The Path of Least Resistance for Artists: The Structure and Spirit of the Creative Process

Some of the most creative people are both ambitious and lazy. “There’s got to be a better way,” often leads to new strategic steps in which radical ideas sometimes cause dramatic changes. Think Google and countless other internet services that challenged tradition. They can support your creative process. Isn’t it more convenient to Google some area

The love artists have is generative, not responsive. Romantic love is responsive. You meet and then you fall in love. The situation first, the love second. But for the artist, the love predates the situation. The filmmaker loves the film before the film is made. The painter loves the painting before paint touches canvas. The choreographer loves the

If you are an artist, you do not have resistance you need to overcome. You simply need to understand how to set up your underlying structure in such a way that the path of least resistance leads to creating the work you want to create.

Originality means nothing. It is the power of the artistic vision that counts. As time passes, most things original will not be original. Fashions, styles, forms, flairs, and what’s in vogue, all will pass. The fashion will become out of date, the style will change, the flair will fizzle, and we will wonder why anyone was shocked. What will always

There are three unique domains we will cover: the mechanics, the orientation, and the spirit of the creative process.

“Many – perhaps all-natural systems obtain their organization and energy from the interaction of opposites,” writes Christopher Alexander in his classic book The Nature of Order.

Neither approach can be productive. We need to have both elements, which means to narrow our attention on what we are creating, while, at the very same time, broaden our awareness to allow unimagined insight to surface.

This point is important for the artist to understand. The audience will fully engage if the universe you create has its own integrity, its own rules that are consistent within itself, independent of how the world really works. It also needs to be worth spending time with.

Perhaps it is important to note that laziness is often joined at the hip with high aspiration. You want to achieve something that matters to you, and that, combined with a good dose of laziness, motivates you to rethink your basic fixed premises.