What is your artistic genealogy?

Who are your creative heroes? Are there artists, writers, or creatives you are continually drawn to or fascinated by? What is it about them that draws you in? What can you learn from them?

 This post is about acknowledging the people near and far who inspire us.

In 'Steal Like an Artist,' Austin Kleon writes about discovering our artist's genealogy. He recommends mapping out a family tree of who influences our work and then adding the branches (or roots) of who influences their work. When I did this exercise I was surprised to find that many of the poets who inspire and influence me connected in some way to the same group of poets who came before them.
 

Creating is about connection. We create to connect to ourselves and to each other. Mentors, learning partners, and arts groups can provide relationships that nurture and support creators in navigating the challenges of craft and the arts industry.

Conflict helps us grow and change. Embrace the opportunities in conflict.

We create on the shoulders of giants, connected to all the creators who came before us and to all the creators who will come after us.

Creators are natural students and teachers. Courses and workshops offer rich opportunities for learning, for making new connections, and for developing community.

“Most of us are not raised to actively encounter our destiny. We may not know that we have one. As children, we are seldom told we have a place in life that is uniquely ours alone. Instead, we are encouraged to believe that our life should somehow fulfill the expectations of others, that we will (or should) find our satisfactions as they have found theirs. Rather than being taught to ask ourselves who we are, we are schooled to ask others. We are, in effect, trained to listen to others' versions of ourselves. We are brought up in our life as told to us by someone else! When we survey our lives, seeking to fulfill our creativity, we often see we had a dream that went glimmering because we believed, and those around us believed, that the dream was beyond our reach. Many of us would have been, or at least might have been, done, tried something, if...If we had known who we really were.”

― Julia Cameron

Indulge in the work of your favourite creative person. First, enjoy the work allowing it to connect to you however it wants to. Then look for clues as to how it might have been created. What could the process have looked like? I wonder how the first draft looked and felt. Who helped them along the way? How did something this person created end up in your hands? How has it travelled the world or across time? What impact has this work had on you or on other people?

Pay attention to craft next. What did they need to be able to know and to do to create this? What is the evidence of their mastery or skill? When was this created in their body of work?

Finally, where are the points in this line of thinking where your creative journey and theirs could align? Are there reflection points, ripples, artistic experiences and connections that bind you to this person in ways you haven't noticed before?