Paradigm Shift

I have found that my work follows a series of what I would call spikes and plateaus. I will work at a level for a period of time and then all the sudden I get this feeling that a spike is pending. There is a feeling that is like a thought that has remained just outside your awareness. We've all felt times when we have something on the tip of our tongue and just can't formulate it into words. It can be very uncomfortable.

As artists I would guess we all go through this differently but that is how I would describe it myself. Once that jolt hits nothing is ever the same again. The work I just posted recently seems years ago, by another artist but it was just a few weeks ago. That's how much things can alter. It was not as instant as it seemed, the plateau was the incubation period. A time of subconscious growth while working away at the drawing at hand.

I don't think nerve, confidence or bravery has much to do with it. It is just something that needs to happen or I burst! It's part of the natural growth process. Someone much wiser than I once said something like this... "a mind once expanded by knowledge can never resume it's original shape". I have to learn who said that, it sums things up pretty well. Might have been Oscar Wilde.