What is frustrating today is that after a few incidents that hampered the creative process, I’ve been having difficulty juicing the throttle, and getting back in to productive gear. Everyone knows you cannot force creativity. To do so dilutes the process and the result. It becomes clearly evident in the work and easily noticeable in the dull idea derived behind the image.

Sometimes the hardest part is just igniting the initial idea to develop from. This is really the spark of the match for me, where the flame begins to get hot, and the light from the fire reveals where I can go with newborn thought. But, there also needs to be the right music and mood lighting, metaphorically, for the process to continue. And when your surroundings present themselves as fingernails-on-chalkboard, one must first work to clean house before looking for the creative matchbox, otherwise you are left trying to make fire in the rain.

Maybe these moments of being the tortured artist, whether at the level of a pissed off raincheck holder or a suicidal maniac, is just the universe’s way of stirring things up and adding flavor to the soup. I sat during morning tea today thinking about the viscosity of my ink and how beautiful it was. How it would drip off my squeegee and how you have to levitate it over parts of the screen to prevent spotting, as if knowing how to caress a woman erotically. And this brief moment to me was where the ultimate beauty lies, the parts of the image and the work the observer rarely sees, the live action drip where it all comes together. Chromatic plasma bubbling around minutes before paper even comes in to play. If frustration and life gets us down, sometimes it is the simple memories that take us back to the moment of discovery so crucial to creative production.