Art Trends & the Continuation of Creativity

Every creative person I know, including myself, is afraid of running out of creative juice.  We are all afraid that one day we’ll wake up and that would be it. No more ideas about what to paint. No more art. A terrifying prospect! So, I modeled that possibility in my mind. What if it did happen? And what if it happened to me? I analyzed my art, how I made it, and what inspired me. I asked myself, could I be creative on demand? After diving deep into my process, I observed artistic trends in my work that kept showing up. These art trends had a throughline: the continuation of creativity. 

I believe that everything is art. Everything can be turned into art: experiences, sounds, technology concepts, or my favorite – ideas Because of that anything can be an inspiration for new art, even art itself. 

Ideas As Art

For my I Paint Ideas™ collection, I interview thought leaders from all over the world. I often find a kernel of inspiration in something they’ve shared with me – a word, a phrase – or a general feeling or an impression I got from our conversation to turn “that” into art.

For instance, one of those paintings is The Goddess Way. I was inspired by my dear friend, Kathryn Ford, a women’s empowerment expert and the founder of the Excellence Institute. I had the pleasure to interview Kathryn about her work, and what I love about her is her approach to taking an active role – born out of gratitude – to creating what you love to be, have, and do. Effortlessly. That’s the Goddess Way.

My painting depicts a goddess (or any one of us) emerging from the ocean – which is another theme in Kathryn’s work – swimming up from the ocean of gratitude to her best self and with her essence echoing through the sea, leaving the trail of love behind (represented by the vibrant colors).

Experiences As Art 

In my Diary Collection, I am translating my personal experiences, insights, dreams, events, thoughts keeping me up at night… into visual art.

Does this painting look like copyright infringement to you?

I asked my husband that after I finished it, and he gave me a puzzled look and said no, it looks like a boat. It IS a boat — It’s called The Sailboat in The Storm. I made it after someone took my content and published it on their website without permission. I had to go through all the unpleasantries of getting them to take it down, which they did. All good now…But I was so mad about it. As a creator and an artist, I strive to do original work and put way too much effort into what I’m doing for someone just to come along and swipe it —lots of fury in that sail.

I was so mad that I made another painting on the same day – The Blue Angel Running, a more literal interpretation of a creative person creating and expanding their energy…

Sound As Art

daeuArtNotes™ collection is about transforming audio messages, spoken words, or other sounds into visual art.

Turning sounds into art started when my daughter asked me to paint her a picture for her room. I ended up recording myself saying to her, “I love you, Beautiful” and then turning the sound wave of my voice into abstract art.

Since then, it’s turned into an obsession: love notes, a symphony of frogs, dogs barking, birds chirping…crystal bowl’s frequencies and music recordings… The image captures the energy and emotion of the sound beautifully and uniquely. You can see the syllables! I asked my hubby to record something, but he said Leave me Alone. So I made that into art. 

Technology As Art 

Finding inspiration in technology comes from bringing all of my interests under the umbrella of art. As a polymath, I struggled to pick one thing to be my thing in a conventional sense. But what art allows me to do is bring it all together. The Emerging Tech collection is about exploring the impact of emerging tech on society.

The painting below is Acceleration of Change, or affectionately nicked named La Paloma. It shows what it feels like to be confronted by accelerated change – it’s a tango between optimism for the future and the fear of the unknown. At the time of great change you just have to keep moving, dancing…and trusting that everything will turn out fine despite the fear. I made my mom play La Paloma for me repeatedly to feel the rhythm of the painting. 

Art Continuum™ is the term I coined to describe the creation of new art by adding dimensions to expand, extend, and enrich the original expression regardless of its medium. I call the process of creating these art extensions “Putting art on a continuum.” Putting art on a continuum means taking the original piece and moving it along different dimensions. For example, by moving my original art along modality dimension, I am:

• Changing spoken word (interviews) into visual arts (oil paintings) like my paintings from the I Paint Ideas collection,
• Writing a poem about the original art as I did for my painting Max & Me, and
• Turning visual art into an audio podcast or live broadcasts by discussing it – like my I Paint Ideas™ podcast

This may sound like a case of repurposing, but it’s not. Putting art on the continuum tells the fuller & richer story of the art – the subject, the message – and provides a more complete expression of the original.

A great example of creating an art continuum is my Painting Innovate or Die. 

Innovate or Die was a painting inspired by my interview with my friend Juliet Murphy, a leadership coach who works with Millenials, and at some point in the discussion, she said you have to innovate, or you die. So, I created original Innovate or Die oil on canvas 48 “x30”, then I transformed an image of the original into an art group of 4 digital pieces depicting the lifecycle of the innovation: Swept By An Idea, Innovation from Above, When Idea Dies, and Innovation In Motion; And then I turned it from static to dynamic by animating Innovation In Motion to include different aspects of innovation into a video. It’s an evolution of the original. All these extensions tell a story about the subject of innovation.

Cubist art shows different viewpoints of a subject at the same time. Instead, I want to show art’s point of view. That’s Daeuism! What is art’s point of view from inside looking out? What does the world inside of the painting look like?

You might have heard me talk about this before — In my mind, art has a soul. I believe art is an entity with its energy. Sure, I give it a material expression as a bunch of paint on the canvas. Still, that artwork holds an imprint of several energies coming together: that of the idea or the subject of the piece, the story and emotions it conveys, the initial inspiration and how it came about, and part of me as an artist, as well.

So, it’s not a stretch for me to be curious about art’s point of view from inside the painting.

An example is my original 5’x4′ An Artist Trapped In Nerd’s Mind from the Diary Collection. For As Long As I can remember, I referred to myself as an artist trapped in Nerd’s Mind. So this is a version of a self-portrait.

The original oil is the view looking at the nerd — black + white, with the artist trying to break through this logical candy coating, and you can peak at colors poking from the inside. In the digital companion, we see the artist on the edge of the canvas, on the verge of reaching escape velocity looking up into the light. I thought a digital extension is appropriate in this case because the artist is trapped in the nerd’s mind but also in a png file. She will not give up.

What I love about going through this exercise and identifying my art trends is the realization that creativity never ends. I found that creativity is not something to be unleashed, like so many blogs and books and coaches would have you believe — when I hear that, I cringe; creativity is an emotion. As long as I’m willing and open to experiencing it, I will be creative. My art trends ensure the continuation of creativity. For that, I am grateful.