Wednesday, January 5, 2011

So you're an artist?

My psychologist is more like a business and life coach than the typical stereotype of a 'shrink'.

If there even is a typical stereotype.

But I digress.

My psychologist twigged me onto a great Blog by a fellow artist who is also a musician and author. Summer Pierre is author of The Artist in the Office, a book my psychologist insisted I seek out. I'm ever so glad that I did!

I read the opening pages aloud to my partner. She cut me off part-way through to ask if I was certain the book had not been written by myself. I laughed but it's true that, as I read Summer's words I felt a strong sense of camaraderie.

This was all just before the holidays and I put the book to one side. I wanted to wait until I was back at my day job and more able to appreciate the worksheets provided throughout the book.

This morning, in the few minutes I had after getting ready and before I must leave to catch my train I curled up on my day-bed, The Artist in the Office and a pencil in hand. I didn't get far before I found my assignment for the day:
Evidence Collecting.

I actually ended up thinking about it as more of a treasure hunt but the outcome is the same. Spend the day collecting things you encounter and paste them to a sheet of paper or in a journal. Below is my end product, of which I am very pleased! It's a peculiar mis-match of my daily tasks and observations.

The other assignment I went for today was playing I-Spy on the train. As I was alone I needed to make it a personal challenge so I decided to pick a colour to seek out. I did a quick scan of the car to see what colour stuck out. There was a lot of red and a lot of navy and then my eyes fell on the headphones of a rather beefy gentleman sitting across from me. The long and twisted chord leading down to his black iPhone stood out quite noticeably against his black shirt, hoodie and sweatpants as it was bright orange.

I wrote the headphones down in my journal and began seeking out more orange. Initially it was quite difficult. I spotted an orange pencil in the hand of a man sitting further down the car. He was working on a Sudoku puzzle or a crossword. Then I recorded that the London Overground is shown as a double orange line on the tube map. Next to me on the seat was a crumple Oyster Card registration information pamphlet, coloured a light orange hue.

Once orange was stuck in my head it became much easier. There are the squares in the pattern of the Northern Line seats, the date line on the cover of an Evening Standard, the orange stripes on my rainbow scarf, the arrows and word 'Open' by the doors, Ryan Gosling's shirt on a movie poster when we stopped at Balham and of course, the scrolling text which announces what station we're coming up to and where the train terminates.

Suddenly orange was as abundant as the navy and red had been. I filled an entire page of my journal and could have filled another but my stop was coming up.

This book is turning out to be quite fun. I'm excited to play I-Spy tomorrow and to read on and discover more clever ideas for keeping my creativity flowing whilst working an almost entirely uncreative job.

1 comment:

  1. Oh my, I think I'm going to have to buy that!! Thank you. BTW Your psychologist sounds seriously cool!! Much love, as always!!
    Robin

    ReplyDelete

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