What Taylor Swift Can Teach Us about Predicting Your Creative Future
It's been a big month for Taylor Swift, at least according to my social media feed. She released news of a new album a couple of weeks ago and it's been fascinating to watch the buzz around the artistic choices she made for the album, the promotion for the event and the way she teased out the album with clues to engage her fans.
I'm not really a Swiftie, but as an artist what was intriguing to me was the speculating about the "easter egg" clues that she dropped leading up to the album release. Some fans were linking the colours, numbers and theme of this new project to imagery and symbolism from tours and projects from years before, as though Taylor Swift was so far-seeing in her planning for this new album that she was alluding to it years before she ever recorded the album.
How far ahead can an artist plan?
As an artist, it got me thinking about connection. How could an artist choose, years before creating a project, to "tease out" that project with imagery and symbolism? Is that level of planning even possible?
My own artistic practice is not that far-seeing. I don't have the ability to see the future; I can't even see as far as the finished version of a painting I'm working on. I prioritize a goal of presence and attention to the moment. If I can be present with the painting as it evolves, I am able to adapt my plan to align with an outcome that makes room for all the things I didn't foresee - my mistakes, the way the paint chose to flow based on the day's conditions, the happy accidents that should be highlighted, not hidden.
I never knew that I'd be as expressive a painter as I am today, either. I have found art to be the place where I'm learning to be honest and vulnerable, to tell truths I was originally concealing under a mask of perfectionism. That's been a process of peeling back continuing layers of control and self-protection, and I don't see that ending. I keep surprising myself with the beauty that is found in that kind of openness.
The Perils of Certainty
It's interesting because any famous artist probably feels a huge sense of commitment when they release a new project. What they've created becomes a statement and, in essence, becomes a part of their permanent record. And yet none of us get to be that definitive. I think this might be why some writers, if they find success with their first novel, struggle to follow that work with another book. If you feel the responsibility to create something that will define you in a permanent, long-lasting way, it has to make it difficult to commit, or to determine when a work is finished.
I've been feeling that way myself. While I create many paintings every year, I have hesitated to apply for gallery shows, because I don't feel like I can commit to creating a definitive body of work. My process is too open-ended and experimental and so I don't feel ready to create something cohesive that makes an artistic statement. I've held back from wanting to put my body of work in a public collection because I feel too "in-the-middle" in terms of my process and outcomes. I'm still growing and learning, so how can I share when I don't have all the answers?
Quality Falls, watercolour
But maybe when it looks like the brilliant genius of years of planning, what's actually happening is that the little threads of fascination are all linking up. Maybe by leaning into the little things that you love and are intrigued by make a gravitational force that pulls your work into symmetry with your heart. This means that even when you don't know what's ahead, you get to follow the compass of your heart into the art you're meant to make today, and that needle will keep swinging in directions that align.
Find the Path by Loving What You Love
I don't think Taylor Swift choose to use an orange door as a stage set in 2019 because she was teasing out an album she'd release six years later. But I do believe that she is willing to be the kind of nerdy, obsessive creative that loves embracing instinctive favourite colours, numbers, images and ideas and uses them with unapologetic self-expression, that lets them lead her, and thus there's a cohesiveness to her body of work that makes room for her to grow and evolve while also expressing where she's at in this stage of her creative journey.
Tempest, textured watercolour on panel
There's a beautiful freedom in pulling that thread of fascination. Love what you love and let it lead, and looking back, you'll see that compass needle; it wobbles and swings, but it keeps leading back to the art you were always meant to make.
View my newest watercolour collection, Quiet Waters, on my web site here.