Gold, Aviva. Painting From the Source: Awakening the Artist's Soul in Everyone. New York: Harper/Collins, 1998.
Aviva Gold's book Painting From the Source is a guidebook to creativity that is presented in layman's terms without getting into the "heady" issues of art that often accompany books on this same topic. Gold's writing style is straight-forward and addresses the issues of creating with more freedom and tapping the inner source of creativity.
Gold addresses everything that a willing new artist could possibly ask. Everything from what paints to use, how to set up a studio, how to overcome anxiety, how to write about the work that you create, etc. It's all in here! Gold keeps the text in a beginning level artist's tone. It seems easier to read and helped me to relax as I was reading it. It wasn't written from a psychological, scientific, or research point of view, but from one artist speaking to another. This is what makes the book so appealing to me.
In the chapter How to Maintain Your Creative Source Connection (188), Gold gives strategies to keeping the source alive in your life. Some of the strategies include:
- Make a paint schedule.
- Join an Arts Anonymous or Artist's Way group.
- Have genuine contact with others who are involved with creative process work.
- View paintings, originals, or copies, that move and excite you. Read books or poems, see movies, listen to music, and attend theater that attracts you and stirs the source within.
- Spend time in places for which you have a natural affinity - the woods, the desert, the seashore, or the middle of a bustling city. Try to spend some time in the types of climates and settings that make your body comfortable.
- Ask for dreams each night to guide and inspire you.
I've tried many of these techniques in the past and found the most successful for me to be viewing paintings that move and excite me. I think I've lost track of this somewhere along the way. I used to be extremely excited about artists of the past and now I find it hard to turn to them for inspiration. It may be that I've moved to a different level of painting. It may be that I'm not viewing other artist's works from a students point of view anymore, but from just an admirer's view. As an example, I don't seem to get thrilled by the way a brushstroke is applied in another artist's work any longer. I see the work as a whole and try to figure out what the driving force was behind the artist's work. What were the artist's intentions? I'd like to return to the interest that I had in the past.
From my experience, I've found that trying to keep a schedule of when to paint is pretty much hopeless for me. I find that I paint depending on my mood and how much I want to say in paint. It's not an "on and off" thing with me. I can't paint when a schedule dictates it. I paint when I need to paint. In addition to this, I find from past experience that working in artist's groups are not the thing for me. I find that my intentions shift from painting for myself to painting to impress the group. I don't want this additional interference when painting. I'd rather keep painting a personal exploration that I can dictate what and when I paint. Although I'd have to say that there is a collective energy that comes from painting in a group. It's an odd feeling because your focused primarily on what you're doing, yet you're aware that there are others that are equally focused. You are alone, but you're not alone. To stop and disrupt this process would put the entire group in creative jeopardy.
Another aspect of Gold's book that I found very helpful is that she includes artists with past experience in her reading. The book is written with a "totally collective artist's" attitude in mind. She addresses not only beginning artists' needs, but also veteran artists' needs as well. She'll give advice to the beginning artist first, then address veteran artists needs separate from the beginning artist's, yet in the end, they are both trying to achieve the same goal.