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Creative Intuition

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When people ask me what I make photographs of, when they ask about the content of my work, I always have trouble answering.

 

My art practice follows no pattern other than that of my own mind, of what I’m looking at and thinking about in a certain moment in time.  If I feel displaced and isolated, I photograph my living space in order to make it feel like my own, to make it feel more like home—if I can find visual interest in my surroundings, I feel more connected to where I am in any given moment.

 

My intuition usually leads me in a circle.  I end up right back where I started, except each time around I understand a little more about the path I took to get there.  Treading a certain path and collecting information about it via making images makes the path a little more well-lit, well-defined, and sometimes, if I’m lucky, I can see other paths that branch off from the one I’m on…though I suspect those lead me back to the beginning again, too.

 

Writing about intuition in my art practice is part of the circular path, too—each idea, each sentence leads me towards what seems like a different subject, though all seem relevant to the task at hand.  I want to write about researching other artists and inevitably finding that their colleagues and friends are all people whose work I admire and look up to, that my favorite poet spent time with my favorite painters and they all read my favorite books.  I want to write about discovering that a friend from work is reading the same Stoic philosopher as I am at exactly the same time, though neither of us discussed it with anyone.  I want to write about meeting someone for the first time and feeling like we understand one another without exchanging more than polite small talk, and counting them as one of my best friends only a few weeks later.  I want to write about painting, how choosing one color to start with leads me to each subsequent color and shape and line because each one is correct, not for any particular reason other than because whatever I did with the paintbrush felt right and necessary in the moment it touched the paper.

 

Listening to my intuition is difficult sometimes because I am a worrier.  Worrying and anxiety create noise, sometimes to a point at which I can’t hear or see or feel the path anymore.  I can’t see the branches, or the center, or even my feet, and I’m forced to stand still in a panic.  Motion, in this state, feels unnatural or rushed rather than easy and timeless.

 

Intuition is vast, and I can’t tell if it exists when I’m not paying attention to it—like looking at something in my peripheral vision, there but not there and what kind of entity only appears when I decide I’m deserving of its attention?  Why can’t I see it when I really need the company, when I can barely see what’s in front of me and have lost my sense of direction?

 

My intuition relies on me, too—it needs my attention and love to survive.  I am the only one who can start the conversation, though it knows how to continue as long as I don’t interrupt too much.  It scares me to follow its instructions, because they’re not clear—they’re more like guidelines, little nudges that only manifest themselves once I move far enough along the little glowing pathway in the dark.  Branches of light, connected by something I can’t see—maybe my neurons, maybe my awareness of people and things I love, maybe all or none of the above.  My intuition resists definition, perhaps because I don’t want to be defined either.

 

My intuition is happiest when I let it guide my hands, when I decide to sit down at my desk or on my bed or on the floor with brushes and paint or a ball of yarn or a tripod and a shutter release.  It’s easiest to have a conversation then, when I’m not getting in our way.  The branches all light up and instead of being blinded and scared and shrinking myself down, sometimes I see a woven tangle of light and I feel supported by a web of my own making.

 

 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

 

Sarah Posner is an artist based in NYC.  She works primarily in analog photography and painting, and is particularly interested in visual perception and the act of looking. sarah-posner.com

 

 

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SIREN

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SIREN

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