Evolution of My Creativity after an NDE

Posted by Nancy Rynes (http://NancyRynesStudio.com) (revised September 2019)

Everyone changes over time. We all understand that, but for many people the changes over time aren't obvious. Well, except for the outward changes that we all notice as we get older: wrinkles, gray hair, and reading glasses. What I'm talking about are the changes that a person goes through on the inside: maturation, personal outlook on life, and personality. Most of those internal changes are invisible to all but our closest friends.

But for folks who create tangible products (books, sculptures, pottery, music, paintings, etc.), some of that inner, personal evolution makes its way into our creations. We simply can't avoid it -- our thoughts and feelings will always be integral to the act of creation itself. 

On social media, someone asked me about my artistic abilities and whether they are recent (after my NDE) or if I was always this way. I'd like to share a little bit about my own personal, artistic evolution with you.

I've been drawing since I was very young, perhaps as early as 5 years old. My dad would bring home those paperback "how to draw" for himself but somehow they always ended up in my possession. Dad wanted to learn how to draw and paint, but as a busy electrician, he had little time to devote to taking classes. Instead, he bought books. And then I co-opted the books from him. He thought it was fun that I would try to draw the animals in those paperbacks: horses mostly, but also deer, fox, dogs, chickens, teddy bears, cartoon animals, or whatever the author felt like teaching. Some of you may know the types of books I'm talking about...showing you how to create a donkey from sketching loose shapes that looked like beans and tree trunks.

While drawing those weird collections of shapes and evolving it into a bear or goose isn't how I draw today, it was a good start for a 10 year old kid. I took what I learned from those books and drew whatever I saw on the farm, on the television, or in magazines. But it's always been animals first. I've been animal-crazy my whole life so it's no surprise they were my first subject matter. 

I began to learn "real" painting when I was 17 by taking classes at a local community college. The instructors encouraged me to go to art school and since Chicago was close, I went to the American Academy of Art. It was more structured and rigorous and although I wasn't a fan of their methods (drawing from still life and casts ad nauseum before getting into "real" art), I can't fault their results. They taught skills from the ground up. What I mean by that is that the students learned to draw well, and in many different subject matter, before we could progress to painting. The reason for this is simple: just like a budding pianist needs to master scales and simple melody before progressing to more challenging arrangements, so too does the artist need to learn the basics of her craft. Some of those basics are composition, tonality, drawing, and accuracy.

Art school laid a strong foundation, but it wasn't the end destination for me. After my 2 years at The Academy, I decided to finish off a BSc in geology at university, then went to grad school. Even then I was interested in both art and science and didn't want to be forced to make a choice. 

I continued to paint through my 20s, 30s, and early 40s, but I didn't take it seriously and wasn't terribly "creative" with it. What I mean is that I was often more adept at scientific illustration and copying what I saw or photographed, rather than inventing a completely new concept. But that is how we're taught if we go through a traditional art school as I had, or work as an archaeological artist, as I had also done for a time. 

In the traditional art school that I attended, we learned to paint what we saw, a good practice when someone is just beginning to learn an art form. But we never learned to invent or be strongly creative. Individual expression or style were not encouraged that early in a student's career. They told us it would evolve on its own, in time. But for a lot of artists it never does because the foundation for that level of creativity is never put in place.

Traditional art schools are often very good at teaching the craft or techniques of art, as they should be, but they often fail the students by refusing to showing them how to give voice to their own unique, creative spirit. Or perhaps they simply don't know how to teach it.

I had my moments of unbridled creativity where I let my spirit soar, but they didn't last very long. Tapping into that higher form of creativity is something that has only come to me recently.

I simply didn't know what to do with it, what the purpose was of my art at that time, so I'd go back to doing mostly copy work.

Since my accident and NDE, things have changed considerably for me in the creativity department. My skills at the craft of painting have improved immensely, and I think my style has evolved a bit too. But both my unique creativity and desire to paint have skyrocketed. I actually *need* to paint, and in new, different ways. I am no longer content with just being a copyist...fresh, new concepts are coming to me pretty much continuously. It's as if the creative floodgates opened up! 

 

What happened? What changed?

I'm not exactly sure. On a purely physical level, I know my traumatic brain injury (TBI) strongly affected my left frontal and temporal lobes, thought to be the center of language and analytical thinking. And sure enough, after my accident I had a lot of trouble with reading, math, remembering names, spoken language, words in general, and computer programming. I was also a strongly verbal thinker prior to my accident. Today, I think mostly in pictures and concepts and have to translate those into words so that I can communicate with other people. Perhaps the brain injury itself had something to do with change in the way I created art.

On a more spiritual level, though, I think that being put directly in touch with my creative Source/God/Spirit during my death on the operating table deeply changed me, too. How could it not? Beauty and love beyond measure, communication so deep and meaningful that it couldn't be translated into words, and being accepted and celebrated without question for simply who and what I was both as a human and a soul. It changed me, and for that I am grateful. It also forged a stronger connection to my Creative, Higher Power (Source) that hasn't gone away. I know that every time I step up to the easel, I am allowing that higher creativity to flow through me and on to canvas.

And perhaps death allowed me to be fearless, too, to no longer worry about what others might think. I suspect this is where recent pieces like "Inyan" came from: becoming a more fearlessly creative, conceptual, spiritual person, seeing connections rather than separation. Feeling free to creatively channel whatever came to me.

"Inyan" (available as a print, here)

My style is evolving into something more contemporary, more imaginative, and incorporating more of the concepts I learned during my NDE. I have a purpose now, too: to celebrate connections, love, and spiritual truth. Oh yeah, and to have fun!

"Song of the East"

"No More War" 

"Horse Play"

Relaying spiritual messages through my art has become second nature now, so you will continue to see more works that show the unity and connectedness of all people and all things. 

"I Remember"

For more on my book, Awakenings from the Light (available on Amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble), that details my accident, NDE, and recovery, visit http://NancyRynes.com

Posted by Nancy Rynes (http://NancyRynesStudio.com and http://NancyRynes.com)

All text and images are copyrighted by Nancy Rynes, 2015-2019.

       

Where Do I Get My Ideas?

I bet that almost every artist out there gets asked this question too many times to count:

Where do you get your ideas?

Each artist might have a slightly different answer, and even mine vary depending on the painting I'm working on. I'd like to be able to say that some angelic muse always guides my brush along the canvas and creating the perfect painting as if by magic, but unfortunately that pretty much never happens. Sometimes my ideas take months or years to mature, sometimes days, some take hours of research, some are just a hike through the woods away.

"A Moment at Sunrise" Oil, 18"x24"

Landscapes - Direct Observations

Walks, hikes, visiting interesting places, and just being outdoors in general inspire my landscapes. Morning or evening light on the mountains is a favorite for me. Yep, these paintings are pretty darn literal...they are a combination of my feelings, memory, sketches, photos, and experiences. I might move things around a bit to enhance the composition, heighten colors in an area and lessen them in others, or maybe add an animal or two. But the scene I paint is pretty much as I experienced it.

"Tough Guys of the Prairie" Oil, 18"x24"

Animals - Direct Observation

Many of my paintings of animals come about in the same way as my landscapes. I'm lucky to live in the western US where wildlife isn't too far away. Even on a usually-routine walk I'll see a Golden Eagle, Bald Eagles, coyotes, deer, or even elk. Sometimes I'll go out into nature to find specific types of animals to photograph and paint. The pose or gesture of an animal might inspire me to paint it later. Or maybe it's the landscape the animals walk through, or a particular moment in time that just feels like magic. Sometimes it's the attitude of the animals themselves that inspire a painting, as in "Tough Guys," above.  Often, I'll put animals from one location into a landscape from another, combining and rearranging elements to create something more artistic, more evocative of the experience than a purely literal painting.

"The Old Ones" Oil on textured panel, 18"x24"

My "Textures" Series - Dreams and Intuition

It's the "Textures" series where the creative process kicks in to high gear for me.

A little more than half of these paintings come to me out of dreams or meditative states. An example of one of these is "The Old Ones," pictured above. I'm not quite sure how this happens, how complete paintings simply show up in my mind and demand to be painted. These pieces seem to be mixtures of different aspects of my personality - varied interests, things I've seen or thought about, bits of history, myths, and many other things. Maybe it's just something as straightforward as Interests + Experiences + Thoughts + Incubation Time = A Painting. Or maybe, just maybe, there is some kind of mystical being like a muse that helps inspire us to create something truly new.

The rest of the "Textures" paintings are on-the-fly, intuitive combinations of things that just seem to go together. My biggest fascinations are history, cultures, stories/myths, and animals, so I will often intuitively combine various elements from a culture into a painting. A lot of research goes into some of these paintings too - researching the history, cultures, myths, stories, and animals helps these paintings "feel" more authentic to me. For example, I might make sure that a particular animal I depict has a range that overlaps the culture showcased in the painting. I guess it's the scientist in me who wants to make sure that the details are generally right!

How do I set the stage for this type of creative inspiration to happen?

I read and research constantly. As I said before, these things are passionate interests for me so I'm constantly reading about them. My library card is well-used, and I visit museums as often as I can. I just absorb this stuff like a sponge - not because I have to, but simply because I love it. If I wasn't a painter I'd still be reading about Lakota history, visiting Mayan and Ancient Pueblo ruins in North and Central America, and searching out new-to-me rock art sites.

Maybe what happens is that this information just knocks around in the back of my brain for a while until one day, my subconscious simply puts the "right" items together into a painting and voila! There it is in my mind's eye, ready to be put on canvas.

Or maybe there really are muses, nudging us along, helping us to create. Sometimes I like this explanation better...



All text and pictures copyright Nancy Rynes, 2014. You may link to this page, but please do not copy text or photos for any reason without my written permission.