There are two ways we can go here. We can embrace our influences and work towards incorporating them as much as we can while still maintaining our originality, or, we can shut them out and see where our mind wanders when it finds itself in unfamiliar territory.
So what does this mean really?
1) Embracing our influences.
How do we go about incorporating everything we love and still remain truthful to ourselves? The key is in our awareness. In order to include or exclude anything we must be aware of our inclinations and that is why my previous post was important. If you haven't done a little self study exercise go and do so.
Once we know why it is we do the things we do; we are free to pick and choose which techniques, which feelings, which voice to incorporate into any given project. Not only can we choose what we want to do openly, we will recognize when we are losing ourselves amongst our influences.
2) Shutting out our influences.
In the opposite direction we can attempt to abandon what we know and forge ahead into uncharted territory. This is going to be more difficult as our influences are so ingrained into us that they may even form the basis of our creativity. However, we can take drastic measures here. If we normally write in prose, we may switch to poetry. If we normally paint in oil, we can switch to sculpture. If we are comfortable in sewing, what would happen if we picked up a paper art? Changing mediums gives us a higher chance of leaving behind our influences and seeing our basic creative nature show through. Will we create a masterpiece? It's unlikely. We will though, get in touch with ourselves and how we work when our instincts are challenged. We will have fun and we will learn. Teaching ourselves how to be creative in a new way will help us to carry over those new techniques into our medium of choice. Like remapping our brains, we will be able to see things afresh and it may be the key to breaking out of a creative rut.
I hope you take some time for self reflection. Think about your influences and what they mean to you. Be aware of why you do the things you do and it will only elevate your art. All the best to you in your endeavors.
by H.E.Eigler of Maternal Spark
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3 comments:
I'm definitely pondering this because I can't answer the questions you've posed. It's interesting though!
this is interesting and thought provoking. i finally found the creativity that i had been longing for in my photography. once i found that, i realized that my writing has gotten a little better. but it wasn't until i decided to chanel that creative energy into my writing. reckless abandon of my influences? perhaps! thanks for posting this. i didn't recognise it until i read this.
Definitely some good food for thought here. I think I might have to "work" to ignore my core influences. They are so unconscious that it would take a mental effort to recognize them. I do this sometimes, though, when I want to use an image or metaphor and realize I've used it before.
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