Why No Experience is Pointless in the Creative Process

30/8/2017

No experience is wasted in the creative process - Shaun McNiff quote

We’re so judgemental, aren’t we? This drawing I did is crap. That course was a waste of time. I didn't get anything useful from reading that book...

We want our productivity to be linear and all of our experiences to yield immediate results.

Sorry to tell you but life isn’t really like that. And neither is making art.

But when I was at art school I didn’t realise that.

For all the wrong reasons I chose Theatre Design for my degree. (For wrong reasons substitute: pleasing my parents, thinking I wasn’t ‘talented’ enough to be a fine artist, and so on.)

Throughout those three years I struggled against the course. I loathed the tutors. I found it difficult to get on with most of the other students. Making scale models drove me nuts. You get the gist.

I wanted to be somewhere else doing something else. I looked longingly at the sculpture department. I even liked the people better there.

What hindsight teaches us about our creative path

A million years later I see that there valid reasons for me choosing that theatre course.

I still love the theatre. There’s something about the minimalism of a live performance that really resonates with me. Everyone does so much with so little.

And the shared experience between those on the stage and off the stage is something magical.

Not only that but much of what I considered to be a hellish, erroneous experience has filtered into the work I make: My work is filled with stories, costumes and scenarios.

In fact, right now I’m actually working on creating some postcard-size dioramas.

Essentially they’re toy theatres.

The wrong place to look for your Unique Creative Voice

So why are so many of us are running around looking for our unique creative voice, the way to stand out in a crowded market?

Why don’t we recognise that we already have the richest source of that imaginable right within us?

We’re the sum of our experiences.

All our experiences. Good AND bad - if we must label them that way.

It’s expressing our individual reality that gives us our unique voice.

It’s the source.

When we apply what we’ve seen and done to our chosen medium, the work has energy. It resonates. It speaks.

Speaks with OUR unique voice.

So the next time you do a ‘bad’ painting, sign up for the ‘wrong’ course or just wish you were anywhere but where you are, please remember me and embrace the moment.

It’s part and parcel of what’s going to make you stand out.