Flow State.

While walking upstairs, last night, my wife called me to the window. It was storming outside, which is always beautiful but this wasn’t quite a lightning storm. It seemed more like an electrical storm in the clouds. There was no audible thunder, just quick flashes of light, percolating in the sky. 

I find inspiration everywhere. Any moment an idea or an image hits me, I try to grab on to it. I have made it my practice to capture these thoughts. My phone storage lugs around thousands of pictures of quickly captured landscape shots and textured surfaces - future paintings or photoshop layers. That’s without mentioning the abundance of screenshots I’ve snatched for reference, for some future illustration or just an idea for a project. 

My Google Docs yearn for some sort of organization. New documents pile on top of the last ones, burying the words that haven’t been opened recently. I keep these notes and lists and thoughts for artwork, all stories in the process of being told, in my cloud. I want to be able to access them all. I need to add and edit and refine, when I am waiting for a given five minutes. I never know which thought is developing, until its growth hits me.

Maybe I prefer to live, juggling multiple creative endeavors at once. I have accepted that I will never be fully finished with every project that I conceive. All the while, I am trying to transform these fragments of ideas into completed works as life allows. This is why I work across mediums and styles. My best work is always different than what I have already created.

Perhaps I have simply fuelled my creative fire long enough that it has just become a compulsion. These systems are evidence that I have built my life to facilitate artistic outlets. To boil it all down though, takes an examination across all of the open tabs in my mind. Some days I need to paint and in doing so a painting emerges. Other days, I have to draw but specifically with my Lamy Safari Fountain Pen because it is the only tool that will articulate that vision onto the paper. I get frustrated with Photoshop, only because they keep “updating” it, but otherwise I know that a given project will only be made complete through Adobe.

The common denominator that I reach, across all of these mediums and practices is my obsession for flow state. I am beyond blessed to be able to pivot between projects and disciplines. When inspiration for artwork matures, somewhere in the back of my mind, I arrive at its method of expression. I have learned not to force a design or a painting. Coerised work always betrays its maker. My practice of capturing ideas allows for them to develop on their own, so that when they are ripe, they pour out of me. 

What I seek is the totally engulfing experience of creation. Flow state is when all of my focus is on the next line or the next brush stroke. This focus tunes my brain. It allows mental cramps and tangled synapses to unwind. At some point, I inevitably look at my watch and discover that several hours have passed. I stand back to look at my work and realize, I have tangibly captured uncountable moments of myself in the form of physical artwork. The materialization of flow state is an addicting reward. There is resolution to one of those brief moments or ideas that I had jotted down. A reference has been utilized to its full potential. A three word note can be deleted.