Yesterday I was reflecting on the previous blog post, I was toggling between my inner critic and having a healthy sense of critique helping my work to develop. I considered that my article was dealing with three themes that could have been fleshed out more. So here goes...
1. Creative practice as a visual, conceptual and physical action benefits everyone
2. It is about balance: Even artists get blocked and spin out if they are not moving in fact Julia Cameron started movement on that premise with her book The Artists Way. Helping blocked artists to heal, process and carry on making work.
3. It takes commitment and work on a daily basis.
But how?
Last year I went to the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town and I saw Andrew Buckland and Sylvain Strike’s Firefly. I was fortunate enough to be there on the night that the LAMTA performance students were watching and so the theatre hosted a Q&A afterwards. Andrew Buckland spoke about the AHA moment he had had as a young performer. He was sharing a living space with a musician who would practice in the lounge everyday. The musician asked Andrew when he worked his craft and Andrew sheepishly said at university the previous year. This prompted him to take more daily action.
If you don’t know who Andrew Buckland is, he is a South African award wining actor, director and mime artist - and a very generous kind person and teacher. He played the role of Sergeant Pepper in the Las Vegas production of LOVE: THE BEATLES with the Cirque du Soleil when he was in his mid fifties in 2008/9. And that is not aimed at being ageist it is aimed at saying that with a consistent daily practice of movement and honing in your craft you are capable of amazing things and long productive career. I saw Firefly in 2022 and there is no way I could keep up with Andrew’s physical performance.
My Qi gong teacher speaks frequently about how the nature of a daily practice is such that you are bound to become stronger. He says that the last time he saw his teacher, who is in his seventies, he was five years stronger than the previous time he had seen him. There is living proof that the concept of obsolescence and that we wither away as we age is exactly that, it’s an idea and often a self-professing one that we use to block our ability and creative practice.
If you are twenty and you don't move your body you will not be agile it all takes action and a choice to mobilise the body, mind and the spirit.
There are some very simple exercises you can do: roll your wrists, wiggle your toes, get up from your desk, computer and mobilize your body. Lie down on the ground (just get up from one side and very slowly lifting your head last) and breathe.
Take a pen or pencil and put it on a page and draw a page of circles. You will be surprised at how you feel after that. Do it daily and see what happens.
In 2010, prompted by Julia Cameron's morning pages - after my family was processing going through a motor neuron disease, which my father passed away from - I began writing and drawing daily. None of it made any sense in the moment. Much of the practice was counter my education of having to have theme, and, for my work to develop into a conceptual project. But I continued because instinctively it felt like it was helping me remain sane. It was only later, with a few years retrospect, that I began to understand that it was practice, like warm up stretches, sweeping the floor, airing out the house and cleaning the gutters making room for my work and my life to happen.
I worked at the University of the Witwatersrand back then in 2008-2011 and I had a very talented young artist student who used to come and sit at my desk and spin out showing me his wild crazy ink pen (like a blotchy Bic pen) drawings. He asked me what he could do to improve and before I could think I said: "what exercise do you do?" He said nothing but he used to run - that guy had so much energy I think he could be a trail runner of epic proportion. He began running and the combination of the exercise, humour and energy that guy had produced these amazing works. That was when I realised the value of the mark as expression of self and how much it takes to let go and trust the process.
https://www.instagram.com/moniquepelserstudio/
Drawing by it's very nature is process orientated. You start with a mark which becomes a line and it develops into an image. Making drawings you are therefore processing. My name is Monique Pelser I am a South African artist, producer, researcher, educator, creative recovery coach and Qi Gong practitioner.
I teach drawing as a skill as well as a wellness practice to children and adults in my doodles sessions.
On this channel I share the experiences and insights I have gained in my life and research process.
The methods I use are breathing, drawing and writing and are used to support self-awareness, focus, self-development as well as creative problem solving. I am the founder of Doodles Daily Drawing.
When you strengthen the individual you strengthen the corporation. When you strengthen the corporation you strengthen the world.
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