Express Your Weirdest Self

Wandering through Space to find home again.

Stuck in Your Art?

When it comes to a blank notebook, why do we run from our personal reality and weirdest truths in pursuit of something “correct”? What if your weird thoughts are the best ones to put on the page?

My weird is zoomed out concepts like “Big History” and “Deep Reality” (I only made up one of these two phrases). I am an animist at the same time, believing that the further into Science and conscious experiences we wander, the more absurd reality shows itself to be and the more alive all Existence seems. 

In exploration of these concepts, I have gleaned an ability to experience different perspectives, what I call “zoomed in” and “zoomed out”. I believe the ability to wander between these points of view can be an asset in your attempts to discover something new to express in your art, something honest and true.

Zooming in and out

You’ve awed at the spectacular photographs of our planet Earth, as seen from Space. You’ve seen photos of Galaxies and crazy awesome Nebula clouds taken by our satellite telescopes far from Earth. From these zoomed out perspectives our lives are quite small and short. 

Zoom in and realize our bodies could not function without myriad symbiotic relationships with microscopic lifeforms, which in turn could not exist without us. And then you see how enormous and long-lived we are, planet sized with so much life bettered by you just being alive.

How This Can Help

The contrast of the zoomed in and zoomed out perspectives help me define a world in which what I care about matters, in which things that overwhelm me can be managed over time with help from other humans and art-making and Science. 

I also, as mentioned, love a world in which all things have Spirit imbued - simply by virtue of these things existing. I mean, have you studied Chemistry? Not just life, but ALL things, are very weird and esoteric deep down below what we percieve to be the surface. What we perceive through our biased human senses is like an illusion, a hologram, a shadow on the wall of what trully is - a map of reality.

But What About…

These concepts can be hard to hold when simply trying to get through a work-a-day life. But when you are faced with the stark white of a blank page, it can be helpful to ground down into the freedom offered by an awareness of your self as superorganism, within an enormous and largely unknown Universe (or, as I prefer, Multiverse). 

We are offered an unimaginably wide array of overlapping potentialities. And we can jump between them with each choice we make, even if the differences are small from an outside persepctive.  I want to harness the energy from a joyous, playful life when I paint in my journals, even if I can’t manage to sustain that energy in the rest of the day. Of course I hope this spirit of play can carry on through into other parts of my life. Art making as such is a practice to try to do just that. Bring play into our lives even in a messed up world.

Seriously, Let Go

I love to explore with color and line, to interpret scenes of life or simply watch the emergence of shape forms as they spill from my constantly moving hand. When too serious and weighed down by virtuous ideals of “what should be,” I can lose that looseness required for free expression. 

I am proposing Serious Play. Seriously letting go of human-scale worries, to better portray them if you wish. Step out of your usual gaze and look down at yourself from above, or feel the whole world from within. There are so many directions to go it can be paralyzing, but if you can simply shake off the shackles of responsibility for fifteen minutes, two hours, whatever you have - you can make something true, something real. Art that mirrors your own weird reality - whether fictitious or directly observational, and everywhere in between. It is by accepting yourself as a unique filter of your experiences that you can access this power. Even if that art is doodles on junk mail - it all counts! You matter. Your weird art matters.