what is artistic thinking?
life as the ultimate creative process (my accidental manifesto)
part 1: thinking about how to think
I spend a lot of time thinking about how to think. Call me a sadist, but I like to critically examine the programs I’m running and the lenses through which I’m processing my feelings and experiences to determine whether or not they’re working for me and the people I love. (If you do this you’re a sadist too, but we thank you.) I challenge my beliefs because I know there’s a massive chance they’re either a) not true, b) they’ve been engrained in me by someone else, or c) there’s way more to the story than I know. My mom jokes that this sounds like an exhausting way to live, and she’s right. But I think it’s cool to get friendly early with the idea that our personal experience is as limited as it is expansive, and while valid, we’re never really getting the full picture—just our own narrow little snapshot.
That being said, there’s still a lot we can do with our little snapshot of experience.
In school, my favourite subject other than anything art-related was a course called ToK; short for Theory of Knowledge. ToK is a brilliant course about epistemology—which in case you’re not familiar, is “the philosophical study of the nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge”. Oof. Pretty big stuff for 16/17 year olds. Whether or not you see attending an IB school as a privilege (it’s definitely not everyone’s thing), this class made the experience worth it for me. We learned to think critically, creatively, philosophically, and to reflect on the limits of knowledge and our world and how we know what we know. We’d analyze where our sources came from, why we collectively believe them and accept their authority, and on and on.
And while an early introduction to different thinking modalities really laid some amazing groundwork in helping us understand how to effectively process information on different levels, I feel that what’s often missing from this type of education is a more robust, humanistic Part 2: How to think in a way that celebrates life, instead of just analyzing it.
Because anyone can analyze it. What we really need is a way to enjoy the process in the wake of everything that goes right, wrong, and sideways.
part 2: artistic thinking
I feel like I’ve been on a really long journey to try and find a life philosophy that makes sense to me so I can relax and go about living the rest of my life. As an anxious, creative, and inquisitive person, it’s become glaringly obvious to me in retrospect that I’ve never felt at home anywhere but in art. I’ve never felt truly seen or on board with the vibe in most spiritual spaces, though I’d definitely consider myself spiritual, and the same honestly goes for psyche-oriented healing spaces and philosophical spaces. I’ve tried nihilism, optimistic nihilism, stoicism, existentialism—like snacks on a tasting platter—and none of them sat correctly (though some came close). I’ve looked to these for answers for years, and keep coming up short.
To me, on their own, they’re all missing the creative glue that holds everything together and factors in the whimsy* of it all.
Art does that without really trying. It’s got that weird, gritty, human je-ne-sais-quois we can all relate to without understanding why. I really think few things can capture the beauty and complexity of what it is to be alive the way art does. Which is why (in my opinion) intellectual spaces designed to provide existential answers can feel one-dimensional in their methods in comparison to art, which often does nothing but exist and plague our tired minds with more questions (in the best way).
So now that we know what artistic thinking isn’t… what is it?
is it like poetic thinking?
People talk about having “poetic souls”, or thinking poetically, and I think we kind of vaguely understand what’s meant by that. Thinking poetically is mesmerizingly beautiful, but it gives me a softer, more tragic energy than what I'm feeling for artistic thinking. If poetic thinking attempts to perfectly capture the magic of a fleeting moment while knowing full well it can’t, artistic thinking paints big broad strokes across a canvas without knowing where the paintbrush goes next.
To me, artistic thinking encapsulates the best of existential psychology, philosophy, and spirituality but with a twist The Artist understands—that life is a radical creative process of creation, duality, breakdown, and experimentation—that we’re making art all the time with the lives we’re living. With the things we do and the ways we act and through the people we love.
At the risk of sounding like “life is a journey, not a destination”, I fear the whimsy really is in the process, and the process is what makes the artist. Artistic thinking is rawly embracing life as the ultimate experiment, and committing to open-hearted trial and error in the face of everything we’re scared and unsure of.
part 3: how can I be an artistic thinker?
To sum up the above, being an artistic thinker essentially boils down to embracing life as one long, weird, transformative creative process. Trusting in the rhythm of its ebbs, flows, and waterfalls the way Bob Ross would because they’re literally the point.
If you’ve also struggled with meaning and purpose and are thinking to yourself at this point, “huh, maybe there’s something to this idea of seeing life as art!” then have I ever got a treat for you. As I’ve created this philosophy in my own words (though I’m pretty sure The Artists Way and The Creative Act cover similar stuff and I’m by no means the first to verbalize thoughts like these), I’ve conveniently come up with three pillars to help guide us on our artistic life journey! If any of this resonates with you and you have suggestions for add-ons to these, please by all means pitch in!! Here we go:
to live, breathe, exist, and think artistically, you’ll need 3 things:
You must birth things into existence (not babies)
Ideas, projects, vibes, labours of love, inklings, friendships, relationships, dreams, creations, musings, connections, anything. Art has always been inherently political, inquisitive, and instrumental to change, but that doesn’t make it void of whimsy. Quite the opposite. Find the courage and audacity to bring things to life around you in ways that enrich your life and the lives of others.
As an artistic thinker, you’re acutely aware you’ve got both light and dark inside of you, and you acknowledge you’ll need both to survive because you’re a human being. You harness both energies to lead by example and live in a way that provokes, explores, self-expresses, and questions the things that need to be questioned! Artistic thinking is an absurd and magical philosophy that’s easy to take part in: you just need to accept the bizarre and experimental nature of life, and spin that into an odyssey your heart can keep exploring.
You must find it in you to radically accept the path of experimentation
Knowing exactly what to do next and how to do it is overrated and is likely making you boring and complacent. (I’m saying this as a reminder to myself.) Experimentation implies a great deal of exploration and reflection, and the good news is that unless you’re doing truly insane stuff, the findings of your experiments will likely lead you closer to places you want to be. It’s a scientific process of trying things for the bit in the name of curiosity. If I get to the end of my life and can think “damn, I really went for it and experienced and loved as much as I could”, I think I’ll be happy.
You must live for the sake of expansion (your own and that of others)
I say expansion because I think it’s synonymous with love. Expansion is anything that makes you brighter and bigger, anything that broadens your horizons and makes you you-ier in the grandest and most transcendent sense. If personal experience is the research in the great experiment of your life, growth is the inevitable result. You can’t escape it! You will grow! And it will make your life and the lives of others better! And lead to—you guessed it—more growth.
ready, set, go! (living life as art)
If I had to add a 4th bonus point, it would be to just keep going. I’m writing this mini manifesto at age 29 and hope there’s a bunch more living I get to do, but this is sort of where I’m at right now. Maybe at 35 I’ll think of a new life philosophy and look back on my own current naiveté. But for now, this excites and motivates me to get out there and get out of my own way, because when you just see life as a series of creative and spiritual experiments to embark on, you can’t really lose - you can only expand. (And become a better artist).
loveeeee this Danika. And the pic of the trees, beautiful
🙏🏼 and thank you for the whimsy star* 🥲🦦