Reflections On Identity

The creative mind creates art, which rejoices in the abandonment of the fixed, yet the mind itself is created from the fixed. The pattern, the sequence, the order.

Glory is not of the fixed, but in the embrace of error. The re-patterning to something new and untested. We are here because the universe has the exact set of physical rules to allow us to evolve, yet we evolve through adaption and difference. This synergy of rules and disorder that we weave in the creation of artwork, can also be seen as an expression of our identity. The conflicted nature of personality, our simultaneous need for certainty and uncertainty, laying the foundation for us to embrace creative pursuits.

By letting go of our need to predict events, or our next brush stroke or word, we can begin to appreciate the vast resources of our subconscious minds. When we dream we visually construct stories from interconnected symbols, rather than everyday perception. Symbols that we associate based on feeling or meaning, rather than consciously learned physical rules (a tree as history, rather than shade).

Throughout my work on Identity in art, I’ve tried to understand this fine relationship between our unfiltered sub-conscious symbols, and the resulting conscious led output. Exercises such as my ‘Identity Mind Field‘ have helped to navigate this potential, as well as external resources such as Win Wenger’s Project Renaissance.

Ultimately, we are questioning what it is to be a creative individual. To take inspiration from our external environment, filter and process it according to the complex rules that we have built-up over our lifetime, and finally create something new from these strands.