It doesn’t matter what your particular area of creativity is, sooner or later you get stuck.

You might have known exactly where you were going, but there comes a moment when you feel you’ve lost your way.

You are suddenly filled with doubt, fear even, and anxiety.

Your brain has a solution – fall back on what you’ve done before.  The more experience you have, the more training, the more you are tempted to fall back on the past. I have a rich bag of tricks I can use, but I have to tell myself: Don’t do it.

Because, the fact is you can rely on your fears. They will push you.

It’s a moment you want to avoid – and you avoid it as long as you can  – but you can’t. You have to go with your immediate instincts, not think about anything else.

When I am looking at the abyss, when I can’t go on and yet can’t not go on, when I get to that point, I just reach out and whatever comes to hand works. Fear and doubt force you to a level of intuition that you need to get to.

And then suddenly you’re flying! That’s heaven.

After I get past the fear, I don’t really remember much about it.  But I do in one case – this is a detail from the family portrait below.  I was stuck on my own self-portrait until I suddenly went with green – for no particular reason. And equally instinctive was the streak of orange. But it worked and that’s what mattered.

Family Portrait, Galya Pillin Tarmu