Training the Wild Child

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

An Artist in His Studio John Singer Sargent

How many of us have started a work of art full of enthusiasm and excitement, only to wind up disappointed with an unfinished piece and no idea why? While there are many reasons for these false starts, they often can be attributed to the natural tendency of our minds to wander while we work. The human mind is a planning, analyzing and strategizing machine, and without those skills we would not have climbed up the evolutionary ladder. We sift through the past to avoid future mistakes and we plan our efforts for the future trying to predict possible outcomes. It is our default mode of thinking—that “voice in our heads”—and it normally serves us well. We are so good at this type of thinking that we can be largely unaware that we are doing it, and this is where the trouble can start for us when we try to create.

Creative work requires a quiet, focused mind to be successful. The optimum creative mental condition can be …