Tuning in to your ARTIST SOUL

How to find the frequency of your “Home Station”

Artists throughout the ages have spoken of where their creative spirit comes from. Van Gogh said it came from an “inner impulse,” Wassily Kandinsky, from his “soul,” Marc Chagall, from his “heart,” Edvard Munch, from “pain,” Frida Kahlo, from her “own reality,” Agnes Martin, from “the contemplation of beauty,” and Henry Ward Beecher says it so beautifully in this quote that I want to shout it out to the world: “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.”

For an artist, being in touch with your inner self, your soul, your creative spirit or whatever you want to call it is the golden road to making great art, right?

Certainly there are times when you are in touch with your creative spirit, when things at the drawing board or easel are flowing along as if a psychic symphony is playing in your mind.

But just as certainly there are times when your creative spirit, your artist soul, is nowhere to be found, like those frustrating hair-pulling days when you’re staring at the blank canvas or paper and it looks back at you accusingly.

But suppose there were a pathway to connect with your artist soul?

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Allow me to introduce you to a powerful concept I call your Home Station.

Think of your Home Station as your internal radio station, that inner mental frequency where you can receive gloriously creative ideas, feelings, hunches and insights from your unconscious mind, as clearly as if they were songs you were listening to on the radio.

You can have access to your home station whenever you want … but only if you are tuned in and listening.

Unfortunately your Home Station frequency gets a lot of interference from your noisy thinking. Noisy thinking is what our minds do when we’re focused on things outside of ourselves such as our complicated families, frustrating work lives, bad romances, political horror shows, the eternal chasing after money and of course the random chaos of life that punches us in the face and laughs out loud whenever it feels like it.

You can almost hear that inner noise when you're obsessively ruminating over past grievances, worrying about tomorrow, focused on aggravating tasks like paying your taxes or screaming at customer service reps who are ignoring everything you say, you know when you feel like her, down below:

But here’s something that maybe that angry person up there (let’s call her Phoebe) has never thought about. What if Phoebe’s artist soul is trying to get in touch with her through her Home Station, saying, “Hello! Hello! I want to talk to you! It’s me, your creative source,” but Phoebe's just not listening.

What Phoebe's artist soul would want to tell her is: “You can’t hear me til you shut up and listen!”

And if Phoebe asked, “How?” her artist soul would say: “To hear me you have to practice quiet thinking.”

Quiet thinking is when you clear out the mental clutter and the noisy thinking, when you’re patient and calm and humbly waiting for the messages to come from your Home Station.

For Phoebe (or any of us) tuning into our Home Station might take some time. It’s a two part process. First, Phoebe has to quiet her mind and wait patiently.

That's when it might get a little weird for Phoebe. Because Phoebe may not hear anything or get any messages right away and this will frustrate her, make her restless and maybe even make her want to quit. It’s almost as if Phoebe’s artist soul wants to make sure she really and truly is listening before she’ll speak.

But if Phoebe persists, and she practices quiet thinking, eventually she will be rewarded with creative ideas and inner knowledge about her art, just like Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo and all those other great artists we talked about above.

This is no joke. The practice of quiet thinking will get you tuning into your Home Station which will give your creative spirit the opportunity to speak to you. Which, if you choose to listen, will totally transform your life as an artist. You’ll not only tap into an Old Faithful always-there fountain of ideas but you’ll find answers to creative blocks that are holding you back.

DIY Challenge: Your Where-I-Get-My-Ideas List.

Because quiet thinking might be an unfamiliar concept, here is a helpful tip to tune into your Home Station.

1. Figure out where and when you get your best ideas, where you feel most in touch with yourself and your most soulful thoughts rise up within you.

2. Promise yourself you’re going to do those things and be in those places for a few hours every week so great ideas come to you that will help you make great art.

Here’s my list of where and when I’m most open to my creative spirit and ideas come to me

• Aimless walks

• Bike rides

• Reading

• Sketching

• Being in nature

• Being in unfamiliar places

• Looking at art

• Falling asleep

• Staring out into space

Now make your own list. Maybe you like to meditate or remember your dreams or cook or cosplay. (When I asked my musician siblings Annie Gosfield and Lucky Oceans about their creative spirit, they said they feel it when they’re actually playing their instruments, and of course the artist’s equivalent to that would be when you’re sketching with a pen or pencil in your hand.) But whatever it is that works for you, figure it out, write it down — even better, draw it — and then commit to doing it for a few hours every week.

Good luck tuning in to your Home Station and thank you for reading so far!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on quiet thinking, or how you tune in to your Home Station or anything else in this post that got you thinking about your creative spirit, so please leave a comment down below. You can even post a picture of your list.

And just so you know, I have something special for you. It’s a cheat sheet that you might find useful with a lot of famous artists telling you how and where they connect with their artist soul. Subscribe for free to unlock this art-goodness extra. What do you have to lose?

A Home Station art goodness extra.

Techniques artists use to tap into their creative spirit

I’ve organized these techniques to make them more accessible for you. The most basic way to get in touch with your creative spirit is very similar to what my musician siblings do. It’s not by playing an instrument but by sketching with your pen or pencil, which is an instrument in itself as you will see from this first category below.

JUST DO IT From the pen or the brush your ideas will come

Picasso goofed around and doodled to get into a creative mood.

Joan Miró used automatic drawing to capture subconscious ideas that he could then turn into paintings.

Jean-Michel Basquiat jumped in and urgently drew marks on his canvas til they gave him ideas of where his paintings would go.

MIND GAMES Put a spell on yourself

Leonardo da Vinci stared at stains on walls or at clouds til he saw things he wanted to paint.

Salvador Dalí tricked himself into a state of paranoid delusion to start seeing weird images he’d later paint.

Yayoi Kusama hypnotizes herself into an obsessive trance-like state, losing herself in her endless loops and polka dots.

MEDITATIVE MOODS Open your mind to welcome the ideas in

Marina Abramović sits in silence, meditating to connect with her inner self.

Wassily Kandinsky played the piano or listened to music to evoke colors and shapes in his mind.

James Turrell spent long periods submerged in sensory deprivation chambers to experience what he saw in his mind so he could recreate a similar sensation in his light installations.

IMMERSION Let the subject of your art surround you and “speak” to you

Edward Hopper took long rambles through the city to let the urban feeling sink in.

Richard Serra walked through shipyards and industrial areas to give him ideas for his monumental steel sculptures.

Henri Rousseau studied exotic plants and animals at botanical gardens and zoos to soak up their dreamlike vibe.

Hopefully, something in here might ring a bell for you. Maybe you’ll even find something new to add to your Where-I-Get-My-Ideas list.

May you have some great ideas you will one day turn into art!

— Your fellow artist, Josh