{"id":10257,"date":"2012-09-26T05:05:53","date_gmt":"2012-09-26T10:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/?p=10257"},"modified":"2012-09-27T09:46:43","modified_gmt":"2012-09-27T14:46:43","slug":"on-creating-in-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/on-creating-in-secret\/","title":{"rendered":"on Creating in Secret"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/churchrelevance.com\/resources\/top-church-blogs\/\">Top 200 List<\/a> of most influential church bloggers came out. I found the list perplexing even after I read the metrics used in the decision process.<\/p>\n<p>Though I didn&#8217;t expect to make such a list, I did recognize some blogger friends who did make it. Congratulations to you who did. (Some of these influential bloggers have guest posted here, check out this <a href=\"lisadelay.com\/blog\/spiritual-guidance-for-bloggers\/\">series<\/a>\u00a0to read them.)<\/p>\n<h5><em><strong>What I am writing about today flies in the face of all of the &#8220;want to&#8221; for making that, or any, list. Well, most of it. It&#8217;s about the bigger picture. It&#8217;s about coming into our own creative health.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/h5>\n<p>At the <a href=\"http:\/\/storychicago.com\">STORY<\/a> conference in Chicago last week I heard <a href=\"http:\/\/www.makotofujimura.com\/bio\/\">Mako Fujimura<\/a> in person for the first time. What a gift.<\/p>\n<p>He talked about the secret creative world of Emily Dickinson, her garden and her many poems. He told us of the need to create something &#8220;for just you&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>He experienced this for himself when he was on a tight-deadline commission to illustrate the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.makotofujimura.com\/four-holy-gospels\/\">four gospels.<\/a>\u00a0During that time he created <em>Golden Sea<\/em>. Nobody knew about it.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_10258\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-10258\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/DanSiedell6.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-10258\" title=\"DanSiedell6\" src=\"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/DanSiedell6-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/DanSiedell6-300x168.jpg 300w, https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/DanSiedell6-350x197.jpg 350w, https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/DanSiedell6-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/DanSiedell6.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-10258\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Golden Sea, Mako Fujimara<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Something happens when we create without thinking about our client or audience. We create because we must. Because we get a gift of inspiration. Something pure is borne.<\/p>\n<p>In contrast, something gets lost or compromised in the process of creating while thinking about <em>communicating<\/em> the art&#8230;Or when we think about <em>outcomes<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>American painter <a href=\"http:\/\/www.andrewwyeth.com\">Andrew Wyeth<\/a> created secretly this for fifteen years. Andrew enjoyed success for 7 decades, and always had buyers for his art.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe that&#8217;s why his studio was his sacred, private space, and he secretly painted (or drew) his German-born neighbor Helga&#8230;<strong><em>over 240 times.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>His wife didn&#8217;t appreciate it when she learned of this <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Helga_Pictures\">secret collection<\/a>\u00a0hidden away in the home of a friend and art student, but Andrew insisted that he needed something that was &#8220;just his&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>In the mid 1980s a world tour of the paintings made a huge splash in the art world. There was just something extra special about the collection that was palpable.<\/p>\n<h4><strong>This is a good lesson for me to learn.<\/strong> I realize I need to resist sharing everything I create. I need to think more about the creation not the outcome. It doesn&#8217;t<strong> have to<\/strong> be about saying something to someone. What I create can just&#8230;<strong><em>exist<\/em><\/strong>.<\/h4>\n<figure id=\"attachment_10259\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-10259\" style=\"width: 250px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/250px-Andrew_Wyeth_Braids_1979.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10259\" title=\"250px-Andrew_Wyeth_Braids_1979\" src=\"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/250px-Andrew_Wyeth_Braids_1979.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"195\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-10259\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;Braids&#8221; (a Helga portrait by Andrew Wyeth)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h5>Is it hard for you to create in secret?<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is it hard for you to create in secret?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5335,5626],"tags":[209,6534,4553,859,6001,6000,5998,2464,6002,5999],"class_list":["post-10257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-creativity","category-spark-my-muse","tag-andrew-wyeth","tag-art","tag-chicago","tag-creativity","tag-golden-sea","tag-helga","tag-mako-fuijimara","tag-painting","tag-secret","tag-story-2012"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10257"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10264,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10257\/revisions\/10264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}