Exploring the Image of the Self as Artist

self-enquiry questions for kindling creative practice

In my recent essay On Stopping, Starting, Faltering and Continuing, I shared my experience of reengaging with creative practice after a long period of chronic illness. Apart from the desire to write, after so long being unable to write; and to voice, after the experience (more than a year) of being unable to speak more than two minutes at a time (believe me, I timed them); there was a strong wish to look at the experiences we all have as creative people and to hold the commonalities as well as narrate my own particularities. As someone who’s worked as an arts educator, creative writing teacher and creative mindfulness mentor I’ve had the privilege of being intimately involved in others’ creative processes for years and have been in a position to witness consistent themes.

And so the idea has formed since writing the essay, to also offer a series of creative self-enquiry pieces here on my new Substack home which would sit alongside my own personal essays and creative practice. I hope these might become a container to help you hold some of the questions you may have around your own creative practice and process, that cyclical experience of stopping, starting, faltering and continuing we all share.

“Rob Burbea calls this the image of the self as artist. He pairs this intra-psychic image with another, the held image of the artwork - two images linked by what he identifies as a dual eros.”

So I’m starting with a series of questions around the image of the self as artist. Please do read my essay including footnotes for more of an understanding of this framing of what we do as creatives.

Composer and Buddhist teacher, Rob Burbea talks of the image of the self as artist, but some of us struggle with feeling any kind of legitimacy around using that word, and some of us identify more concretely as writers, or musicians, or … gardeners. So we might also use the Greek term, creātrīx here. The Creātrīx - or (genitive) Creātricis, or (masculine) Creātor - take your pick, being a creator seeking the vision of their soul’s desire, bringing inspiration from the depths of their spirit with a pure eros to create. This word and its associations fits nicely with Burbea’s ideas which are located in Soulmaking, which he defines (at least partially) as ensouling or filling life with more beauty, sacredness and mythos.

It’s also worth saying before I go any further that the word image is also entirely open to your own interpretation of it. Personally, my image is more of a visceral and emotional knowing, an (almost) unwavering sense of myself. I might call it a sense-image. So please do think of and use both these terms and ideas elastically. Writers may experience themselves as a narrative for example. Everyone will be different. You can use them any way you want to connect with the essence of your own creative self.

So to begin: these questions would be best approached first in quiet time or meditation, but they can also be journaled about, or simply mulled over when out for a walk. Let them grow and engender new understandings and insights. If you wish, you can share what you discover in a comment on this piece. Or restack with a note with your reflections - which would also help to spread the word about what I am starting here on Substack. (Thank you kindly.)

Do you have an image or sense of yourself as artist, or writer, composer - whatever your creative medium is? Is this a visual image? If so is it still or a movie like the metaphor I used in my essay? What are you doing in this image? Are you viewing yourself from the outside or experiencing from within? Or perhaps your image is a felt image, or an intuited or a heard one? Sense into this. Sit with it a while - does it stay the same or shift, develop, fade in and out, change in some other way? Where do you feel it in your body? What emotions or thoughts arise with it? Do you recognise yourself, does it look or feel like you? It might not. It might not have a body, it might be a colour, an energy, a presence, a feeling. We are working with the imaginal here, so it could conceivably be anything.

Allow sense-images to arise and trust them. Don’t manufacture an image if there is none, or strain for anything. Don’t second guess what emerges. Just be receptive. Perhaps, expect it to take its time to appear; or for it not to look, feel, appear as you expected - then there’ll be less pressure and you might discover something you didn’t already know. (I can surprise me - is one of my current affirmations.) Or possibly there are layers to this image (hint, there almost certainly are), combining multiple sensitivities, characteristics, emotions, feelings, nuances, histories. Give yourself time to get to know this image of yourself as artist, and how you carry it within yourself. Much of this may be beyond words. Simply sense into it. Trust your intuition.

If you don’t have or can’t find an image of yourself as artist now, but are a regular, semi-regular, occasional or stopped creator, get curious about this. (Rather than worried.) To name ourselves as artist or creator requires many things, some of these we struggle with. Self worth, self belief, a sense of entitlement - for example. So be gentle with this enquiry, be kind with what comes up for you around it. Be mindful of the thoughts and feelings, see if you can be a friendly witness to the old hurts or insecurities rather than getting swamped by them. This is a tender act. And if you can’t find an image, perhaps there’s a story, or a voice in your head speaking of your dream or wish to be an ‘artist’. What does it say? And does an image form around it? And if there isn’t, just imagine that there is an image of yourself as artist. What might it be, what might it encompass? Who are you in that secret place that no one else goes - your imaginal studio? What do you do there? Yes, please do use your wildest imagination.

So many other questions you could ask once you have connected with your self-image. When and how did it form? How has it changed over the years? Has it changed? Perhaps it hasn’t. You may also like to reflect on how you have related to this image either knowingly, half-knowingly or unconsciously throughout your life. How has it influenced your choices and directions?

And finally, there is this question of eros. (Again, please reference my original essay to understand this in context.) How does this image kindle you? What kind of charge does it hold? How does this charge act upon you and your life and your creativity? Or how does it act as container for your passion, your love for who you are and what you do?

And once you’ve found it. Return it to often. Kindle this connection and this image even if you have stopped and don’t know how or when you will get started again. Especially then.