Up: [[Expressive Art]] Created: 2025-06-18 Updated: 2026-02-09 > [!Orbit] [[C. G. Jung]] > When the safeguards of specific ideas fall away, unlimited possibilities emerge. > [!Orbit] [[C. G. Jung]] in *Aims of Psychotherapy, CW16* > …my patients might imagine themselves to be artists, and the whole point of the exercise would be missed. It is not a question of art at all — or, rather, it should not be a question of art—but of something more and other than mere art, namely the living effect upon the patient himself. (para. 104) The above quote is from 1929, making C.G. Jung likely the world’s first art therapist! > [!orbit] [[C. G. Jung]] and C. Douglas in *Visions: Notes of the seminar given in 1930-1934, Vol.1* >….in order to hold an inner experience, it is…a necessity for certain people to see it expressed in external physical form. That is such an important point that one really might be tempted to call it a method, but I do not feel quite safe because these things are very delicate and complicated. (p.6) > [!Orbit] Andre Breton > Trust in the inexhaustible nature of the murmur. > [!Orbit] Unknown > Make art that hands a paintbrush to your heart, not to your mind. > [!Orbit] Shaun McNiff in *Trust the Process: An artist’s guide to letting go* > The discipline of creation is a mix of surrender and initiative. We let go of inhibitions, which breed rigidity, and we cultivate responsiveness to what is taking shape in the immediate situation. (p. 2) > [!Orbit] Helen Hallows from post *What is Art For?* in *The Wild Path* Substack > The act of making art has to embody the feelings you wish to express. In order to achieve that you have to slow, and be present. You have to flow and be confident. You have to tap into an unknown, unquantifiable space and with faith work out into the open. You have to be brave and soft all at the same time. Keep living with your soul wide open and make art from that space within. > [!Orbit] Helen Hallows from post *What is Art For?* in *The Wild Path* Substack > Stuff the pages of your sketchbook with the fullness of life, the mess, the clarity, the accidental, the colour, the subdued. Once your sketchbook is full up, then you can edit, curate and find your voice in the mess. Nothing is born fully formed. Dance with the anarchy of creativity. > [!Orbit] Shaun McNiff in *Trust the Process: An artist’s guide to letting go* > If we are able to stay with a situation, it will carry us to a new place. (p. 22) > [!Orbit] Shaun McNiff in *Trust the Process: An artist’s guide to letting go* > To pre-meditate is to strive to make something before it is made. Creative expression doesn’t work this way. Creation is a process that cannot be programmed. It is an immediate meditation focused on discovery and there is always an emphasis on ‘epiphany,’ a religious term for that which arrives unannounced. This unplanned aspect pervades both creative and spiritual phenomena, and it is the basis for their integration. (p. 65) > [!Orbit] Shaun McNiff in *Trust the Process: An artist’s guide to letting go* > Withhold your desire for outcomes….. You have to be where you are as completely as possible. Free play is the best way to achieve this committed presence because there is no expectation beyond the activity pursued for its own sake. (p. 116) > [!Orbit] Shaun McNiff in *Trust the Process: An artist’s guide to letting go* > Everything depends upon your attitude and your commitment to the creative imagination. But don’t place too many demands on yourself. Realize that you are not the total river of creation. You are in the river, in the process, and it will carry you where you need to go. (p. 210) > [!Orbit] Richard Diebenkorn > I don’t go into the studio with the idea of “saying” something. What I do is face the canvas and put a few arbitrary marks on it that start me on some sort of dialogue. > [!Orbit] Claude Monet > When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects are before you. Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here is a streak of yellow, and paint it all exactly until it yields your own naive impression of the scene. > [!Orbit] Stephen Nachmanovitch in *Free Play: Improvisation in life and art* > Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender. (p. 21) > [!orbit] Rick Rubin in *The Creative Act* > The act of creation is an attempt to enter a mysterious realm. A longing to transcend. What we create allows us to share glimpses of an inner landscape, one that is beyond our understanding. Art is our portal to the unseen world. (p. 31) > [!Orbit] Rick Rubin in *The Creative Act* > If you know what you want to do and you do it, that’s the work of a craftsman. If you begin with question and use it to guide an adventure of discovery, that’s the work of the artist. (p. 153) > [!Orbit] Thomas Merton > There is in us an instinct for newness, for renewal, for a liberation of creative power. We seek to awaken in ourselves a force which changes our lives from within. > [!Orbit] Frederic Leighton > The true function of art is not to tell us what is or what is not, but to set free in us the glorious faculty of imagination. > [!Orbit] [[Lynda Barry]] in *Syllabus: Notes of an accidental professor* > Both writing and drawing lean on a certain kind of picturing -- not the kind that is already finished in your head and just needs to be put to words or reproduced on paper -- it's a kind of picturing that is formed by your own activity, one line suggesting the next. We have a general direction but can't see where we are until we let ourselves take a step, and then another, and then we move on to the third. (p. 136) > [!Orbit] Helen Brammer-Savlov > If I am working intuitively or spontaneously, trusting what comes, and not worrying about my technique (which she hopes I’m not), then this is what is coming from my unconscious. Her exact words were poetic as they so often are — *Consciousness dips down to meet what comes up from the unconscious.* > [!Orbit] Ellen Gallagher > Collage is an art of intuition, where image and materials speak a language beyond words.