Happy New Year! How would you like to start 2023 in a new, creative way?
Every Wednesday and Saturday, we will be posting an installment of our book, Through an Artist’s Eyes: Learning to Live Creatively offering you a pathway to art and the vision of the artist. Enabling you to develop your own inner creativity and apply it to the personal cycle of everyday living!
II. The Journey to Art
Creative Routines, part 3 (continue from February 25)
Note: The following was written pre-pandemic and the use of zoom allowing employees to work from home. Although, depending on the situation, workers are retuning again to offices and businesses. Yet, the ideas below can also be applied to those individuals who remain in home-based offices.
But don’t forget the environment of your office. How does it compare? Regardless of your feelings toward your employment, does your workplace seem separate, enclosed, even remote from the pulse of everyday life? Is it represented by a tall, looming skyscraper, or a more human scaled one-or-two story building, or even a house converted for business purposes? (This section is more office oriented but you can substitute other work environments such as schools and stores.)
Yet, isn’t it the interior that has more impact on you? Frank Lloyd Wright, one of America’s leading architects believed that the surroundings where people worked directly affected their spirits and morale. For example, what are your first impressions when you enter the lobby foyer? Have you considered the colors? Are they bright and varied, or monotonous and dull? How about the furnishings and their arrangement, their overall decor? Do you get a sense of openness, full of light? Or is it confused and dark for you?
But obviously your own workspace most concerns you. For isn’t it presently where you spend most of your life, in this room, or cubicle, or alcove, whether windowless or with a view? What about its size and dimensions as well as the color scheme? Is it dominated by your desk? The computer and phone may be the center of your sphere in which you spend thirty-five hours or more every week? Your office is probably more your second home, but do you have a feeling of comfort and familiarity? Or are you actually detached from your office? Do you perceive it as more of a backdrop of a career or paid activity, a temporary area of little personal meaning, although you might spend years within its boundaries?
Whatever your attitude, isn’t it best to have your walls hung with a couple of paintings or photographs? Or bring in a few accessories, or a favorite statue, or a plant or two. Hopefully, you are not restricted by corporate policy from creating an atmosphere with some color or personality.
However, even the most uplifting and positive spaces cannot ease the tensions caused by looming deadlines and waiting clients, peer competition, and executive demands. Then why not make an artistic escape? Liberate yourself in a few minutes of private reverie. Close your eyes and dream of Gauguin’s Tahiti, a paradise of exotic natives and mysterious lagoons by the artist who once earned his living as a stockbroker. Or lose yourself in the vastness of an Ansel Adams photograph, whether the majestic ranges of the Sierra Nevada or the towering heights of Yosemite’s waterfalls. Even a simple postcard or print of these images can beckon to you from the corner of your desk and transport you into your own creative sanctuary.
COMING NEXT: REMBRANDT, ARTISTIC COMPANION
Copyright 2010: Joan Hart, Museum One, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented including photocopying, recording and information storage and retrieval without permission from the publisher.
ISBN 9780615301884
