The Creative Process According to Alex Grey

Artwork by Alex Grey

Creating anything is a transformative process, though we tend not to think of our projects in those terms. We tend to be focused on the end goal: finishing the blanket we’re making; publishing the book; concluding the event. We don’t think about the fact that what we produce is creative work, and requires not only your analytical mind but your emotional and creative mind, as well. 

When we focus on the end goal alone, it’s easy for the creative spark to be lost. The singular focus on results means that we lose track of the experience on the way, and what it can do for us. 

Even if you consider yourself to be the least creative person on earth and favor analytical thinking, your creative endeavors will require your creative genius, or your audience, whoever they may be, will be bored to death. The whole of your being needs to be engaged—not just the analytical side that’s tracking and monitoring progress and outcomes. 

Your creative journey will reflect the journey your audience will take. Alex Grey, the artist known for his spiritual and transcendental paintings and images, describes his version of the creative process in his beautiful book, The Mission of Art, using six steps: 

1. Formulation: discovery of the artist’s subject or problem.

2. Saturation: a period of intense research on the subject or problem. 

3. Incubation: letting the unconscious sift the information and develop a response.

4. Inspiration: a flash of one’s unique solution to the problem. 

5. Translation: bringing the internal solution to outer form. 

6. Integration: sharing the creative answer with the world and getting feedback. 

Steps one through four take time and are not always experienced in a nice clean, linear fashion, in my experience. For example, a writer might saturate in their ideas, methodologies, or the philosophies of their field for years, and they might have a series of insights and inspirations over a short period that lead them to write a book. They might incubate and formulate all at the same time. The writing process typically begins with step five. At this point, a writer has accepted the work of translating their knowledge and unique solution to the problem their readers face into a book. 

I once met a prolific painter—he didn’t always know what the result would be, but he got the idea down on canvas anyway. He said he frequently came across unfinished canvases started 20 years prior and finally knew what he needed to do to complete them. 

In Translation lies the challenge. How do you take something as hard to define as a thought or a feeling and translate it onto the page, the canvas, or the musical score, in a way that delivers your truest impression or message? The inevitable gap between what we intend to make and what we make is what makes creation challenging (and so rewarding).  

Every maker goes through their creative journey, whether they acknowledge it or not. If you take nothing else away, please remember that you will find yourself emotional about your creative work on some days, exhilarated on others, and at times downright frustrated and crazy over it. You’ll have peaks of triumph throughout the experience, and you’ll have troughs so low that you’ll think about quitting and walking away from the work altogether, even if you’re near the finish line. This is natural, but it’s the awareness of the journey that will keep you going when the going gets rough. 

Knowing yourself, how you react under pressure, how you work best, and how your creativity is nurtured is going to be an incredible asset to you. If you don’t yet know how you work in a creative process, then give yourself the time to learn.  And remember, it’s often darkest before the dawn. When things get hard, or you find yourself creatively stuck or blocked, know that it’s often hardest just before you’re about to have a major creative breakthrough. This isn’t a sign you should give up—it’s a sign that you’re probably much closer than you think.