The Adjacent Possible® Blog

When it feels like you’re behind in your art, remember: You’re not behind. You’re catching up to something brilliant that’s already alive in you.

We want to see you in your art, not someone else’s idea of what you should or shouldn’t do or be 
 

It’s been said that playing is the work of childhood.
I believe it’s our work too, as adults, as artists.
We have a great deal to learn from the playful exploration of children. One of the world’s greatest innovators, Picasso, said that at 14 he could paint like Raphael but it took his whole life to paint like a child.

It costs not less than everything to seek the truth of your own expression, to trust yourself as an artist, and to finally create the elusive, deepest art that lives inside you.

The transformation of creating your deepest art lives at the edge of your struggle

From Shadows To Nuances

Changing direction from radiology to psychiatry, though seemingly unrelated on the surface, was in fact simply moving ‘from shadows to nuances’ as the late John Shillito,  neurosurgeon and éminence grise at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston told me at the time.

Stepping into the mystery, allowing ambiguity, and experiencing ‘not knowing’ was similar to my experience of painting. As my study of psychiatry deepened, my painting journey took off.

Experiencing the suddenly darkened exhibition was reminiscent of reading x-rays in the dusky, subterranean catacombs of the Radiology department.

Embrace “ugly paintings”. Ugly paintings are often nascent, embryonic forms of new work being born.

At the pivot point between creation and collapse, you’ll experience a state of poised instability. This is the art and science of the possible- a world of continuous creation.

At the pivot point between creation and collapse, you’ll experience a state of poised instability. This is the art and science of the possible- a world of continuous creation.