What is Intuitive Art-Making?

Intuitive art: a method of creating art that emerges from a relationship between an artist and their intuition

There are lots of types of art to be made.

You may have heard of abstract, impressionist, expressionist, pop, and surrealist. Those are styles, movements or schools of art (often taught in art history classes). And then there are types of art related to the medium it’s made in: watercolor, oil, acrylic, ceramic, mixed-media, etc. (often taught in art techniques classes).

What we do in Unfold Art programs is specifically mixed-media intuitive art journaling.

Mixed-media art journaling is easy to explain: It’s a combination of paint, drawing, print-making, collage, and more in an art journal (sketchbook). One of my favorite things about mixed-media is that it’s so open-ended. It fits into my philosophy of art journaling being a no-rules creative practice. There are no rules about what materials you can use with mixed-media and in an art journal! FREEDOM!

Intuitive art is a little harder to explain. But here goes…

Intuitive art is art that comes from the artist’s intuition or subconscious. Intuition is found in our instincts rather than our consciousness. You could also think of it as art that comes from your guts! And art that comes from that place is thus not coming from the conscious or thinking mind (I like to call it the thinking/directing mind), but from the sub- (or un-) conscious, feeling mind.

When we make art from that deep place we must turn off our thinking/directing brain as much as possible to give space to the rest of our consciousness.

Our thinking/directing mind is our inner director. It has lots of opinions about what, how, when, where, and why we should or should not do things. It is constantly chattering at us. It is always running the show: director and stage manager and writer.

Noticing how our body feels and noticing the energy of our emotions requires the thinking/directing part of our consciousness to be quiet. And it’s not that easy, honestly.

The brain has all those jobs to do! When we tell it to hush, that we don’t want to hear about all of its plans, well, it’s not gonna be happy. It might even get louder for a while.

So, it is definitely a practice to make space for the deeper part of our consciousness to surface when making intuitive art. When I am working intuitively…

I like to make the space sacred.
I like to do a grounding and centering meditation before I begin.
I like to minimize distractions (let my housemates know I’m not available, turn off my phone, listen to calming music, etc.).

The thinking/directing brain is very uncomfortable when we…

Work without a plan: When we come to the page without a plan, waiting to see “what comes up,” the thinking/directing brain wants to tell us what to do on the blank page.
When we aren’t sure what something means in our art: We might use collage or other imagery without knowing what something means. The thinking/directing brain wants to define everything…”Oh you’re using blue? Well that must mean you’re sad.” “Oh you’re using an image of butterflies? You must be thinking about transformation!”

When my thinking/directing brain tries to interrupt my practice with directions, I tell it:

Thanks, I got this.
That’s an idea.
Maybe later.

(I sort of think of it as the strangers who used to give me all kinds of unsolicited life advice when I was pregnant. I’ll check with my doctor, thanks. Moving on!)