creativity Archives - Ingrid Murray

Art-Making is Your Birthright

A bunch of art supplies — mainly pens, paint, and pencils — shot from above.

When it comes to the art community, I fiercely defend everyone’s right to create, explore, make mistakes, and share their journey.

Creativity belongs to every single one of us. It’s a human birthright. From ancient handprints in the caves of France to weird contemporary art, the title of artist is not something you are only allowed to claim when you have graduated art school, launched a professional career, and are pulling in five-plus figures and are internationally recognized.

You are already creative; you are already an artist.

You are allowed to claim the title.

You are allowed to make good art, shitty art, weird art. You get to try new things and new combinations of materials. You are allowed to draw and paint even if you don’t think you’re “good” at it. You get to explore and share and connect with other artists, and to celebrate successes and growth. You also get to make artwork that doesn’t turn out the way you expected without that meaning you need to give up your creative practice.

No one — no one — has the right to tell you that you aren’t using the right supplies or the right technique or that you’re not “good” and that you should give it up. No one has a right to tell you what “real artists” do.

If I open a door, I will lead others into the room. And then I will cheer them on, watch with excitement what they make, be inspired by them, and make more art.

Cultivate curiosity over judgment.

Keep going. Keep making.

Process Over Outcome

An open mixed media art journal. A layer of neutral-colored collages are topped with marks and splatter in green, black, neon pink, and white. Most of the background shows through.

Black and white photo of an orchestral concert hall

Last week, I went to a dress rehearsal for Enno Poppe’s musical composition Strom. The piece sounded like an orchestra tuning its strings, or a child’s first concert: discordant, uncomfortable, and strange. (Listen to a small sample of it here.)

Poppe created the piece by stretching single intervals — the difference between a note and the one next to it — into multiple sub-intervals and having instruments playing in different tempos, all at the same time. The outcome was noise, but the process? Extremely intentional.

Doing something intentionally can be really challenging. Sure, you may think that kids’ art is simple, but have you ever tried emulating it? Or made ugly art? There is so much value in the paying attention, like pulling something apart to see how it’s made.

Sometimes, the process is the most important aspect. The outcome can be made more interesting by the process, and in fact be defined by it. And even if the outcome is a dud, often you’ll learn a lot during the process.

Messy May 2023

An open mixed media art journal. A layer of mostly neutral collage (and one large teal painted paper) is topped with energetic marks and drips in black, neon pink, white, orange, and blue. Most of the background shows through.

Over the weekend I took part in a Creative Hour conversation with Caylee Grey, Meg of Meg Journals, Claudette Hasenjager and more than 100 other art journalers. Caylee is the founder of Get Messy, and Claudette, Meg, and I are three of thirty artists leading this year’s Messy May, a free daily art journaling project.

Connecting with other creatives is something I treasure. Sharing processes, challenges, inspiration, and habits reminds me both of how deeply personal creating necessarily is, and also how universal and innately human creativity is. I am always humbled and inspired, and leave more curious about and committed to my creative practice.

Thank you to all the participants for joining, and to Claudette, Meg, and Caylee for a fantastic conversation.

PLAY in Messy May

For me, creating is a practice of tapping into childlike wonder and intuition. There is no room in my art journal for criticism or perfectionism — only curiosity, joyful exploration, and reflection. As a Messy May featured artist, I encouraged participants to let go of expectations and tap into playfulness and possibility.

Check out the video above for a time lapse of my process, and some additional creative prompts to encourage playfulness.

And below, just a few of the many, many responses to the PLAY prompt. Click on any image to be taken to the artist’s feed. (If you decide to give it a go, please tag me on Instagram! I’d love to see what you make.)

Hey, Artist

Open mixed media art journal. A layer of neutral-colored collage is covered with energetic marks in teal, green, white, and green. Much of the background shows through.

I have heard from a number of people over the course of my own creative journey who’ve said something along the lines of “I’m not an artist, but I’m interested in starting an art journal [or painting, or exploring collage]. Where do I begin?”

First up: yeah, actually, you are an artist.

Creating is innate; as a species, we’ve been expressing ourselves through dance, sculpture, music and painting for tens of thousands of years. You don’t need a degree to make art, and you don’t need to make “good” art to be an artist. All you need to do is start.

I wrote on My Peacetree — way back in 2011 — about the creative process:

The journey to creativity is not a static one: we must always be searching, pushing, moving, and striving forward. There is no end to be reached — there is only new discovery, exploration, growth, stretching, and learning […]

Art is something which must be practiced over and over again. It is only through this we can really make it our own.

As to where to start: What art makes you pause and stare? Go buy some of those materials — cheap ones are fine. Try them out. Make mistakes. Experiment.

Seek out other artists, look closely at their work, and pull elements of it that you love into your own. (Don’t steal others’ work, though! Incorporating colors and processes and materials is ok; duplicating work is not. And always, always credit artists where it’s due.)

What do you like about your art? Do more of that. What don’t you like about your work? Do less of that.

And above all else, don’t apologize for your work or for yourself. Take yourself seriously and others will, too.

Bird by Bird

I just finished reading Anne Lamott’s insightful (and wickedly funny) Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. I hadn’t actually heard of her before picking up the book in a little library in my neighborhood — but her words found me at the right time.

I’m deeply curious about other creatives’ practices, and the writing process is still somewhat of a mystery to me. How can anyone take a feeling or experience, something so big and complex and nuanced, and capture it in something as limited as language?

But this kind of question can ensure that we never put pen to paper. Perfectionism, really, is the antithesis to play and exploration and learning. Lamott gives you permission to write badly: one of her first pieces of advice is to “write really, really shitty first drafts.”

“You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something — anything — down on paper,” she says. If you write and it turns out laughably awful, you are still doing something right. (Kind of like making ugly visual art: if you’re creating, you’re on the right path. Make ugly art, or terrible first drafts. Just don’t not create.)

The only thing to do when the sense of dread and low self-esteem tells you that you are not up to this is to wear it down by getting a little work done every day.”

Lamott also speaks about writing as a lifelong journey, with no fool-proof formula: you can only show up, pay attention, create terrible first drafts, seek feedback, learn from your mistakes, and try again. Writing, like any other kind of creating, is a process, one of self exploration and expression — and it’s the work (the verb), not the work (the noun) that is ultimately most valuable:

You’ll find yourself at work on, maybe really into, another book, and once again you figure out that the real payoff is the writing itself, that a day when you have gotten your work done is a good day, that total dedication is the point.”

(Emphasis is mine.)