Creative Solitude: An Artist’s Best Friend

In the holy hush of your own space, you begin to remember who you were before the world told you who to be.

I work in a well-lighted studio space on the second floor of a building in downtown Vinton, Virginia. I can look outside and see the busyness of a small city, but inside, I’m alone with my thoughts about design and process.

And it’s my idea of heaven.

It’s a gift to be alone to hear your thoughts long enough to get to the truth of them.

Why Solitude Matters for Creativity

You remember those big boxes of Crayons with the sharpener in the back? One would think with all of those colors, you would end up being a creative powerhouse.

But all of those choices stifled me as a kid.

I wondered why?

It took me a long time to figure out that creativity thrives when resources are low.

Now, let’s compare that idea to a mind that has too many thoughts, coupled with endless distractions.

A cluttered mind results in indecision and creative blocks.

That’s why solitude can be the missing ingredient in your quest for a more creative life.

And sometimes the most valuable thing you can do for yourself is nothing. Just stare at something in your environment that captures your attention and let your mind wander and be free.

Learning to Be Alone

As a kid, I loved playing with others, but I also craved being alone in my room, doing the things that kids like to do when they are by themselves.

My parents respected my alone time. I would read, make art or sort things on my desk. Sometimes, I would just sit on the floor and stare at the ceiling.

I didn’t have much pressure put on me to be productive with my time. We were poor, so I wasn’t hurrying to the next thing to do, to learn or to perform.

I had to rely upon my imagination a lot, since we didn’t have a lot of toys to distract my brother and me.

It was the best. I learned how to be alone with my thoughts, and I would often daydream about the life I wanted when I was ‘older’.

Funnily enough, I pretty much live that way now, but I use my backyard hammock to daydream and just stare at the sky.

I started twisting telephone wire when I was around 11. I would make keychains, necklaces and rings out of the brightly colored wire that the telephone installation guy threw away in our suburb as developers were building new houses.

I would enter into a trance-like state where time stood still, as I concentrated on learning new weaves that my father taught me in the garage after a successful telephone wire haul.

I would become so involved in my wire-wrapping that I wouldn’t eat or do my chores.

My parents came down on me about that, but often I couldn’t wait to enter my bedroom, close the door, and bliss out in creative solitude.

I didn’t have the vocabulary then to describe this state of consciousness, but it filled me up in a way that nothing else did…with the payoff being, “Look what I made!” as I showed my family and friends my latest creation.

Solitude As A Portal

When I’m in my studio alone, I enter into an inner world where the balance of receiving inspiration and acting on it is uninterrupted.

Everything in my studio supports my creative output. Other than colorful art I’ve collected over the years, everything has a purpose to maintain the dance between producing what I’ve been given in inspiration and integrating what I observe about my life’s experiences into the abstract of my art.

Most of the time, I don’t know what I’m integrating until the finished piece is in front of me. Some sort of weird portal opens up, and I can physically see something I’ve been stewing on as it pertains to my emotional well-being.

I’m constantly surprised by what my subconscious conjures up, and solitude is the medium I need to bring it out.

I also love the feeling of time slipping away because of my intense focus on a project. Often, I will think an hour has passed, and it will be several.

Balancing Solitude with Otherness

A good friend of mine is a writer, and she lives alone.

She wrote a very intensive book in a year or so, and I watched her immerse in the creative stream she entered as she navigated her way through the material.

Her other was the presence that was whispering to her as she wrote down what she needed to learn.

She often tells me that she writes so that she can know something that companionship with people doesn’t give her. I understand what she means by that.

There is a quiet stillness that is full of possibility when you embrace solitude. When you learn to hear what solitude has to share with you, it’s hard to give it up.

I had an experience once with some sea lions in California when I was in my 20’s. I swam with them and was invited to play with some of the juveniles.

It was a total immersion with them where I forgot who I was and that I was even human.

I was present in the moment in such a profound way that I disappeared and was left with just pure awareness, swimming with the other sea lions in the water.

That is a close physical approximation of what it feels like to be alone with myself in a creative capacity.

They left me with an experience that can only be summed up with one word: communion.

The Remembering

While in communion with yourself, you open up a channel that invites you to remember what you have long forgotten, before the world got to you, and told you what you are to become.

I believe it has something to do with differentiation.

Differentiation isn’t necessarily separation in a bad sense. It’s the ability to bring something unique back to the collective.

Creative solitude is where that differentiation is felt, explored and softened by that eternal part of you that has been buried in the busyness of life with all of its distractions.

But before we were separated from God or Source, we were in communion. And it feels like a home that you never knew you missed and were away from until you experience it.

Paradox is a wonderful part of being human. I think if there were such a thing as a universal truth, a paradox is as close as we may get.

In order to experience being part of the whole while alive, you have to understand the gift of being apart.

The sacred distinction.