The Pace of Art

what are your dance steps?

painted sketch

I’ve noticed something interesting about art making, and it is parallel to a stroll. Have you ever found yourself walking with someone whose pace is very different than yours? If they are slower, you need to slow yourself down. It can be surprisingly irritating! Or, if they are faster, you ask them to slow down, and they say cheerily, Sure! but it only lasts minutes and you are back to scurrying to keep up. It doesn’t seem polite to insist the other match your pace, so you try to match their’s. Like compatibility in a relationship, it is most fun when it happens naturally and you are neither pulled upstream nor rushed down.

I’m finding that I am discovering my natural pace with art making. It is a little fast, I suppose. I’ll finish a painting in under an hour, and it is usually best then. Sure, I might go back and fuss, but the best gestures always come in the beginning when I pretend to myself that this is just the underpainting.

Pottery, also, was fast for me, and I never wrestled with the process. Throwing a pot on the wheel can take less than five minutes. Potters are known to say that a pot takes seven years and five minutes to make reflecting the skills they have honed and revealing the study behind the seeming ease of making.

Recently, when talking with my sister, a fiber artist, we both reflected on how we have no patience for sewing. I admire fiber art, and artists who paint with threads, but I know it would drive me crazy to do it. Is it the pace of art making that puts me off?

Each art form has a process, a series of steps, both internal and outward that are followed (and discovered) in the course of making. I am slowly refining my painting process and finding that, just as with pottery, I feel best with speed. These reflections have led me to wonder in what ways pace plays a role in the choice of medium that the artist makes.

In 2025

I am intending to offer an online course in contemplative art. For over two decades I have offered various incarnations of a creative process group. Some members have been with me for almost that duration. As a therapist, and mystic, my course will center artistic inspiration and how that inspiration mirrors and reveals insight. I have developed exercises that cultivate self-discovery through art for many years now. I will be sharing several of these practices during the course. Artists and non-artists who work or want to work in any medium are welcome, but since I am currently painting, the starting point will be there. The exercises are generic, however, and don’t worry if you are not a painter. I am still wondering if I am, myself!

The basic premise of the course will be cultivating self-awareness through the joy of art making. We will discuss your experience, and help you articulate your vision as it becomes revealed to you. The emphasis is not on how good or bad your art is, if such a thing could even be determined. The emphasis will be Inner Art and what that comes to mean to you. I am in the midwife camp of teachers, and I see my role as helping you connect with the teacher within. Sometimes that teacher announces itself through inspiration. In sessions I usually see the sign of a person’s direction when I see their face light up.

In terms of logistics, the course will be online on Thursday mornings every other week. There will be more details to come, but in the meantime, if you are interested please comment on this post or email me at leslie@leslieihde.com. There will be a fee, but it will be reasonable and paid subscribers will receive a discount.

Namaste,

Leslie