Creativity is freedom
Creativity is freedom.
When you write or draw or make things or sing - you can do anything you want.
Put red here. Blue there. Burn it and begin again.
Write some words, fit them into sentences, read them back and reorder them so they sound like poetry.
Creative freedom is absolute within whatever limits exist.
It’s a nice puzzle. You’re not free, because there are limits, but within these limits, you are completely free.
The size of the page, the materials you have to work with, the level of skill you’ve developed, the amount of time you have to work. Inside of those limitations, you can do whatever you want.
I used to spend more time getting shitty at my limits than I did exploring the freedom within them. I hated that I didn’t have the skill to create the things I saw in my mind. I was too hung up on judging results I hadn’t even created yet, and hadn’t even noticed the freedom that was there for the taking.
I hadn’t noticed that playing freely within those limits helped to broaden them in unexpected ways, until I had the thought one day - I can write WHATEVER I WANT. Wow. And by the same token, I can DRAW whatever I want. Literally anything. Any words. Any images. Here, I found freedom.
I FELT the freedom in my body and my perspective shifted - instead of looking at all the things I couldn’t do, I was feeling free, and an interesting thing happened when I showed up from that place.
The limits shrunk, and more things became possible. Inspiration visited more often. Creativity got more creative - I wove words in new ways, I put colours on pages in combinations I’d never considered before. My level of skill increased and as it increased the limits shrank still further.
Some of the limits I thought were concrete turned out not to exist at all.
The size of the page is the size of the page, I can’t magically make it bigger, right? Unless I have another page, and a roll of tape… and the limit disappears.
After a time, these lessons spilled out into the rest of my life. I’m not free, because there are limits. But within these limits, I can do whatever I want. And more and more I find the limits I thought were there, exist nowhere but in my own mind.
This is one of the reasons I love art therapy - it creates a nice container for us to explore some of these things in a way that feels safe, before we try them out in the world. A way to push limits and find our freedoms, a way to understand ourselves and how we move in the world, and with time, to begin to move differently. Bigger. Brighter. With more freedom.
Want to explore your own relationship to limits and freedom? Things you thought you could never do, but maybe… those limits aren’t what you thought. I have room for another client this month :) Send me a message and let’s see if this kind of journey might be right for you right now. Freedom awaits....