Have you ever found yourself feeling that you aren’t entirely sure how you managed to do something? Something you started out doing and then suddenly you were close to done but you wouldn’t be able to say exactly how and what you did to get there?
I often find myself feeling like this while painting, almost like it’s not me painting as if I’m just watching from the back seat.
Sometimes the sensation is even bigger by contrast when self-esteem is low or when painting something for the first time. As doubt starts off the journey amazement sees you through it until you arrive at the destination of the completed work and in a daze.
Its almost as if after a certain point you swich over to autopilot, but why would you do that? What could be the benefit of not remembering how to do something?
I recently saw an episode of Morgan Freemans “Through the wormwhole” documentary where they were looking at the unconscious and its function while awake and aware.
And from what i understood the unconscious mind is almost as active as the conscious while awake and doing a range of things. Espacially when there is a fear of making mistakes, a task that you have done repeatedly over time, the unconscious will take control to help prevent mistakes being made. So the unconscious is our very own autopilot. Once you relax it kicks in and will literally do it for you which explains the feeling of not completely knowing how we got here. But the amazing thing about it is even thought you couldnt explain exactly how, to somebody because you werent giving every stroke of the brush a moments thought, your unconscious will still remember the new things you learnt and implement it the next time you pick up the paint brush!
Unfortunately this also means that someone who has never say painted before wouldnt be able to just relax and create a lovely landscape, at least not by unconscious means, unless otherwise generally gifted.
When it comes to painting then the benefit of remembering in this fashion must be to retain your creativity and artistic sense. If you had to consider how you held the brush the angle and the shade of color continouosly throughout the process i would imagine that all of your energy would go to staying focused and you would end up ending up with potentially boring art work or maybe not even end up with anything of value. Thankfully that isn’t how we normally work.
That is what I would call to help yourself and it really does give real life application to the saving: practice makes perfect.
-jeanie