Breakneck Speed! The ART OF CREATIVE MANIA

Breakneck Speed! The Arts and Creative Mania.

Sometimes in Art the progress an artist makes comes fast and furious. Eating and sleeping become inconsequential. You rush headlong into creativity and time, days pass and you don’t know it.. you just don’t want to loose the momentum. Good Creative days coming one right after the other and you want to milk it for all its worth with out any interruptions from romantic admirers, friends that want to tell you all their problems that are the same problems they cant seem to solve over and over again, responsibilities of family, home repairs, shopping, doctors appointments, sleep.

Its more charged than speed or any other high.. you just zoom to your doom from exhaustion hoping that Providence will allow you the opportunity to finish. And those brief breaks that you take, you plead with God to increase your time so you can finish the task, bless your endeavor and help you accomplish it because you know you aren’t humanly capable of keeping up the pace. But you just don’t want it to end.

Among all this stark reality of the Creative Mania, you realize that not one member of your family or friends understands what you are doing, what you are going through, understands the passionate drive, that keeps you going on two hours of sleep and going with out food to paint and paint and paint… except God who has blessed you with, for the first time in months, something that is working, finally, the way you want it to.

Those thoughts and pictures in your head.. they are traveling thorough your hand finally to the paint and canvas and images are leaping out at you telling the story you want them to tell, the colors and brushes are giving you the effects you want them to show. This is the Blessing.. to have it all come together for as much time as you can keep it coming. Until it runs out.. and then you struggle again until the breakthroughs start again and you suddenly find there is technical control.. it happens with each new level you achieve in painting, in writing, in music. It is the Creative Process that drives you to passion, often drives your family crazy and marks you as a “selfish bugger” or… well it rhymes with itch. It drives away possible mates at breakneck speed because they know that they cant complete with what they suppose is your secret lover.

God understands it.. he put it in you. Sometimes a family member who shares it also understands. And once in a life time you meet a person of mate potential who not only understands it, but has it as well.. and when you pass as two ships in the night …you at least always have something to talk about, to share, to empathize with each other about, to encourage.

You pray in your small human life that God will bring you such a mate. That any children you have will also be inherently filled with it. That your patrons become so interested in what you are doing, they too will at least seek to learn about this Creative Process, so that even if they cant understand it, they can at least accept it as normal. That you aren’t really borderline insane .. you are in fact just really really focused.

Check out more of Linda Martin’s work at www.llmartin.comKeep up with the latest news about Linda’s work at http://llan.blogspot.com