great down treatments into some very broad groups:

1. Medicines
2. Talking therapies
3. Physical exercise
4. Mindfulness
5. Activity based therapies

I’m deliberately not covering the more invasive or extreme medical interventions for more profound or debilitating disorders such as electro shock therapy. And I’m steering clear of “alternative” medicines that have little to no basis in scientific research. I’m not discounting these on premise, but until they have a little more evidence behind them, they can’t be considered effective treatments, whereas the rest of them do and can.

I also recognise that there are varying degrees of scepticism about some of these, especially antidepressants and mindfulness, even within the medical and scientific communities, but I’m going to stick with the mainstream scientific views here, not least because doing so backs up my core thesis. If you want to debate this stuff, feel free to do so with the next medical professional you meet.

So, onwards.

When we think about mood altering drugs, we think of often illegal substances that make the user feel good, often accompanied with less desirable side effects like dependency, physical ailments and er, death. That might be the case with cocaine, but the stuff used to treat anxiety and depression don’t really work that way, despite working along similar lines.

To understand how they work we need to go back to our “bad homoeostasis caused by sustained stress” scenario, via an analogy.

Imagine a pipe in your kitchen has sprung a major, gushing leak and is spewing water all over your kitchen floor. You’ve go no plumbing skills and no idea that the concept of stopcock even exists, let alone where to find it. You’re able to hold back the flood somewhat by putting a bucket under the offending pipe, but it fills up in a matter of seconds, you don’t even have time to call your dad to ask for advice or to call for an emergency plumber. You just need a break so that you can take some proper action without completely destroying your kitchen. Then you have an idea. You remember that if you have two or more taps running in your house at the same time, they all run down to a trickle. That’s usually annoying, especially when having shower, but it proves to be a godsend right now. You rush to the bathroom and turn on all the taps there as well as the shower. When you return to the kitchen, the leak is still ejecting water, but now at a much slower rate, and so you now only have to empty the bucket once every few minutes. Sure you’re wasting water, but at least now you have time to make some calls and fix things. Maybe that will take no time, or maybe you’ll have to keep hauling water for a couple of hours until help arrives, but you are at least able to deal with it.

When you fall into one of these spiralling, self-perpetuating doom loops, your body and brain tend to spend all their free time and energy on dealing with that, like the gushing pipe. Most treatments are less like an experienced plumber simply locating the stopcock, and more like the scenario outlined above. Yes do have the psychological machinery to get better, but it’s fully engaged in the act of trying, and failing, to prevent things getting worse.

What treatments like medication do is buy that psychological space to attempt to fix the real problem. The most common type of antidepressants are SSRI, Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, such a prozac aka fluoxitine, and sertraline. I won’t go into the specific mechanism of how these work, but they increase the levels of inhibitory neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain, which in terms has a calming effect. You don’t feel good when you take them, in fact you barely feel anything at all, but over weeks and months, they take just enough pressure of your embattled nervous system that it can divert some resources to regaining that much needed homoeostasis. While this is happening in the background, your constant panicking and racing anxious ruminations subside, you feel generally more calm and start to see the world through more rational eyes.

If external factors are responsible for getting you into this state, for example you lost your job and have been struggling to find a new one, then this psychological headroom will make it easier to to take on that task. The source of your trouble hasn’t gone away, but you’re in much better shape to deal with it. And deal with it you should if you possibly can. Because medication can only do so much, and many people relapse when they come off these medications not because they didn’t work, or because they are doomed to suffer as humans, but because they were only ever there to tackle the symptoms. If the cause still remains, and you’ve done nothing to ameliorate it, then the illness may well return. It’s like visiting a house of cats while being allergic to cat fur. You can take antihistamines, but if you don’t leave the house, you’ll be sneezing again as soon as they wear off.

So if both illicit and prescribed substances alter your brain chemistry, then why not just go out, score some coke and get smashed? There a few reasons why this is not a good idea, as fun as it might sound, and perhaps be. We’ll sidestep the obvious legal problems, which I think obvious enough to go without saying, and stick with the inevitable side effects.

So one of the main treatments for ADHD is dexamphetamine, and the more socially liberal of you out there might have spotted that that sounds very much like the formal name for the party drug known as speed. You know, the one that Lemmy from Motorhead mainlined and that students use to get themselves through exams. And you would be right, they’re basically the same. I am prescribed dex to manage ADHD, which basically means I go to the pharmacy every month to pick up big bag of pills that have serious street value. And yes, I could in theory get off my nut on the stuff, but I don’t because it would just make things worse. Dex only has the effect that it does, to allow me to focus and to take the edge off of the constant need for stimulation, in small, controlled doses. In fact, most forms of ADHD stimulant meds are prescribed as slow release pills that yield a small amount of the drug throughout the day, ensuring that a) it can’t be abused and b) you get the requisite dose drip fed in measured. It’s still possible to take too much which generally makes me feel like crap - it’s similar to drinking too many espressos - and gives me brutal comedowns. And that’s exactly the problem with taking high doses of mood altering drugs - you get into a boom/bust cycle that tends to spiral as you need more of the drug to account for the comedowns, making the next comedown worse. And so on. Anything that increases dopamine as part of it’s effect is also potentially addictive, and we all know where that leads. There are also various other side effects that only increase with higher doses.

So even though some of these drugs can be abused, it’s always counterproductive. The same applies to stuff like alcohol and caffeine, which are arguably even harder to manage. The illegal stuff comes with a whole bunch of other perils such as not knowing what’s actually in it, having to deal with drug dealers, illegality, unpredictable supply, differences in quality and strength, high costs, higher risk of overdose or poisoning, etc. etc. Don’t do it kiddies, it ain’t worth it.

I’m getting sidetracked, but since I’m talking about mind altering drugs, I figured I better put some guard rails in.

So where does that leave us? We now see that the nervous system is, among other things, tasked wit the business of managing our emotional and physical equilibrium, and that when that equilibrium is persistently unbalanced we get bad homoeostasis which manifests as mental illness. We can take medication to help with this, but there are other methods we can use to treat it and help maintain our equilibrium. That’s what we’re going to talk about on the next episode in this series. We might even get to talking about art again!

So, biology lesson over kiddies. Please proceed in an orderly fashion to the playground. And remember: be nice to each other.

While you’re there, , since you’re going to be glaring at your little glowing triangle anyway and instead of doomscorlling, why not leave a rating and a review of this podcast on wherever you’re listening it. And if you do end up on social, tell all your friends to come have a listen.

See you soon.

Alex reflects on how, during these turbulent times, art is more important than ever to help us cope, express our views, connect with society, and ultimately help us maintain our mental wellness and that of those around us.

Transcript

I tend to stay away from current affairs on this podcast, well, I have done thus far, not because I don’t pay attention to such things, or because I don’t think it’s relevant to the subject. I think the events in the world around us are deeply relevant to both arts and mental health. With the world and the state that it is at the moment: Two brutal wars and what just happened in good old US of A, I’m recording this the day after the American election that saw Donald Trump win his second term in office, I’d argue that art’s relationship current affairs and politics is increasingly relevant. Not just relevant, but essential and urgent. Which is what I want to talk about in this episode.

The level of ambient anxiety all this global instability causes is not particularly good for my mental health. At times like these I try to screen out the news since it stresses me out, and I have very little control of it. For example, I’m not American and I didn’t get to vote in that election, despite the fact that a Trump victory would, and now will, likely affect the security of my country.

I don’t think I’m alone in wanting to open my phone on a daily basis and scream into it, “give me some good news for God’s sake” although I’m sure Google Assistant would oblige were I to do so, I dread to think what it might dredge up. This instability is affecting the mental health of many people, and this being a podcast aimed at improving mental health, it would seem a little irresponsible to knowingly inflict on my listeners stuff I know is likely to harm their mental health.

But I also can’t ignore it completely, because if art does anything, it holds a mirror up to the world, to society, culture, and reflects what it sees, which is sometimes beautiful and sometimes hideous. So I’m going to talk about a few facets of the arts and their interface with current affairs, society and politics. I’m going to try not get sucked into any specific of what’s going on in the world right now, or soapbox on my political views, but inevitably I’ll have to make reference to real events here and there, and my opinions are likely to leak out, even if only latently. So consider this your content warning. If you really don’t want reminder of the nutso state of the world, then skip this episode, and maybe go listen to my calming tones on one of my other episodes.

I deleted my Twitter account, I guess, maybe a year ago. I think just before it got mutated, hulk-like, into it’s malignant and incessantly angry twin, X, after It was bought by King Goblin, Elon Musk. That turn of events is what finally triggered me to delete my account, but I’d realised long before that I needed to stay off that platform, regardless of what it was called or who owned it, because it’s like crack to my brain. I just get sucked in. The algorithm is designed perfectly to mesmerise my ADHD brain, feeding me dopamine via little packets of rage and outrage. I’ve heard it said that arguments are full of dopamine, and as much as I loathe conflict, my dopamine starved brain will take its fix anywhere it can get it. Twitter/X is just one big argument these days, a stock pot of outrage and bile that’s always teetering on the threshold of boiling over. To varying degrees it was always was. I used to get sucked into obsessively refreshing my feed like chicken pecking at its feed and finding myself constantly tense and angry but still hitting refresh and getting annoyed when the algorithm wasn’t feeding me anything new. There had been times when I’ve entirely deleted the app from my phone and actually put blockers on my home network so I couldn’t access it but still couldn’t be bring myself to actually delete my account because I convinced myself that I needed it, so I could promote my art, for my job, to keep abreast of fast emerging events, FOMO. The creeping, insidious fear that if I did so I would be irreconcilably severed from the rest of the world, to fester in abject solitude. I was like an alcoholic in recovery having a secret stash of vodka in an unmarked bottle at the back of the larder, just in case.

But the Elongated Maskrat’s antics compelled me to finally kick the habit, and I downloaded my history and said goodbye to the trollverse. I haven’t looked back, and despite the fact that mental health remains at best variable, at least I’ve removed one source of anxiety and negative feeling and that’s good. But, here’s the thing, I’m going to get angry anyway. It’s kind of hard to avoid the news, especially at the moment, given everything that’s going on. I avoid the news apps but I then fire up one of my favourite podcasts and here’s an advert for some current affairs show or whatever and there I am dragged right back, kicking and screaming, into that world. I don’t like a lot of what’s going on and I feel somewhat powerless. Not completely powerless, I can choose where I direct my eyeballs, where I spend my money and how I use my vote, although the opportunity to do the latter is probably five years away in the UK. But really, there’s relatively little I can do to affect the macro world situation. But I can talk, I can run this podcast and I can attempt to enrich the lives of people around me to the better and I can make art.

Instead of venting my spleen via one hundred or whatever characters, I could retreat to my studio and spleen vent onto a canvas. It’s an escape route where I can either simply ignore the world and/or channel my reaction into an artwork. I create paintings that are parcels of escapism both for me and hopefully for the viewer.

Some of my works from about five or six years ago around the time of Brexit in the UK were either overtly or covertly political. I would weave in cuttings from newspapers and bits of social media and magazines and stuff and I would have collages with some themed picture over the top taken from a movie or whatever to make some point about the state of things. I was making slightly clumsy but heartfelt comments about the absurdity of the world around me. I incorporated images of political figures who I found repellent. This for me is partly at least an exorcism of demons by depicting and making fun and critiquing these people who I disagree with on almost a molecular level. It takes the place of me ranting and raving and moaning and boring and baiting those around me. It feels like I’m doing something positive or at least doing something. Whether or not these messages will reach anyone or whether or not people understand or interpret these works as I interpret them, and if they could, whether it would at all affect their opinion on any of these matters, I don’t really know. I doubt it. Some of my motivation here is to make a statement so I can say in the medium that I’m comfortable with, “I’m not okay with this”. And to connect with people who are also not okay with this. If I can change someone’s mind on a subject, then great, but I strongly suspect that almost never happens. And it’s pretty well understood in psychology that reasoned persuasion is usually counterproductive in terms of trying to win people over to your argument.

Art is a medium for communication and therefore that’s what I’m doing. And I’d rather show someone something that I made that they can appreciate and enjoy while also containing a message than, you know, getting on a podcast and ranting about the state of the world.

I’m certainly not alone in using my chosen artistic medium to express my dissatisfaction. Picasso, responsible for perhaps the most famous piece of political or protest art before Banksy turned up, The Guernica, stated that ‘Art is a lie that makes us realise truth’, he’s saying that by making fictional things, we highlight real things in the real world. His famous, and giant, painting was a comment on the horrors of the Spanish Civil War which, in his words, “clearly expresses my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death.”

The history of protest art it at best diffuse, but examples of it have been traced back to ancient Egypt. More recent early examples can be found in the likes of Francisco Goya’s series of 82 prints depicted the horrors of the Peninsular War with terrifying, unflinching honesty in the early 19th century. But it was in the 20th century that protest art really became a cultural force. From the anonymous feminist activism of The Guerilla Girls through Keith Haring’s vibrant, playful but deadly serious graffiti, to Pussy Riot’s very public displays of performative, punkish discontent.

About his 1917 work The Funeral, German expressionist George Grosz said “In a strange street by night, a hellish procession of dehumanized figures mills, their faces reflecting alcohol, syphilis, plague … I painted this protest against a humanity that had gone insane.”

Chinese artist in exile, Ai Weiwei dedicates his life and works almost entirely to political protest and makes work across a dizzying array of styles and mediums including sculptural installations, woodworking, video and photography. He stated that “The world is not changing if you don’t shoulder the burden of responsibility.”

Grayson Perry’s illustrated vases and other nicknacks are elaborate narratives packed with wry social observation and political comment. Jenny Saville’s nudes wage war on society’s warped expectations regarding the female form.

Music is a awash with protest. Folk legend Woodie Guthrie’s guitar was adorned with the slogan “this machine kills fascists”. Bob Dylan’s early work, Billy Bragg, Joni Mitchell, Bob Marley, hardcore punk legends Minor Threat’s clean living polemicism, Public Enemy’s intimidating black power hip hop, Queen Bey’s world conquering feminism, Kay Tempest’s poetic bile and beauty, Pink Floyd, Rage Against the Machine, Lamb of God etc. etc.

In movies we have Dr. Strangelove on nuclear war, Dawn of the Dead takes aim at consumerism, Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket on Vietnam more recently Don’t Look Up and Civil War turn their sights to modern day USA.

I don’t even know where to start with literature. Orwell? Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, Slaughterhouse 5, Catch 22, Silent Spring, Handmaid’s Tale, American Psycho, 50 Bloody Shades or Grey. Many claim that The Lord of the Rings, despite Tolkien’s protestations to the contrary, is awash with social commentary.

I could go into TV, the stage, performance art, and on and on, but I can’t very well just sit here listing things now can I? Suffice to say that if you were under the delusion that the arts should keep their noses out of society and politics, then I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed.

And it’s precisely because some people think such things that the arts are so important to a functional society.

I don’t have to look very far to see evidence of those with power seeking to curtail the ability of the arts to critique them. The UK has seen huge cuts in art funding, especially in schools, over the last decade or two, and even direct attacks on our cultural institutions such as the National Trust, the BBC and Channel 4. Although it is fair to say that our film industry is booming.

We see similar manoeuvres all in patches across the world as wannabe despots spring up all over the place. Those with totalitarian leanings, don’t tend to like being critiqued and most see the arts as their natural enemy, along with protest and free speech. Because if people can hold the mirror up to society, then you’re also holding the mirror up to its leaders. I don’t think anyone, regardless of where they sit on the political spectrum, enjoys being criticized, but people who are truly democrats, as in the small d democrats, understand that, criticism, free press, right to protest, right to criticize the government, are essential for a functional democracy and that the correct course of action when criticised is to either change course, or justify your actions. As much as luxury freedom of expressions is only somewhat afforded to us in the UK, Europe, America, there seems to have been a creeping view from the political extremes that, you know, freedom of the arts and freedom of the press is not optimal for the society that they envision coming about, or in China and Russia’s case, that they wish to maintain.

Artists and creators tend to be quite high on the empathy scale and because of this we recognise and reflect the cultural undercurrents human society. And therefore, not only despots see the arts themselves as a threat, they see the artists as a group of people who are inherently opposed to their ideology.

Despots crave a certain kind of order. One where everything points towards them and their bloated ego. Dissent is a dirty smudge on the clean, orderly world they crave, and therefore must be extinguished. So you lock up your critics and curtail the arts. It’s one of the most important doctrines in the fascist playbook.

A functional society needs to be able to express itself. It wants to be able to express itself, and freely. We might be pack animals, but there are a lot of packs out there and they don’t all want or need the same things. Therefore if you want society to fall neatly in line, you have to use force, which is inevitably the way for tyrants. But it’s a hard regime to maintain, and fraught with pitfalls and most despotisms ultimately fail under the weight of their own psychoses. Art is communication, and the number 1 requirement for a functional despotism is to control communication.

But I don’t think many people would knowingly wish fascism upon themselves. Yes, the Nazis came to power democratically, but I’m not sure the German people really knew what they were getting themselves into. One way or another, Hitler preyed on the desperation created by the reparations to serve his own needs, and created a big, evil mess in the process.

Ultimately, as a sane member of a functional society, you want people to feel free to express themselves, to communicate, because that’s how humanity progresses, that’s how culture evolves. That’s what’s enabled innovation in technology, healthcare and entertainment that has made us safer, longer-lived and with richer, more varied lives. It’s enabled some less healthy stuff too, but that’s for another day.

A functional society needs the arts. It may not be that everyone in society appreciates the arts equally, but you’ll be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t watch TV or movies or, YouTube or play games or listen to music. And so, the arts do impact on everyone’s life to one degree or another, even if they don’t think of it that way.

And if you constrain the arts, you constrain what people can do and say, you’re by definition constraining creativity and freedom of expression. And yes, of course, there are certain areas that fundamentally shouldn’t be allowed because of the harm and horror they would inflict on people who can’t otherwise defend themselves, i.e. children. But in terms of just creating art that has a functional, non-destructive role in society, you need creativity.

And people need fresh culture pretty much constantly. That’s why people turn up week after week a day to watch the next episode of their favourite soap, Love Island, or the next Mr. Beast video - because it’s new, fresh. And enabling that needs creativity and freedom to express. And the more you constrain that, the less new things can come about. So yes, of course, you can take the same few chords and create a huge number of different songs with them. But eventually, that’s going to sound stale and boring and monotonous, and people will tune out and/or demand something different and new. You genuinely need innovation, and restricting the arts restricts cultural innovation and eventually people will get twitchy about that.

At it its most benign, the art provide solace and escape from a wearying world for both the creator and the consumer. I know that is the case for me. It’s not soley world affair that erode my mental health, but its a major factor. Being able to channel my fear and frustration into artworks is a vital, cathartic release and shelter from the constant barrage of bad news. For all of us, such a refuge can provide that vital breathing space, to recharge so that we may resume the fight revitalised.

So ultimately, restricting the arts leads to a less healthy society, both physically and psychologically. And if you want your society to be optimally functional, then you need them to be healthy and happy. And therefore, the arts need to be available and unconstrained.

Therefore, far from being apolitical, the arts are integral to societal stability, cohesion and progress. Not to mention the money made for those who create and the richness brought to people’s life because of them. Whether your art is explicitly political, or purely aesthetic, your freedom of expression, to choose what you represent and how, is a reinforcement of liberty and middle finger up to tyrants. To quote German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.”

Next time you find some space in your time for creativity, or when you find yourself experiencing some great art, which is basically constantly, remember this. In itself it is an act of defiance. Defiance of the status quo, and a defiance of all those who seek to perpetuate the status quo for their own, malignant ends. Art is change. Be the change.

OK, OK, I’m climbing down off my soapbox now. I’ll stay off it for a little while not least because I’m apoplectically sick of it all, it’s making me so sad and tired. But I should say that I’m not shy with expressing my political views, nor am I embarrassed buy or ashamed of them, and I doubt it’s hard to either discover or infer my political leanings. But one of my key aims with this podcast, and my artistic endeavours in general, is to bring people together, to help them exchange ideas, communicate empathise. If I use this channel as a platform for broadcasting my political views, all I will do is alienate large swathes of people, and what’s that achieving really? Most of the most pervasive and destructive problems we observe in the world at the moment, which includes epidemic and endemic mental illness, is division. It’s less about left vs right or liberal vs conservative, and more about lack of communication, mutual understanding, empathy, community and shared goals. If you bring people together, they talk. If you guide people to the act of creation, the solace they find in that will help them be more open and empathetic to the world. A few more mentally healthy people in the world can’t be a bad thing right?

Lots of fun stuff coming up in future episodes. Part 3 of the How to be Creative series will be about mastery and lack thereof, and likely a couple more focussing on the role of constraints in creation and one on how ideas come about. I’ve got an episode in the works on the physical aspects of mental illness and how the act of creativity helps. I’m also attempting to line up my first interview episode. Watch this space! Or should I say hear this space?

As ever, please rate and review this podcast and tell at least one of other of your artistically inspired friends or family about it. Support me on Patreon at patreon.com/alexloveless. My artworks can be bought at my website alexloveless.co.uk where you can find lots of other arts based tomfoolery that has exuded from my brain.

Stay safe and I’ll be back soon.

Alex explains how problem solving is central to the practise of creativity via mathematical proofs and magicians in this long awaited second part of the How to be Creative series.

Notes

• Fermat’s Last Theorem

Transcript

In 1637, French mathematician Pierre de Fermat scribbled the following in the margins of his copy of the ancient Greek mathematics tome Arithmatica:

“It is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second, into two like powers. I have discovered a truly marvellous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain.”

Pithy, eh?

The thing is, it turned out he had a point. What he didn’t leave us with, is that actual proof which, if it ever existed at all, he took to the grave with him. This became known as Fermat’s Last Theorem, or sometimes Fermat’s Conjecture, and it’s a problem that many of history’s best mathematicians spent the next few centuries attempting to solve.

The slightly more concise, but equally vexing form of the conjecture is usually stated as such:

No three positive integers a, b, and c satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than 2.

Basically, if you take sugar 2 cubes, and glue them to 3 other cubes, the no amount of manipulating them, short of crushing them up and reforming the resulting pile of sugar, will produce a bigger cube. The conjecture states that as long as a and b are different no amount of cubes will create that megacube. This then extrapolates in to n-dimensional space as no value of n will achieve this either, and we get into some seriously mind bending territory. Simple right? OK, maybe not, just formulating those sentences made my head hurt. I’m no mathematician, but I understand from reading books and the internet that maths people thought this was a pretty important problem to solve. In maths term, find a proof for. Some thought it impossible. Possible or not, whoever came up with said proof would not do so with sugar cubes, except maybe to put in their coffee, which they would need a lot of.

Oxford Mathematics professor Andrew Wiles had been fascinated by this problem since he was a kid. In 1986 he decided that he was going to try and solve it. For the next 7 years, Wiles basically shut himself away from the world and attempted, in secrecy, to find the proof, only letting his wife in on his plan. In 1993 Wiles thought he finally had it, and unveiled his secret quest, and his ground-breaking proof to the maths world. His proof pulled in diverse, seemingly unrelated areas of mathematics into a highly original and elegant proof. Hurrah! But within months, it was pointed out by others in the maths community that there were errors in his proof. Not just little ones, either. Well, the errors were actually quite small, but their implications threatened to render Wiles’s proof worthless. Damn! Wiles was devastated, but unperturbed returned to his desk, and with the help of fellow mathematician Richard Taylor, he attempted to fix the problem, only to fail again.

In late 1994, Wiles was about to give up on the whole damn sorry business, but decided to give his work one final, forlorn look. Sitting at his desk, he had a sudden flash of inspiration, seemingly out of nowhere, that the answer lay in the fact that his final approach didn’t work meant that one of earlier approaches, from 3 years prior, would work. He later said:

“It was so indescribably beautiful; it was so simple and so elegant. I couldn’t understand how I’d missed it and I just stared at it in disbelief for twenty minutes. Then during the day I walked around the department, and I’d keep coming back to my desk looking to see if it was still there. It was still there. I couldn’t contain myself, I was so excited. It was the most important moment of my working life. Nothing I ever do again will mean as much.”

Yay for Andy!

Wiles published his final proof which was again put through its paces by the maths community, and this time found to contain no errors, and thus he had proved Fermat’s Last Theorem, 358 years after it was conjectured. Wiles became pretty famous after this. Many books have been written about his epic quest at his desk with a pen and pad, and probably a blackboard. Mathematicians love a blackboard, don’t they?

Why am I talking about maths? Well I decided this is going to be a maths podcast from now on. Suck it up!

Only joking! I did study maths for a bit, and I need some maths for my job, but I find it punishingly hard, and the road to mastery seemed impossibly long. You see, as Wiles proved, along with Fermat’s Conjecture, you can be creative with maths. Actually it’s an inherently creative field. But you need a certain type of brain and a lot of study to get to the point where you can actually be creative. There’s a couple of themes I want to pull from this story:

1. the idea of creativity as problem solving
2. creativity and mastery

The latter I’m going to cover in the next episode of this series, and I’ll no doubt, return to Wiles’s story, at least a little. But in this episode I’m going to talk about problem solving, because I think it’s one of the most important aspects of creativity.

In part one of this series, I talked about the core facets of creativity - mastery, conviction, an open mind, collaboration and focus, with a sprinkling of chaos for good measure. These are the things that need to be in place for creativity to occur. But what exactly is creativity? What things do you actually do when being creative?

If we look at the example of Wiles, you might conclude that it is a flash of divine inspiration. Either that or that act of locking yourself away for 7 years. But throughout that 7 years, he made countless creative leaps. Wiles’s contribution wasn’t that one inspired idea, that was just the last inspired idea required to get from A to B. Wiles’s genius was in pulling lots of seemingly unrelated areas of maths together to make something new and to solve a problem many thought unsolvable. Wiles’s solitary journey was really a string of intuitive leaps. A blanket of lilly pads in an pond the size of the universe. He simply chose the right ones to leap to. This is creativity - you pick a destination, and you figure out to get there. More specifically, you pick a problem, and you solve that problem one challenge at a time. The destination may or may not be important. You might not arrive at the destination that you originally intended, but that’s not a problem. As I’ve said countless time on this podcast, it’s the journey that matters. And this journey is pretty much always problem solving.

So how do we get from solving tough, or for that matter, easy maths problems, to the ephemeral, mercurial, mystical practise we call art?

It’s simple, Artists are problem solvers just like mathematicians! You dream up an idea of something you want to create, but that’s just where the job of being a creator starts. The real job, the 99% of perspiration to quote Thomas Edison, is problem solving. What problems are you solving?

How am I going to represent this beautiful landscape I have in front of me? How am I going to represent this picture of human? How am I going to capture the essence of what I’m looking at? How am I going to take this idea of a story in my head and turn it into a book, play or a movie? How am I going to photograph this tree and really of capture the essence and the mood and the character of the tree? How do I get my latest collection of artworks in front of some punters so that I can sell some and therefore afford to do more artworks?

And I struggle to think of any creative enterprise that isn’t mostly about problem solving. And I would argue that if you are not put in the position of having to solve a problem, you’re probably not being creative. You’re likely being fairly derivative. Even then, it’s still about solving problems.

Take those caricature artists that sit on Montmartre in Paris or on Leicester Square in London, doing caricatures of tourists. It’s all very formulaic. I’m not knocking their skills, these folk are really amazing at that they do. But it doesn’t seem particularly creative. But every time someone turns up they have to solve the problem how to characterise them in such a way that is humorous yet complimentary, but not insulting and therefore risking a punch in the face from some doting and muscular dad. This is no mean feat, especially when you consider the bizarre effect that those cities seem to have on people’s brains!

But for anyone attempting to push boundaries, either theirs or those of their medium, then problem solving constitutes the bulk of the effort, since ideas tend to come quickly. It might take them a while to develop them, but as we saw with Wiles, that’s just part of the problem solving process.

So take something that usually takes long time to develop, like a novel, perhaps a long one or a series. The arc of the thing or at least the starting point or the ending point or the meaning you’re trying to convey, tend to arrive fairly effortlessly . Maybe you had the idea many years before, and are just getting round to drafting it - you have probably been developing that ideas on or off for the intervening time. Much of it might change when you get into it, but you’re going in with a pretty good sense of what’s what. That’s the impetus to start fleshing out characters, figuring out problems with the plot, world building, all that fun stuff. And what are you doing? You’re problem solving! The problem of how to make your characters relatable so that the reader cares what happens to them. How to make the setting believable while also leaving the possibility for something out of the ordinary to happen, some drama. Figuring how to structure it to get the reader emoting in the right place for the right reasons. All this before you start solving the problem of which words to use. You then solve that problem one words at a time. And then when you do a second draft you solve the problem of the words you chose in the first draft being the wrong ones, and that your main character is a detestable twat. Oops!

In between drafts, maybe you find yourself on a hilltop in the Lake District, admiring a staggering view. You want to capture it with the watercolour paints your handily brought with you. Maybe this is the cover for your new book! But you still need to think about how you’re going to render it, what colours you’re going to use, what colour intensity, how you’re going to mix them to get the right hues to capture the ethereal light, the brush you’re going to use, where to put each blob of paint. And since you’ve only got a portable watercolour set with you and that the light is rapidly changing as the weather takes a typical English turn for the dreary, you now have to solve the problem of how to do all of that in the time you have left with the materials you have at your disposal, as well as getting back to your car before you and your artwork become a soggy mess.

I don’t think people tend to think about the creative process in this way, perhaps because framing it all as problem solving feels a little bit mechanical. A bit unromantic. Lacking magic and wonder.

And for those who don’t practise creativity but just consume it, that’s fine, and perhaps for the best. The shrouded methods a magician uses to create that spectacular illusion is always mechanical and rightly kept secret. If you look behind the curtain, the magic is lost, and you’re just left something that’s “clever”, which is no fun at all, and a sense that you’ve been had.

But from the creator’s perspective,I don’t see this process as mechanical or prosaic at all. The problem solving bit is where the magic really happens. Where the fun is to be found. This might be a problem of nomenclature. Maybe if instead of boring old problem solving we think of it as pathfinding, questing, adventuring, conquering we’d better capture the wonder and delight of it all? But it is all of these things too, it’s just that when you boil it down to its rudiments it is what it is - solving one problem after another.

The corollary to the “inspiration” fallacy, is the misconception that you have an idea, you then bust out you instrument or materials or laptop and make that thing appear. Like you plug a USB lead into your ear and a stunning sculpture is delivered via your 3D printer.

As I say, I’m going to come back to the subject of mastery as a supposed prerequisite for creativity, but for the purposes of this conversation, people seem to assume that we’re always at the level of mastery needed to achieve our musings and that we just flip a switch and the creation appears. Most folk seem to forget the sometimes long, often wonderful, sometimes painful, and usually massively rewarding bit that happens in the middle.

But the act of creation just isn’t as rewarding if there’s not some challenge involved. And if there’s some challenge, then by definition, your existing mastery needs some work to get to where you’re trying to go. And that journey might include many false starts and failed attempts that ended up in the bin. Yes, pumping out another workmanlike landscape watercolour may be mindful and relaxing and a reason to go sit on a hill with a baguette and a hip flask, but it’s not the magic bit. That just the bit where you leave your poor, overworked brain alone for a bit to simmer down.

And without that challenge, we never progress. If you want to be able to lift really heavy weights, then you need to start by lifting much lighter weights, and gradually work your way up as your muscles build. Every time you add another kilo you’re challenging yourself, your muscles, your resolve. It’s the same with creation, it’s like a muscle. Use it or lose it. The more you use it, the more powerful it gets.

And how do you know if you’ve progressed? The next thing you do is better than the last. Things take less time. Your endeavour starts to feel less like a toil, less forced, and more like a labour of love. A celebration.

And I think the consumer of your work can tell when you really challenged yourself. Not necessarily by mastery of your materials or perfection in rendering of your subject. Challenging works have an aura. A certain quality. They have the opposite feel to a Bob Ross, knock it out in 30 minute landscape by numbers. The opposite of an elaborate but soulless hodgepodge quickly rustled together using Midjourney or DALL-E.

And I know that I keep banging on about GenAI, but it really does bring into focus many facets of real creativity. I’m all for using language models or AI image generation as part of the creative process. To take the legwork out of outlining your script, or to create a mock-up for a painting you want to make. There are many ways in which AI can improve and enrich the creative process and help us more quickly solve many of those problems. But if the creativity isn’t coming from within, if you aren’t focussed on solving those really interesting problems, to bringing really delicious ideas into reality, then all that these models will do is accelerate you to a soulless and flat creation. And worse, you might feel compelled to let the AI do most of the work, which in my mind is skipping past all the fun stuff, all the stuff that really matters.

Perhaps the most important job for an artist is connecting with other humans via their medium. Art is communication. A conversation with other humans via a shared understanding of culture. If you expose your voice in a lazy artificial way, people will hear that lack care and passion, and turn their backs. You can’t connect with the world if you don’t have something compelling, or at least vaguely interesting, to say, and an effecting and engaging means to do that.

And you can’t create something compelling and engaging before having figured out the problem of having to do so. And doing so is where are the good stuff is:

It’s the part that involves the meaningful work. It’s the part that involves challenge and growth. It’s the part where you find the mindfulness and flow. It’s the part that involves a sense of fulfilment and achievement.

You don’t need to be a creative to feel the truth in that last point. If an activity didn’t take you a certain amount of mental or physical effort or a certain amount of time to produce, the results are never going to be that fulfilling. Fulfilment comes from overcoming obstacles, achievement can only occur where there is a challenge. That feeling that you’ve pushed your abilities that bit further. You’ve created something really interesting and unique and special.

Think back to where you started your last project. Recall the fact that you started with a blank canvas, and empty page, a formless slab of clay thinking:

How do I realise this idea? How do I convey this emotion? How do I tell this story so that it’s compelling and engaging? How do I make something that people can connect with emotionally?

It’s not something you get right every time, but that’s why it’s fulfilling, because it’s challenging. Any type of work you partake in has to be to some level challenging to be fulfilling. And I think that if you enjoy your work, by definition, it’s challenging. You are, by definition, spending your time solving problems. Far from being the more prosaic or mechanical part of it, of the creation process, it’s the whole thing.

It’s where the dopamine is. It’s where the excitement comes from. It’s where we get our focus and our flow from.

And these things are what are important if creativity is going to help you keep your sanity. Coming up with great ideas in itself isn’t that fulfilling if you don’t see them through to inception, because that’s the bit where you really feel good.

Thanks again for listening kiddies. As I keep alluding, there’s at least one more episode coming in this How to be Creative series. Maybe more. Will the next instalment be the next episode I release? Who knows! Tune in to find out.

In the meantime, please like and review this on whatever platform you’re listening on. This stuff really does help. Support me on Patreon at patreon.com/alexloveless and go buy my art at alexloveless.co.uk.

Alex gets all meta and talks about his latest episode, ChatGPT and the challenges and delights of podcasting, all recorded (badly) while he walks through some woodland!

Transcript

The following transcript as transcribed my OpenAI Whisper and is presented completely unedited and therefore might contain some errors of even total nonsense. I take no responsibility for anything herein!

Welcome to the Art Against Mental Illness podcast. My name is Alex Loveless and this is my podcast about the healing powers of art for artists, art lovers, the art curious and anyone with an interest in mental health and well-being. So I guess you’re wondering why I’m back so soon. Well here’s the thing, I’ve taken to preparing for these episodes by going out for walks and recording my thoughts via my headphone microphone into my phone, which I later then transcribe and then edit down into a proper episode. I tend to think better when I’m walking. After I wrote my last episode on finding your voice, I went out for a walk as I often do and was thinking about that episode and also some of the things I’ve been doing around large language models, Gen AI, chat GPT, things like that and decided to just record my thoughts there and then. And I was going to format that into a follow-up episode and then I thought actually maybe you should just hear the original recording as it came out as a bit of a view into my world and how I think about these things in real time. And so yeah that’s what you’ve got here. The sound quality is terrible because it was recorded by my headphone mic while I was walking around some local woods here in central Scotland in Octorada. So you’ll hear me sort of sniffing, crunching leaves. I think there’s some rattling sound towards the end which is me fiddling around with my medication, my little medication box I carry around with me that carries my ADHD meds. And it’s a little bit meta and self-referential but I think you’ll find it quite interesting. So I’m just, this is completely unedited. I’m just going to cut and paste it in there and you can listen to it or not but otherwise I’ll be back soon with a more formal episode. Enjoy. And addendum to my piece on finding your voice. I don’t use chat GPT or any other language model to write these episodes for me. I do increasingly use record my thoughts in my own voice and then use a language model to transcribe that which I didn’t edit it. Most of the ones I’ve created so far, the ones I’ve scripted rather than the monologues, are, you know, I’ve just sat down in front of my laptop and with an idea of what I wanted to say, written some on my phone and just gone at it and redrafted a few times and then performed it. But it takes quite a while and it had occurred to me as someone who regularly works with language models and has as part of my day job, forms natural language processing and various other data science related tasks that relate to understanding of the written language and creation of the written language via computers. It had occurred to me that I could remove some of the labor required to create these episodes by feeding my thoughts into a model and asking it to write, write them for me and I can just edit it or whatever. And I have tried this and if you just put in my thoughts, you know, please write a podcast episode script for, you know, the covers about this topic, the covers, the following points in the following order. You just get chat GPT, whichever models do that for you and it always does a pretty decent job of it and you might think I could just use that, but every time I read back, I really cringe at the choice of language and to be more specific, the voice it uses, which isn’t mine and it tends to err on the side of some corporate American or perhaps American media voice that is fundamentally not how I talk or how I write or how I want to talk or write and I think would sound very weird coming from me and I think you’d probably figure out very quickly that I probably didn’t write or I’ve got someone else or something else to write for me and that’s certainly not what I want to put across. If I’m going to say it in my actual physical voice, I would prefer to say it in the way I would usually say things now. That’s not to say that the words that I write down and then perform are exactly how I would say it. I’m not quite that eloquent in real time, but certainly they’re the way I want words to come out of my head and if I slow myself down enough and clear enough head, the words sometimes do come out like I wrote them down. So broadly speaking it is how I speak. So obviously that’s just with the vanilla GPT-4 or whatever model and either other models and B, you can give the model instructions to tune its output and I’ve tried this too. For example, I’ve given very specific instructions on how to use language, UK English into a semi-informal style and given a bunch of pointers and then giving it actual examples of how I write things. So for example, transcripts of previous episodes and it’s like well here’s the points I want you to write it like that and it gets it closer, but it’s always saying things in a weird way that I don’t like and tends to miss some of the nuance that I would put into it. So I don’t tend to think it’s more work then to rework that than it is just to write it from scratch, but it also ignores another factor of how I write these in that I don’t know what I’m going to write when I start. I know the point I want to make or perhaps multiple points and perhaps have an idea of structure and especially if I’ve dictated it, i.e. I’ve done a guy out for a walk and done a monologue about my thoughts about a particular subject and then transcribed that. So I might have a whole body of text to edit into a more palatable form, but even then I don’t really know how it’s going to come out, how much of what I said is going to be left in there, how much of it was even coherent or was really the point I wanted to make. And so if you take my last episode on voice as a case in point, I went out for a walk, I recorded into my headphones which are attached to my Bluetooth attached to my phone and I recorded my thoughts and had that transcribed which did a decent job. I then just went at that text directly without passing it through a language model and I probably changed 70 or 80 percent of the words. The structure is roughly the same and then I sort of stumbled across some bits and I’m like yeah this is good but I kind of need to bring that alive a bit more. And that only happens sort of reading through it, changing this, but that doesn’t really say what I want it to say. I understood the words that I said and they make sense. I don’t think it’s going to translate well. And so if you look there’s a whole block in there where I put in some examples of some pretty radical voices. And that came out after. That was one of the last things I did. I was like I thought I need something in there that sort of makes this feel a little bit more human. And I sort of started thinking about how to illustrate some of the points that I was going to make. And I started coming up with some stuff. I mentioned Stephen Hawking, Yoko Ono, Lamont Young and others, Napalm Death. And they sort of just started coming out. I went and did a little bit of research to verify what I remembered of these artists and their work. Found some new stuff along the way. Learned some really interesting things. Went on a minor detour where I actually really bothered to find out what the situation with Jerusalem, the West Bank Wall, Gaza Strip and Israel and this Palestinian people. Because I had a fairly high level knowledge of that. But I sort of really didn’t understand how that situation, well how that state came about in the way that it is. And so while looking, verifying my understanding of Banks’s work on the West Bank Wall, I learned a bunch about Israel and Palestine. And I’m not going to make comment on it. But I’m now more educated than I was before. Hasn’t massively changed my view. But that’s for another day, another podcast maybe. But the point is that not only did all this come about as I was producing the piece, I learned a bunch. And the piece was a lot better for it. And I just simply wouldn’t have conjured that up by sitting around thinking about the structure of the piece and then farming that work out to a language model. Not because I’m being lazy by doing it. I mean if I can make a tool work for me, I’m going to do it. I use Python to do things that would be boring, laborious and slow or not even possible. Whereas I try and do it myself. So I don’t shy away from using tools to help me do what I want. But only if they’re actually helping me achieve the same thing I would have done otherwise but faster. And in this case, not only would I have probably not put these extra embellishments in, I would unlikely to have gone and researched and discovered some new wonderful things in the art world and understand more about the situation in the Middle East. And I just would have missed that. And I wouldn’t. That’s good. I’m really pleased that happened. And therefore, you know, maybe I could get a model to talk in my voice. But would it make the choices that I made? Would it, if I said to it, insert some examples in here, would it chose the examples that I chose? Because they’re very much part of me, my brain, the things that I know, the knowledge that I have. And GPT doesn’t know everything. It knows probably all the facts that I know, but it doesn’t know which facts I know. It doesn’t know which I’m likely to choose. And maybe there’s some point in the future where we’ll have our own personal agent that reads and hears everything we do and does know. You know, what we would do or what we would think. And that’s theoretically possible now. But at what cost? And I think it’s a big realisation of mine where I’m sort of toying with the idea and feeling slightly icky about using a language model for any of my work. And let’s be clear about this, where I’m doing my day job and what I need to do is write corporate, slightly American sounding English for a client or for my website or whatever. If that’s what I need, I’m damn well using the model to do it. I almost certainly will have a model that more closely suits how I would say things. But it’s for me, in a sense, for a lot of that sort of stuff, I sort of want my voice out the way. Certainly, well, depending on the type of communication, but absolutely no words. But using it for this stuff, it feels anyway, a lot more personal. And I let my voice roam a lot more freely. I let my opinions and thoughts and philosophies flow. And and that’s that the process is the whole process. So cutting, scooping bits of it out for the sake of convenience has totally changed the process. And so would change the output. And and I think for the worse, not the better. So I’m not going to use language model to produce my scripts for these. I will continue to use them to transcribe. I might use it, use them in the process of doing any research I need to do, answer any questions I have about the world or whatever. And that’s fine. But the words that get written, the structure, the tone of voice, the word choice, the phrase choice, the artist that appear, I want them, it’s important for me, them to come from me. And when I speak these words out, I’m allowed to have conviction. And that when I say something, it’s because I meant it, rather than I read something about it and wanted it to sound like I came up with it or I meant it, which is really not the case. I’m not claiming I’m some sort of philosophical genius art wizard. But, you know, I talk about what I want to talk about when I want to talk about it. I’ve got my spin on things, which may or may not be controversial. I have no idea. But these are the things at this point in time that I believe and that I think and that are motivating me and driving me, giving me enthusiasm and joy. And therefore, that’s what I talk about. And that’s me. That’s my voice. That’s my choice. And I hope that any of you, if anyone’s listening, please let me know if you are. This is a value to you in some way. If you learn something or it helps you make you feel something or helps you progress or well, maybe you think it’s terrible and you just love to hate me, it’s all good. But this is me. This podcast isn’t like a magazine, you know, where lots of different people contribute, although it’s not out of the question of bring some others into the mix at some point in the future. But really, this is about me and my thoughts on creativity based on my experiences and my understanding of the world. And I don’t know if this is interesting or valuable, but I enjoy doing it. So I’m going to keep on doing it. And it’s a good way for me to capture my thoughts on these things. Anyway, it’s a matter of prosperity. It’s like a diary. So feel free to listen to not listen, but do know that if you’re listening to me and I’m saying it, and I wrote it, I meant it, my ideas, my thoughts, minimal from robots, computers, language models.

Alex explains the concept of voice in creativity, how to find your artistic voice and why it’s so important.

Show Notes

• Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece
• La Monte Young
• Banksy’s West Bank Wall works
• Napalm Death’s You Suffer Wikipedia Entry and video
• Absolute Elsewhere by Blood Incantation
• The Bayles and Orland quote is from Art & Fear (pp. 116-117)

Transcript

In 1985 Stephen Hawking finally lost his ability to speak. From then on he communicated verbally via a text-to-speech device called the Equalizer that was attached to his wheelchair and controlled, initially with his hand, and later by his cheek muscle when he lost the use of this hand. The device spoke in that now iconic robotic American accent, despite the fact that Hawking was English. At various points later in his life, he was given the opportunity to change the voice, but refused stating that he “preferred it and identified with it”. It’s also fair to say that he was instantly recognisable because that voice. Voices are important in terms of our identity, and how we are perceived, just go ask Morgan Freeman. But voices comes in many forms, not just the noises that come out of our mouth hole.

Hawking was intensely creative, and was responsible for some of the most important discoveries in science, yet he was profoundly disabled. However, he stated “My disabilities have not been a hindrance; they have shaped my life and made me who I am.” In every possible sense, his disabilities were part of his voice, and everything he became. He was a one off, but then, we all are.

Humans have very different personalities, different lives, different lifestyles, physiologies, world views, upbringings, cultures, prejudices, beliefs and therefore they tend to have different tastes. Even people from roughly the same background and world view may have some overlapping tastes, but still be quite divergent, often radically so. And therefore the idea that you can make a piece of art that is universally liked is ludicrous, it’s just not possible.

This is all awesome and as it should be, because if everyone likes anything that anyone makes, the world would be a boring place, and no progress would ever happen, there would be no or little novelty, and beauty couldn’t exist. Culture emerges through variety. But variety isn’t distributed uniformly through culture.

In statistics, you have the concept of the normal distribution. Often referred to as the bell curve. This is what you get when you take measurements across a population and create a chart that shows how many people have each measurement, the measurement being along the x-axis. Google it, you’ll recognise the distinctive bell shape. The obvious example is adult heights. You have a small number of very short people and the same for very tall people, in between all the heights of the everyday folk around you. This makes a bell shape with the average height bang in the middle. What this tells us that the majority of people cluster around a relatively small number of heights. The same goes shoes size, IQ and any number of other measures. This is a basic statistical reality. A fact of the universe. There’s all sorts out there, but mostly, if you zoom out, and look at them en masse, people are pretty similar.

This goes for culture too. There’s a huge diversity of creative outputs out there. Go poke around on Spotify and you’ll find an insane number of artists across a mind boggling array of styles genres and styles. However, despite the quality of their music, cosmic progressive death metal band Blood Incantation are not selling out 10 shows at Wembley Stadium, whereas Taylor Swift is. Go figure.

I can recommend the new Blood Incantation, it’s really rather good. I’ve not heard the new Swift album though. I’m sure she’ll get over it.

Like human heights, there is a middle ground of stuff that’s more common and ubiquitous. Stuff that’s considered to be more socially and culturally desirable sees more exposure and therefore more engagement than more esoteric stuff. This is just simple statistics, where there is variance, there is both uniformity and extremes.

These days there are 8 billion people on the surface of this little wet rock we call Earth, most of which are perpetually wired into this thing called the internet where they spend their time swapping cultures and really mixing things up. So now we have legions of English speaking teenage girls worshipping Korean boy bands that who sing in a language that they themselves don’t speak. This is all marvellous.

Along with the prevalent or popular culture wherever you find yourself, there are a million micro-cultures that are like a gumbo with ingredients from across the cultural spectrum. These are cooked up as all the different flavours of weirdo seek each other out and celebrate their shared oddity. And these little, or sometimes huge, cliques sprout new sub-cliques, which them sprout their own tendrils and so on. As I say marvellous.

And as we discover more things, more technology, more about the human mind, more about the universe and the world around us, new inputs come in, new people have new ability to create even more strange new things and form cultures around them.

So for anyone looking to scratch a cultural itch, there’s a hell of a lot of it out there to choose from now. The flip side of this from the point of view of a creator, is that one one hand, there’s 8 billion potential eyeballs, on the other hand, those eyeballs are is bombarded with diverse and manifold choices for things that they can consume. And therefore it’s quite hard to reach your potential audience, especially since the arrival of things like the social networks, Instagram particularly, but also now TikTok, YouTube, Netflix and so on. Increasingly these businesses are mediating what people see. This has a countering effect on the diversification of culture since these networks have algorithms that are optimised make money for their owners, and therefore will favour one creator over another in the competition for eyeballs and attention in such a way to maximise revenues. This tends to favour creators and influencers that are already very popular, and squeeze out niche players. So the majority of people are exposed to only a small sliver of the global melange.

Unless your lucky enough to be able and inclined to make stuff that pleases the algorithms and therefore this middle ground, you need to seek out your audience, your clique. So not only do you not have to please everyone, you just need to find your tribe, and please them. It’s not exactly easy to do this, but it is, thanks to the interwebs, possible. And when you find them, they will support you.

How do you please them, perhaps even before you find them? Easy, you please yourself, since, by definition, you are one of them! Actually, it’s kinda hard to make stuff that doesn’t please you. Since how do you know if you have produced something good? You like it! This is not a facetious point. And perhaps not as obvious as it seems. From an observers perspective, ideas and creations are magic unicorn poo that flows from some mystical, esoteric inspiration inspiration gland, using the creator merely as a conduit.

But here’s how it actually works. You pick a starting point and maybe an end point, or a sense of an end point. You do some stuff to move you away from the starting point and towards the end point. You pause and you consider what you have done and make a value judgement. That value judgement is always, “do I like where this is going?”. “Is this moving towards my ideal end point in a way that I find pleasing?”. You come up with an answer and then either carry on as you were, or make the requisite adjustments and then continue. You then repeat this process until either reach your desired end point, or you judge that making further changes would make you like it less. That’s it. No unicorns in sight. How quickly you get from A to B, and how much effort that takes is largely dictated by how difficult your end point is to achieve, and how much skill you have in your medium. And assuming you liked the finished product, you will likely decide to repeat the whole process again, perhaps with some adjustments based on what you learned from the last one.

How do you choose your start and end point? You find something that you like, and you try and emulate that, and ideally add a flourish of your own. By this measure, creation is always a labour of love.

Over time, by repeating this process, you start to create things that are different enough from your initial inspirations that they are completely new, both to you, and to the world. Your outputs are different from other artists. Maybe just a little bit, maybe a lot. The way in which you are distinct from others is called your voice. Sometimes it’s called style, but it’s more than that. It’s about how you choose your subject, which medium and materials you use and how you wield them, size, shape colours, textures, word choice, phrasing, where you choose to display it, when.

Take the works of Banksy. They are not particularly technically difficult, their compositions are simplistic, if beautifully and impactfully stylised. Really though the point isn’t the designs themselves. In 2005 Banksy created a series of murals on the West Bank Wall that divides Israel and the Palestinian territories within, that depict, among other things, holes in the wall revealing photorealistic idyllic landscapes in front of which children pay, as well as his iconic silhouette of a girl being lifted by a cluster of balloons. He was making a statement about what that wall represents. And one that was only impactful because of where he put them. I’m not going to get into the politics here, my point is that in terms of Banksy’s voice, it’s the “where” and the why that really counts here as much as the “what”.

American avant garde composer and performance artist La Monte Young, generally thought of as the father of minimalism, composed long, like 6 hours long, hyper sparse musical pieces for various instruments in the 60’s. These he played during lengthy live performances accompanied by light shows. He’s credited with inspiring David Bowie and The Velvet Underground among others, and collaborated with John Cale, a member of the latter. I’d point you towards some of his recordings, if there were any. Well, there are a few, and I mean a few. Even the scores are hard to come by. This isn’t an accident. Young largely refuses to allow his performances to be recorded or released, and keeps his scores under wraps, while also frequently changing them. He takes legal action anyone who tries to perform or make his work available in any way. Young’s work is aggressively situational. I’m afraid you just had to be there. So the major component of his voice is “when” and arguably, for sanity’s sake, “how bloody long?!”.

At the other end of the scale in terms of musical extremity, in 1986 brummie grindcore legends Napalm Death recorded a track called You Suffer, which comprised of a blast of chaotic drums and distorted guitars accompanied by the shouted lyrics “you suffer, but why?” and is exactly 1.316 seconds long. The track holds the world record for shortest song and Rolling Stone ranked the song at number 72 on their “100 Greatest Heavy Metal Songs of All Time” list. They would some points at the time play it 30 times in a row just for a laugh, and still taunt audiences with with it today by playing unannounced and then berating the audience for not keeping up! Their voice was channelling “what if?”, or maybe, as stated on the song’s Wikipedia page, “wouldn’t it be funny if?”.

Yoko Ono’s 1964 performance art work Cut Piece, involved here kneeling on a stage in Tokyo and inviting the audience to come and cut bits of her clothes off. This was before she married one of the most famous humans of all time, John Lennon, with whom she later participated in an artwork cum protest where they spent 2 weeks in a hotel bed and invited folks to come and view them. There’s quite a lot to be extrapolated from Ono’s work, but she very much traded in the “who”.

Another of Ono’s works that I absolutely love is one of her so called “instruction pieces” which are created for the viewer to perform. Many of these are distributed via books like 1964’s Grapefruit, which contains 200 such pieces. The one I really love, called Lighting Piece is simply the instruction: ‘Light a match and watch till it goes out’. Lighting a match and watching it is a sensory delight for all the senses, and is so fleeting and beautiful. The piece is a Zen inspired reminder to take some time to experience simple, beautiful things. Via this and similar pieces her voice is expressed by who (in this case, you), what, where and when and includes components of smell, touch and even pain is you happen to still be holding the match when it reaches its conclusion!

My point is not that you should become a abstract performance artist, although if that’s what your inner artist is telling you, then crack on. My point is that artistic voice can manifest in an essentially infinite number of ways, many of which transcend simple materials, instruments, subjects etc. and if you are to free your true artistic self, then you need to allow yourself to be free to do that voodoo that you do.

Your voice not only expresses who you are as a creator, it differentiates you from other creators, and gives a reason for people to like your stuff more or less than someone else’s. It’s arguable that voice is art.

And this is more important than simply a matter of being original. If you want to grab the attention of the audiences that are awash in other voices trying to grab it, then you need to have a distinctive voice.

And that voice is something that comes from deep inside you, and is not something that can be taught honed from or reading books or by emulating someone else. That might help to hone your technique and your craftsmanship and your mastery, but is really only paving on the path to more interesting places.

Your voice is like your fingerprint or your handwriting or the pattern of your iris. It’s something that’s individual to you. It’s part of your make-up, of your genetics and your upbringing and your culture and so on. It’s the essence of you projected into the real world via an object or a song or video game or whatever.

This all seems a bit abstract and mystical, especially if you’re just starting out, and you haven’t found your voice yet, or even figured out what it means to do so. It’s not even very easy to define in concrete terms, let alone tell you how to find it.

But I can perhaps help you figure out where to look for it - you know when you’re listening to your voice, when you’re expressing what your inner voice wants to express because you’re pleased with what you create. Because it gives you joy to experience it, it gives you joy to make it.

The journey of finding your voice is really a matter of getting to the point where your ability and craftsmanship matches the needs and the wants of of that voice. And this process never really ends. The most experienced creators are usually still chasing that illusive voice, it’s part of the fun and the challenge of the process. And as you change as a person, as you get older, as you acquire more experiences and ingest other world views and meet new people, as you appreciate new art forms or new approaches and so on, your voice continues to evolve, and sometimes you need to learn new tricks to keep up with it.

But this often clashes with reality and the culture and society around you. Your voice can move in and out of phase with the ever mutating cultural environment. This is often apparent with niche musical artists that appear to “sell out”. This is when they change or compromise their sound or style to suit current musical trends. Their loyal fans might rebel, and it’s usually perceived as the artist chasing the money, but perhaps they’re just well attuned to the zeitgeist. The flip side is artists that disappear completely when they don’t keep up with the trends. In this case they listen purely to their artistic voice and only do things that really please them, or stick with what they do best - culture moves on and they don’t. Sometimes, if they stick around for long enough, culture comes back round again. An obvious example of this is aussie rock stalwarts AC/DC, who seem to have survived through multiple instances of such a cycle having barely changed their signature sound from day one.

However, if you’ve been successful, the pressure to change, both cultural and financial, and perhaps from your record label or even fans, is huge, and doing so without compromising your voice is tricky. I’m getting off track. You get the point, your voice exists both independently, but is also affected by, and is part of, the culture around you.

I can’t tell you how to find your own voice, but maybe I can help you understand to hear your voice, and how not to drown it out.

I’ve talked about flow before. It’s that state of mind you get into when you’re totally absorbed by an activity, and the world seems to fall away. It’s a similar state to meditation, and it’s a state that most creators spend their whole time chasing. Flow is what happens when your skills are in line with your ambitions or goals. Voice is what emerges when your output matches the complex mesh of desires that you have in your head. These two work in tandem as you evolve as a creator. Flow happens when you get out the way of your subconscious, voice in turn naturally emerges when you do so. You can only really achieve flow when your mastery is of sufficient level to achieve what your voice desires. Therefore you need to practise to achieve either.

One of the biggest barriers to finding your voice, is distinguishing between your voice, and the voice of other creators that you admire and wish to emulate. It might be hard to recognize your own voice, since from an artistic perspective our artistic voice is made up of a patchwork environmental, cultural and genetic influences and the cultural aspects of that involves other people’s work. We seek to emulate our heroes, which is natural and healthy. That’s how art propagates and progresses. If you start to create, it’s usually because you’ve encountered some work that you love so much that you feel compelled to emulate it. So inevitably, your work starts out somewhat derivative or even outright copying, at least to the degree that you are able. You don’t have a lot of choice about this. You like what you like. There’s no shame in this at all. You have to start somewhere after all. Your influences will remain a part of the fingerprint of your voice long after you’ve moved on.

But to be taken seriously as a creator, you must progress and differentiate. The problem with emulating someone else, is that you are not them. Your voice is not theirs. The results will always be unsatisfying to produce, and will ultimately come up short. It may seem like your influence’s voice is the same as yours, but it never is. Most creators figure this out pretty quickly, because it always feels more natural and comfortable to let your own voice emerge. Flow states cannot emerge when you’re constantly falling short of your desired outcome, which will usually be the case when you emulate someone else’s work. You are simply not them. You are not speaking in their voice, you are merely suppressing your own in your attempt to channel theirs. This is sometimes hard to recognise, but for many creators doing so is that “a ha!” moment where they finally feel like they’ve clicked with their chosen art form or medium.

This is not something that happens over night. Your voice will start to leak out in small drips as your progress. Ultimately, having a stronger grasp of your medium gives you the confidence to experiment and push boundaries, giving you more freedom to depart from your beloved roots, like a child gaining independence from her parents. That same confidence allows you the conviction to share your work with others, thus gaining further validation and the agency to experiment more. As you spread your wings, you discover more influences, ideas, approaches, techniques, and incorporate them, either consciously or subconsciously into your work. You’ve not left your old world behind. It’s all still there, it’s just been expanded to incorporate new things.

So by increments, some larger than others, your work evolves. This is simply the process of your voice emerging and evolving. Maybe this is via refinement within a particular style or movement, further towards a pinnacle of craftsmanship and mastery. Maybe this involves one or more radical shifts, and wild diversification. Maybe it’s a bit of both. Either way, you progress in increments you probably won’t even notice, then one day you look back at your older works, and realise how far you’ve come.

In my experience, artists tend to start off with a fairly narrow band of influences, and are fairly conservative in their development, but then broaden out to experiment with other styles, mediums and subjects, before finding their groove and largely sticking to it after that, maybe with a slower evolution and the odd digression. After all, it might well be that your chosen starting point wasn’t actually a good fit for your voice, just a reflection of the ideas and approaches that you had been exposed to to that point. This is likely the case with those who start young and simply have less life experience. In this sense, the progression is as much of a correction as an evolution.

My own journey as a creator started with a desire to be a fantasy artists and emulate the likes of fantasy art legend Boris Vallejo. I’ve been through many iterations since then, and I’m not even much of a fantasy genre fan, and never really was, but echoes of it remain in much of my work to date, and I still massively admire his work, even if I no longer seek to emulate it. And to be fair, I don’t think I would be able to if I tried! I’m just not configured that way.

How did I get from swords and dragons to where I am now? I just followed my voice, which means I did things that pleased me and gave me satisfaction to do. The little artist in my head became the big artist IRL. And given how restless and prolific I am, my evolutions are usually pretty frequent and pretty obvious, to me at least.

Some would say that, as you progress, your work becomes more sophisticated, more mature. But think this view is limited and a little condescending. I think the pressure to “grow” as a creator often comes at the expense of satisfaction and fulfilment. Why make free-form jazz when you love electro punk? Why make abstract expressionism when you love comics? Sophistication is a facet of a style or medium, not something intrinsic and universal, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. After all, what’s more simplistic than Mark Rothko’s colour field paintings? In some worlds, that’s considered the height of sophistication. I would rate Alan Moore’s genre defining graphic superhero novel Watchmen higher than classics by Hardy or F Scott Fitzgerald, both in terms of artistic merit and social observation. We develop sophistication and maturity within our medium, and we look to please those who love what we love.

And that brings us back to where I started - you can’t please everyone. So if you please yourself, your inner voice, you will find an audience who that also pleases. And those that don’t like, or are indifferent your work are simply not your audience. Their criticisms are no more valid to you than a food critic having views on veterinary science. They are different domains. You don’t take your dog to the vet and tell them how to treat it. That’s not to say that you should listen to or accept criticism, of the constructive type, that comes from your contemporaries or audience. But you should be sure to mediate and contextualise that criticism, since if you try and cater for everyone within a domain, you’ll end up with something derivative that fails to please anyone. Protect your voice, but listen for signals within the noise for how to let more of your voice shine.

Of course, pleasing people isn’t the only goal of creation. Some people produce art specifically to annoy certain groups, and sometimes all people. It’s the case with many artists that the only disappointing response to a work of art is indifference. If someone despises your work, then you’ve had a serious impact in their world. You’ve got them emoting. You’ve got them thinking and talking about you. You’re creeping around their head leaving grimy foot and hand prints everywhere. Some artists exist specifically to do this. Some are just douchebags.

So even if you’ve thus far found very few people out there that like your work, if you like it, then there will be other that do too. They might be hard to find, but at least with modern technology, it’s possible. I’ll talk another day about how this is actually getting harder again. But there could be a huge audience out there for your work, you just haven’t stumbled across them yet. I know I certainly haven’t! And don’t think, that because you haven’t found your audience yet, that this means your work in unlovable. You presumably haven’t shown it to every one in the world, so you don’t know that.

And maybe your style isn’t fashionable now. But just as existing styles fall out of fashion, other styles become trendy. This is as true with art as it is with fashion. You may choose to tweak your approach to better adhere with current trends, but don’t risk compromising your voice trying to keep up with the Joneses.

My wretchedly hopeful mantra these days is “just keep turning up”. It’s a bit like the whole “build it and they will come” thing. I think that if I just keep pushing my work in people’s faces they’ll eventually take pity on me and buy something! Or maybe I’m just ahead of my time. I guess we’ll find out.

So, although your job as an artist is to honour your voice that doesn’t mean that you can’t tailor your output for the broadest possible audience. It’s perhaps a slightly slippery slope if you let this go too far, and get caught in a commercial rut, especially if you find some success. But ultimately if you like producing work that’s more commercial and you it honours your voice as much as the non-commercial work, then good for you. Fill your boots.

What many creators do is to try get the best of both worlds - produce both commercial work and personal work. This works well as long as you can balance the competing time pressures, and that your commercial work can pay the bills. This is a dilemma and trade-off that many that rely on art as their income have to face, and it can a heart breaking one. If, like me you view art as primarily a therapeutic outlet, it’s especially tricky. I need money, but I also need my mental health if I’m going to make money. Perhaps I could make more if I sacrificed some of my creative freedom, but would I also be sacrificing some of the therapeutic value?

I’ll come back to the joys of making money from art, or not, another day. But it’s hard to talk about voice without mentioning it, since it has a disproportionate effect on it. It’s just something you have to deal with if you choose to take your craft that far.

So in summary as an artist as a creator your job is to find your voice as it’s important for you as an artist and your well-being and progression and satisfaction as a as a creator but it’s also essential from a outward facing perspective for you to differentiate yourself.

Now, for some tips on finding your voice.

• First, you’ve got to set aside time to just create and as my mindfully as possible and to follow your nose as it were and work on the things that you want to work on. From day one.
• Spend some time bathing in your influences and try and figure out what it is about them that really draws you to them. What is the essence of their voice? When trying to emulate or honour them, how does your own voice channel theirs?
• Try not judge yourself too harshly and to recognise when you’re judging yourself by someone else’s standards. Figure out where your own standards lie where your own what looks good to you. If it feels right, it probably is right.
• Understand where your core capabilities, your strength and weaknesses lie. Work with the tools that you have got - physical, psychological, economic, environmental. If you find that you struggle to emulate someone else’s craft, then find your own way to the same ends. These boundaries are not weaknesses or limitations, just resistance. Skills meander like rivers do.
• Find the beauty in your own work by trusting yourself, let your voice emerge by getting out of its way.

Finding your voice is as much about blocking out other people’s voices, it’s as much about not listening to critics, of not judging yourself by yardsticks of the culture or society and to trust your own instincts and trust that your work will connect with people. And if you can do all that while keeping your sanity then you’ll be a force to be reckoned with. But one way or the other, your voice will only come when you stop shutting it down and just let it flow.

I’ll leave your some words from some folks that are much more articulate and erudite than me. In their book, Art and Fear, one of my favourite books on the practise of art, David Bayle and Ted Orland explore the inner world of the artist and tackle many of the issues, both philosophical and practical, that I touch upon in this episode and many others. It’s a book that I will most likely return to again. Here’s what they had to say on the subject of voice:

“The artistic evidence for the constancy of interior issues is everywhere. It shows in the way most artists return to the same two or three stories again and again. It shows in the palette of Van Gogh, the characters of Hemingway, the orchestration of your favourite composer. We tell the stories we have to tell, stories of the things that draw us in—and why should any of us have more than a handful of those? The only work really worth doing—the only work you can do convincingly—is the work that focuses on the things you care about. To not focus on those issues is to deny the constants in your life.”*

Thanks again for listening folks. As per usual, if you liked this, then hit the subscribe button, and tell some other folks about it. Support me on Patreon at patreon.com/alexloveless. I have now have some NFTs available to buy on OpenSea at opensea.io/AlexLoveless. I will no doubt have something to say of NFTs, blockchain and crypto at some point. Watch this space. I shall return soon. Plus, after my mental illness imposed sojourn, I’m back on the party bus, so I have a backlog of drafts for future episodes. So you should hear from me a bit more frequently. I create these episodes when a particular subject tickles my pickles, so you’ll just have to turn up and see what happens next. Bye!

Alex talks about overthinking as an anxiety response, why this happens and how to combat it.

Please support, me, my art and this podcast on my Patreon.

Transcript

There are a few reasons why this podcast is coming out less frequently. Some of this I discuss in the last episode, and I’m not going to rake all that depressing stuff up again. Suffice to say that my brain decided to stop playing ball. One consequence of what amounts to an onslaught of acute depression and anxiety, is a marked dip in self-esteem. This is a very common cause and/or side effect of such mental illnesses. I’m not going to go into neurological foundations of this, but suffice to say, that humans that are feeling like they are some sort of god-like genius don’t tend to be depressed. That’s not to say narcissists can’t be depressed, it’s just that depressed people are, by definition, not feeling very confident.

With low self-esteem, comes the constant questioning of everything you do. That nagging sense of “what’s the point?”. “No one cares”. “I was never very good at this stuff anyway”, “everyone hates me”. These thoughts are usually illusions. The malignant mirages of a malfunctioning brain. But they seem pretty real at the time and are hard to ignore. The little demon on your shoulder, whispering nasty nothings. For viewers of Big Mouth, this is the Shame Wizard.

This lovely fellow was at work while attempting to compile no less than three editions of this podcast, subsequently aborted. I keep getting half way through writing them, and start thinking to myself “where am I going with this? This is indulgent nonsense. Who is going to care?”. I was just in the middle of a slightly maudlin and self-pitying piece about how a tortured soul like me can’t sell any of my tormented masterworks to simple folk who just want something pretty for their dining room wall, when such a fit of self-criticism struck. I literally stopped dead in my tracks and thought “this is a self-indulgent piece of dull nonsense that no one is going to want to hear.” Now, this might well be the truth, but since it is the third such occasion that this has happened it gave me some pause.

I need to get another episode out, I thought to myself. I decided, yet again, to try something else. So I referred to my list of “subjects to cover in future episodes” list and it took me literally seconds to stumble across an item simply titled “overthinking”. Bingo!

If you hadn’t noticed, as well as providing a medium for me to spout my ill conceived ideas on art as therapy, I also use this podcast as a way to think through various issues, to order my thoughts, even to exorcise my demons. So I immediately recognised an opportunity to work through my thoughts on overthinking, since that’s exactly what lead me to this point. Will I overthink this one too? I guess we’ll find out!

Overthinking is a trauma response. It is a form of anxiety that happens when your general anxiety levels are high and you’re afraid of negative consequences from something that you’re doing. It’s a type of perfectionism and can completely paralyse you from a creative and productivity perspective. It manifests as a need to make sure that what you’re going to make or you’re going to do, or what you’re going to say is perfect, and you become very worried about what might happen if that’s not the case. This often involves internally “play acting” the role of another person and how they might react to what you present to them. This usually leads to assuming the worst about how they’re going to react, or what they might say. It may not be obvious to you that that’s what’s going on at the time, it all seems very rational and logical. But that’s the most pernicious thing about overthinking - it seems to you at that moment in time to be perfectly reasonable and rational, and that the paranoid thoughts you have about the task you have to do or the interaction you have to partake in, is really as fraught with danger as you think it is.

If you’re suffering from depression or anxiety, you’re going to be more prone to having negative points of view or negative outlooks on anything that’s happening in your life. Anxiety perpetuates anxiety, so it can be that anxiety in one part of your life - perhaps you’re worried about something you said to a friend that you thought might be a little bit hurtful - and when when you try and write some poetry or paint a picture, you may start to worry about that. About whether anyone’s going to like it, or maybe you even think someone might find it hurtful or offensive. And you freeze, delay, procrastinate. You start to worry about the other areas of your life. And every time you try and get back to the project, you start to meander again, and speculate and fret.

But is this overthinking really a problem? A little bit of reflection once in a while is a good thing right?

Let me me explicit about this - overthinking is poison to spontaneity. And art, regardless of how you approach it, is underpinned by spontaneity. The strokes or the marks you put down on canvas or paper, the notes that you lay down on a piano, there’s always a level of spontaneity that happens to create the thing in front of you. You are not a machine, you are a sentient being, and therefore the job of creation is a process, and it’s necessarily spontaneous.

Now that’s not to say that you’re never going to produce something that is, in fact, offensive or boring or just plain bad. Sometimes you will realise after the fact, or maybe during the creation of something, that it’s not something that people are going to want to see, or maybe it’s plagiarism. Maybe it just sucks balls.

There have been times when you’ve created something that you’ve looked back at and gone, “yeah, this is not great”. Maybe you paint it out, CTRL-A Delete, throw it away, whatever. You just moved on, and you didn’t freak out, the world didn’t end, you just moved on, did something else. This is part of the learning and maturing process and a constant part of the creative process. After all, you can’t be a genius all the time! You trust yourself to make such judgement calls, because when you’re creating, you’re making lots of little judgement calls all the time. About what to put where, about in what order to do things, what materials to use, and so on and so forth. You trust yourself, you trust that you know, in your experience, or from you’ve been taught, that if I do thing A, then I get thing B. But we all make mistakes, we all make decisions that seem right at the time, and don’t turn out to be optimal, and then we just fix it, or we discard it, and we move on. You trust yourself, and in the skills that you have in the endeavour that you’re on.

It’s all very well, however, to, y’know, just decide to not overthink things. But it’s often hard to know that you’re overthinking, because, by it’s very nature, it feels very real. This is just a basic fact of anxiety, because if all your worries seem as ridiculous as they tend to when reflecting on them after later, you wouldn’t be anxious. This is the pernicious nature of anxiety. You might well be in a precarious situation. Maybe, like me, you’ve lost your job, and your finances are getting tighter. Maybe someone close to you is ill. Maybe you’re in a difficult relationship. Sometimes very bad things do happen, and we need to accept and prepare for those. We need to keep scanning the horizon for danger. This is a fact of life. No big deal.

But when you’re feeling anxious or depressed you start to see bad things threats everywhere. You start to look at every slightly adverse situation as a harbinger of something bad. You start to worry that you’re going to run out of money, that you’re going to be turfed out onto the street, that the world is going to end, and, of course, that’s possible. But you don’t think about the fact that any number of other things could happen to alleviate or avoid this and probably will. You forget that you have options, and there’s usually people around you who care about you and can help out. And that positive chance events happen as likely as negative ones. The chances are the situation isn’t as bad as you think it is, but when you’re in a precarious situation where lots of things are not going well, and we all find ourselves in this position from one time or another, those things that might seem like threats to you are going to seem more, much more imminent, and much more likely than, in fact, they really are. And that’s why talking to people like a therapist or a friend often helps. If they’re the right type of person, they’ll help you frame that problem in the terms of the reality that’s around you that you’re struggling to see. You don’t get to forget about the problems, they don’t magically disappear. But more often or not, when you look back on a time in your life where things were not going at all well, and there was lots of potential problems on the horizon, so few of them came about. Things didn’t go at all how you thought they would. The worst-case scenario, or even close to it, is usually much less likely than you think.

Either way, you have no idea what of what’s coming down the line. You can control what you control and the rest is down to fate. And when the really bad things do happen, they often don’t unfold as you think they’re going to, and provided the bad thing wasn’t fatal, you generally have a route to fight back. The only way is up from rock bottom.

This amplification of risk perception tends to infect everything you do. Suddenly that relationship problem, those money woes, that issue at work, starts to get in they way of doing literally everything. What’s happening is your nervous system has switched to fight or flight mode. You become perpetually hyper-alert to risks of any sort. So instead of leaning into that short story you’ve been looking forward to writing, you’re suddenly questioning whether anyone would want to read it. You start worrying that you’d be ridiculed if anyone did so. You nitpick and analyse and it all seems perfectly logical. Because you’re an experienced and mature creator, you look at you’re own work critically, which is just what you’re doing right? But this is the literary equivalent of thinking you see an intruder in the dark shadows of your house. You’re not any less capable than you were a couple of weeks ago, but suddenly it seems to you that every thought you have is amateur drivel.

And so here I found myself, struggling to write one podcast episode after another. I think to myself, no one wants to hear me talking about this stuff. I came up with a subject, and I thought, sounds great, but I’ve got nothing interesting to say on this, and there’s a little voice at the back of my head that’s being drowned out by the shouting little demon, a little anxiety demon, the shame wizard, that’s saying, mate, you do this podcast because you’ve got good things to say. People listen to you in all sorts of circumstances because you have good things to say, and you tend to save them very, very well and very articulately. You know, I know I’m no genius at this, I’m not just about to get offered a job as a BBC TV presenter or whatever. Quite frankly, I’m only okay at this, but I’m better at than many or perhaps most people are, and I can use it to help myself and other people because I find talking quite therapeutic, and I think some people find listening to people like me talking therapeutic, and that makes me feel good. And from that I get the opposite of the anxious spiralling feedback loop. And if I can bring some light by using the abilities that I have into someone else’s world and relieve them of some of their burden, I can’t think of a better way to use this ability.

But I couldn’t hear the sane voice. Only the shame wizard sounding sane and logical and telling me I suck. Call it writer’s block. Call it low self-esteem. Call it procrastination. Call it what you want. I stopped.

I’ve talked about procrastination before, and I think procrastination and overthinking are very, closely related, but not quite the same thing. With procrastination, you’re avoiding doing something, usually by doing something else, which may or may not be productive. Whereas with overthinking you obsess over something you’ve got to do. You can’t seem to get it out of your head. You worry about it. You question it. You overanalyse it.

This, in my mind, is all more serious than perhaps it sounds. Unhealthy thought loops are one of the main signs of pervasive, unhealthy anxiety, and precisely what therapies like CBT exist to combat. Sometimes this manifests as ruminating over a single thing. Sometimes you ruminate about anything and everything. Either way, you’re central nervous system gets stuck in panic mode which triggers all sorts of other physical and psychological effects most of which, over time, can cause lasting damage and worse.

For creativity to be therapeutic, it needs to be relaxing, or at least absorbing. If it’s creating anxiety, then that exactly the opposite of what you need it to do. Maybe you’re not in the position to defuse all your other worries, but getting on top of your creative anxieties will set you on a good path do exactly that.

So what’s the remedy for this? Well, the risk of sounding obvious, it’s to stop overthinking. Now, I know that’s harder than it might seem, and it’s sort of a bit of a contradiction in terms, but I think the reality is that you’ve got to do something.

Most specifically, you’ve got do anything. The cure for overthinking is action. And in many ways, it doesn’t matter what action, just that you progress somehow,

My most common form of overthinking when it comes to art, is obsessing about coming up with that new idea. The next signature piece. Something that will dazzle. Paradoxically, this usually comes off the back of a prior success and is delivered with a flavour of imposter syndrome. Were all my prior successes just accidents? What if I never do anything worthy again!

The solution on such occasions is to do something else. That might sound a little bit glib. Almost a bit defeatist. But it’s a bit like when you’re trying desperately to remember something, or to solve some tricky problem. Sometimes you’ve just just gotta stop trying. Go do something else. Sleep on it. Then, bam! The answer comes to you when you’re doing something totally unrelated.

From a creative perspective, I don’t necessarily mean go do something completely different, like washing the car or whatever. You’ll likely end up just obsessing more. You need to do something else absorbing, and preferably something creativity related that you can relax doing. You’re not being lazy or weak by doing this. It’s just part of the creative process. And an essential one. Creation should feel natural, intuitive. If you force it, then your work will likely seem forced to other people. You’ll also be eroding the joy that you naturally take from that process, a feeling that will likely stay with you through future works. This stuff accumulates over time, like dirt and grit in an engine. Eventually the engine seizes up.

But that if you don’t come back to the original project? Well, unless you had committed to it, then maybe it wasn’t something that you should have been doing. Or maybe just not now.

If you do come back to it, you’ll likely find yourself looking at it with new eyes, a new perspective, and renewed enthusiasm. Your anxieties forgotten, or perhaps even woven into your work.

And please don’t start stressing about whatever you end up doing to distract yourself! The point is to do something that you’re comfortable with, and that you enjoy doing, even if it doesn’t feel like much of a step forward.

What if you’ve committed to something and the reason you’re stuck in a loop is that you’re afraid you’re going to deliver something terrible? Perhaps you’re already part way through a project and it’s not panning out how you thought. Now you’re worried that you’ve got to go back to your client with something crap, or nothing at all!

This is when you need to check in on yourself and apply a bit of logical thinking, as well as taking a break from it. Sometimes it’s worth taking stock of your worldview from a probabilistic perspective and looking at it soberly and in a detached way.

Maybe you’ve agreed to paint a portrait of someone. And this is a particular anxiety of mine, because I have messed these up once or twice in the past. You’ve agreed to make a portrait of someone’s beloved and it just doesn’t go well. We can all be geniuses all of the time! Well, it’s not a good look and it’s a bit depressing and embarrassing. And it really knocks your self-confidence. Most most of us have messed up a bit in our professional lives or in when we’re dealing with other people. It’s just part of life.

At times like this you’ve gotta trust yourself. So maybe you have messed up in the past, but how many times have you nailed it? So if you’ve done, say, 50 portrait commissions in the past and one of them went astray. That’s one in 50 chance of screwing one up, which is pretty small odds of you doing that again. The odds of flubbing it are actually much lower because once you’ve messed up once, you’re not going to mess up in that way again. And of course, that was past you, who was much less capable and awesome than now you!

These things never go smoothly anyway. How many times have you got half way through a project and thought to yourself “what is this ridiculous assemblage of canine excrement?!” only to go on to craft a masterwork? And as every author knows, many works need a couple attempt to get it right.

Every time any of this happens, you learn from it, move on, and are better for it. There’s a reason there’s been 50 odd anxiety free works between the last misdemeanour and now - you’re damn good at this! So just get on with it!

It’s like being afraid of flying in case the plane crashes. And as we all know, many tens of thousands of flights happen every day and there’s a crash, like, once every couple of years. There’s a lottery winning order probability of getting you getting on a plane that takes a dive. I put my foot through the floor of my first floor studio a couple of weeks ago, so I suspect that, for me at least, the act of creation is more perilous than flying!

So I think that sometimes you’ve just got to take a step back and think about yourself and your situation soberly and objectively recognize that, almost certainly you’re being too pessimistic and over over weighting the likelihoods of negative outcomes.

And that the core of all of this. Anxiety happens when you’re brain loses track of the real likelihood of bad things happening. Of course, sometimes our problems are real, but sometimes our worries about those real problems bleed into other part of our lives.

So remember this: overthinking is a form of anxiety, and as rational and sensible as your ruminations and self-criticisms seem, they’re often just another symptom of incipient anxiety. And what better way to relive anxiety, than the act of creation?

So the question is, did I end up overthinking this one too? Well, I finished it, which I guess counts for something. But perhaps it’s for you to decide!

On the subject of not overthinking - I have a draft for the second instalment on my “how to be creative” series, so maybe you’ll see that next. Or maybe I’ll get distracted by something else.

Now a shop on website

Alex talks candidly about his recent resurgence of mental illness, what happened to cause it, and how he intends to fight back with the help of, you guessed it, art!

Please support, me, my art and this podcast on my Patreon.

Transcript

This is where my fight back starts. Or perhaps it’s better to say continues.

I committed to myself that I would get an episode of this podcast out every week, which I had managed until a few weeks ago, at which point I lapsed. Initially this was because I was busy preparing for the solo art exhibition that I held a couple of weeks back. Then it was because my mental health completely collapsed. I want to talk a little about this today, partly because I think it’s important to talk, to be open about one’s struggles, as I believers it’s essential to the healing process. Partly because I think you, the listeners, might benefit from hearing about my struggles, and my nascent fight back, in the hopes that any of you that are having, or have had, similar struggles, may find some solace, that you are not alone. And partly as an explanation, not just of my inability to continue this podcast, but also to those around me who have experienced the rough end of my stumble, in the hopes it will help them to understand, and to beg their patience for a little longer. For recoveries take time, and I have been ill for a very long time.

It might seem like I’ve got it all figured out. It might seem a pre-requisite for someone who creates a podcast on healing mental illness through art, to have figured out how to do exactly that. But you don’t just “switch off” mental illness in the same way that you can’t just “switch off” a broken leg. Healing is an ongoing process, and when your neurological afflictions run and deep and long as mine do, it’s arguable that this process never ends. I, at least, have accepted that it never will. I have made peace with this in the same way that diabetic or asthmatic must make peace with their affliction. Like these afflictions, mental illness and it’s inverse, mental wellness, ebb and flow in presence and intensity. Constant management is required to prevent an increase in the intensity, and therefore destructiveness, of the affliction. I have various methods for achieving this, chief among them making art.

But I don’t live in a bubble, neither so I with to. My ability to maintain my mental health is tightly bound to my environment, and environments aren’t constant. Circumstances change, whether we want them to or not, and sometimes in ways that are dissatisfying, and perhaps even unsettling or even alarming. Life happens, and doesn’t much care about my psychological fragility.

And this is where I’m at - life happened.

I’m not going to talk in any great detail about how I got to where I am at the moment. I’ve covered this to one degree or another in earlier episodes. And quite frankly, I need to stop obsessing over the details of my situation, as that’s part of the problem. Suffice to say, since last October, I have had a set of unexpected, and not entirely positive changes in my life, most of which are linked and leave me in a somewhat precarious situations that, regardless of what happens, positive or negative, will yield more changes.

I frequently talk about myself as two people, ADHD Alex and Autistic Alex. These two sides of me are somewhat at odds - they have different, and often conflicting, needs. ADHD Alex generally likes change, he certainly likes novelty, Autistic Alex abhors change, he likes predictability and routine. When either side of me is significantly out of kilter, both suffer. It’s arguable that there is a third Alex in the mix - the gestalt being that is the combination of ADHD Alex and Autistic Alex, AuDHD Alex, Gestalt Alex, or perhaps just Alex. I’ll refer to him as Gestalt Alex from here on for the sake of clarity. When either Alex suffers, Gestalt Alex suffers, when both Alexes suffer, things get very bad for Gestalt Alex.

The changes of the past 10 months, and the various requirements placed on me, have been very hard indeed on Autistic Alex, who’d been the comfortably dominant half of me for the prior 3 or 4 years. This has lead to a string of acute and intense mental health episodes, the first of which hit full tilt in February this year. I clawed my way out of that by immersing myself in my art, accepting the help of various incredible people around me, exercising my demons through writing, which lead to my book, The Fall, and starting a podcast. Also exercise, gardening and burying my head in the sand, for better of for worse, as to what was happening around me.

However, life didn’t stop. The world kept on turning, the clock kept ticking, and money kept getting spent. Despite dramatically reducing our outgoings, and we found ourselves having to sell our house. The house that I love. My dream house. This was, and continues to be, devastating. However, through the generosity and grace of a good friend, we found a temporary solution to our housing problem, replete with a wonderful workshop/studio. Thank heaven for small (or in the case huge) mercies. But mercies accepted, trauma is trauma. Autistic Alex was freaking out.

So decided I needed something to focus on. Actually, I’m not sure I did decide that. I just threw myself into a project that absorbed me for 2 or 3 weeks - my solo art exhibition. This felt very positive, and allowed me to continue to ignore our precarious situation. Why is our situation precarious? Because the house we are now living in, is part of a major development that will kick off sometime mid-2025, which means whether we want to or not, we have to move again. More Autism nightmare fuel.

Anyway, fast forward a few weeks, to me mooching around a solo exhibition that looked amazing, and might well have been the best planned thing I’ve ever done, at least on my own. And mooch I did, mostly on my own. I’m not going to pontificate here on why my show was a bit of a damp squib. In every other way it was extremely positive, a fair few folk did turn up, not least lots of lovely friends and fellow artists, but I didn’t sell a lot, and ultimately made a financial loss, which I can barely afford right now.

The psychological collapse that afflicted me over the subsequent week might well have had nothing to do with the success, or lack thereof, of the show. That certainly didn’t help, but what I think really happened is that once I didn’t have something to focus on, the realities of my situation came flooding back in. Nothing had particularly changed, but I hadn’t been dealing with my response to my circumstances, I hadn’t been processing. I was just blocking it all out. Stalling. Head. In. Sand.

In some ways, this is neither here nor there. I process now, I process then. Practically speaking it didn’t make a whole lot of difference. Maybe, anyway. But I had convinced myself that I was processing, that I had processed. I wasn’t. I hadn’t. And in the meantime, I put a whole bunch of autism baiting stress on myself. It was equivalent of trying to drink or gamble or snort my problems away. Not just delaying, but exacerbating.

When did I recognise this? When did I figure out that I was unhealthily delaying facing up to my situation while w simultaneously exacerbating my psychological problems? When I wrote that last paragraph, that’s when. As I write this one. As I read this out to you. The act of creation, is an act of cleansing, is and act of processing is an act of love. Thinking about it now, I suspect others around me spotted this, probably a while ago, but felt powerless to do anything about it. Once I get an idea into my head, I’m kinda hard to stop. This is ADHD Alex in full flow, and more significantly, full control. And Autistic Alex was relegated to the sidelines to look on anxiously but powerless to do anything.

So was all that time immersed in my art in prep for the show actually doing me harm? Not at all, I think the only reason I was able to block all my problems out was because I find the act of creation so immersive. There’s a lesson there, I guess. Like any other treatment, or therapy, art is only truly effective when wielded properly. I’ll ponder that one, and maybe come back to it in a future episode,

Anyway, rationalisations aside, I fell apart. I’m not going to go into all the yucky details, but suffice to say that this was a weeping, snotty crisis, rather than screaming, breaking stuff one. I just felt so desperately sorry for myself. So apoplectically angry at the world. My behaviour became erratic. I started saying stupid stuff to people who deserve better from me. I put my family, and particularly my wife, through living hell. I decided my life wasn’t worth living.

Which, of course, is nonsense. But mental illness is not rational. And pain is pain, regardless of whether caused by a broken leg or a broken brain.

So what was, is, this? Depression? Autistic Burnout? Narcissistic, planet-sized self pity? A bit of all of these. And probably some other stuff too. Definitely some of other stuff too. Plus the fact that my situation is still far from optimal. Describe or diagnose it how you will. Ultimately it was Autistic Alex having the mother of all sense of humour failures. And he was perfectly justified in doing so. When this happens, ADHD Alex freaks out and runs round in circles.

The relationship between the two sides of my brain is pretty well described by Rick and Morty at their most self destructive. Rick drags them both on some crazy adventure, while Morty gets increasingly distressed and frequently goes in to full on meltdown. Rick and Morty’s co-creator, Dan Harmon, is autistic himself, so maybe he’s trying to tell us something about himself.

Anyway, the reality is that, at least in the short term, I’ve largely lost control of my life. Things could be a lot worse, but anyone who’s experienced this type of mental illness knows that such rationalisations are worse than unhelpful. They’re massively counterproductive. They can be fatal. So we’ll not go there.

But until a few events, whose advents I have very little control over, resolve themselves, I’m stuck in a bit of limbo. And if there’s one state that massively traumatises both Autistic Alex and ADHD Alex, and therefore, Gestalt Alex, it’s being in limbo. Autistic Alex hates the uncertainty and ADHD Alex finds the implicit lack of options unbearable. This may all sound a bit frivolous, but anyone listening who has a brain like mine, know that this is not frivolous. It’s literally deadly serious.

And so this brings me to where I am today, writing this, feeling slightly annoyed at myself for letting things get this bad. Another unhelpful rationalisation I should note. I want to be better. I want to feel better. But recovery is a complicated, delicate and, most importantly, an ongoing process. It’s all very well me saying “I’m gonna get better now”, but I can’t simply will wellness into reality, Recovery takes self-care, honesty with one’s self and help from others. It needs communication, thoughtful action, and humility.

You’re asking the organ that is stressed or damaged to heal itself. Not only that, but you’re asking it to figure out how to do that itself! This is not as strange as it might sound. When you have a broken leg your leg knows how to fix itself, it just needs the space to get on with it, otherwise known as rest. The brain is the same, with the somewhat frustrating twist that your brain can decide that it doesn’t want to do that! That’s a problem for another day.

The physical analogy is one that I come back to time and time again. If you want to run a 5k, and you’ve never run one before, the best thing to do is give your body regular and ongoing examples of what you expect of it, and let it do the rest. You can’t think your muscles into growing in the right ways, only they can do that. So you can read books or watch videos or whatever that gives you tips on running posture, training regimes, nutrition and all that, and that’s all very helpful (providing you got good advice), but it’s really your body that figures out how to actually do it all. All you’re doing is giving it general direction. A bit like a conductor for an orchestra. Her job is to make sure that everyone is doing the right thing when they’re supposed to. She doesn’t tell them how to play their instrument.

So how does this work with brains? Well, pretty much the same. If you’re stressed or anxious, you need to show your brain, your emotional brain, what you expect from it - which in this case is calm. So do something that makes you calm. This is actually not the purpose or meditation, despite what most people think, but mediation is an extremely useful method for cultivating calmness of mind. It’s almost like weight training for your brain’s calmness muscle. But, if you’re like me, the practise of meditation is really only useful when I’m already relatively calm. If I’m in a tizz or, as is the case now, total tailspin, something else is required. Two things help me 1) exercise - I’ve been walking and running a lot of late. But this is not a podcast about keeping fit. Well, it sort of is. It’s about keeping your brain fit, rather than your body. So we’ll move on to the second thing that I use to create moments of calm - you guessed it, making stuff. Not a whole lot of suspense there, soz. I’m not a thriller writer. Yet, anyway.

I make pictures with paint and pencils and anything else that comes to hand. This makes me calm. It’s what I’ve been doing for weeks. So why didn’t it help me, to actually make me calm? Well I think it did. I just spent a few weeks shovelling a bunch of extra stress on my plate, as well as not dealing with the stuff I was already dealing with. I used my creativity to stay afloat. When my sense of purpose faltered after the exhibition, I stopped floating.

What happened after that was a state of self-fuelling psychological spiral. I don’t want to go into the details. They are for me those who support me. It wasn’t fun and mostly happened inside my brain. No one, including my family, was aware this was happening until I could mask it no longer. Then it all came leaking out in both the literal and metaphorical sense.

When did I decide that this all had to stop? I recalled a conversation with a friend that I had a while ago. They were having a rolling meltdown triggered by a crappy situation a week or so earlier. What I told them was that their anxiety and pain and distress was real, and justified and valid. But there comes a point where your reaction becomes the problem. You’re freaking out because you’re freaking out. Distress breeds distress, and every level of distress amplifies the original problem. The original problem has usually not really changed, but over time starts to seem so much worse. But it’s not worse, really, you’ve just zoomed into it, like you looked down at it through an increasingly powerful microscope. But the magnification is an illusion brought on by distress perpetuating itself. At some point you need to realise that, regardless of your problems, if you don’t get a handle on the distress itself, which is caused by your reaction to the problem, then things are only going to get worse. At that point you need to treat the distress itself as the enemy.

So this is my fightback. I choose to recognise the distress itself as my enemy, and to face it down. To do this, I need to accept this fact, while recognising my situation on its face values. It is what it is, nothing more, nothing less. Then I need to do things that I need to do show my brain what I expect of it. I will keep taking on reality one day at a time. I will keep fighting. I will get better. I acknowledge that there will be peaks and troughs, but I choose to keep fighting.

[pause]

There’s another reason that I’m telling you all this. Let me tell you another story. 5 or so years ago, for reasons that I can’t quite recall, I decided that I wanted to run an ultramarathon. Not just a normal, gruellingly arduous marathon, But an _ultra_marathon, which is always longer and usually on more challenging terrain. Up until that point, the most I’d ever run was 5k or there abouts. I was overweight and unfit. Knowing my habitual capriciousness, I figured that, with the best intentions, I was unlikely to follow through. So I hatched are rather boring, but also very effective plan. I entered a local ultra, and I pledged my sponsorship money to a local cause, the custodians of which I knew well. Something else you might not know about me. I hate, hate disappointing people. And 9 months later, I ran a 50km, offroad marathon, I actually ran most of it, rather than walking or crawling, and I placed quite well. It wasn’t one of the hard ones, like that one that goes through death valley, but from zero to 50km in 9 months isn’t bad going, right?

My point is that if I tell enough people that I’m going to get better. If I commit to getting better, maybe I’ll actually do it. As I say, I hate to disappoint.

So there’s my confessional. I hope you found it helpful, and maybe even hopeful.

One of the things I was avoiding doing during my fun little episode was writing the second part in my “How to be creative” series. I promise to get on to that. And I’ll try not to take so long. One thing I need to be careful of is not loading myself up with too much stuff. So if that means these episodes have to come a little less regular, so be it. I hope that you understand and stick with me. I did actually record another episode of me rambling about something or another. When I went to try and edit it, listening to myself in that state put me in a state of pure horror. At some point I’ll go listen to that and see if it’s worth releasing. Watch this space.

Alex kicks off a new series of a yet unknown number of episodes on creativity. He explores the nature of creativity using examples from the world of jazz, introducing the core concepts that will be covered in upcoming episodes.

Notes

• The Wikipedia entry of Kieth Jarrett’s legendary gig
• Tim Harford telling the story of that gig considerably better than I did. Includes some other bits broadly relevant to my points on creativity.
• Listen to the first hour or so of this episode of 500 Songs that has a detailed but accessible explanation of modal jazz
• A couple of dudes getting uncomfortably excited by John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme
• Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Transcript

Once upon a time there was a young girl called Vera who lived in Cologne, Germany. Vera loved jazz, but Cologne wasn’t exactly a destination for jazz scenesters. Unperturbed, 18 year old Vera took a punt and invited American virtuoso improvisational jazz pianist Keith Jarrett to come and perform in her jazz-deprived city. To her surprise and joy he agreed. On 24 January 1975, after a long, gruelling drive, suffering from back pain, Jarrett arrived for his 11.30pm performance at the Cologne opera house. He took a look at the crappy, broken down, out of tune piano that the Opera House had provided, and walked out again, refusing to perform. Jarrett had asked for a Bösendorfer 290 Imperial Grand Piano. He was very particular about this. The Opera House staff had interpreted that as “some Bösendorfer piano or whatever” and rolled out a dusty old practise piano they found back stage. So basically, Jarrett, somewhat understandably, pulled the whole “how can I create under these conditions” routine. Vera was in a tight spot, and 1,400 German jazz fans waiting were expectantly in the Cologne Opera House. This was a disaster.

So Vera did what any self-respecting teenager would do in such conditions. She badgered him until she got what she wanted. Against all odds, Jarrett took pity on the rain soaked (I’m imagining it was raining, for dramatic effect) teenager, and agreed to play. He hadn’t even managed to eat much, after his long drive, and he was tired and in pain. By the time he re-entered to the auditorium, the piano had been tuned, but a bunch of the keys weren’t working and it wasn’t nearly big enough to to be heard across an auditorium of that size. Jarrett assumed he was about to give the worst performance of his career, but the German kid had seemed to miserable, and they’d already set up the recording equipment, so what the hell?

The thing is, Jarrett was a genuinely prodigious pianist, so he knew his way around a piano. The limitations of the offending piano forced him to be much more creative in his delivery, both in terms of his note choices, but he also had to hammer at the keys in a way that he wouldn’t usually, just so he could be heard. The resulting performance, which was recorded and can be tracked down easily at all the usual streaming platforms, is considered nothing short of legendary. One of the most revered, venerated, copied and best selling jazz recordings of all time. It propelled Jarrett from being a preternaturally talented upstart, to being a major force in modern jazz. In jazz terms, this most definitely counts as fairly tale.

What lessons are there to be learned from this story? I think there are a few. There’s probably quite a lot to be said about proper preparation if you want a quiet life, and completely conversely, that all’s well that ends well. But it’s what this story, and some others I will touch upon, tell us about creativity that I want to focus on.

I’m actually going to spend a couple of episodes talking about the nature of creativity. Maybe more. Because I think it’s essential to understand the role that creativity plays in the therapeutic power of art and the creative process. As I’ve said before, if you can’t loosen up a bit, making art isn’t going feel relaxing and fulfilling. It’s going to feel stressful. And relaxation, flow and creativity all come from the same source. The same spring of magical, mystical unicorn juice. But the experience and understanding of creativity depends heavily context and your place in the lifelong creative journey. Put simply, if you’re obsessed about doing things “right” then you’ll always be doing something wrong, and you’ll almost certainly end up doing the same thing over and over again.

Music, and particularly jazz music, is a good place to start here because, during improvisation, creativity happens in real time, and in full view. Now I should point out at this point, that I’m no expert on jazz, or even particularly a jazz fan. There just so happens to be a few characters and stories I’ve come across that help make the points that I need to make. And more generally, Jazz, as opposed to say, country music, puts quite a high premium on creativity.

Take Jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. He is considered one of the most important jazz musicians of all time largely, for his improvisational abilities. He reputedly practised for 16 hours a day. He was good at his instrument. But he was also renowned for his creative approach to the saxophone, and to jazz music and indeed music in general. He was your archetypal innovator. John Coltrane changed the jazz genre. He was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize in 2007 citing his “masterful improvisation, supreme musicianship and iconic centrality to the history of jazz.” He was even made a saint by African Orthodox Church!

Does this suggest that you need to be a virtuoso to be able to improvise or innovate? If we think of innovators in other fields, they also seem to be crazy talented prodigies and/or big brains. Think Einstein, Da Vinci, Bach, Bowie, Bill Gates, probably some sports people. I don’t pay any attention to sports. Ronnie O’Sullivan fits the bill I guess.

But there are plenty of virtuosos out there that neither improvise or innovate. Top tier convert violinists, for example, may bring innovative flourishes to their renditions of others’ works, but little in the way of raw creativity, much of which will have come from the composer. Walk into your local art gallery, and you might find some supremely able painters, but how many of them are using that ability to pump out fairly pedestrian landscapes. Every field is jammed to the gills with also-rans that pump out solid work, but did little to really move the dial in their respective fields.

No, Coltrane didn’t change jazz because he was a boss saxofonist, he had some other secret sauce. So what did Coltrane do that was so disruptive to the jazz genre? Well, strictly speaking, nothing, at least not alone. He was part of a movement that included another pioneering jazz legend, Miles Davis, which innovated the form of jazz known as modal jazz. The musical theory of what modal jazz actually is is somewhat brain-bending, so I’ll not attempt to characterise it here other than via a rudimentary description. I’ll put some links in the show notes for anyone masochistic enough to want to know more.

Put simply speaking, most music uses chord changes to to drive the melody and movements within the piece. Modal jazz instead uses modes, which are basically scales of the sort you were forced to learn during those piano lessons you did when you were a kid, that petered out because they were so dull. Often, modal jazz is performed as lengthy jams over a single chord, with melody and structure defined by changes in the modes used. I think anyway. It’s all very confusing. Just go listen to it. Listen to Coltrane’s magnum opus, 1965’s A Love Supreme, and you’ll get a sense of it. It’s easier to just listen to it than to try and describe what’s actually going on. It represents the musical intersection of hyper-minimalism and hyper-complexity. It is the music of dichotomies and extremes. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I’ve no interest in the conversation about whether this is style over substance. Whether enjoyability or even listenability has been sacrificed in the name of technical prowess or the pursuit of pure, cold artistic abstraction. Many people love this music. I’ve included a link in the shownotes of a podcast where a couple of guys get something akin to sexually aroused listening to the aforementioned A Love Supreme. That whole episode’s worth a listen, as they state various views on the nature of art that are very much congruent of my own therefore is a good corollary to this and future episodes. And as an aficionado of most wonderful music form known as death metal, I have little time for views that, for example, assert that melody is an essential component for something wishing to be classified as music. That said, this particular debate is one that I’m going to come back to at some point, maybe as part of this series. I guess we’ll find out!

Back to Coltrane. Far from being cold or aloofly technical, A Love Supreme is, specifically and intentionally, an act of worship. An act of love. It is a document of Coltrane’s reverence for both the transcendent powers of jazz music, but also of God him/herself. And this is where we start to glimpse Coltrane’s secret sauce. For he was both obsessive and eclectic. He was a scholar and a spiritualist. Coltrane was a man of extremes, of contradictions.

Raised a Christian, he largely considered himself a Christian and was by all accounts a true believer, a profoundly spiritual person. Yet he frequently integrated beliefs, doctrines and practices from other, diverse world religions into his own spiritual world view. Including from Kabbalah, Hinduism, Islam, Tibetan and Zen Buddhism. This inevitably found its way into his music. This compulsive cultural and spiritual kleptomania was part of his core approach to music. Coltrane interwove techniques, approaches, themes and motifs from all over the world, including from African music and particularly India, collaborating with legendary, Beatles approved, sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar, who by some accounts, thought that Coltrane was nuts.

And all this might seem to imply that he did this alone. But Coltrane worked with some world-class musicians. Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington are among the names that you’ve likely heard of. Each no doubt a melting pot of creative collaboration. But it’s with his longtime bandmates that complete the John Coltrane Quartet where the magic really happened. When Coltrane, double bassist Jimmy Garrison, drummer Elvin Jones and pianist McCoy Tyner got in a room together, something special occurred. Coltrane’s compositions were sparse at best and offered little in the way of direction to fellow band mates, instead relying on a shared understanding of the each other’s style, audible and visual cues and a deep understanding of the jazz artform. What emerges is a semi-improvised melange of diverse music styles that lead to innovation in real time - he and his band were making creative leaps unconsciously in as they recorded.

For Coltrane this was like prayer, or perhaps more accurately meditation. He and his bandmates would achieve trance like states of pure mindfullness. This is common among musicians, particularly while improvising. But these guys weren’t just in a world of their own (although sometimes it might sound like it), but they were in constant telepathy-like, communication, reacting to each other’s playing in realtime in ways that are seamless to the rest of us.

I’m not trying to sell you on freeform, avant-garde jazz here. I’m very far from being sold on it myself. It’s the sort of music that I want to like, but it largely leaves me cold. But I can hear their passion and focus here. It’s hard to find another artform that makes the creative process this manifest. It’s hard to parse for us mere mortals, for sure, and the theory of it is largely beyond me to understand, let alone explain. But as I’ve suggested, there’s something to be learned here about the process of creativity.

So let me summarise some of the things that are going on here that seem to be driving creativity:

1. Ability or mastery within the medium. We’ll come back to this one a fair bit. I think this requirement is overstated, but a good understanding of the medium is essential. As Coltrane himself stated “You can play a shoestring if you’re sincere.”

2. Conviction. Or passion or maybe authenticity. Although the latter is, as I’ve stated before, to my mind, overused and nebulous as a concept. What we really mean here is that sense that the artist really believes in what they’re doing. That they care deeply and approach it with zeal and enthusiasm regardless of what it is. I’d rather spend time with a passionate train spotter than a cynical or ingenuine classical composer.

3. Eclecticism aka curiosity. An open mind. From my perspective, this is as important as conviction. Coltrane didn’t innovate by doing the same thing over and over. He brought in influences in from wherever he found it, and he searched far and wide. Part of the reason that some of his stylistic flourishes feel familiar now, is because he seamlessly integrated them into his own style, then everyone copied him.

4. Input from, and collaboration with, others - Coltrane collaborated far and wide, as well as with his hard-core of regular bandmates. You can’t help but, if only by osmosis, absorb approaches and ideas from people who you work with. And they in turn absorb from you. They take your ideas and expand on them based on their experiences and interactions, and when you work with them again you absorb your own ideas back again, but now expanded, mutated, maybe even improved. Even if you collaborate with someone who you end up feeling is a complete waste of space, you still take away some knowledge of how not to do things!

5. The zone - that mystical state of hyperfocus, more formally known as flow states, is where the magic of creativity really comes spilling out. That’s not to say you can’t be creative or innovate at any point. I’ve come up with new approaches before while doing mundane tasks like stretching canvases and cocking it up. But as I said earlier, this is where jazz shines as you can see innovations as it happens.

With those five elements, we can go a very long way to where creativity comes from. These are the attributes or perhaps conditions that need to be in place for creativity to happen. Not all of them need to be there for innovations to occur. For example it’s perfectly possible for someone who never leaves the house or sees anyone else, to be creative or innovative. But it’s a lot less likely. Conversely, putting all these things in place, does not guarantee creativity.

But there’s something missing here, and it goes back to the story I started off with. It’s at work with Coltrane and his compatriots, just in a more subtle, routine way. And that is randomness. Chaos. Unpredictability. Luck. In the case of Jarrett, the “luck” was, on the surface at least, bad. An apparent setback. Really it was just an unexpected constraint which forced the pianist to think differently. In the case of Coltrane and friends, chaos was their whole approach. Outside of some basic melodic and structural guidelines, each band member did not know what they were going to play, let alone what everyone else was going to. By going in somewhat blind, they were deliberately imposing constraints, the influence of which they were unable to predict, then trusting in their own instincts and ability to not only account for these, but to capitalise on them.

So with my original list - mastery, conviction, an open mind, collaboration and focus - you have a set of ingredients, that can be put together in varying measures, to cook up something different. But to really mix things up, you need a sprinkling of chaos. It’s like making your omelette with all the usual stuff, then picking something random from your fridge or pantry to add in every time you make it, to see what works. Sure, some omelettes will be choked down or just thrown in the bin, but once in a while you’ll create something magical.

So the chaos isn’t one of the core ingredients, it’s a more like a method or seasoning. It can be applied to any or all of the ingredients, at any point of the process, in any amount. It could be argued that, as far as creativity is concerned, it is the magic unicorn juice.

I’ve got a lot more to say about this particular subject. But I’ve piled a lot on here. Much of which borders on philosophy, or at least isn’t very practical. I also worry that this is probably a bit daunting to those just starting their creative journey. So I’m going to shut up for today. In the next episode I will be making the case for how this works at any point in a creative’s maturity. At least I think that’s what I’m going to do. For better or for worse, my pathological propensity to create chaos means that unpredictability plays a large role in my work. Maybe I’ll talk a little bit about that too. Maybe not!

In the meantime, if you don’t feel like taking my word on all of this, or you just want to get ahead with some reading, many of the ideas from this and future episodes are crystallised and expanded upon via various real-world scientific studies by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Csikszentmihalyi gave us the concept of flow states, and in his book Creativity: The psychology of discovery and innovation, elaborates on my of the subjects discussed here using interviews with and anecdotes from real-world innovators. I’ll put a link in the show notes.

In the meantime, go create.

Alex talks about his move to a new house and studio, how such transitions affect his mental health and how it’s essential to make space and time for your creative therapy during times of transition.

Transcription

Welcome to the Art Against Mental Illness podcast. My name is Alex Loveless and this is my podcast about the healing powers of art for artists, art lovers, the art curious and anyone with an interest in mental health and well-being.

I’m not good at transitions. Well I should say that my ADHD brain loves transitions. My autistic brain really really hates them and so I find them quite confusing periods. So I’m going to talk about transitions a bit today. This is because I’m currently going through one. I’m sitting here in my new studio by my new house as part of a move that I neither wanted nor asked for. I won’t go into the details of why I find myself in this situation today. There are previous episodes where I mentioned this a few times. I won’t bore you with it any more but I’ve had to move house and I’ve had to move studio and I’m recording this from my new studio. So you might hear some traffic in the background. We might hear the odd voice. My last studio was in my garden in a place in the countryside that was much more isolated and quiet than it is here. Here I’m right near a local high street and the walls of this place aren’t very thick and currently reading 25 degrees on the thermometer. This is an upstairs part of a two floor studio with skylight windows all the way across which makes the light absolutely spectacular but it means it’s like a greenhouse.

So I’m sweating and trying to figure out how I’m going to construct an episode for my podcast which I at least to myself I committed to do weekly. Since I spent most of the last week either preparing to move or moving, I haven’t had time to prepare a well thought through nicely scripted episode. So I’m going to let this one wander a bit and I think that’s appropriate given the subject matter and hopefully you’ll find it interesting or at least I don’t know soothing, enraging, insightful. I don’t know come up with some adjectives that seem to suit your mood after this and by all means tell me about it.

So back to me finding transitions troublesome. At the very least after a transition like a house move but I even find this the case when I go on holidays but starting a new job is a very big one and maybe you’ve you’ve just had a kid, maybe you’ve had a bereavement or anything that changes your life significantly even when it’s very very positive can be quite wrenching and very very stressful. So I think that these are the moments when we need the things that keep us centered and the things that keep us sane and calm, the things in your life that you can hold on to that give you if not a sense of pleasure but certainly a sense of either belonging or familiarity or take you out of the new world that you’re in and I think they’re really important and that for me is obviously my art but even then it’s been very very difficult to use that as a as an escape route over the last week or so because I had to I had to move my studio I had to move all my art stuff and it took a while and it left both sides the old studio and new studio in various states of disarray and it made it impossible and less fulfilling to do my art because of that.

I can pick up a piece of paper and a pen at any point and and start doing some sketching there’s there’s plenty of ways to continue to create or be creative when you don’t have your studio or your office space or whatever it is you feel that you need but it’s not the same to me and it sort of ignores the core of why I do what I do and why I do it in the way that I do it which is partly the sort of mindful stimulating creative element of of making things making paintings in my case but it’s also the way that it necessitates isolation and facilitates isolation in such a way that I can block the outside world to the degree that I need to and people know that when I’m in my space and I’m doing my thing that they need to leave me alone and that’s absolutely vital to me I would find a way I think of making that work regardless of what situation I’m in. And if it sounds like I’m complaining that I’ve I’ve gone from one situation where I had a big old studio to another situation where I have a big old studio then please understand I’m not I feel incredibly blessed to be where I am. But where I am is not the same as where I was and I will make this my my home for whatever time we’re going to be here and I will make the most of it and I think this is going to be absolutely incredible.

But this transition is hard any transition is hard even as simple as I want to paint a picture so where are my brushes I sat down and started painting last night and went to dab my brush in some water and the water’s not there and where’s the pot where’s the pot that the water goes in oh god it hasn’t made it over yet some stuff is still over in my old studio. This is not a hard problem to solve I have lots of pots hanging around the place so I just went and found another one but obviously then there’s no water source in this studio so I had to go and get that and my flow was immediately blocked. It’s all fine but it is something that will break my concentration and make it harder for me to do the things I need to do to center myself and of all the times I need to center myself it’s in the middle of a move of all the times that it’s hard to find the space to do that is in the middle of the move. And these little bits of friction, of not having the things that you need around you almost seems like every time I want to do something I have to go and set the thing up that allows me to do that. And if you’re in a position like me where change is especially hard then then this stuff really mounts up and it adds up and I think that everyone experiences this.

I think some people thrive on it even and on half of my brain I think does the process of setting up a new studio figuring out where to put things it’s really a process of the ADHD side of my brain problem solving and enjoying the new things new challenges new stimulus and trying to please the autistic side of my brain which wants things just where they should be where they’re supposed to be. And this is quite a positive process in that sense because my last studio for example I never really got set up in the way that I was happy with I was constantly moving it around and I suspect that will be the case no matter where I am but this is a nice opportunity a new space to rethink how I’ve got things and how I want them and what’s going to be most conducive to me working and what I’m doing here is fundamentally to try and create a space where my surroundings disappear, where they are less and less important to me and I can focus on the art and the things that I do in here without distraction. Because distractions are just inconveniences in your space that stop you from doing what you’re doing.

If you’re a writer and you’re sitting in a cafe and you’ve got your headphones on the fact that there’s lots of stuff happening around you probably doesn’t matter if you’ve chosen that space you’ve got a cup of coffee and that’s where you’re happy you can either tune out or drown out the sound via headphones then you can be very creative and none of those distractions or that might pose distractions to other people are really distractions. Distractions are like weeds they’re just a normal everyday thing that’s somewhere where you don’t want it. And I think that to have a happy productive creative space and creative practice that is conducive to good mental health then your things need to be where they need to be. You need to have an environment that is set up so the types of distractions of, do I have to get up and walk across the room or go to my house or something to get this thing to allow me to do something I want to do am I going to be disturbed if someone just going to walk in and start talking to me while I’m doing something and these things matter the lack of these types of irritations distractions are important as is making the time that you can spend in your creative space actually being creative. These things are absolutely essential to enable the therapeutic value of creativity.

And that’s what I’ve spent my last couple of days doing I’ve got some plants up in here I’ve got this space is much bigger and although it’s not got some of the amenities that my old space had so I have to think through how I’m going to account for that but these are these are small problems and given how house moves have been for me in the past I think I’m I’m actually coping pretty well and I think my creative space is is almost as I want it to be and that’s great because the rest of my life isn’t. My house it looks like someone turned it upside down; a good portion of my stuff is still at the old house. That’s a long story but we’ll still be in possession of that house through a little while longer. And we have to sort of find our feet in the local environment, new neighbours, new garden, new space. The house is totally different it has a totally different feel.

It might seem a little bit, what’s the word, selfish maybe? That I spent time setting up my creative space before fully getting my house sorted but I really needed this space to be sorted out so that I could re-center myself and get myself back in the right frame of mind so we could do the house properly and we could do it in our own time in a way that really suited us. Plus I’m not the only person sorting the house out whereas I am the only person sorting my space out and so I can’t just go in and make all the decisions my wife might have something to say about it it’s a bit of a team project takes a bit more organizing.

Now I think that this is all first world problems and I feel amazingly blessed to be in this position but it’s not just my house it’s my whole life you know I’m unemployed at the moment I’ve got to figure out how we keep going we still have to eat. And I’m in a position now where we knew we had to move house and we focused on doing that and now I’ve got to figure out what else I’m going to do what I’m going to do next. And that’s the real battle that I’m gearing up for and why I’m trying to get my creative space how I want it. Because maybe at the other side of this I’ll be blessed enough to be able to do more of this, but one way or the other I will block out a part of my day every day for the rest of my life to do this stuff in my space and I will use that time to charge my batteries so that I can tackle all of the other stuff that I’ve got to do. And I think that is is massively important.

I think that if you’re going through transitions especially things like house moves or having a kid. I think the mistake that a lot of people make, which lands them in hot water, is that they let the things that they need their self-care fall away because that’s not important any more. What’s important is baby; what’s important is getting ourselves established in the new house and we’ve got to do some building and decorating and all this stuff. So we don’t have time for doing the things that we need to do.

And this is a podcast about art therapy and I’m assuming that if you’re here that that is one of your ways of recentering and balancing yourself. It might look like it’s a bit of a “put it to the back of the queue” chore to get your creative space in a good state or to create at least an environment where you can get moving on this stuff again. It might seem like a selfish thing that should go on the back burner and I would urge you to not think about it that way. I recognize that in some situations it’s just not possible to transition in a way that I am. If you feel guilty or bad about doing this I really really wouldn’t if you rely on art for your mental well-being then it’s absolutely essential that you continue to be able to to find that space when when you are transitioning.

And this works for me for things like going on holidays well. I find holidays ridiculously stressful I always used to say when I come back from holiday I need a holiday to recover from the holiday. And that’s partly because travelling is stressful and family all locked up in one space together for a week or two can be a little bit incendiary especially if you have a family like mine. But also my stuff is gone I don’t have my creative space I don’t have all my stuff that I need to do what I need to do so. I have to try and find some little microcosm of that I can take with me. It’s about being able to carve out that mental space to be able to express myself and to zone out and to have a place where people will leave me alone. I have to have my headphones and I have to have at the very least some pencils and some paper so that when I’m on holiday I can I can relax and that’s how I relax. My ultimate holiday is really to be left alone for a week in my studio to just create if holidays really are about relaxing then that’s how I would want to do that I can’t think of a better way of spending my time. Although given that it’s at least 25 degrees I don’t know what that is in American temperatures but it’s pretty warm and getting warmer in here. And I’m in rural Scotland very warm for this part of the world and so I might as well be on holiday at this point I feel like I’m sat in the middle of the Mediterranean except I’ve got no swimming pool and if I was on holiday I would probably be sat in the corner trying to find some shade with my headphones on hoping that everyone will leave me alone.

Anyway I won’t wrap it on for too much longer. If like me you’re going through a transition, you have my sympathy. And if, like me, you’re the type of person that finds these things very very difficult you need to make sure that you look after yourself. You need to make sure that you have your space to escape and to recenter. There is never a more important time to find those spaces than in times like this. If you’re planning for a house move or you’ve got a baby on the way make sure you also plan in the opportunities and the facility to do the things that you use to centre yourself. Make sure that you’ve got access to your guitar or your piano or whatever issues you use to make music; make sure that you’ve got a place to go with your laptop or whatever it is to use to do some writing; make sure you’ve got some creative equipment to go with you so that you are able to express yourself and find your space. And then talk about this with the people who are with you in whatever that transition is and make sure that they understand what you need when you need it and why you need it. And I think you’ll find that although it might seem like you’re adding some extra stuff into the process that isn’t necessary you’ll find that it will have such a rejuvenating effect that you’ll see that afterwards how absolutely necessary it was. And so don’t feel guilty about it. Don’t deprioritize it I urge you to keep going and do the things you need to do and when you come out the other side of it you will feel really really pleased that you did it.

I think that’s all I’m going to say for today. Next week I will attempt to find the time to do something a little bit more formalized. I don’t know what I’m going to do it on I’ve got such a long list of subjects I need to cover I can’t wait to get on with it. As per usual if you want to support me if you like what you hear here please like it on whatever platform you’re on. Please rate it if you’ve got that facility. Tell your friends, your dog, your mum, the random person on the street. Tell them to come and listen to my podcast.

And if you want to contribute at all financially I’m on Etsy if you want to go and buy some artwork. Alex Loveless on Etsy. But probably the easiest way to support me financially, other than sending me a suitcase of cash, is to support me on Patreon: patreon.com/AlexLoveless. There are various plans on there where you can give me money monthly. I know there’s tens of thousands of you out there so if you all went and gave me a pound on Patreon a month I wouldn’t have to go and get a proper job and I could sit here in my studio talking to you lot all day every day. Wouldn’t that be nice, eh? Come on make it happen. I’ll see you next time.

Alex challenges the dangerous myth that suffering is essential for artistic creation, emphasizing that while art can reflect personal pain, it should not be a cause of suffering. Drawing on examples from Van Gogh to Kurt Cobain, he passionately argues against expecting artists to endure pain for art’s sake, advocating instead for recognizing art as a means of healing and self-regulation.

Notes

• The History of Rock Music in 500 Songs
• Nirvana’s I Hate Myself and I Wanna Die
• Soundgarden’s Like Suicide
• Ozzy Osbourne taken to court after fan suicide
• An excellent, detailed breakdown of Kendrick Lamar’s lyrics
• Backxwash
• Alice in Chains Dirt
• Nine Inch Nails The Downward Spiral
• Amy Winehouse Back to Black

Support this podcast and my various artistic enterprises at my Patreon.

Transcript

This is getting easier. Making this podcast I mean. I’m not sure that means that I’m making better, or even vaguely decent podcasts, I’ll leave that judgement up to you. But making this is easier than it was a couple of months ago when I started making this, which was done largely on a whim. I had to figure out how to do this mostly from scratch. I mean, I have some of the base requisites - tech skills, ability to articulate myself, a bit of money, residing at a point in time where doing such things is not only possible but fairly easy, and in a country with enough freedom and prosperity to allow me to do so. But even so, I’ve found it somewhat challenging. Just figuring it all out was a bit of a brain bender. As I’ve stated before, I find reading and talking somewhat challenging, to the point that via this process I’ve discovered that I’m probably also dyslexic, to add to my growing list of neurological peculiarities. I find self-promotion particularly challenging. And thanks to my ever-assertive ADHD, the fact that I’ve managed to follow through to this point is something approaching a miracle. But here we are. Assuming there’s a “you” out there. Maybe I’m talking to myself. Nothing unusual there.

But I’ve overcome most of this. I’m even getting better at the reading and talking thing. The last recording I did took considerably less time than any of the previous ones did, by merit of not needing to record every line several times, just most of them.

I expect it will get easier too, to a point at least. Despite my apparent Noel Coward-esque eloquence, this doesn’t come natural to me and I doubt it ever will. Getting these edited, distributed and promoted will likely continue to be a chore until such a theoretical time when I can pay someone else to do it. But on the whole I find it, if not an enjoyable process, a rewarding one. This is why we do things, because they are worth it, either through necessity or desire to achieve something.

This is an elective process. I choose to do it, replete with all the challenges. The pain vs reward trade-off is worth it.

So thank you for listening. Bye.

Only joking!

You have to stay with me for the rest of this episode. I demand it. You must put up with whatever insipid drivel I decide to I inflict on you.

Don’t fancy it? Can’t take the pain? Ok then, feel free to bugger off. I can’t keep you here. You have the right to go listen to Joe Rogan instead. Actually don’t. Listen to literally anything else. I can recommend The History of Rock in 500 songs.

Right.

Anyone left?

Look at you!

What a brave little poppet you are. Really though, this is going to get dark in places. Seriously dark. Consider this a content warning. I’ll be touching on self harm, suicide, depression, grief and various other issues. Honestly feel free to skip this one if that stuff might cause you distress, I won’t be offended.

Anyone still there?

Ok, so what if instead of telling you I basically enjoy making this, I told you that it causes me immense amounts of physical and psychological pain to make this podcast? What if I dedicated that suffering to the very medium of podcasting itself and to you, my listeners.

Would you continue listening? Knowing that this would result in my inflicting more pain to myself? Still comfortable?

How does Vincent van Gough’s Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear make you feel? How about the track I Hate Myself and I Wanna Die from Nirvana’s final album, written by Kurt Cobain just months before he took his own life? Here’s some lyrics from that:

Runny nose and runny yolk
Even if you have a cold still
You can cough on me again
I still haven’t had my full fill

Maybe, like me, you like to immerse yourself in the poetry of Sylvia Plath? She took her own life too. One of her final poems, titled Edge, contains the line “Feet seem to be saying: We have come so far, it is over.”

Why am drawing your attention to these isolated, tragic examples? Because I want you to think about the relationship between art and suffering. I specifically want to do my bit to relegate the notion that one must suffer for their art to where or belongs: the bin. A bin that is buried under 7 miles of concrete that is subsequently blasted into the infinity of space, or even better, to oblivion in the heart of a star. Ideas can be dangerous. And few are more dangerous than this one.

Let me make myself perfectly clear: humans suffer. Humans make art. Some humans use the creative process to relieve some of their suffering. That is where the relationship ends. Except for occasions such as stubbing your toe on a painting that you forgot to move. Art no more requires suffering than you require that pot of Ben and Jerry’s in your freezer. Sometimes your freezer contains Cherry Garcia. Sometimes it contains frozen peas. Hopefully it never contains frozen body parts.

Yet, like the brief moments that your freezer contains Cookie Dough Ice cream, art sometimes contains, or perhaps reflects, suffering. Sometimes you eat the ice cream, sometimes you listen to a sad song. Both things fulfil a need. Maybe someone suffered to make the ice cream. Someone almost certainly suffered in such a way that resulted in the sad song.

This is all just fine. I love sad music, more than all the other types. One of my favourite songs is Like Suicide, by Soundgarden. Its writer and singer, Chris Cornell, would also, much later, take his own life. I still love that song. But Chris was not a happy guy. When I listen to his music I am moved. I feel empathy. I feel seen. Chris was an incredible musician and was blessed with what many would consider one of the best and most powerful signing voices the world has ever seen. He was a millionaire with a family and legions of fans. He was also miserable. He was mentally ill. So much so, it was terminal. I’m not going to pontificate here on why this might have been, what caused such a seemingly enviable gut to take his own life. It’s really none of my business. Also, for better or for worse, many others have written about this who know much more than me. Its just a fact that I, and others, have observed, mostly via the consumption of the sad, beautiful songs that be delivered to the world.

As you might have guessed from my words on this podcast, I have been, and continue to be, inflicted with mental illness. When I listen to Chris’s songs I hear his pain, and I empathize. I feel the pain, but I also feel pleasure or sorts. I feel relief. I feel identification. I feel lots of things, but what I don’t feel is worse. Listening to sad songs makes me feel better. Not just via Cornell and Soundgarden, but their brothers in grunge, Nirvana and Alice in Chains, who both lost their singers through mental illness. The early 90s was a golden age for musicians channeling their pain into their music, but you can still find plenty of out around today, from Kendrick Lamar’s guilt-ridden confessionals to the furious bile of trans trap metal artist Baxxwash to pretty much the whole country music genre.

Across the arts we see the baring of souls and the airing of suffering. You’d be forgiven for thinking that this is why the arts exist.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons why suffering might be encoded in an artistic work. Processing grief, release of anger, unburdening of guilt, relief from trauma. But one thing binds all of these motivations together: they relate to things that happened in the past, or perhaps are in the process of happening. These creators did not think to themselves “I need to get me some of that trauma so I can make me some art”. Whether an artist was destined to be an artist regardless of the infliction of trauma, or whether the trauma itself motivated the decisions to take up an art form, the process is always, and I mean always, reactive.

Art has always been a refuge to me. I took it up again seriously 6 years ago as a means to process and treat trauma, which makes a frequent appearance in my work. As a teen, my art helped me to escape a society that sought to bully and minimize me because, although I didn’t realise it at the time, I was different. It’s still a refuge, but now it is both therapy and a podium for me to share my pain as well as my healing. I’m not motivated by a need to burden others with my trauma. I would produce art whether anyone saw it or not. But I put it out there is the hopes that it might benefit others in some way, much as the other creators mentioned here have benefited me. Making art does not cause me suffering. Not making art causes me suffering.

More generally, this is how we, humans, process grief, sadness and trauma. We share. I find it hard to connect with people on an interpersonal level, despite my habitual, brutal openness. So I share in a way that feels comfortable and appropriate for me. There are many others like me.

I’m speaking about grief, sadness and despair as if they’re the only negative mental states that emerge via art. But this is a podcast about mental illness, and these emotional states are not mental illnesses. Sadness does not lead to depression, although sustained sadness can. Depression does not require or imply sadness. It’s just as likely to be brought on by sustained stress and or anxiety. Having suffered through frequent bouts of depression my whole life its a theme that pervades much of my work, whether it’s explicit or not. I can see it. My depressions were rarely related to sadness or loss, but usually from burning out due to the constant need to mask neurodiversity. So although depression played a role in these episodes, I now recognize them as being, in most cases, autistic burnout.

Addiction is an illness that often manifests via art, listen to Alice in Chains album Dirt, The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails, Amy Winehouse Back to Black. Of the singers on those 3 albums, only Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor survives, and thanks God he does. Whole swathes of Stephen King’s work is about alcoholism and recovery, particularly The Shining. He’s clean and sober now, and writing SO MANY books.

But is it possible that consuming all this sombre art actually causes, or at least contributes to negative states of mind? I would argue not. In the 80s, perhaps well meaning but ultimately malignant figures from the political right in the US took legal action against various heavy metal acts alleging that they were responsible, perhaps consciously so, for the tragic acts of suicide and self harm by several fans. One track identified as promoting suicide was Ozzy Osbourne’s Suicide Solution. Had they spent more time listening and less time blindly judging, the might have noted that the track is actually a cautionary polemic about the perils of alcoholism. Note the opening lyrics: “Wine is fine but whiskey’s quicker/Suicide is slow with liqueur”. Not a whole bunch of ambiguity there. All those cases were rightly thrown out. The whole affair illustrates the mountain of stigma, misconceptions and prejudices that existed, and continue to exist, around mental illness, as well as art.

Experiencing art born of mental illness does not make me mentally ill, it validates my experience, making the healing process easier.

From the point of view of the creator, the process of creation is often one of healing. Making art, for me, is a form of regulation. If I am suffering, the time spent creating gives me relief from that suffering. The suffering will perhaps return, but where longer term illness is a feature of my existence, this relief makes recovery more likely, and healing quicker.

So let me repeat: art does not cause suffering, it relieves it. Well, good art does.

It’s possible of course that art can cause the suffering, and some would argue this is exactly what caused Cobain to take the devastating action that he did. Indirectly at least. Its a complex issue and one best left to those who properly understand it.

If a work of art is causing you some level of suffering, then you should cease to be party to it. Most people have that ability, although my heart goes out shop staff at Christmas time.

If you are suffering due to some creative activity that you are partaking in, then you should consider stopping it. Yes, there are hardships from time to time especially when you first start such a journey. I think most of us are capable of recognizing such episodes for what they are. But if something is causing you sustained misery, it might be time to try something else. You certainly don’t owe it to anyone else to be miserable.

And this is where this journey was leading to. Cobain, Cornell, Plath, van Gough, Whitehouse, and countless others - none of them owed me, you or anyone else their pain, and certainly not their life. For you and I to experience their pain, for it to feel authentic, these artists must experience that pain. But let us be specific here: depression can be fatal. It kills via suicide. Shunning or criticising an artist for seeming more cheerful or positive or, dare I say it, happy, is, in a sense, equivalent to expecting a cancer sufferer to stop treating their cancer so that you can continue to empathise in their struggle.

We don’t need artists to suffer to gratify our need for catharsis. Suffering happens, that’s a fact of life. But It is never necessary, NEVER. NEVER! It is ALWAYS wrong to wish or otherwise expect someone else to experience pain for our own gratification. These people were not martyrs to their art or their fans. They were humans experiencing intolerable levels of illness and misery. They used art, creativity, performance as a release and a relief, and we should be thankful and feel blessed that they did. But they didn’t suffer because of their art, they suffered despite their art.

Since you’re listening to this podcast, I hope you had some sense of this anyway. Of all the issues I touch up on, this is perhaps the one I’m the most vehement and emotive about. It troubles me deeply that suffering is seen as a necessary form of self-flagellant entertainment. We’re not the bloody Romans. Beauty may emerge from suffering, but this should and must be seen as a bridge to relieve the suffering of others. Not a form of vicarious titillation. If you need the latter I can point you towards various reality TV shows and/or soap operas.

I’ll climb down from my soap box now. The beautiful humans mentioned in this episode were more valuable to the world alive, but their memory and legacy brings so much healing and hope.

If you someone you know if expressing their distress via some form of art, then maybe they’re in an process of healing or regulating. Let them be. If you suspect they are processing trauma, grief or mental illness in real time, then don’t just passively revel in it, check in on them if you’re in any position to do so. Ask them what they need. Listen with an open mind. The world doesn’t need another tragic creative and no artist owes the world their life.

In this podcast episode, the speaker challenges the notion that there is a ‘right way’ to do things, drawing on examples from mathematics to art. They debate strict adherence to traditional methods in art, arguing for a more individualized approach that embraces personal style and innovation. The discussion covers misconpective rules in artistic practices, such as avoiding black paint, and the constraints of following perceived artistic conventions. Emphasizing neurodiversity and personal expression, the speaker advocates for breaking rules when they stifle creativity, ultimately suggesting that art should be a liberating and enjoyable pursuit that transcends rigid frameworks.

Notes

• Did Russel and Whitehead really spend 360 pages proving that 1 + 1 = 2?
• Why artists shun black paint
• When Rachel Whitehead filled a house with concrete
• Find out more about Pathological Demand Avoidance
• Michael Craig-Martin’s An Oak Tree
• Martin Creed’s The Lights Going On and Off

Support this podcast and my various artistic enterprises at my Patreon.

Transcript

There is, according to some people, a right way of doing things. This is an assertion that I usually disagree with. I say usually, because in the most philosophical sense, any such sweeping assertions as “there is a right way of doing things” is dubious to the point of idiocy, but by that same yardstick so is saying “I always disagree with such assertions”. I think you can already get a flavour of how this is going to go. Strap in kiddies, this is going to get DEEP!

Take the seemingly obvious and self-evident mathematical axiom that 1+1=2. Philosophical legends Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead reputedly spent 360 pages of their epic treatise Principa Mathematica demonstrating that this is indeed the case. This suggests that there is more than one way to skin that particular numerical feline.

So the idea that there is, for example, only one way to approach creating an oil painting of an apple on a plate has the strong stench of nonsense. Yet classically inclined artists tell us that we should learn to do things in a certain way, which is, to them, the correct way. This especially true for those artists that went to some prestigious school to learn how to do things the supposed “right way”.

In reality, this is less of a thing these days, especially since most artists don’t go to art school any more, and those that do are just as likely to be encouraged to fill a building up with concrete as paint a nude.

However, even among those of us who are self-taught, the imprint of supposed rules, dos and don’ts, cardinal sins etc. echo from blog posts and YouTube videos and turn up to haunt us at the most inopportune moments.

Here’s one that you tend to hear a lot: when painting, don’t use black paint. This is, we are told, because the colour black really doesn’t actually show up much in the real world, and where it does, it’s not really actually black, but just dark “all the other colours”. This is, in fact, broadly true, although it applies to all the other colours too, and obviously, black holes. More importantly, blacks tend to be a little flat and lifeless, and are often used by novices to darken other colours, which depending on the colour and the type and amount of black you use, will often not lead to the colour that you want and will frequently lead to some sort of horrible off brown or grey. Ever tried darkening yellow? Darkening hues can almost always be achieved more effectively and to better effect using other colours, for example, you candidate colour’s compliment. A similar issue arises when trying to lighten a colour with white. Colour theory is for another day though. Anyway, “don’t use black” is not the worst advice. Good advice even. Some extremely able and important artists simply don’t have it in their palette at all. Good on them.

But here’s the thing. I like black. I use it ALL THE TIME. Use all sorts of shades of it. I particularly like to combine it with another supposedly rookie error that sets classical artist’s teeth on edge - putting lines around depictions of 3 dimensional things. Most children, when asked to draw a human, will draw his or her outline, first, then fill in the details and daub in glorious technicolour. But unless you happen to live in Springfield then you’ll note that humans don’t have black lines around them. It’s one of the first things you get beaten out of you if you start taking the visual arts at all seriously. However, one of my artistic heroes is Alphonse Mucha. Google his work. On his posters at least, he put dark lines around all his humans. And everyone else for that matter. And if Mucha does it, you can bet your last pair of clean knickers that I do too. And guess what my favourite colour to do this with is?

There are effects, particularly when looking to create brutal contrast, or the aforementioned non-existent lines, that simply can’t be achieved with out lifeless old black.

Maybe you think my art is no better than that of a playschool kid, but I think it looks great. And if it grates on some people, then those are just the sort of people I exist to be the metaphorical lemon juice in the eye of. Why? Because, that’s why. And more specifically, as we’ll see, I don’t like bing told what to do. Black stays.

Some “rules”, however, transcend the more asinine “if you do this, then bad outcomes with ensue”. Some dictates fall into the more dangerous category of “you can’t do that, it’s cheating!” or the slightly less alarming but somehow more insidious “that’s just not how we do things darling”. The application of such techniques and approaches not only risk creating something less than perfect, or perhaps MORE than perfect, but to be discovered using them risks actual social ostracisation and or ridicule. At the very least side eye and muttered disdain. Some things that fall into this category:

• Tracing and/or using grids to capture form and composition
• Using AI for any creative process at all
• Using an autotuner when performing live
• Eschewing proper grammar and punctuation (ever tried to read Joyce? Or Woolf?)
• Not taking yourself and/or your art VERY seriously. God forbid.
• Probably lots more

For example, I use tracing for my drawings. Specifically I use tracedown or carbon paper - those black sheets that when you write on creates the equivalent black marks on the paper below. I’m very good at pencil drawing. My works are delicate and detailed. It took me a long time to get this good. A LOT of practise. So I CAN take and image and transfer it to another bit of paper freehand, I just choose not to. Why? Because it’s hard and tedious and always ends up looking a little off. So what? You might say. Do I not feel that you must suffer for my art? Do you now bang on about process all the time and how one should embrace the mundantiy?

And you would be correct. And I do occasionally do this stuff free-hand, just to prove to myself that I can. But really, I’m not doing that for myself at all. I’m doing it to get your voice out of my damn head!

You see, my process is filled up with the bits that are either necessary for the outcomes that I seek, or that I find pleasurable or relaxing to do. And since relaxation is the primary goal, I tend to prioritise the stuff that facilitates that. Which means less fiddling with the exact position of a nose, and more soothing, mindful shading. Remember geography class when you used to find trying to colour inside the country boundaries oddly relaxing? It’s like that.

But it does leave me with a nagging sense of imposter syndrome, which is the enemy of healing. Let me state this with absolute clarity - self-doubt, of which imposter syndrome is a form, and it’s ugly cousin low-self-esteem, are arguable the biggest enemies of good mental health. For a long time I wouldn’t talk about my techniques and approaches to art because I was afraid that someone would call me out, which is of course, completely irrational.

It’s worth noting that this is in part at least yet another neurodivergence thing. Us weirdos tend to have spent most of our existences being told by some person or another, in one way or another, that some thing or another that we were doing, or being was somehow wrong, and frequently finding ourselves ostracised or otherwise punished for doing/saying/drawing/thinking it. Most of the time it was not at all clear what we are doing that is so obnoxious to the delicate sensitivities of neurotypicals, or indeed why it was wrong at all. It leaves one a bit sensitive to criticism, and sometimes irrationally so.

What’s ironic, is that I’m a habitual breaker of rules. Especially if it is not absolutely clear why they exist. It’s an odd quirk of the autistic mind that we both feel compelled to follow rules, while being pathologically hostile to to rules that seem to us to be stupid. So we tend to be staunch, law abiding citizens, while aggressively shunning all the various unfathomable social conventions. At least where we think we can get away with doing so. And if you want to really entertain yourself by how warped my brain is, google Pathological Demand Avoidance aka PDA. Actually don’t, I’ll put a link in the show notes. Far be it for me to tell you what to do!

I digress, but suffice to say that if you tell me that I shouldn’t use black paint, you can bet your bottom dollar that I am going to do so, all the while feeling like a bit of a fraud for doing so. Go figure.

And here’s the rub - one of the things that attracts me to art, is the boundary pushing. Many people associate art with aesthetics.If things aren’t nice, they ain’t art. So Bob Ross and Coldplay are art, but Martin Creed and Napalm Death aren’t. Creed, won the Turner prize for turning a light off and on again. But in my mind, aesthetics is but a small feature of the artistic endeavours, and an extremely subjective one - I would much prefer to listen to Napalm Death than Coldplay, and musically Napalm were far more inventive and groundbreaking, despite all the shouting and sweating. Art, for me at least, is about creation, and therefore dull reproduction and repetition barely qualifies. If the machine at the Heinz factory can produce millions of something, then it’s not art, no matter how beautiful. This is, of course, a large part of what Warhol and the pop artists were alluding to.

So when Michael Craig-Martin put a glass of water on a shelf in a gallery and called in an oak tree, people quite reasonably said “if that’s art then ANYTHING can be art”, which is precisely right, and precisely wrong at the same time. It’s not a nuanced point either. If something is presented as art, then it is art. A can of soup on a supermarket shelf is not a work of art, but if you can convince someone to put it in a gallery, then it is. Whether that constitutes GOOD art IS a nuanced point. Let’s pretend that it is for the sake of this conversation. If someone buys the exact same brand of soup and puts it in the gallery next door, then that is art too. But that most likely IS bad art, by merit of being derivative alone. If every gallery in the world had the same tin, then there’s some theoretical point when that particular item stops being art and magically transforms back into a commodity and we start calling galleries supermarkets.

The point is, repetition is the death of art. Any item reproduced in sufficient numbers degrades in value to the point it is worthless, and anything that has no intrinsic worth can not, by definition, be art. The contents of each of those tins of soup will vary slightly, they are at their very essence unique, but to all intents and purposes they are the same. At the macro level, they have very little intrinsic value outside of their utility and what that’s worth to any given shopper. We’ve strayed into economics here. It’s a subject for another day, but art and economics are bedfellows, as icky as that makes all us creatives feel.

Back to my core thesis. If repetition is the death of art, then uniqueness is it’s beating heart. Art thrives on novelty. Art REQUIRES novelty, just try and recording a Radiohead song without permission and see what happens, I dare you. And you know what stifles novelty? Rules. Bloody rules. In fact, it’s arguable that rules exist specifically to curb novelty. The game of chess wouldn’t be much fun for anyone if people only followed the rules that they liked.

There’s an obvious counter to this argument, which is that, even by sticking precisely to the rules, there are, to all intents and purposes, a near infinite number of possible chess games. Which is true, but most of those games are so pointless and silly that they can be ignored. What’s left is largely dictated by probability and the conventions of the chess community, and for the purposes of this argument, conventions are just pseudo-rules that can and should be broken. Deep Blue didn’t beat Kasparov by sticking to convention.

So if art is so conceptually broad that it strays into economics and soup then is it not the same as saying that there are no rules to be broken? And this brings us back to my beloved black paint. You see there is always good taste, historical context, personal reputation, broader societal dictates and taboos and a raft of other ambient conditions to consider - in short, context. Banksy would have been laughed out of the Royal Academy a hundred years ago, but there is nary a middle class abode that doesn’t bear his imprint somewhere, if only on the side of a coffee cup. We’ll side step that he would never have turned up at the RA since then everyone would know who he is, but you get my point. Miles Davis, arguably one of the most important and inventive musicians of all time would have been laughed out of every jazz club were he to have tried to play any of his seminal Some Kind of Blue 20 years earlier.

Art, or indeed any creation, that in retrospect can be tagged as “ahead if its time”, was, in its time, considered pointless drivel and subjected to ridicule, or more likely, completely ignored. There’s no point in staring at your 6 foot sculpture of Margaret Thatcher made entirely of Babybel wax feeling your genius is being shunned, since you don’t get to ascribe genius to yourself, only other people can do that. And those others are almost always the very gatekeepers of taste and decorum that gleefully create the rules to which you find yourself on the wrong side of. It’s a Catch-22.

SO where does this leave us? If shunning the rules is the equivalent of biting the hand that feeds you, then are we not all doomed to mindless reproduction? Well, the existence and popularity of Banksy should suggest otherwise. Acceptance by and to “The Establishment” is only important if you care about such things, and the vast majority of people outside the point one percent of the one percent don’t. But it’s worth observing the rules for a couple of reasons:

) Many of them exist for a reason. And although that doesn’t mean you can’t that reason, it’s worth at least understanding that reason before chucking it out. Pollock didn’t use a squeegee and a string because he didn’t know what paint brushes were for. 2) RULES ARE FUN TO BREAK, and you can only break them if you know they’re there

But from my perspective, learn the rules, don’t, it’s not important. Rules are only important if they get in the way of you enjoying yourself. There are plenty of rules that I happily follow, I’m hardly even aware that they’re there, because they suit me, but you can be sure if they started getting in my way I would drop without missing a beat. Does that mean that my art isn’t acceptable? I don’t think I’m particularly radical. To be honest, I suspect my art is pretty pedestrian. Some people like it, some don’t. Most are blissfully unaware that I exist at all.

So since I largely don’t care what the establishment would think of me if they even knew I exist and that I think that lots of the rules are stupid anyway, why would I feel imposter syndrome? Well, it’s been a choppy journey, and I wasn’t always this preternaturally self-assured. In fact, it’s quite likely that I’m trying to convince myself where as much as you. Bucking conventions is a risky business, even for an old-hand like me. That comes with its own anxiety, and we are always our own worst critics. And if breaking rules wasn’t a bit risky and uncomfortable, then it wouldn’t be fun, would it?

If breaking the rules isn’t your jam, don’t feel that you need to, but you’re always breaking some somebody’s rules, so you probably are anyway. For those of us who like to push at the edges, stand proud and stand your ground. This is not a rallying call. It’s simply a suggestion. Boat rocking can leave you a little queasy, and annoy the other passengers, but this shouldn’t put deter you. It certainly shouldn’t make you feel bad. If art is to be your release, then you need to feel unconstrained, and you need to value the work that you produce, regardless of what others may think. Otherwise the process is always going to feel unsatisfactory and confining and having some real fun will seem like a guilty pleasure rather than the blossoming it should be.

No homework this time. Just be yourself. Go revel in it.

In this episode of the Art Against Mental Illness podcast, host Alex Loveless introduces a new, less structured episode format called therapeutic outlets. He engages in a more relaxed, wide-ranging discussion, focusing on the impact of AI, especially in the arts and creative industries. Alex shares concerns about AI’s role in content creation and job displacement, reflecting from his experience as a data professional. He emphasizes that true creativity involves choice and context, arguing that AI lacks the genuine creativity found in human-led artistic processes.

Please support this podcast by joining my community on Patreon

Notes

The film scripted by AI that I reference is called The Last Screenwriter. I’ve not seen it but it sounds like all the fun.

If you want to understand more about how I use AI in my artistic process, see this blog post.

For absolute transparency this transcript was created by OpenAI’s transcription service Whisper and then tidied up and corrected by me manually. The episodes description was created by ChatGPT. These are the only times that AI was used in the creation of this episode and it’s one of the general use cases that I approve of.

Transcript

Welcome to the Art Against Mental Illness podcast. My name is Alex Loveless and this is my podcast about the healing powers of art for artists, art lovers, the art curious and anyone with an interest in mental health and well-being.

So this episode I’m going to introduce a new format that I’m going to use from time to time. My usual episodes are scripted and well thought through in advance and for these ones and I’m going to call them my therapeutic outlets. I’m going to be a little bit more wide ranging, a little bit more chatty and ranty and cover some aspects of art and mental health that are perhaps a little bit wider in context and a little bit more of the moment. And this episode I’m going to talk about AI.

Now everyone’s talking about AI at the moment, specifically around generative AI and the term you’ll have heard used most frequently is ChatGPT which is OpenAI’s large language model chatbot. But more broadly speaking there are generative AI models and products that cover things like image and video generation, a whole host of language based things and more increasingly into things like you know life sciences for things like medication drug generation. Effectively anything that can be created and predicted, people are using generative AI as a shortcut to being able to generate much more content much more cheaply.

The jobs that are being more generally affected by this and the vocations and the pastimes that are being more affected by this right now are very clearly within the arts and within the creative communities and the creative vocations and particularly and most critically within anyone who works with the written words and then secondarily but coming very closely up behind visual artists, visual designers and creators. This creates a very scary environment I think for anyone in those industries. Now we’re going to talk a lot about that, I’m going to talk a lot about that, but I should also point out that those are not the only industries that are suffering here.

It’s worth a brief reiteration of my circumstances. I’m a data analyst, a data scientist based in the UK and I got my redundant last year from my job and have since been trying to set up my own consultancy doing data analytics and or to find particularly contract roles but at this point any job that pays doing what I do which is pretty well paid and a pretty privileged job to be doing and I’ve thus far in the last six months since October last year I’ve failed to do so and eight months I guess that is now. That’s been very baffling to me and there’s a couple of things at play here. One of them is obviously the UK economy is very much in the doldrums at the moment and businesses aren’t really investing in anything or taking any risks and to AI. Now I thought that given my skills that I know how to build AI’s, I can build you a neural network, I can train you a machine learning algorithm to build a model to do all sorts of things in terms of language processing and we’ll come back to my generative art and a few other things as well but I thought I was safe from the potential coming storm in terms of jobs being lost to AI but it seems that isn’t the case and so I find myself under attack from both sides both from my up until now has been my main income stream in on the data site site and on my most hobby past time stuff with with regards to art. Yeah I was very very surprised by this and I think that the reason it’s happening is because businesses think that AI is easy because you can go and type into ChatGPT please write me a python script to analyze my data, please write me some copy for my website, please build me a prototype that shows a chatbot for my customers and prototyping this stuff out is very very easy and it’s very easy for someone who is not technical to look at that and go well job done and if you work in the technical arena at all you’re on my side of things you’ll realize very quickly that it isn’t that simple but as it stands right now a lot of businesses believe it’s that simple and haven’t discovered that it isn’t there’s a you know there’s a whole bunch of technical infrastructure and skills required into scaling these things up and to handling all the things like the fact that they hallucinate all the time and also things like data security and privacy GDPR that type of thing. So I think my industry on that side is probably going to pick up a bit but it’s a bit late for me and I’m really struggling to make ends meet.

I think a lot about this sort of stuff and I think a lot about what people can do just by typing things into a into a prompt and what that means for what I do in general and I’ve come to quite a few conclusions and I’ve still got some open questions but fundamentally what I’ve realized and what many other people particularly on the business side of things haven’t realized yet is that the making of the thing be that a piece of code to for a chatbot or a beautiful artwork of some sunflowers the trick here isn’t in the actual making of it the trick is in the whole process and you’ve heard me bang on about the process but it’s it’s the way of thinking it’s the choice to do one thing over the other it’s the understanding of what quality is and it’s the application of that to any given vocation and so you can think about the fact that they’re the first fully a AI scripted film is currently struggling to find a distributor but I don’t know what it’s called but it’s coming out apparently it’s very well made film that makes a very specific point because actually getting ChatGPT to create a script for a film well it did create a script and it created a very convincing one but it didn’t create a very good one and I know the argument is that well it didn’t create a good one now but you know was that done on gpt 3.5 or 3 or was gpt 4 capable of that or maybe gpt 5 will be but if you think that the whole thing about a movie or an artwork or or even a python script that the substance of that was the thing itself then you’ve completely misunderstood the creative process and it works on both sides of things here.

I consider coding a creative process as much as I consider painting a creative process at the beginning of of my journey when I’m trying to write some python that does something I don’t know what how I want it to do that I don’t know all the things I need it to I just think I’ve got this thing I need doing a job that needs done and I I figure I can I can automate that because I don’t want to do it myself and I can do that myself because I’m I’m a very proficient python developer what I always find is that when I’m trying to write a prompt to tell it to write the code for me two things go wrong one I don’t really know what I want at the beginning I don’t know all the things that I need it to do I don’t know what I need the inputs to be and the outputs to be I don’t know how I want it to look I sort of find that out as I’m coding it where you start off with a little kernel of code and you code out a bit and you try something and you fail and you go I’ll do this thing and I’ll do it like this and it produces an output and you go no that’s not really what I wanted I thought that’s what I wanted but it isn’t so what if I tweak it this way and that way and you you feel your way through the development process as if it were a creative process and the second thing is is if I can get it to a point where I where I know what to describe where I know what I want it never writes it in the way that I want it written it never does what I want and I found myself creating system prompts and seed prompts very very detailed descriptions of how I want things done before I can even get to the point of of getting it to write any code so it’ll write it in the way that I want it or in the way that I think is sensible and I sort of given up I’ll use it bits and pieces here and there to do what we call boilerplate code the really basic stuff that is a bit boring and a bit laborious and no one really likes doing it’s really good at that type of stuff as long as you know what you want.

Anyway this is an arts podcast so what does all this have to do with the arts well I don’t see the process as different when I paint a picture I don’t I very rarely know what I’m going to end up with I sort of feel my way through it and I think if you’re someone who’s going to paint a picture that’s going to be you know very very well thought through and considered and might take you months if not years to create you will recognize that the process that you went through to paint that final picture was only a tiny little bit of the overall process which includes all of your life and all of the way things you do and the way you think about things that the things that you chose the paints the colors the composition the subjects the the materials the the type of painting you use the the size everything were part of a continuum in your creative journey and the the reason you create pictures in the way that you do paintings and the way that you do is because of who you are and that journey and and all the choices you made at that point in time which were very much influenced by things around you like constraints of money or ideas that you had and people that you met it’s not simply the final piece that you started and then at some point like you finished it and you were like robotically working on it for eight hours a day and then it was done.

It doesn’t work like that, no creative process does. In fact that that type of process this idea that things come out of the ether perfectly formed is antithetical to the creative process. It simply isn’t part of it. There’s no such thing as that stroke of genius. There’s no such thing as the light bulb. People might have intuitive leaps, but you have intuitive leaps all the time. That is creativity. Sometimes they’re big and you notice them and sometimes they’re little. Sometimes you end up creating something that’s world changing and everyone thinks well there was that one creative leap that that person made that one stroke of inspiration which is nonsense. There is never that situation, it doesn’t happen that way. That’s not how creativity works. You’re always standing on the shoulders of giants there anyway, right. Einstein created relativity off the back of a whole bunch of work that had been done before him by equally brilliant people. He just happened to put the lego bricks together in a certain way that brought a whole bunch of things together that made a lot of things to make sense that didn’t make sense before.

So firstly there’s no sense that large language models or any of these image generation models can be creative if you think they can you fundamentally misunderstand what these things are. They are simply probability machines they simply say given this input what is the most probable output that the user would expect. What is the next character what is the next word. They contain no knowledge. That’s why they get facts wrong all the time there’s no actual knowledge in there. There’s just probability of characters. There’s not even characters because the model internal to that uh that particular model is is just mathematical it’s just a whole bunch of vectors. There is no knowledge now there is information and that information is compressed and it is uh made fuzzy and it is it is placed within a probabilistic framework. But there is no creativity in there there’s no intelligence and there’s no volition. It may look like there is but there absolutely fundamentally isn’t. Generative AI models cannot be and will not be creative not anytime soon, not ever. So to say there’s no such thing as a creative artificial intelligence does that exist now I don’t believe so. Will it exist in the future I don’t know I can simply say for certain that what we’ve got now isn’t that and cannot possibly be.

So what do these models and these approaches mean to art? So at the most basic sense we can say that you can go to DALL-E or Stable Diffusion or one of these commercial generative image models and say make me a picture of badger juggling some mini cheeses while whistling and balancing on a ball and then do it in the style of Van Gogh or something. And you’ll get something good or bad and if you get good at the prompting you can probably produce something quite amazing and some of the gen AI art I’ve seen it is very impressive indeed and very detailed and quite creative. But where did that creativity come from? It did not come from DALL-E, it came from the person who prompted it. The person who prompted it was using it as an artistic tool. And they either had good ideas or bad ideas, they either gave it good prompts or bad prompts and, they had a good vision or a bad vision. And they produced art whether you like it or not. It’s either good or bad art. It doesn’t really matter how they created it.

So you might think well that’s lazy and cheating and I’ve spent decades teaching myself how to paint and it takes them half an hour to do. And I would argue well that’s not really the right way to think about this. Firstly stop devaluing your art. Stop doing that. You’ve produced something physical and amazing. And even if it’s digital only it has your fingerprints all over it, in a way that the AI art can’t possibly have. And secondarily it’s not just about the things that you produce. It’s about the ideas and the techniques and the approach and so on that goes into making something like this. And I’m afraid you just simply can’t encode all of that into a piece of generative art. And so if you went off as being the brilliant fine artist that you are and started using generative AI to produce art, I guarantee you produce much better art than the people who have just picked it up over the last few weeks and are producing something that looks very impressive. And I think that people can see the difference.

But for me it’s also somewhat beside the point. Because for me art is about communication art is about being able to make a connection with someone either directly or remotely and through time and through space. And the most important thing about the art is not the artwork itself it’s not the piece of music or the painting or whatever. It is the human context in which that sits. The history, the placement, the artist itself, the context of where it is being consumed and the taste of the person that is consuming it. And the historical context within which it sits at that moment in time and whether it’s in a gallery or someone’s living room. And all these things matter and they all are human connections and art is about humanity. Art is about distilling culture, and the idea that that can simply be replaced is nonsensical.

Another thing to think about is the fact that very few of these AI artworks are the first attempt. They’ll often go through lots and lots of different ideas and many different iterations with many different prompts. And that person who made that still had to choose. They still had to choose which one was the best and they still had to choose what went in it and how they described it to the AI. And that in itself is the essence of the artistic process. Especially in the visual arts. You have to choose something. You have to choose a theme, you have to choose a subject, you have to choose a way of approaching that. And then you have to select the best one.

And so you’ve made a bunch of sketches for an oil painting you’re going to do. And you did a few different versions of it and you’re going to choose the best one. And have you chose the best one? Maybe you have maybe you haven’t. If you’re a good artist one of the things you learn is to develop your artistic eye. One of the things you learn is to be able to choose the best output the best version at that moment in time, for the job that you want doing.

So there was a creative process in terms of how that person came about making that piece of art. And the difference between a good piece of AI art and a bad piece of AI art is still choice. And that’s why we have a pile of bricks in in the Tate Modern. That didn’t take a lot of technique. What that person did was choose. They chose to put a pile of bricks. Tracy Emin chose to put her bed in a gallery. Marcel Duchamp knew exactly what he was doing when he put the urinal in the gallery. And the person who went and urinated on it didn’t realize that they were contributing to the art. He knew exactly what he was doing. And this is the whole point, art is as much about choice and context as it is anything else. So to rule AI art out is…it’s a bit short-sighted.

But I do understand the paranoia. Now it’s also worth noting that I use AI in my art myself. I don’t use the likes of DALL-E. I am a data professional. I do know how to build these things and so a lot of my art involves an element of AI in it. What I have is a homegrown neural network I use algorithms that have been built by other people. But I deploy them in my own specific way. I’ve written my own code. I’ve got quite a complex body of code that does what I want.

So the way it works is that I have what’s called an autoencoder whose only job is to reproduce what went into it. And in this case it’s an image so I encode an image into a mathematical form, I pass it into the autoencoder and then I ask it to recreate that image. But along the way I constrain it so it doesn’t have enough brain power, enough memory to do it properly. And I put lots of images into it and say “right, I want you to recreate all of these images” knowing full well that it can’t. And what it does is it mixes them up. And it mixes them up in lots of weird, exotic, crazy ways that I find so exciting it gets me so motivated and excited. It makes thousands of these and I’d say a good 60 percent of them pretty much delete straight away, of those 40 I have to sort through them individually and look at ones and which ones do I like, which ones are just really actually a reproduction of the original, which ones have been mixed up in an interesting way and which ones make sense in that context. And it’s a choice. The computer created the images but I chose how that machine works, I chose the images that are going to go into it, and I choose which outputs I select And then I take those I scale them up and I put them on canvases and then I embellish them by hand. I put the colour into it manually. I choose which bits of the images to use how to scale them up, and what to do with them. And all along there you’ve got a whole string of artistic choices. And that for me is a really fascinating interesting exciting process. But the AI in that context for me is just another tool part of a long long creative process that I use to get to where I want. And it helps me ideate. It helps break me out of modes of thinking and reproducing things too directly or too literally. It gives me all sorts of ideas and then those ideas bleed into stuff that doesn’t involve AI. Suddenly I’m using the things I’ve learned from that AI to apply to stuff that’s enriched my imagination and helping all of my art and also every part of my life.

I think there’s a lot of people particularly in the arts worried about what AI represents. Unfortunately the one thing that ChatGPT is good at is writing solid copy. Now it writes bad English in the sense that when you ask it to write something it often uses weird word choices that I wouldn’t use. But it writes exceptionally good English so it is good at checking someone else’s work if you know how to wield it properly. So there’s a lot of jobs that are going to be lost in that area there’s a lot of jobs that are going to be lost in terms of people who design logos for small businesses or or website design. And these sorts of things that people aren’t going to be massively choosy if you if you’re starting a plumbing business and you just want a logo that says Joe Blog’s plumbing you know you’re not going to worry yourself too much that it doesn’t it’s not iconic like the Nike swoosh. You just want something that works and unfortunately there’s a whole group of people out there who have made their jobs to do that type of thing and they’re now going to find themselves without a job. And this is terrible. I think probably it’s out of the scope of this particular rant but I do want to talk a lot about how those clearly creative, brilliant people, a lot of them are going to find themselves out of work like me, suffering from mental health problems because of it, who need to channel their creative instincts somewhere. And we need to support these people. The government needs to support them and us as the wider creative community needs to support them. And fundamentally that’s partly why this podcast exists and so that’s definitely a subject I’m going to come back to, but I think it needs a lot more discussion than I’m going to be able to give it here. I just want to stick with the more fine art side of things for the rest of this this episode, which I promise won’t be too much longer.

This side of the artistic community is going to suffer a lot less and a lot less than people are worried about could possibly happen. If someone wants something generic on their wall then they’re already going to have that because Ikea has been providing that stuff for a very very long time as do many other high street or readily available shops will sell you some cheap generic wall candy for your home or your business. Nothing’s changed there, but the people who really invest in art invest in the artist they invest in the human and they often invest in actual real things. I’m not going to get dragged into NFTs and on that whole ridiculousness here, although I do have a lot to say on it. I’m not going to say it now but I think broadly speaking most of these people are interested in something that feels tangible and that can include digital art. And I think people can tell the difference between something that was created with a human in the loop rather than just a few prompts to to DALL-E. And I think that people care I think it’s important to them to know that there was a human involved in that. And so we’re going to get more and more businesses and industries that spring up around the validation, almost like a kite mark for creative products, so you can guarantee that it was made by a human.

Something i learned the hard way coming back into the art world after many years of being away was that as an artist you’ve got to be out there. People want to know about the artist, they want to be invested in that person, they want to feel like they’re connecting with a real human. And you’ve got to be out there on social media, you’ve got to be out there in the world world. And a lot of people who are buying art are on a journey with you as an artist and other artists like you and want to be on that journey. It’s a high consideration purchase that they want to be high consideration. It’s like buying your new car if you’re really into cars. You really love the process. I mean, I hate the process of buying cars. It fills me with absolute horror. But I’ve got no interest in cars. But if you were a car enthusiast the idea that you’re on a journey to buy your next car is the most enthusing experience ever. And I think people are like that with art. And I think that broadly speaking that maps on to music and the performance art, photography you name it. It’s a different type of journey they might be a different type of punter but it’s really the same thing. These people are on a journey with that playwright, they’re on a journey with that…I mean very much so in music people very very very invested in recording artists and that’s not going to change. People’s consumption mechanisms might get slightly different but they’re not going to change.

And I also think that from a very much from a visual arts perspective it’s I think it’s going to lead to a boom in physical art because people know when you look at that painting close up then you can see the little globules of paint and the little imperfections that are in there, and the texture on the canvas or the paper. And you can see that that was not made by a machine and if someone decided that they could build this machine that could could do this I don’t think anyone would want it because people want to know that it’s still attached to a human. That they can see that this was a physical artwork made with human hands and that they can go and see that human or talk to them or send them an email or see them on Youtube or Instagram. And it’s important that’s vitally important to the whole process for them as art consumers and that’s their therapy.

You know I talk about art therapy on this podcast is very much from process of being the artist and making the art because that’s who I am that’s where I am and that’s what matters the most to me. But I’m an art consumer as well. And the more people will see art as a therapeutic outlet purely as a consumer than I’ll actually like me. And as more as the world changes people find themselves left at a short end loose end sorry because the work isn’t out there because the machines are taking over they’re going to take solace in art. They’re going to take solace in creating art and they’re going to take solace in in consuming art and they don’t want stuff made by a machine. They’re going to forgive you and perhaps laud you for having some AI in the process, and maybe I’m wrong about that, but I think so because they’ll still be able to see the signature of a human there. What they don’t want is something that had no effort put into it and no imagination and no talent. And if you think you can pick up a paintbrush or or turn on your computer and fire up DALL-E and believe that you can automatically make good art then then you’re off your rocker.

Art isn’t just about technique, it’s about ideas it’s about selecting the right thing, it’s about understanding what people want, it’s about tapping into your emotional state, tapping into zeitgeist, in culture. It’s about reading the room it’s about understanding what’s happening around you and channeling that into something that has some meaning to someone. And if you’re what you’ve done is you’ve created something in 20 minutes that it has no meaning it’s just you messing around, humans who care about art are going to see that and go “I can’t connect with that, that’s not art because it gives me nothing, I get nothing from it”, it’s like just looking at might as well be looking at blank canvas which in essence will probably be more creative.

So I don’t think that the arts as a whole is going to suffer and I start to think we might be at the on the cusp of a renaissance because people will need it more than ever. In a world that’s going to crap people take solace in art, and many of the antidotes to the problems in the world are in part something that art and the community of art can help solve, by bringing people together, by spreading ideas, by challenging authority, by spreading beauty over hate and despair and division, by creating unity and love and beauty. And I don’t take those I’m not the sort of person that spouts all of this type of those types of words lightly. I don’t like using them liberally because they’ve been overused and almost feel empty, but they do mean what they mean, and I know what I mean them to mean right now. I mean the art creates connection and it creates beauty and it creates the opposite of beauty as well and that’s exactly what it’s there to do.

And that’s what we need to keep doing and so if you’re making art now and you’re worried about what’s going to happen I would urge you to not be worried, I would urge you to learn more about what AI art means understand it, understand that it’s not your enemy or your foe and maybe you’ll find something there that you can use. But if not that’s fine too, the world still needs you. The world still wants you to be there creating. So don’t worry immerse yourself in it if that if you’re at all that way inclined. Don’t worry if you’re not it’s irrelevant you can still do what you do. And I think it’s going to become more valuable not less you know.

Just think about the fact that when photography first came about in the late 19th century people thought that that meant the pictorial arts were dead. That painting was a finished art. Because why would i want to paint a picture of that woman there when I can just take a photo of her. And to an extent it sort of did kill off the strongly pictorial representational art to the to the absolute benefit of the art world as a whole. Initially the photography world was aping the classical art world and then the classical art world moved into impressionism, post-impressionism, expressionism, abstract expressionism into all forms of mad abstraction and the art world and the art discipline got richer because of it. And now we’re coming back to it and you know I can get a high definition picture of anything I like, I can buy a really amazing camera and get the best picture you could ever imagine, but here I am still making paintings and tens of thousands of millions of people are, and it’s not getting less because it’s not about the finished product, it’s about the context and the culture and the process.

And this is what I want you all to understand I want you to feel comfortable and happy and I want you to do more of what you do and I want you to be not afraid of AI and to work with it or not just keep doing what you’re doing. And keep remembering that art is about therapy it’s about connection it’s about love and beauty and to not get distracted by these other things because it’d be the worst thing in the world if you felt this meant you needed to give up and one less person was doing this and one less person was getting the benefit from it themselves but one less person is spreading the benefit of it to the wider world.

So that’s my rant was that a rants impassioned speech I’m going to stop talking now. I will be back next time with something a little less animated and a little bit more scripted and I’ll do more episodes like this in the future because I’ve actually quite enjoyed doing it. And I hope that you enjoyed it too but feel free to tell me if you didn’t.

As ever if you want to help me keep ranting into the microphone like this then I have a Patreon account that you can go and there are three plans plans for as little as one dollar and some more expensive plans that will see you receiving a piece of personalized artwork made by me. That supports this podcast and me as an artist. Otherwise follow me on Instagram @alexmloveless, Facebook AlexLovelessArtist. You’ll find me on most of the social media platforms. I have a blog. Sign up for my newsletter alexloveless.co.uk. Keep supporting me, keep listening, tell your friends, tell your family tell your dog, and I’ll see you next time.

Please support this podcast by joining my community on Patreon: patreon.com/AlexLoveless

Notes

• The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes
• More info on Mary Shelley’s scary sojourn
• More info on Panizzon and the genesis of Ritalin

Here’s the painting “David” that I refer to:

Transcription

Welcome to the Art Against Mental Illness podcast. My name is Alex Loveless and this is my podcast about the healing powers of art. For artists, art lovers, the art curious and anyone with an interest in mental health and well-being.

Once upon a time there was a teenage boy. He was awkward and odd and kind of shy. He had a friend who was kind of odd like him, whose house he would go around to watch fascinated as he drew bizarre pictures of vampires, zombies and superheroes. It was all a bit Stephen King.

Anyway, the boy was enthralled. He wanted to do the same. He also wanted to make stuff like the stuff he saw around him, like posters, all that sci-fi stuff that was everywhere in the early 1980s by illustrators such as Drew Struzan who did all of that amazing Spielberg stuff, as well as those incredible Iron Maiden album covers by Derek Riggs.

He started making his own pictures, initially like his friend, then trying to copy all the other incredible stuff he saw around him. Over the coming years he became very proficient. Eventually he became a man. He wanted to be an artist for a while, but then he wanted to be many things. In his early 20s he met a girl and they were to have many adventures together, but those adventures got in the way of making art and it all fell by the wayside.

He followed other paths. In his 40s he came back to his art. Again finding pleasure in this he began to take it increasingly seriously. He eventually started trying to make money from it. He also started a podcast.

The End.

Well, not quite the end, but the end of that chapter maybe. Or maybe a beginning.

Most stories in books, in films, TV, in culture have a beginning, a middle and an end. The best ones can be experienced repeatedly and yield more detail, insight and delight over time. When each person experiences one of these cultural artefacts it takes on a slightly different meaning, but it’s still for the most part enclosed, complete and finished. But no story is an island. Stories come from, sit within and influence larger stories. Those of the author, their culture and its history. That of the human race, that of the earth, the universe. And those stories are all still works in progress.

And each story within this wider framework changes its meaning, its substance, as the context of history around them shifts. New eyes evaluate with new values. Every moment that every human, every organism exists, they exist as the product of the whole of history to that point. The past points crisply towards this moment. The future converges backwards to point at the same moment. This moment is all there is.

Since memory is fallible and we only have our own perspective to work from, what we know of the past is stories. History is stories, experience is stories, memory is stories. Similarly, we can’t meaningfully see into the future, but we can create future moments in the form of plans, in the hopes that they happen, and we can make things. Some of those things might actually be stories, but everything you produce projects forwards to create or contribute to the great web of stories. The best art not only exists within that story, it doesn’t simply contribute to that story, it defines it. Think Shakespeare, Da Vinci, Newton, Spielberg, Donald Trump. Let’s not push our luck, eh?

But for all this cosmic bluster, stories are really about one thing, characters and their journey. The heroic struggle, the tragedy, the comedy, the ecstasy, but characters like you and me.

Maybe you don’t consider your art, your creations, as autobiographical like I do, but they are whether you like it or not. They are the product of your genetics, your upbringing, your experiences, your passions, your quirks. It’s all you until it’s not. As I said in my episode on sharing, once you share your work it also becomes part of someone else’s story.

In fact, since recording that episode I predictably discovered that I’m not the first person to come up with that theory. French literary theorist and philosopher Roland Barthes also had a lot to say on this subject. In his essay, The Death of the Author, Barthes argues the interpretation of a text or by extension an artwork should not be limited by the author’s intentions, biography or psychology. According to Barthes, once the work is created and shared, it is detached from the creator and belongs to the realm of the audience or the readers who create their own meaning from it.

The point is that you bake yourself into your work and that in turn gets gobbled up by whoever consumes it and integrated into their world, into their stories, sending narrative ripples outwards in time and space, but not necessarily in a linear way.

The thing is, like stories, art is a form of time travel. It allows us to surf the wave of entropy in either direction as we encode our hopes, emotions and visions into our artworks as well as our experiences. So even though it’s always only now, you can experience another moment in time via a story or other artwork and integrate it into your now.

The best stories, or maybe the best storytelling, uses gradual exposition to build setting and character rather than explaining all at once what and where we’re being introduced to, which is a no-no in literary land. This is partly because info dump style exposition is dull, but the wonder of a great story is precisely in the exposition of the characters and their story because the character and the story can’t be separated. It also mimics the way that we learn about other humans as our stories intertwine with theirs for better or for worse, whether shallow and fleeting or deep and lifelong.

Similarly, as an artist, you choose what of you to expose and when. You control that exposition, the narrative and the pace of the story and you can, and almost certainly already do, expose your narrative in a non-linear way, drip feeding it from one work to the next. And as your artistic voice evolves, so does the way that you tell your story, almost as if you’re harmonizing with your past self, singing the same song but with different complementary voices.

Stories can also be exposed in layers like deconstructing an onion, often starting with a sketch and outline, just the details and slowly exposing more detail and more depth. And each new exposition reveals details about the story which casts it in a whole new light, a bit like the moment that you discover Luke Skywalker is actually a kid of a Jedi Knight. After you know that, you see everything in a new light.

Take the story with which I started this episode. Let’s see what happens if I fill in some more details:

The boy was afraid of bats and after his parents were murdered in a dark alleyway, he became a masked vigilante crime fighter. Okay, that’s Batman.

The boy I was originally referring to, now in his forties, he painted a picture that depicted Boris Karloff in his iconic role of Frankenstein’s creation. He depicted it in fluorescent dayglo colours. It was one of the earliest pieces he painted after reprising his art hobby. It sort of just poured out of him. The image sat upon a collage of words torn from magazines and newspapers, words such as nerves, label, impulse, broken, obsessive, as well as the torn remnants of the information leaflet for the medication methylphenidate, otherwise known as Ritalin.

The symbolism of a man made of random pieces of other human beings clumsily put together resonated with him, since that was how he’d always felt. He titled the painting David, his dad and his son’s middle names. Rewind two years. The man sits in his car staring blankly at the office of a technology giant, his employer, beset with feelings of dread and utter hopelessness. He had a job that many would be envious of, paying eye-watering sums of money, yet he felt worthless. The idea of getting out of the car and walking into that office filled him with horror, just like it had the day before, and the day before that.

Rewind to a few years before that. The man sits by a swimming pool in Crete. His kids splash carelessly before him, his wife dozes contentedly beside him. Everything seems idyllic. He can’t understand why he feels so miserable.

Rewind to some point in the mid-80s. The boy is writhing in absolute terror as his so-called friends, one holding each of his limbs, suspend him over the storm drain. They told him that the evil zombie Arthur Grimsdyk lived down there, and that he would launch a spear out at the boy and kill him. This was not the first time this had happened, and it wouldn’t be the last. Stephen King’s novel It hadn’t been released yet. It didn’t matter to the boy. He was terrified anyway.

Fast forward to around six months before the Frankenstein piece was created. The man sits in front of his therapist. They are discussing the mindful activities that might help calm the man’s frenetic brain. The hope is that this will help him with his recurring depression, panic and anxiety. He mentioned that he used to make art and maybe that would be worth a try.

Fast forward to six years. The man had lost his job a few months earlier and was struggling to find work. He was recovering from the major mental health episode that this had caused. His art had played a major role in his ongoing recovery. His ever frenetic brain had the idea that maybe he should start a podcast about artists and form a therapy. Maybe he could help himself by helping other people.

Most people see David, the painting, as a wacky rendition of Frankenstein’s monster. Pop art or some such stylistic frivolity. They either like it or they don’t. If anyone asks what it’s really about, what all the torn up strips of magazines mean, I might give them bits and pieces of that story. Occasionally people see something entirely different. For example one lady bought a print of it. She explained that she had spent years recovering from a life-threatening brain trauma and the image helped her make sense of that experience.

The image itself is a piece of art made from other people’s artwork. Mary Shelley, who wrote the original novel. Boris Karloff, who played Frankenstein’s creation. His makeup artist, Jack Pierce, who was responsible for that iconic look. Director James Whale. The impetus for the novel was instigated while Shelley holidayed with her husband, poet Percy Byshe Shelley, original megastar heartthrob Lord Byron, and John Polidori, who went on to write a novel about vampires for the same reason.

Their stories are woven into the artwork too. Incidentally this all happened while they sheltered from the year without a summer, which was caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora. So that goes into the mix too. Perhaps from Mary’s mother, proto-feminist icon Mary Walstonecraft into the mix. And perhaps throw Ritalin creator Leandro Panizzon in there too. And even his wife Rita, after whom he named it. I could go on.

I’ve made hundreds of artworks and millions are made every year across the world. Some have greater impact than others, but all make their mark in some small way. This is how society functions. Art isn’t just for the artist or art lover, it’s for everyone whether they know it or not. It is a distillation of culture, like a dynamic piece of reality frozen in amber, but one that actually affects the world around it.

This has all been pretty abstract and philosophical so far, since much of the impact of art happens once the artist has set it free. But the artist still played a starring role in the story in a very real sense.

I experienced this recently when I took on an eight-piece commission for a couple that lived near me. We worked closely together over the space of two months, deciding on what I would create, where it would be hung, the colours, the theme, the style. We all learned lots and had a great time doing that, and for as long as they lived they will remember that experience and, I hope, cherish it, and will be reminded of it every time they see those paintings. It’s part of their story now.

This effect is particularly prominent with pop stars and the like, especially in the hyper-connected modern world. Swifties follow Taylor’s every move, her life is in her music, and the Kendrick Lamar versus Drake rap feud has manifested in an ongoing public work of music and cultural art.

The stories of artists, authors and creators aren’t the only ones that matter, not by a long way, and many creators make it their business to tell someone else’s story, but even then they write some of their own in there, in the facts that they choose to expose, turn a phrase, their levels of reverence or disdain.

You tell your story with every word, note or brushstroke, with every breath, with every heartbeat. Keep on telling it, history needs you.

Homework for this week? Go find some art and arrange it in some order that means something to you. It could be your own artwork or someone else’s, it could be some paintings, some photos, some music. Go make a mixtape. Put it in an order that resonates with you. Try some different orders and see what it tells you about your story or the story of the artist or the story of the events or the people in the world that it depicts. Think about that story that it tells. Think about how it tells a wider story and think about what it says about your story.

I just want to say something quickly about the fact that I spend a lot of time in this podcast selling my own story. In fact, most of this podcast was spent doing that. I’m autistic, as I’ve said before, and autistic people have a tendency to relate to other people by telling their own stories. It’s a way of empathizing. It can make autistic people come across as being quite selfish or self-centered or single-minded and it’s not that way at all. It’s just that we find it much easier to relate to someone by telling other people stories about ourselves. Autistic people tend to be great storytellers.

So if it seems like this podcast is a bit of a big ego piece for me, please understand that it isn’t. This is just how I relate to the world.

Secondly, I found that when I open up to people, they tend to open up back to me. They tend to be very thankful for me being so honest and open with my own stories, with my own struggles, and it makes them feel better and it makes them feel more able to talk about their stories. In the past, I just used to do this reflexively. I would just relate my own stories to people and then I found they would just pour their hearts out to me and a lot of the time I didn’t know what to do. I was like, well, why are you telling me your life story right now? But over time I started to see it as a bit of a superpower that if I could help people open up and talk about themselves, then they would feel better and I would learn something and everyone would be better off.

So that’s why I’d do it. I hope I don’t bore you too much with my stories and I’m not going to stop doing it. I’ve got lots more stories to tell and I’ll probably find some other people to help me tell some stories at some point as well. And I hope you find it helpful and valuable and I hope it helps you tell your story to someone else too.

So that’s it for today. As ever, if you want to support me, I have a Patreon account, https://patreon.com/AlexLoveless. That’s the best way to support me and to keep this podcast going. There’s plans for as little as one dollar and the higher paying accounts includes some personalized artwork made by me. I’ll be putting lots of extra content on there that relates to both this podcast, my artworks, I’m doing some demonstrations on there, some tutorials, all sorts of things, book reviews, you name it. I’m always producing content. Most of it goes there. There’s even a free tier. So go along and help me out if you can and I’ll see you next time.

• Dissect Podcast. The In Rainbows season is season 11, but if you’re a music fan it’s worth trawling through the historical stuff too. There’s some fascinating, in-depth analysis of some amansing albums.

Transcript

Welcome to the Art Against Mental Illness podcast. My name is Alex Loveless and this is my podcast about the healing powers of art for artists, art lovers, the art curious and anyone with an interest in mental health and well-being.

Today I’m going to be experimental. Most of the episodes I’ve done up until now have been to at least some degree scripted. The more recent ones are completely scripted. Although I found this a good way of making sure that I get the right thoughts out and say the right things and get my point across, I find it quite difficult to do. I find reading and speaking at the same time very difficult and uncomfortable and I find the process less relaxing and enjoyable.

Earlier today I was tidying up my studio. It’s a ritual I go through. You might have heard me mention it a couple of episodes ago. I do this when I’m feeling stuck or down and I need something to help me break the impasse and to feel a bit more positive. A tidy studio has such a rejuvenative effect on me. And while I was doing that I was listening to a podcast called Dissect which is a music podcast that takes one album per season and dissects it one track at a time. This time they were talking about an album that’s one of my all-time favorites which is In Rainbows by Radiohead. Now before you decide that you know you hate Radiohead and you don’t want to listen to an episode about Radiohead, I’m not going to do that. I won’t inflict that upon you but I might use it as a starting point or a jumping off point for what I have to talk about which is experimentation.

Because Radiohead’s career has been to one degree or another defined by experimentation from their initial forays as a pop indie band through releasing some of the most important and lauded rock albums of all time including OK Computer, Kid A and In Rainbows. And they have a fairly exhaustive and thorough approach to creativity and experimentation that is quite alienating to some people but I think comes through in their work. I think you would struggle to argue that they weren’t a very very creative band.

Anyway while I was sweeping up my studio I thought I need to experiment some more. I feel like I’m in a bit of a creative rut. I’ve got some things going on in the background that I’ve had going for a while and I think in their own right they’re very creative and experimental but it’s a bit of an ongoing process and so it’s become part of the furniture. It’s become less exciting even though I’m still very motivated to carry on with it. In general I’m feeling like I’m a bit of a crossroads in my life.

It’s worth explaining a bit why that is. So for my other day job, the one that’s actually supposed to make me money, I’m a data analyst, a data scientist, I’m a data and an analytics nerd. I use programming and technology to take data and extract value in the form of insights from it. I got made redundant from my last role doing this in October last year along with my colleague and that was fine at the time. We were quite happy with that because we got paid a bit of money to go away and we thought well this is an opportunity to start our own business. We’ll try and start a consultancy doing what we do until it became clear that we’d launched our little initiative in one of the most economically hostile environments we could imagine. So I’ve got a mortgage, I’ve got a family and fast running out of money and I’m genuinely in fear of losing my house and becoming unemployed for the long term.

On the other hand I’ve got my art and that doesn’t make me a lot of money. I’m not here recording a podcast about how to make your first million as an artist because I’m lucky to make a few hundred quid here and there. Art for me is and never has been about making money anyway but I could really do with it earning me a bit of cash right now and to be fair it has done. A recent commission did extend my stay of execution for a few months which is a real blessing and was a real joy to do. But now that’s finished and no further light on the horizon in terms of generating any more money or business. I find myself increasingly struggling with my mental health, feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness and generally mental fog that is preventing me from bringing a lot of the energy that I would usually bring to the things that I do.

Hence we come to a point where I find myself tidying my studio again and it really did need it so it’s not a wasted effort by any means but listening to this podcast about Radiohead and how they locked themselves away and imposed all sorts of fairly bizarre scenarios on themselves to force themselves out of the musical and creative ruts that they found themselves in. A band that pride themselves on always creating something different for better or for worse because it should be pointed out I’m not a fan at all of their last couple of albums and thinking to myself well you know experimentation is what drives my approach to art.

Part of the reason I’m struggling so much to sell my art is I think because it’s so inconsistent. Not in my belief in terms of quality but in terms of the theme and the style and the general narrative that flows through it. If you know me at all you’ll see that narrative but if you don’t know me then it’s going to look like someone who’s just scatter gun cherry picking doing bits here and bits there not really settling on a particular style. I experiment a lot and this is who I am. I think it comes very much from the ADHD side of my personality. I tend to jump from one thing to another because I get my energy from starting things, I get my energy from novelty and so I don’t restrain that because when I try and follow a particular thread stylistically or thematically I get bored and then when I get bored I get depressed and when I get depressed all sorts of bad things happen to me and those around me and it’s not a nice place to be.

So I find myself observing a lot of the artists that are out there that are commercially successful and if you look at those, not exclusively but the primary driver for most of them is consistency of style and theme and subject. They find something that works for them and hopefully that they enjoy and they make lots of that because that’s what sells and that’s how they make money. Now I faced the problem of doing that. I would destroy my mental health and the therapeutic value of the artistic creative process, for me at least, and that poses a dilemma because I know I can produce high quality consistent work. I just know that it will also destroy me and listening to this podcast about Radiohead who took this exact challenge on face value and came out of it like phoenixes from the ashes over and over again by pushing their creative boundaries.

Now I recognize they were in a fairly privileged position. Their first album despite being pretty crap sold a lot and they had the backing of a major label with lots of money who were willing to let them experiment and most of us aren’t in that position but it took an act of bravery to do what they did. Many people would consider their subsequent two albums as being they should by any standards be career suicide. Now I don’t really want to delve into why they won. It’s not really important I think to this conversation and you don’t have to like their work to recognize that they did take risks. Whether you think that they were good risks, whether you think they made good art, there is absolutely no doubt that they took huge risks when they did that and those risks paid off in spades and allowed them even more creative freedom.

It’s hard to see how you’d find yourself in that position as an artist and I at least to some degree am privileged in a sense that while not having a job I do have time to experiment but my whole focus really needs to be on making money and since I can’t sacrifice the creativity, the spontaneity and the experimentation in my art for fear of destroying my mental health further, I have to focus a lot of that on the other side of my life and try and be creative and experimental over there which of course suffers from exactly the same problem that if I’m not toeing the line and looking like the crowd then no one will want to hire us because people want what’s cool and trendy, people want to talk about generative AI, people want to talk about the the latest greatest new thing even though if you ask anyone who understands any of this stuff including myself and my business partner the reality of the situation is this stuff is overblown. There’s a lot of potential here and it is a game changer but it’s not as important as people think. It’s not as flexible, versatile, clever or intelligent as people think and the field here in terms of the intellectual side of it, it’s pretty narrow. A lot of the best, most creative people in the AI technology space aren’t particularly impressed by it. It’s basically just a big engineering problem which is fine in its own right but not what people are dressing it up to be.

So here I am talking about experimentation. I decided to do an unscripted episode and just let my mind wander on this a bit. Part of the process that Radiohead and many other bands like them and many other artists and creatives like them have gone through is simply letting it flow and I think it’s vitally important for the process of creation and even if you are someone who does stay consistent that has found their niche and their style and is happy within a certain realm, a medium, a subject, a style, a level of experimentation is still absolutely essential. Your work needs to evolve, it needs to be fresh, it needs to be fresh for you and it needs to be fresh for your buyers, your fans, your admirers and I think that experimentation is exceptionally valuable in terms of the therapeutic value of creating art because if what you’re trying to do, if what you point yourself at is a specific goal, a specific outcome, I want to make watercolours like this person. I want to make oil paintings like Van Gogh. I want to make music like Radiohead. I want to write books like Norman Mailer. You are setting a funnel for yourself that’s going inwards, that’s pointing towards a particular point and is going to lead you very quickly into the realms of disappointment, procrastination and perfectionism. This is not a good place to be if what you want to do is experience the therapeutic value of art.

Yes you do need to be a better writer, a better poet, a better painter. Yes you do need to get better at playing guitar or the piano or the violin. Yes you do need to practice and yes you do need to do the drudgery, the boring practice at times but most of the time that’s where as I explained in my earlier episodes is that’s the most important part. That moment where you’re laying down another scale over and over again where you’re practicing the same piece of music where you can just suddenly meander off and find some creativity in your motions and your movements and your muscle memory where you can lose yourself in the music, that that little trigger, that little extra thing that allowed you to meander off and do something different. These are the most important parts of the creative process. These are the most important parts to the therapeutic value of creation and artistry and excellence and so you shouldn’t embrace the practice but always look for those moments to jump off and run with them. Some of them will go nowhere, sometimes you’ll make a horrible mess on the canvas, sometimes you’ll just hit a bunch of bum notes, sometimes you’ll write 20 pages of utter utter nonsense that will be completely discarded, but sometimes you’ll make something incredible and you’ll find yourself in a flow state where you just keep on making wonderful things.

Interestingly it sort of doesn’t matter if what you’re making is wonderful as long as you’re enjoying it. As long as you allow yourself the brevity and the freedom to go and do something different, to experiment, to take yourself off into a different area than where you started off, as long as you’re enjoying that process and that’s what’s important. And so you need to look for the moments that take you away from your path and perhaps you know that your path is well defined. You won’t be able to achieve the levels of mastery that you want to unless you’re allowing yourself to be a bit more free and a bit more experimental. You need to be able to take yourself to places that you wouldn’t have otherwise and give yourself the freedom to do that.

In fact you should actively try and create those moments to jump off, to jump off the train, to take a different route. You should actively create things within your creative environment that forced you to or to give you the opportunity to experiment in different directions.

One of my favorite things to do is to take a blank canvas and then just abuse it, drip things on it, splatter things on it, smear it, create texture, knowing what I’m going to put on that canvas after. Not because I think that that’s going to improve my duplication of some image that I found that I wanted to depict, but precisely the opposite because it will make it hard, because it will mean that I have to think differently about how I create that image. It helps me to find new ways and new ideas of thinking about things and incorporate some of that chaos that I put on the canvas into that image and you’ll see that in many of my artworks. And that’s what a lot of these creative processes are about, these techniques you can use to break yourself from the monotony of practice, the monotony of the pursuit of mastery, is that you get stuck in these ruts and you need to create little jumping off points, you need to create disruptions to that flow that force you to think differently, that force you to act differently and it doesn’t matter if those things that you do don’t add up to anything.

You hear a lot, especially in sort of technology circles, about failing and failing fast and I think that this whole philosophy that comes from the agile methodology of software delivery has been massively overblown, but there is something to be learned from this. It’s not that you don’t finish anything, but it’s that if you’re going to do something you’re going to explore a direction and that direction is ultimately doomed to fail, then you want to fail fast, you want to fail and move on. But you also want to learn something from that process, from that digression. You want to learn that perhaps that route was a dead end, full stop, or perhaps there was something there but the way you pursued it wasn’t helpful, or perhaps it’s a medium or a subject matter that doesn’t motivate you or excites you. And those those pieces that you’ve got, you shouldn’t throw them away. You should actually go back and listen to them or look at them later and convince yourself as to whether they really were failures or what you can learn from them and whether you can build on top of what’s already there.

I always keep old canvases, I don’t throw away bits of paper that I’ve cut off things, I don’t throw away old drawings or sketches that I didn’t like or I didn’t think were good enough to share. I keep them all and I keep them all in piles around the place and every now and again when I need a bit of inspiration I go and sort through them and have a look at what’s there. Sometimes I’ll find something that was actually fully finished and quite brilliant and I will bring it back to life. I think actually I could probably sell that. Some of them are just scribbles and I’ll incorporate those into other works. I’ve got a lot of collage in my artworks and some of that collage is stuff that I’ve just to all intents and purposes discarded. And sometimes I just get ideas from that stuff and I can say well actually this was a bit of a weird experiment but I think I can take this somewhere.

And so experimentation then isn’t just about taking a different approach and then producing something magical because most of the time you won’t and maybe most of the time it won’t have a huge effect on your main body of work. But it will be there, it will have some effect and it will have given you that feeling of freedom and lightness and that feeling that you can be creative and it will give you stimulus to do other things.

For the therapeutic value of art to really work you need to be able to feel that you can be whoever you want to be uninterrupted and unencumbered and to lean into the person you are. There’s a lot of talk about being authentic which I think is in many cases nonsensical and focuses on being someone else’s version of authentic. If you want to be authentic self you just need to let yourself flow. You need to go wherever you want to go, how you want to go there, a time and in a place where you’re allowed to do that and no one can criticize you. And that’s when you’re going to truly relax into being yourself and until you are able to feel like you can be yourself and express yourself you’re not going to be able to to relax and relaxing leaning into the process is the important thing. And that can only happen on your terms using your methods. Yes you can use mindfulness and meditation, maybe you need to tune into the spirit realm, maybe you need to exercise, maybe you need to jump on one of these bandwagons, but ultimately you need to find your own path however that is and you do that by experimentation not by doggedly pushing against the same door. And you can only do that if you can do it by being free of the possibility of criticism and that’s why it’s important to take these moments to experiment when you have the freedom and the peace and the space to do so.

Anyway I think that’s all I’m going to say for the moment. I have a lot more to say on this subject and I have a lot more to say on many subjects like it. In the spirit of everything I’ve just said I don’t know how this particular experiment in free form monologuing went. I’m going to set it aside for a little bit and come back and listen to it. I’ve no doubt it will need a bit of editing or maybe I’ll decide to throw it away in the spirit of experimentation. Maybe I’ll share it, maybe I won’t, but if you’re listening to this I did share it which means I thought it was of some degree of quality, but maybe a disagree. Feel free to get in touch and let me know.

Hello it’s me again. So this was recorded originally just over two weeks ago. I’ve just finished editing it and have a few observations based on what’s happened in the intervening couple of weeks.

First just to cover off some of the themes that were covered in there with regards to experimentation, I’ll probably pick up the thread on experimentation in music particularly around Radiohead and their long time producer Nigel Godrich and the various techniques they use which I think have applicability across the arts, as well as the well-known work with Brian Eno and David Bowie using their cut up technique which I think is another thing that’s worth delving into. Experimentation’s a theme I’ll definitely come back to.

With regards to the general life situation which I talk about on this, things didn’t get better in the intervening two weeks. We took the decision last week that we were going to sell our house otherwise it might get repossessed. That means I have to move into another house and I don’t have my studio anymore, my lovely studio which I’ve made so much my own and has become my place of peace and serenity and happiness for the last couple of years. I have to surrender it. Hopefully its new owner will treat as nicely as I did. I doubt it will be an art studio again. You never know though. More likely someone will turn it into a garden office or a summer house or something. I just hope they leave it up and are nice to it for me.

Thankfully a friend of mine up here has a cottage that they can rent to me that has a workshop space out the back of it. A two-storey workshop space that I can convert into my studio so we’re going to rent the cottage off him. It’s only a short term thing, probably less than a year. That means I get to keep my creative space if a different one and I can make it my own for a very short period but I’m really lucky to be able to have any space at all. I’m unbelievably pleased about this.

With regards to my wider financial situation I’ve had to be pretty creative there as well. Among other things I’ve set up a Patreon account which allows people to pay me a little bit of money if they appreciate the work that I do. So that will be the official Patreon account for this podcast as well as my wider artistic endeavors. It’s still very early days and a bit of a work in progress but I’ll no doubt be recording some Patreon only stuff. I might do some studio work around art therapy, maybe some sessions that people can work along with and some tips and tricks and some more practical stuff that anyone who’s interested can participate in. So if you want to support me as a human, me as an artist or me as a podcaster please head on over to Patreon and there’s plans for as little as 80p $1 a month and the upper tiers of membership actually include me creating personalized pieces of art and physical art for the top tier. So if you’re interested in acquiring some of my work then that’s a good place to do it. There’ll also be members only discounts and artworks and so on that are exclusive to the members. Watch this space, I’m sure it’ll develop into lots of other interesting places and any help you can give me on that side would be massively appreciated. That’s all for now, I’ll see you next time.

• So I heard a story about a guy called Jack

• Jack sojourns for the winter

• to act as a caretaker for a remote Colorado hotel

• he did this to relieve his writer’s block

• Which he kinda achieved

• Since he ends up having a breakdown and attempting to axe-murder his family

• OK, so that’s clearly the plot of The Shining

• But it helps set the scene for a conversation I want to have around finding space in your life to be creative

• real life and literature is replete with tales of escape and transcendence

• It’s hard in the busy modern world to find the space to be creative

• Secluded getaways are tempting, and may even not result in murder

• And you may have temporarily have released yourself of the murder of daily drudgery

• And improved your mental wellness in the process

• but life always comes rushing back in

• For the value of art and creativity to be truly transformative,

• you have to find some space in your life

• that is permanent

• That is hard-wired into your daily or weekly existence

• You need to find some time and space to express yourself

• that’s free of responsibilities, distraction

• and all the stressful hubub of the daily grind

• I do not consider this an optional part of of the art therapy journey

• In many ways it’s THE most important part

• Because the act of creation is not a relaxing one if it’s crammed in here and there when you can find the time and space

• by all means go for that murder-free artistic retreat

• and I’ll have more to say on this in the future

• especially the non-murdering part

• but for now, I want to talk about what you do for the rest of the time

• Now, I know I said back in episode one that bringing your whole self to the artistic act was neither necessary

• nor in many cases desirable

• But here’s the thing, you still need to bring quite a lot of your self

• but more importantly, you generally need to bring JUST yourself

• Unless you’re one of those lucky types who can easily shut other people out

• At the very least you need to bring some portion of yourself,

• and give that portion of yourself the permission to engage in the creative act with impunity and without obstruction

• I want to drill into these elements

  • impunity
  • permission
  • but first - space

• by which I mean physical space

• although if you can find some creative space while actually IN space

• That would be perfectly acceptable

• Finding space to create often means you need to find some private space

• I recognise that this is going to be difficult for many people

• Perhaps you live in a house with a bunch of drunk students

• or have young kids

• although maybe there’s not a lot of difference between those two

• So at the very least,

• You need to find some space that can be rendered distraction free for example with headphones

• and a do not disturb sign

• Or somewhere you can go

• Maybe a local park where you can find a tree to hide under with a sketchpad or your ukulele

• Why is seclusion necessary to be creative?

• Well, strictly speaking, it’s not

• But the creative act, in the way that I talk about it, is a solitary process

• and a monotrpic process

• What do I mean by that?

• I mean that you you need to give enough of your being to it

• Your attention, your body

• That largely precludes doing anything else, other than maybe listening to some music

• When I’m painting I can listen to a podcast or an audiobook

• But if I’m writing I can listen to anything where I can discern the words

• Otherwise I just can’t concentrate

• No words of my own will come

• Any songs with clearly audible lyrics

• Particularly hip hop

• I just can screen them out

• So I tend to listen to a lot of death metal cos you can’t usually hear what they’re saying

• And probably don’t want to anyway

• But there are other forms of music that you could consider

• Like any process that requires a lot of concentration

• Like coding or doing your finances or beating someone at pool

• Disturbances and distractions will really throw you off your game

• And getting back on your game is hard

• And maybe you can’t

• For my day job I write code

• basically programming

• It’s a really big thing in the tech space that you don’t disturb coders in flow

• As an aside, coding can be a very creative process

• and also lends itself to flow states

• In an upcoming episode I’m going to talk, probably at length, about flow states

• They trance-like states of mind you can get to when engaging in something that takes your whole attention

• Some call it being “in the zone”

• Total focus

• If someone disturbs you while you’re in one of these states

• Not only is it annoying

• It’s a bit like knocking a train off its tracks

• It can’t continue

• And it’s going to take a bunch of heavy lifting to get it back on its tracks

• Before it can even get moving again

• So much time and momentum is lost

• So much time is wasted

• and it annoys the crap out of the coder

• and what for?

• So you could ask them if they remembered to send some pointless email or whatever

• No

• There’s an understanding in business that respect their coders

• DO NOT DISTURB

• Not because they’re highly strung

• although often they are

• but because it’s BAD FOR PRODUCTIVITY

• And it’s usually a manager, the people ultimately responsible for productivity

• that do the disturbing,

• Since the other coders know better

• it’s seems a bit silly to do something so damaging to productivity

• not to mention the damage to staff morale

• From a therapeutic perspective, flow states are like gold dust

• We’ll come back to the concept of productivity as relates to the creative journey

• But suffice to say that being productive is not a necessary prerequisite

• to being a happy creative

• and is frequently has an entirely negating effect on the therapeutic value of art

• However, being immersed and relaxed is EXTREMELY important

• And disturbances are equally hard to recover from

• and often knock you so far off track, you can’t get back on again

• But this is not about slowing you down

• It’s not the productive track that matters here

• It’s the psychological track

• So much is lost in that little disturbance

• In terms of the calming power of the creative act

• So let’s assume that you found a quiet corner

• or even total isolation

• alone on an island in the middle of the pacific

• Do you feel relaxed?

• Do you feel like you are justified in being in that space?

• Like you deserve to be there?

• Do you have permission?

• This is not a minor point

• Maybe those around you are giving you the space

• But are you giving yourself that space?

• It seems in the modern world, in the west at least

• you’re always supposed to be doing something

• Every moment must be LIVED

• TO THE MAX

• This has not always apparently been the case

• It’s generally believed that men in hunter-gatherer tribes

• both of antiquity and existing remote tribes

• Only tend to work 3 or 4 hours a day

• The rest of the time is spent chilling!

• These days if you’re not actually DOING

• everyone seems to feel like they need to LOOK like they’re doing

• We fill up our schedules

• Work long hours

• Play hard

• Or if you have a family

• all that goes out the window

• and you work a 27 hour days

• in servitude to demanding sprogs

• who, at any age

• seem to think that your free time

• or headspace

• must always have THEM residing in it

• Whether such responsibility is real or not

• Whether the demands you face are self-imposed

• or just, life

• Finding the space

• Physical or psychological

• can sometimes seem impossible

• I think people frequently find this situation claustrophobic

• disempowering and constantly stressful

• this can lead to bad places

• Humans need respite

• Not 10 minutes snatched while the toddler tries to hospitalise itself in the back garden

• Not that faintly uncomfortable date with your other half

• Not time infront of the TV only half paying attention while you doomscroll and answer SnapChats

• All of that is different favoured version of the same slog

• No, humans need regular rest

• TRUE rest

• And failure to get this will inevitably result in decline in mental health

• Sustained over long periods can lead to VERY dark places indeed

• So maybe you do just need an undisturbed cuppa infront of the TV

• or spliff by under a summer sky

• But since you’re here, I’ll assume that you achieve your kicks by letting the creative juices flow

• Just like those other activities you need to find that space

• Proper space

• But once you get there, how often do you feel GUILTY?

• Twitchy and uncomfortable

• I think many people feel more guilty in front of an easel than they would in front of the TV

• since at least then they’re spending time with the other half or family

• Maybe you need to get permission from someone else

• Do that if you need to

• And if the kids can’t be trusted to leave you alone

• Make sure that you arrange for someone else to keep them caged or whatever is needed to constrain them

• But did you also give yourself permission

• You may think you did

• But how often are you only half there

• feeling like you should be somewhere else

• doing something else

• But the kids aren’t stopping you

• YOU are

• This is not often easy to achieve

• When really is the right time to check out?

• If you attempt to suffice with some snatched time here and there

• then those moment will frequently not arise

• and when they do

• you’ll likely not be able to achieve the required headspace

• If you’re serious about building art into your life

• then you need to be more purposeful than this

• It’s best to create some time in your schedule

• preferably the same time every day

• or whichever days of the week make sense

• and book these out

• Arrange with anyone concerned that you will be COMPLETELY out of commission for that time

• NO QUESTIONS ASKED

• Not best efforts

• Not “unless something comes up”

• That time must be sacrosanct

• and respected

• ESPECIALLY by you

• Find some space where people can’t easily barge in

• OWN IT

• After that, it’s down yo you

• Lean in and relax

• You’ll feel the difference

• The benefits are transformational

• I have the hours between 6pm and 8pm at least 5 out of 7 days a week

• blocked out for this

• I’m often very wound up and stressed from my day job

• and this is how I wind down

• My family knows what happens when I can’t get this time

• I don’t get grumpy of petulant

• this is not. “I must have my man time”

• If I don’t make this space in my schedule

• I simply stop functioning

• My mental health starts declining almost immediately

• And I get worse and worse until very bad things happen

• This time is all but prescribed

• And It’s considerably more effective than either therapy or medication

• and believe me I know, having being prescribed both

• multiple times

• Don’t get me wrong, that stuff has helped

• to one degree or another at least

• But not nearly as much as my creative headspace does

• It’s important to remember that what your produce in that time is only peripherally important

• Back to my mantra like obsession with process

• See episode 2

• what you DO

• The QUALITY of that time

• matters WAY more than important than what you produce

• or how productive or effective you are

• Quality time spent doing something that you love

• is worth WAY more than anything that you might make anyway

• And I would argue that what you learn when you fail to make something great

• is just as valuable as producing stuff that you’re already good at producing

• It’s ALL part of the process so it ALL matters

• So, to your homework

• I want you to find that regular headspace

• I want you to go look at your routine

• Your calendar or whatever

• And I want you to carve out some time to make that creative space

• And you should go and agree with whoever needs to agree with that

• And set the ground rules

• No ifs,

• no buts,

• no guilt,

• not disturbance

• If you already find such time

• Then I simply want you to reflect on it

• next time you’re in that space

• Simply remind yourself of why it’s so vital and magical

• Art is a conversation

• Even if you’re work has never seen by anyone but you

• At it’s outset it’s a conversation with yourself

• With your subconscious

• Consider American 19th century poet Emily Dickinson

• Many would say she was one of poetry’s greatest

• She had just 10 poems published in her lifetime

• She didn’t like the way that the publisher interfered with her poems before they published

• She was a very unconventional poet you see

• some would say an innovator

• But the publisher though that her work needed editing

• Like there was something wrong with it

• SHE didn’t,

• she knew they were perfect already

• and all the meddling changed their meaning

• Which is a travesty in the world of poetry

• So Emily simply stopped submitting them

• She didn’t stop writing them though

• Towards the end of her live, Emily reportedly became a recluse

• Rarely leaving her house, or even her room

• When she died at the age of 56, in 1886

• Her sister found a stash of eighteen hundred poems in her room

• yep, ONE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED

• Many are considered classics

• And as a body of work, it’s considered amoung poetry’s greatest

• My point is, you don’t need to share your art for it to be worthy,

• For it to provide the transformative, healing action that I bang on about here

• Never feel pressured to share your work

• NEVER

• What you make is yours and yours alone

• and if you want to keep it to yourself, that’s what you should do

• You’re beautiful, amazing company

• But

• BUT

• The world is a better place for Emily’s sister having discovered her secret stash

• Her poetry is truly beautiful, very dark in places, introspective

• And deeply personal

• Some of it tragic

• Some ecstatic

• There’s something in there for everyone

• And many, many people find comfort and solace in her work

• I hope she would have approved of the rest of us being able to experience it

• Her works inspired everyone from Sylvia Plath to Taylor Swift

• She had IMPACT

• The single biggest influence on me

• The person who inspired me to take up making art in the first place, as a teen

• WHo continued to encourage me and inspire me to push my creative boundaries for decades to come

• He’s one of my oldest and closest friends, although we’ve been a bit estranged of late

• That’s another story that also relates to mental illness

• For another day maybe

• Anyway, I won’t name him here, as I’m not sure he’s appreciate it

• He’s a very private person

• and only ever even shown his work to a couple of people

• Let alone let it been seen by other randoms

• He has literally thousands of pages of incredible, intricate comics

• Think Marvel, but so much darker and odder

• A rich world of unique design, mesmerising colour

• and totally original characters and stories

• There are huge piles of it around his house

• Piled up in corners

• Boxes full of the stuff

• All on A4 photocopier paper

• I doubt he’ll ever let them be seen by anyone else.

• They’re not FOR other people

• It’s for him

• And that’s just fine.

• I feel privileged to have seen some of them myself!

• He literally changed my life.

• And that’s where the rubber hits the road here

• Art changes lives

• Art inspires and motiveates

• Art heals and unites

• The world needs art

• I think that my friend, and the illusive Emily

• are outliers

• Most people who set out to make are

• Do want others to see it

• But are prevented through lack of confidence

• Fear of criticism or rejectioin

• Or maybe the worry that their art doesn’t matter

• THat no one will care

• These are all valid concerns

• But they can and should be overcome

• In this episode I’m going to try illustrate to you why you should work to overcome these objections

• We will cover the “how” in coming episodes

• In fact, in many ways, that’s what this whole podcast is about

• Now, I’m not going to talk here about the business of being an artist

• I’m not going to talk about monetising your work or promoting yourself on Insta or anything like that

• Maybe I’ll cover that another time

• I just want to talk about why sharing your art MATTERS

• How it can help you connect to the world

• And how you can use those connections

• For healing

• Of yourself and those that you connect with

• Let’s get on with it shall we?

• To help with that, I’m going to talk about autism

• Yep

• Autism

• You see, I’m autistic

• Purely as an aside, I have a suspicion Emily Dickinson was too

• But that purely hopeful speculation on my part

• So anyway

• You probably know a bit about autism

• Maybe you ARE autistic, and many creative people are, in which case, be patient,

• I’m not going to give you an exhaustive breakdown of what autism is here

• But we’ll definitely come back to this subject again

• But right now I want to talk briefly about the autistic experience of interfacing with the world

• Because I think it will help explain why creating connections through art is so valuable

• Dealing with humans are troublesome for autistics

• It’s not that we can’t carry out interactions with other humans, but it’s ALWAYS much harder for us

• It takes a lot more effort

• and it’s fraught with missteps, dangers and trauma

• Think of it like being a 5 foot tall person playing professional basketball.

• The average height of NBA players is closer to 6ft 4 which implies many are MUCH taller than that

• It turns out that height is a HUGE advantage in basketball

• as you might imagine

• The basketball players that are technically the best are actually the shorter ones

• The tall guys earn their keep for sure

• And they still score the points

• But the short players have to work MUCH harder to even compete, let alone score

• They tend to be truly exceptional players, but they’ve got an unconquerable disadvantage

• This is what it’s like being autistic, every time we encounter other humans

• We have to work REALLY HARD to just keep up

• Many times we just get stomped on

• It’s mentally and emotionally exhausting

• Yes we just have to do it.

• We don’t have a lot of choice.

• We develop all sorts of methods and coping mechanisms to account for your defecit

• Anyway, One thing I, and many other autistics find exceptionally difficult

• is approaching people we don’t know

• Just rocking up to someone and kicking off a conversation

• I’m terrible at small talk, it makes no sense to me

• seems pointless

• I have no idea what the other person is likely to say or ho to respond

• I just want to get straight to the point

• to dive right in to some much more meaningful conversation

• But that tends to freak people out for some reason

• So I get stuck in these strange, unpredictable conversations

• Saturated in subtle social norms and are steeped in subtext

• And I always end up saying something really odd

• cos I get nervous and confused and can’t follow what’s going on

• And people try and run away

• So I avoid doing it at all costs

• I’m literally find it terrifying

• So I’m not good at meeting people and making new connections

• This leaves me feeling isolated and anxious and ashamed

• More little cuts to add to the thousands already there

• They all add up

• One way I have of dealing with this is not healthy at all

• So alcohol gives you courage right?

• For years, from way before I knew I was autistic

• I would drink alcohol at any social event

• In fact i frequently still do

• I genuinely didn’t know that the reason I was doing this

• was because the alcohol dampened my inhibitions

• and allowed me to relax enough to hold and almost normal conversation

• This is an all too common pattern for autistics

• Via this route I had convinced myself that I was confident and outgoing

• But here’s the thing

• I was still rubbish at making those connections

• Just a slightly different kind of rubbish

• A louder and more obnoxious kind of rubbish

• And I would sometimes make a fool of myself.

• And feel terrible in the morning

• And wanted to hide away even more

• Thus increasing the cycle of isolation and shame

• More cuts

• What I discovered when I started exhibiting my art transformed my approach to this problem

• Because when I show my art, 3 things happen

• 1. people rock up and talk to ME
• 2. they tend to skip past the small talk
• 3. we automatically have something to talk about - me and my art

• Now I know EXACTLY how to talk a about THAT

• And my enthusiasm on this subject tends to be infectious

• We’ll sidestep the fact that I’m terrible at converting these conversations into sales

• But who cares, I’m talking!

• At that point, people tell me all sorts of things, about themselves,

• their life,

• stuff they love

• And they tell me all about MY art

• They often have al sorts of thoughts and opinions on it

• They often observe things about my art that I’d never thought about it

• When first this happened

• When someone rocked up and told me

• lots of things about what my artwork meant

• Their interpretation wasn’t at all

• what I had in mind when I made that artwork

• I was a little incredulous

• I didn’t say it at the time thankfully

• But I thought to myself

• “no, that not right, stop misinterpreting my art!”

• It felt like a bit of a violation

• But when I reflected on it after

• I realized how mind blowing that was.

• Someone had projected their OWN story

• Their own creativity

• inspired by their own life and experiences

• onto MY artwork

• And made it mean something totally different

• It was as if they’d made a new artwork!

• And their version was actually BETTER than mine!

• I realized that at that point,

• that once you put an artwork out there, it’s not yours any more

• It takes on a life of its own.

• And once it takes up residence in someone else’s house,

• someone else’s head

• It develops this secret life that you’ll never be party to

• As the new owner evolves their story

• based on new stuff they notice about the work

• New experiences that they project onto it

• Conversations that have about it with OTHER people about that work

• that gets integrated into their understanding of it

• And those now other people have a THEIR own interpretation

• Integrating THEIR points of view into their own understanding

• And this just keeps perpetuating as long as people are able to experience that artwork

• Image how many stories have been projected onto the Mona Lisa

• Or Van Gough’s sunflowers

• So this autistic guy who struggles to connection with people that he’s not met before

• Has reached out in time and space and is connecting with all these strangers

• And in a uniquely intimate and dynamic way.

• I can’t understate how important this is to me

• I love humans, but I can only experience them in small doses

• This way I get to have intimate conversations with lots of people without EVEN HAVING TO BE THERE

• How amazing with that?

• It’s also probably worth reflecting

• that I do this all right now via a local art community

• One that I founded

• I’d recently moved to where I am now, in rural Scotland

• And I didn’t know anyone

• the idea that I would just go out and talk to people felt rediculous

• But I knew I needed to meet people

• and I knew I wanted to start sharing my art again, in the real world, not just on line

• So I started an arts community

• On reflection, this is very much a symptom of my overall inability to instigate connections

• as backward as that sounds

• But by starting a community around my art, I had a reason to speak to people

• and about something that I knew I can relate to them about

• And because I was at the center of it, at least at the beginning

• They kinda HAD to talk to me!

• But I soon realised the impact I was having on their lives

• And how many others like me there were out there

• Also

• A death metal appreciation society in a small rural town was unlikely to get many members!

• Maybe I’ll start that on line

• Or maybe I’m wrong

• Drop me a line if you’re in arse-end-of-nowhere scotalnd and feel the need to sit around and chat about Cannibal Corpse.

• I’m IN

• Anyway I digress

• We can talk about death metal another day I promise

• back to the art

• I think that every artist gets something different from sharing their works.

• To name but a tiny fraction of possible motivations:

  • Money
  • Attention
  • The thrill of performance
  • Delighting others
  • To protest
  • Make people laugh
  • To make people cry
  • To have a reason to get out of the house
  • Because, well, you just gotta

• I could go one and on

• Whatever it is, it’s always about connection, at least from the artists perspective

• Art IS communication

• It’s not ONLY about communication, but in itself it is a form of communication

• and perhaps the most effective one of all

• We’ll talk more as we go on about this as well as the broader value and necessity of art to a healthy society

• But today I’m really interested in the personal experience

• And conversations you have with people about your art

• And it’s amazing what people tell you

• things like how your art reached them

• enriched their life

• made them feel seen

• moved them, sometimes to tears

• made them angry or sad or joyous or calm

• People’s reactions sometimes seem bonkers to me!

• I mean, It’s just a painting people!

• But it’s amazing, always

• and I mean always

• When you’re really low, it’s sometimes hard to feel that you have any worth at all

• Maybe you get some solace in the artistic process

• But it can feel selfish

• Solitary

• perhaps even indulgent and self-centered

• The idea that you could help someone else

• to reach someone in any capacity seems ludicrous

• How can this broken person help fix someone else

• I’ve been in places where I felt completely worthless,

• more often than I like to admit,

• and for no GOOD reason really

• But I justified it to myself,

• told myself stories,

• made myself believe that I was right to feel that way

• This is the way that it works

• Misery is self-perpetuating

• The last time this happened to me was quite recently actually

• Due to various circumstances I’d crashed

• I was not a well person, and it was leaking out everywhere

• I needed to stop, take stock, heal

• But I felt that I couldn’t

• I was already committed to doing a bunch of stuff that meant I needed to put myself and my art out there

• For various reasons,

• not least because I was the organiser of the event,

• and me not turning up would put a bunch of people out and make me feel a whole bunch more worthless

• So I did it, even though I really didn’t want to

• I found some energy from somewhere

• Then people came and spoke to me and told me what my art meant to them

• and what this exhibitions I’d organised meant to them

• they said I’d helped them

• I made a real difference

• How works like mine had helped dig them out of a hole

• me!

• This hollowed out husk!

• It all struck me as so bizarre!

• How could this broken useless shell help anyone?!

• How could someone who struggles to reach people on a good day,

• actually create light in their lives, on a bad one?!

• I think if you’ve been to psychological place like that,

• you’ll know that your addled brain tries to fight anything positive

• Like it’s allergic to hope

• The nasty chattering deamon that put you there doesn’t shut up

• But it DID make a difference

• A HUGE difference

• Because I didn’t feel useless any more

• Yes I was still exhausted and broken

• In some ways the worst was still to come as my situation in real world continued to worsen

• But I faced that stuff down with renewed strength, because I felt like I mattered

• That even in that state

• These are the building blocks of recovery

• And this time a recovery that took a lot less time that it usually would.

• And those little threads of positivity I spun spread, and created a web

• Some of that web I could see, via the positive repercussions of that event

• and others that I knew would be there

• Because I knew that any sliver of hope in MY world made a difference

• And so any little glimmer of positivity I can create in another’s world,

• must create ripples of positivity that spread

• Even if they only spread a little way, they MATTER

• Small things matter

• Every small gift counteracts a small hurt

• Every sliver of light, no matter how small, gives someone who is suffering a reason to carry on

• And as an artist you are in the privileged position

• to be able to create such moments by doing something that you love

• it is your JOB, whether you know it or not

• There ARE other benefits to sharing your work.

• Here’s a few

  • You’ve got both an excuse and more room to make more art
  • Meeting other creatives
  • Seeing your art in it’s natural environment
  • the potential to make some extra money, and perhaps a LOT more money
  • Contributing to the progressions of an artform
  • To just do it. Art for arts sake

• Taking the step of sharing your art is harder for some than others

• Harder at the beginning than later on, well, most of the time

• Maybe you think it’s too hard for you

• And that’s fine, you’re in good company

• But, if your objection to showing your art to other people is really just hesitancy, trepidation, fear

• I urge you to push through it

• Because The world needs you

• The world needs your art

• Your homework this time is simple

• Go experience an artists or creator’s work

• This could also mean reading or rereading a book or poem

• Listening to music

• Listening to a podcast

• Anything creative

• it needs to be a living creator, not JMW Turner or anyone like that

• And no someone who already gets heaps of attention

• I think Taylor Swift can do without you for a bit

• But someone who needs it

• Get in touch with them tell them how it made you feel

• However you can find to do that

• Email, social media feeds, website comments

• Tell them how their art made you feel

• Do this to multiple artists if you want

• And if you find someone new to this game, someone inexperienced

• Then all the better

• Go create a bit of light in another artist’s life

• Let them know that they are appreciated

Transcript

[00:00:00] / Welcome to the Art Against Mental Illness podcast. My name is Alex Loveless and this is my podcast about the healing powers of art. For artists, art lovers, the art curious, and anyone with an interest in mental health and well being.

[00:00:14] So I’ve talked so far about arts and creativity being a journey. A process of processes. A long line of moments, some of which result in beautiful things being produced. Those moments where we actually finished something might come to him frequently. But as I alluded to in the last episode, They’re also somewhat beside the point. It all counts, not just the showy bits. But the showy bits is still important to most of us, and give people those moments of connection that happened when you experienced great art. But it’s easy to obsess over those moments to make them the only thing that matters and to obsess about making them perfect. To obsess about making your work perfect. But here there be dragons.

[00:00:57] Perfectionism. Isn’t just the preserve of creation. It pervades the modern world and imposes itself on every corner of our lives. Due to the fact that most people only share their best moments on social media and angle and doc to them so that they showed the best version of themselves possible. It’s easy to believe that your life has dull and insipid while everyone else is loading it up.

[00:01:20] And maybe you think you’d feel a bit better if everyone thought you were also loading it up. And so you get sucked into the same cycle. Everyone is glaring into their little rectangular screen, feeling worthless and looking for a little moments to share that will hopefully dupe the world into thinking they’re happy and carefree.

[00:01:37] This can lead to some very dark places and increasingly is doing so.

[00:01:42] The reports that arise in occurrences of anxiety, depression, suicide, and eating disorders may not be exclusively related to the inescapable devices and FOMO, but it’s pretty clear that this has had a big influence.

[00:01:55] This behavior is a form of perfectionism and it’s corrosive. You find yourself in permanent optics mode. Always feeling the need to optimize, improve, remove floors, airbrush, Photoshop. A whole industry has sprung up around this, but in reality, for most of us, this is not lipstick on a pig or polishing a turd.

[00:02:14] It’s more like taking something beautiful and alive and pickling it. Sticking a pin in a butterfly. I think it leaks into every part of our lives. Everything we own and do has to be perfect in case someone else sees it. And soon there are no safe spaces. Nowhere you can relax. Not because other people can see you, but because you can.

[00:02:34] Perfectionism is something that I think pretty much all good artists suffer from. I say good artists. Cause there are narcissists out there that produce art, a corrupt firmly believing it to be genius. They suffer from the opposite of perfectionism.

[00:02:47] But for the rest of us, it’s a persistent blight. I think it’s especially pervasive in the early stages of the creative journey before you’ve really found your voice, your audience, your confidence. And before, you know what good looks like for you, but artists of all levels of experience and popularity experience it. To a degree it’s inevitable. And sometimes even appropriate and helpful, but most of the time it’s not. Most of the time it’s a destructive illusion.

[00:03:14] So what is perfectionism? In the context of the creative process, maybe it’s easier to define what it’s not. The opposite of perfectionism is knowing when to stop knowing when a piece of art is finished, ready to ship. One of the most important skills you learn as a creator is knowing when to stop. When stand back and say, that’s enough. It’s not as easy as you might think sometimes, but very rarely work is obviously finished. Just as you conceived it to be done. This has never happened to me, not least because I don’t plan my works. They just tend to emerge. So the idea of done is a little more fluid.

[00:03:51] I think even the most meticulous and deliberate artists expect and encourage an element of randomness in their work. Artworks without this tend to be flats and style, in my opinion. Most artists aren’t very deliberate in my experience. That’s kind of the point of our otherwise it’s really just manufacturing.

[00:04:09] So the concept of done is a kind of mutable or ephermeral one one. And it’s often very hard to know when something is done. When asked how I know when a painting is finished, I always find it hard to give a satisfactory answer.

[00:04:23] As an aside, I think only other artists ever asked this question. Everyone else seems to imagine that our work exudes from a magic unicorn horn, maybe it’s better that they do.

[00:04:33] But I’m not a unicorn. And my work takes, well, work. So when pressed on how I know when a piece of artists finished, the best answer I can think of apart from the unicorn horn, one is. " When adding more to it would make it less good."

[00:04:48] This is a deeply on satisfactory response, even to me. Some obvious objections being surely a work in production goes through peaks and troughs. You can’t just bail on it because something went wrong. I’m always cooking things up while in flow. In fact, I generally encourage mistakes. Some of the best work I’ve done is as a result of happy accidents. There’ve been times when I’ve created a finished work that I wish based on photo evidence that I’d stopped adding too many iterations ago.

[00:05:14] The second, and much more confounding objection is simply the usual follow-up question again, usually from artists.

[00:05:21] How do you know what good looks like? The answer to that is the same answer that I should have given in the first place. And one that is even less satisfactory than the other answers. Which is, well, you just sort of know.

[00:05:33] No one likes a smart ass is a usual irritated reaction to that.

[00:05:37] But unfortunately it’s the only meaningful answer, even if it’s only actually meaningful to me. This type of response is especially galling to beginners who just assume you’re being obtuse or aloof or evasive, or just playing condescending.

[00:05:49] The naive response. And one often emerges from beginners is see what other people think finished looks like and use that as a guide. And this is where we get into seriously ugly territory, because what you’re really saying is I’m going to compare my work to someone else’s, which is always an, I mean, always a terrible idea. And the last we find ourselves back to perfectionism.

[00:06:11] You see. The experience of art is deeply subjective and deeply intimate, even in the most shallow kind of art. Everyone’s art has its own signature, both figuratively, and literally that is as unique as their fingerprint. This is called style of voice. So, of course you can compare your work to others in the same genre. But your finished and their finished may be and should be very different.

[00:06:35] Even if you set out to copy someone else, presuming that is you’re not a forger, then you should and will diverged from that to develop your own flavor. This is how art works. And since it’s their style that can only have ever emanated from them, you cannot possibly replicate yet. But what many people do is set their sights on reverently, emulating another artist, and then tear themselves apart, failing to do so. All the while berating themselves for not producing the quality of peace that they set out to do. At that point, it doesn’t really matter how good your actual work is. It will never be good enough. You’re looking at it through the wrong eyes. This is perfectionism. Not then the pursuit of perfection, but a pursuit of emulation. The pursuit of someone else’s idea of perfection. The result of this can only be consistent failure. Not failure to produce good work, but failure to recognize your own good work.

[00:07:29] This is a disastrous outcome. It’s demoralizing and depressing and stressful, and it’s stopped many a budding creative in their tracks. Many simply give up at that point. And that’s a terrible outcome.

[00:07:41] But much like the perfect selfie obsession. It’s an illusion, a self-imposed self destructive doom loop.

[00:07:47] And one that you need to get out of ASAP, if you want to make good work. More importantly, at least in my view, you need to shake this attitude because it largely negates the therapeutic value of the process of creation. Since statistically speaking, you might want to use the healing power of art because of the anxiety is brought on by social and societal pressures. Letting the very same predator in the ring is probably not the best idea.

[00:08:12] And perfectionism is hard to spot. Not least because it doesn’t just come into form I’ve already discussed . For more experienced scientists. That’s the genius that they have been trying and failing to emulate is actually themselves. Too many creators can get sucked into the doom spiral of trying to recreate supposedly former glories. Rather than recognizing and celebrating their own progression. Not least because those former glories are a result of praise from others, particularly in the artist’s formative stages. Paying too much attention to your fans or critics is a dangerous game. And one that I’ll no doubt revisit at some point.

[00:08:46] But understand this, the only opinion that really matters is your own. Other people tend to sell you things that you want to hear for all the nicest possible of reasons. That earlier supposed master work might well, just be an average early work that found the right eyes after all Bob Ross has a lot of fans, but did you really want to get off the bus at his stop and stayed there forever? Even if you did produce an actual item of genius, that was then, and this is now. And did we not talk already about art, being all about the process? Move on your life may depend on it.

[00:09:18] Whatever form your perfectionism takes it’s always destructive and rarely leads to actual good works. Usually at least a flat finicky, emotionally stunted works or just an overworked brown mess that gets discarded. Or even worse, no work at all. And it always, always leads to misery and disillusionment. Perfectionism is an evasive animal that prefers not to be seen, but hides in plain sight. It is irrationality masquerade thing has common sense.

[00:09:47] I’m aware that this leaves the troublesome question of how to know when a work is finished or. Sometimes I do just know. Sometimes it do keep going a little too long and realize that I’m making a perfectly good work, well, less good. Hopefully not too much less good that it’s ruined.

[00:10:01] But more often, I get to the point where I think a piece may be finished. And just can’t decide. I have a special solution for this type of situation. I asked myself. No, no stop getting angry with me. I’m not being obtuse and condescending again. What I mean is I simply put that work aside, preferably where I can’t see it. For a few days, weeks, months, sometimes even years. Then at some point, go back to look at it. Nine times out of 10 I know immediately if it’s finished and if it’s not, the fix is usually immediately apparent. And sometimes I realize that it’s a complete Turkey and hide it away again until I decide what to do with that. And that’s fine too.

[00:10:39] But the fresh eyes are important. You need to get some distance between yourself and that work. That person who revisits that work is a different person, even though it’s still, you. And there’s no better, more caring and nurturing supporter that then yourself. There’s also none harsher critic. But now we’re back to perfectionism again.

[00:10:57] And that’s where this all really comes back to. We are our own worst critics. Sometimes this is necessary, but most of the time it’s not and left unchecked. It can become pathological. Believe me. I know. The good thing is, whereas we can’t control our critics out there in the real world.

[00:11:13] We can control to a degree, at least our inner critic. At the very least we can ignore them or tell them to shut the hell up.

[00:11:19] And so to your homework. Go and find some work that you didn’t like, but haven’t seen for a while. Maybe a sketch that you followed at the back of your sketchpad. So they one can see it. Might be an old short story that you never shared with anyone because you thought, it was lame. Go look at it again and observe how it makes you feel. Maybe it’s still a turkey, but maybe there’s something there. Maybe there’s something you can work into something else you can be proud of. Or maybe it’s a forgotten work of genius.

[00:11:45] Recently, I was sorting through some old discarded artworks, and I found a watercolor landscape with it. I remember thinking at the time was terrible. Well it’s car. Isn’t really my medium. Anyway. But seeing it again, I was actually gobsmacked. It might be the best water color I’ve ever done. I kid you not.

[00:12:01] So go have a rummage and I’ll see you next time when I’ll be talking about the scariest, but perhaps the most rewarding part of the creative journey, sharing your work.

[00:12:10] I, hope you enjoyed this episode and found it helpful if you did, I’d love for you to support me by hitting the like button and following me on whatever platform you’re listening to this on. Your support helps me reach more listeners so that I can continue bringing you the content that you love. Don’t forget to leave a review and share this episode with everyone that you know, that might find it helpful or valuable.

[00:12:30] If you want to find out more about me, I can be found on Facebook. At Alex Loveless artist. On Instagram. At Alex M Loveless and my website. Is Alex.

Transcript

Welcome to the Art Against Mental Illness podcast. My name is Alex Loveless and this is my podcast about the healing powers of art. For artists, art lovers, the art curious, and anyone with an interest in mental health and well being.

Hello and welcome back to my studio in deepest, darkest central Scotland. Last episode I talked about getting started and how difficult that can be sometimes. This time I’m going to talk about what you do once you’ve got started, either at the beginning of your creative journey or the next phase or even your next artwork.

Now, I wasn’t intending for this to get all deep and philosophical, but when I was writing the notes for this, that’s basically what happened.

So strap in, here goes. So I’m going to talk about process. I’m not massively comfortable with that word. It’s not terribly sexy. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, but it seems the most appropriate word. And I guess the fact that process tends to be a bit of a dirty word is what I want to talk about. So it’s probably a good idea to start by stating what I mean by process. So I Googled the definition and the first one that came up was a systematic series of actions directed to some end.

Which is likely a definition we can all agree on. You might think this is a pretty good summary of the subjective experience of making artwork, although I don’t take issue with it per se. The spirit of the definition is what I take issue with. I take issue with the idea that a series of actions and the end point are in any way different.

You may think the purpose of the creative process is to make stuff, which is definitely true to a degree. But what I want to talk about is how important the process of making that stuff is, both in general and in terms of the therapeutic value of art. It’s my belief that the journey of creation is perhaps the most important thing as far as mental wellness is concerned.

Now this might seem like something that should only concern experienced artists. But as a beginner or an enthusiast, understanding the value of process, the whole process, will make your progression easier and so much more rewarding and beneficial. This means leaning into process as part of the creative and healing journey, seeing the whole process as part of the finished product, and understanding that that product is never really finished.

How I think about process is informed by Zen Buddhism. Zen and Buddhism in general recognizes in the most literal sense that there is and only ever was one moment, and that moment is now. Much of what we think of in the West as mindfulness derives from this concept. If you spend your whole time dreaming about something you’ll be doing in some future time that you really want to be doing, you are committing the cardinal sin in Buddhism, which is

wasting only moment that actually exists.,

which is right now. Everything you ever did, all the past nows exist just to get to this now. Everything. So while you might be on your dream holiday right now in the Maldives, there was a now three weeks ago where you were sitting in the freezing house eating stale cornflakes and lukewarm milk, where you were preparing for now.

And likewise this moment on the white sandy beach is preparation for the next cold every moment is preparation for every other moment.

So what does all this have to do with making art? Well, put simply, you may think that the only moments you’re making art is when you’re sat in front of the easel or prancing around with your 3000 quid SLR.

But assuming you actually make some art at some point in the future, you’re in the process of making that art right now, even if you’re sitting on the bog. The point is that Any of the process is all of the process and since you can’t produce that work of artistic genius without having eaten, then eating was part of that process.

Zen Buddhists take this concept really seriously to the point where Zen’s primary text, Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo, contains lengthy chapters on eating, getting dressed and going to the toilet.

So do you need to include taking a dump in your creative process? Maybe. The stuff you certainly should include is cleaning and tidying your art studio, washing brushes, Taking a walk on your own, journaling, hanging artworks, having a run, anything that gets you further towards the next point in that process.

My point is, if you’re rushing through the preparatory stages of making something with gritted, impatient teeth, then you’re not only making yourself needlessly miserable, you’re actually doing it wrong.

It’s all matters. In the context of art as therapy, this is a hugely important concept. A moment resented is a moment of potential healing wasted. And another little cut to add to the thousands you already have. I learned to love all the nitty gritty of the process of making art.

Actually, I didn’t learn to love sweeping the floor of my studio. I learned I already loved it. That feeling of frustration or impatience I had was created by the false belief that the only time I was actually making art was when I was in front of an easel with a paintbrush in my hand.

Think of it like when you have a really tasty sandwich ready to eat and you’re looking forward to it but then it’s finished and you didn’t notice because you were too busy answering some BS work email or whatever. Maybe once in a while you stop to think, I’m sure I really enjoyed that sandwich, but I don’t really remember eating it at all.

Most of the time the memory of that awesome sandwich is entirely gone. It was just another step on the journey to doing whatever supposedly important thing you thought you were supposed to be doing. But maybe eating that sandwich was the best part of your day, and to all intents and purposes you missed it.

I love tidying my studio, but I don’t do it a lot. I used to think that this is because I’m lazy, which is sort of the case, I am a bit. But I’m also usually quite busy, and prioritise making art, assuming that the studio isn’t too messy to do that. But these days I like to think that I save it for the special occasions when I’ve really got the time to appreciate it and having a tidy studio is such a gift so much so that it’s often been an impetus to make more cool stuff. Once it’s tidy, when you think about it like that, It’s obvious that tidying the studio is part of the creative process, not an impediment to it.

What we’re saying here is that the process and the product are the same thing, which makes sense when you think about it. The process is right there on the canvas or the page or the camera. Along with all the other bits of you from your life experiences and stuff you experienced that day and all the other things you were thinking about at the time.

I recently worked on a commission while listening to the audiobook of The Great Gatsby and you can bet bits of that found itself smeared all over the canvas, literally in some cases since I actually printed out some bits of text from the book and glued them to the canvas.

So if you agree with my core thesis that art is therapy, and that all these other apparently non art related tasks are actually part of the art, then by embracing this you’ve literally increased your quota of daily therapy by really quite a lot your brushes as a chore and see it as a beautiful gift. This applies even when you’re feeling really low. Perhaps solo you can’t find any creative energy at all. Fairly recently I found myself in a very dark space and somehow couldn’t find the mental space to create anything new.

I just went into my studio and started tidying and rearranging. It was such an immersive activity that the problems receded into the background. I think I started the task out of indignation that I let my studio get into such a state, but I soon started really enjoying it. stepping back at the end to a tidy studio which I had seemingly conjured to be, double the previous space out of felt like such an achievement. It was like I’d done the same thing to my brain.

There’s also the idea that all your works are interlinked anyhow, , there’s likely to be a progression through your artworks, from the , very first one that you made, right through to whatever you’re doing now, and there’s a thread there, there’s a story, and That story really matters.

You can’t ignore all the things that happen between each artwork.

All these things were part of creating each one of those artworks and part of the creative progression that people will observe from one to the next. They may not be there watching you clean your brushes or stretching a canvas, but they are there in spirit in what you bring to your artwork and the process that you went through to make that.

but all of these things add up to make something that I’m proud of. reach other people and to communicate with them. That love of every part of the process will show in each final work in terms of its quality, in terms of its creativity, in terms of its attention to detail, in terms of its spirit and passion.

So what they see really is a version of your process sped up, but it’s all there. They may not see every little thing that you did, but they will look at every little detail on that canvas, and it will mean something to them.

Anyway, I could get lost in explaining the Zen ness of all this way of thinking. If you really follow and extrapolate my logic here, you get into some pretty hardcore philosophical territory, which is the very essence of Zen. But this is not a podcast about Zen, although at least a fair amount of my worldview has to some degree at least been informed by Zen, more of this is likely to leak out. So how does this apply to people just starting their creative journey and have yet to develop a process?

Well it’s really quite easy. Developing the process is your process. The same actually goes for experienced artists, because the process never ends. It’s constantly evolving. There is no such thing as becoming a black belt artist.

There’s no highest level. Great masters like Michelangelo and da Vinci never stop. Creativity is all about creating something new, and since the process and product are the same thing, then the process must evolve too. This thinking also maps to the concept of progress. You may think that a stick figure drawing or angsty teen poem is just embarrassing cruft on the path to future greatness, but that supposed dog rule is part of all your future works. I’ll also bet that it’s brimming with ideas and enthusiasm and fear and anticipation and lots of other emotions that you’re going to spend a lot of time as a mature artist trying to force out onto the canvas and many times failing.

It’s beautiful because it is creation. Maybe no one’s going to pay a bunch of money to take your stick figures off your hands, but further down the line, since it will be interwoven into every other piece of work, it is worth something. Maybe this is all a tad abstract and philosophical, but in my mind, it’s deeply and practical and deadly serious.

And the implications are pretty transformative. We’ll revisit this stuff many times in coming episodes, particularly when we start talking about perfectionism and procrastination. Anyway, so today’s homework, your task is to tidy your creative things.

So don’t know what your particular creative enterprise is. I’ll make some suggestions and you can figure out what works for you.

Sort and sharpen your drawing pencils, tidy your studio, organize your poetry folder,

restring your guitar or rewire your effects board

But while you’re doing this, whatever you end up doing, I want you to consider the experience.

Don’t think too hard, just notice how it makes you feel.

I think you’ll find that since you’re spending time with the tools of the activity that bring you joy, you’ll find that this activity brings you joy too.

Okay, that’s all for today. In my next episode, I’m going to be tackling the thorny issue of perfectionism. Thanks again for listening. Goodbye.

If you want to find out more about me, I can be found on Facebook at Alex Loveless artist at Instagram at Alex M Loveless. And my website is alexloveless. co. uk

Transcript

Welcome to the Art Against Mental Illness podcast. My name is Alex Loveless and this is my podcast about the healing powers of art. For artists, art lovers, the art curious, and anyone with an interest in mental health and well being.

Welcome to my podcast. I’m recording from my garden studio, so you might hear some birds around me.

Hopefully this is the first of many episodes of my podcast. We’re going to talk about beginnings today. I love starting things, for example podcasts. I’m not so good at finishing, but I don’t really intend to finish this. Hopefully this is an ongoing thing.

So the best stories rarely start at the beginning. They tend to jump into the middle and work their way outwards from there. I don’t really see this as a linear narrative. I see this as a sort of more a set of interlinked themes and stories and subjects that you can come in at any point and find, something that you can relate to. I’m also not going to do a long introduction about why I believe artists therapy and why I’m doing this podcast at all. I think that will come out in the mix. We’ll talk in the future about my own struggles with mental illness, as well as my journey to discovering art as a therapeutic outlet. But this podcast isn’t therapy. Well, okay, it is a bit in part for me, but this needs to be useful to other people and not just me and it needs to be practical.

Others need to experience the therapeutic value of art. So we’ll hear some stories hopefully from me and from some other people, but we’ll also be talking about some stuff that you can do to help to maintain your own mental health and help those around you maintain theirs.

So I’m a creator, most prominently of artworks, paintings, drawings, that type of thing. And it also seems now podcasts and various other things too. But I think that all art is therapy, regardless of your relationship to it. And so I’ll be exploring all aspects of art, even the bits I’m not myself particularly familiar with. This episode is still about beginnings, uh, beginning your art journey or just beginning your next piece or even just getting back into it.

Perhaps oddly I’m going to start talking about not starting or specifically the barriers to starting. The opposite of starting things is procrastination and this is something you’ll hear spoken about a lot. In the art community, in the mental health community, the neurodiversity community, and there’s quite a few reasons why you might not be able to start something.

I just don’t have the time. I keep trying and then I get distracted. My life just keeps getting in the way.

Procrastination is also to some degree a trauma response. I think a lot of people have tried to start creative projects in the past and perhaps have been let down by those around them who haven’t been supportive or have been overly critical. Perhaps it was a teacher at school, perhaps it was a girlfriend or a friend or a sibling, particularly siblings can be quite brutal in your early expeditions as a creative or creator or an artist.

And so you don’t want to repeat that you don’t want to risk being made to feel small or minimised. And that bleeds into the sort of next which is that’s a form of, of low confidence. I can’t do this, I suck, I’ve never been good with art, I’m not very creative. I can’t write, I can’t sing, I can’t dance.

And and of course, at this point, maybe you can. Maybe you can, or maybe you can do some of it. And that again leads on to the next point, which is perfectionism. And, and this is a killer, I think that people mistake for sensible thinking, but really isn’t that, you know, I can’t start this, I can’t carry on with this piece of work, it’s not good enough. I need for this to be good enough so that people respect me so that I can be proud of this so that I can show it to people. And so maybe you’ve had a few false starts in the past and you’ve kind of put yourself out there you’ve put your art you put your creations out there and and you sort of really feel like you’re surrounded by people who really know what they’re doing that they’re really really on it and that you feel like a complete imposter and we get into imposter syndrome.

Another reason is creative block, perhaps analysis paralysis, we’ve heard it a lot called writer’s block. And that’s where you’re already out there creating, but you simply can’t seem to start again, you can’t seem to move on to the next chapter, the next painting, the next drawing, you can’t seem to move, you’re overthinking, or you can’t conjure up any new ideas or any enthusiasm. And so that’s one of the very big, big problems I think existing creatives have.

And then there’s just the general noise of modern life. Your phone is constantly chirping away at you, drawing your attention. You end up doom scrolling on Facebook, dopamine hunting on Instagram or TikTok, or getting sucked into YouTube videos and suddenly the two hours you had spare have disappeared.

And that was a time that you should have been perhaps being creative and you end up in a bit of a cycle there of self recrimination. Well, I didn’t do that. I didn’t do the thing that I should have been doing. I wasn’t creative. I’m a terrible person. Well, this is just me, I have to live with that.

And I think that all these things can come into play at some point in terms of stopping you from starting.

We’ll delve down on all of these, perhaps some of them in great detail in the future. And I could sit here for a really long time now going through each of those and explaining why these things happen in detail and how to overcome them and why they are often false methods of thinking and we’ll come to that in the future but I wanted this first episode to feel positive so I want to talk about how to just get started.

So I’m going to talk about how I get started and I’m also going to cover off a few of the misconceptions about getting started and getting on your way for your creative project or endeavor.

So I don’t, I didn’t plan a lot. I don’t think a lot about the artworks that I produce. My process is, is naturally spontaneous. I think this comes from the ADHD half of my brain. I get bored with projects really quickly. So if I, like some artists, create lots of sketches, lots of studies to build up to a final piece that then you finally can get stuck into and start working on. By the time I’ve got through my third sketch and study, I’m bored with the idea I’ve talked myself out of it, or I’ve just got distracted by a shiny new thing, a new idea.

I’ve had so many false starts by trying too hard to start, trying too hard to make something that I had in my head at that moment in time. And I actually find it best to just to act on my ideas as soon as they come into my head. The reason I can do this , and actually ever finish anything, is because I always have multiple things on the go at the same time.

I’ve set my studio, my life, my approach up, so I can react to ideas as they come to me and I can set priorities. And so I might have a commission on, of course that takes precedence, especially if I’ve got a time limit on it. I don’t really like it as it is, but there’s probably something here, or even if there isn’t, I’ll just stop and I will put that aside and I will go back to one of the other pieces I was working on or I will start a new piece. And I always used to think that this was a terrible thing, so I’ll never go back to these. But actually what I found is that if I give myself a little break, a holiday, and that can be anything from a day to, to a year or two to several years.

In some cases, I’ve got pieces of artwork that I’ve been working on, on and off for literally four years. And I’m fine with that because I’ve always got new things churning through. So I do revisit them. And I’ll, I’ll either finish the idea that I was on or I will take it in a new direction.

And that’s a new start. It’s a new beginning. Well, here’s a piece. I look at it now and I think about it totally differently. And so I start taking that in a new direction, which for me is a new piece of art, it’s a new idea.

And because I’ve relaxed my rules on on things like perfectionism, because I don’t worry too much about things having to be finished or looking perfect, I don’t mind starting new things and going on to other things, because it’s all part of the process and that’s really important to me, because it means I don’t find it hard to start.

Now it’s worth bearing in mind that I am I’m in a bit of a fugue state at the moment, I’ve just finished a really big, commission that was really amazing and creative and some of the best work I’ve ever done. And I’ve sort of stopped and so much of my creative energy and my time went into that.

But I didn’t stop, I immediately started making new canvases, I immediately started playing around and just making a mess. And and I took some old ideas that I had. And I just started playing around with them and shoving them on canvases, and they’re not very good.

And I’m looking at one now thinking, Okay, it’s fine. And, and maybe I’ll pick it up later today. Or maybe I’m just gonna stick it aside. But that’s just fine. And I almost look forward to that moment when I get back to it.

Then that’s how you get started. And I think Just breaking that barrier and just doing something, anything, just take a piece of paper out and start scribbling on it. Start up your PC, record yourself talking about something, start tapping some words into a, into a document, just do anything to just do something. Don’t be judgmental about it. Don’t look at a sketch you just did. did and think, well, that took me about 10 minutes and it’s rubbish and it wasn’t worth doing.

Just move on to the next one. If you look back at it and you think, well, this isn’t okay. I don’t think this is very good, then fine, right? Put it aside, start something new. And that’s what’s really important to be doing things and to be not to be critical about the things that you’re doing while you’re doing them.

You’re constantly making choices little criticisms as you go along when you’re making a work of art. And that’s how the creative process works. That’s what how when you start at one point, and you finish at another, you end up with something that when it started was just nothing was a blank canvas.

And at the end is something beautiful, because you took lots of little creative and critical decisions as you go along, and criticism part of the process, and you have to just let it flow. That’s why beginnings are so important. That’s why starting something is important because you’re looking for that flow and we’ll go into flow states later on, probably in quite some depth, but if you can trigger one of these flow states, when you get into that mode of concentration, where the world falls away and you’re sucked into that activity, that’s going to have such a profound effect in terms of keeping you moving and taking you on to the next idea and moving you through that creative process.

One of the most important and immediate effects you get from art is those flow states that break the cycles of ruminant, destructive thinking that personify so many people’s poor mental health or mental illness. And anxiety is a response to something that’s happened, perhaps in the outside world, but how you’re reacting to it in your own head.

And this is where you get things like cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, which looks to break those cycles of destructive thoughts and some people find that type of therapy really, really valuable. And it was less so for me, it pales into comparison to me being able to get into these artistic flow states.

Now, my mental health is very variable and has been for my whole life. And I think that being creative and having art as a creative outlet hasn’t cured my problems of anxiety, I will never cure those. So I need to manage my mental health you Permanently and so I’ve built the opportunities to create these flow states to create these creative interludes Into my life into my calendar into my schedule into my daily routine And so I have at least an hour every day in my studio free from other people free from constraints responsibilities chores anything like that I come into my studio and I do whatever I want I can let the world fall away and just relax and get rid of some of those anxious ruminant thoughts, those persistent ideas or, or that urge to be doing something or being productive in some other way.

And I can relax and I really, really do relax. And I want to just zone in on one particular sort of misconception , because I do talk about being in my studio and being myopically focused on the creative process. But that suggests that I’m bringing my whole self to that creative process at that moment, that I’m focused on the process, I’m focused on the creative act.

And I think this is one of the biggest and most pernicious and dangerous misconceptions that stops people from starting on any creative journey is this idea that you have to bring your whole self, that you have to bring your whole self and then that has to spew out onto the page or the canvas, and that it has to mean something.

I think this is such a dangerous way of thinking. And it’s probably one of the biggest contributors to procrastination. You don’t have to bring your whole self. This is not what this is about. Yourself is going to leak out everywhere in everything you do, whether you want to or not you don’t have to think about that process. It happens naturally, the moment you start creating. And so you don’t have to just say, well, I have to be here focused and doing just this one thing. I write blog posts while watching the television. I draw and paint while listening to. podcasts, I conceive of ideas while out walking, I constantly am churning things in my head, I’m never doing one thing at a time.

And I never bring my whole self to any given task. I simply can’t sit and watch the TV, I’m not capable, but I still love the things that I can watch on the TV, I but I’m never doing just that.

I’m always doing something creative on the side. And I try and do things that don’t distract me from what I’m trying to watch on the TV. But most people these days anyway, are sitting there with their phone in one hand, trying to doom scrolling through their social media feed and only half paying attention to what’s on the TV to the point where TV makers now acknowledge this and that scripts and formats and TV formats are created so that you can experience them without paying whole attention .

For someone like me, that’s a godsend. And it means I can do something like drawing which doesn’t doesn’t take me out of what’s happening on, the TV, but allows me to do something with my hands, allows me to relax more into something and to practice my creative skills and to, to make something beautiful.

I don’t do much with those drawings and the drawings aren’t the point there. It’s a relaxation. It’s, it’s the process I’m going through and it’s the ability to engage my brain in something that takes me away , from the world around me.

I’m going to come back to this theme a hell of a lot, that I thoroughly believe in art as a medium of connection and communication, but that’s only part of what’s going on. And that you need to. Remember that the process itself is just as important as all the individual pieces, selling or showing or getting feedback.

The whole process is the therapy. And I’m going to go into this in a lot more detail in the next episode, where we talk about process in a bit more detail and why it’s so important and valuable. So I’m going to start rabbiting on now.

I’m going to start setting a bit of homework and we’ll keep this quite easy to begin with. I want you to just go off and do something,. I want you to pick up a pad and any writing or drawing implement and just start scribbling. I want you to open up a notepad or word or something on your computer and just start writing it doesn’t matter what whatever’s in your brain at that moment in time i want you to go and dust off that old guitar you’ve got in the corner of your spare room and just start strumming away don’t even bother tuning it just make some noise same if you’ve got a piano or the old casio keyboard in your cupboard dust it off go and make a bit of noise you Do whatever it is, just do something and do it for 10 minutes.

All I’m asking is for 10 minutes of whatever it is that you think might help you stimulate some creative juices and then see how that makes you feel and reflect on not the finished piece, just look back and focus on the experience.

So that’s all for now. And I’ll see you next time.

If you want to find out more about me, I can be found on Facebook at Alex Loveless artist at Instagram at Alex M Loveless. And my website is alexloveless. co. uk