I have been in a funk in the studio for the past couple of weeks. It feels as though any momentum or confidence about my work that I thought was permanently embedded in myself seems to have completely evaporated. I should have known better than to think that things had changed, that I had somehow gained some new kind of unwavering confidence that would inure me to my natural uncertainty. This happens quite often with me, as I have documented here before. Like the words from Goethe below, my own progression as an artist moves in a spiral, sometimes pulsing forward and some times retreating.
Evolution and dissolution.
I went back to a post that I have twice posted here that describes a time not much different than my current situation. I felt out of sorts and uncertain, definitely in need of a pep talk that could only come from my own experience of overcoming this inertia. Here’s that post:
Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral
with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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I was looking at a book catalog yesterday, just browsing for something new and I spotted a book on the works of Robert Smithson, who is best known for his monumental earthworks. The most famous is shown here, the Spiral Jetty, which juts out into the Great Salt Lake in Utah. I’ve always been somewhat fascinated by earth-moving on a large scale and have admired Smithson’s work whenever I came across it.
The reason I mention this now is that I found myself thinking smaller lately, painting smaller paintings for a smaller economy. Part of this was a conscious decision but part was the result of just becoming a little more wary with all the turmoil in the world. There has been a period of introversion marked by a noticeable withdrawal from thinking boldly. Seeing this reminded me of the need to think big.
I realized I had become a bit fearful of pushing myself, perhaps afraid of exposing my limitations. I had lost a little faith in my own abilities, including the ability to adapt to new challenges.
I was being safe. It was the retrogression that Goethe talks of in the quote above. I was in the spiral.
This all flashed in my head within a few seconds of seeing the spiral jetty. Funny how a single image can trigger a stream of thought with so many branches off of it.
I had forgotten that I had to trust myself and throw the fear of failure aside, that thinking bold almost always summons up the best in many people. Once you say that you don’t give a damn what anyone says, that if you fail so be it, the road opens up before you and your mind finds a way to get you on it.
So I have to remember to think big.
To look past the horizon. Just freaking do it.
Then progress will come…
Redtree Times 
Many years ago I started thinking about the learning spiral rather than the learning curve. The interplay of action and reflection seems best represented by a spiral, and it can be terrifically creative. I’ve always found action without reflection, and reflection without action, to be those places where I get “stopped.”
You’re right, the learning curve is much too optimistic. Progress almost never comes in a direct line. The spiral definitely better describes my experience and recognizing it helps me through these periods of retrogression.
My own experience of creativity is less like a steady state and more like a cyclical thing, like waves breaking on a shore, or like breathing. The inhalation of breath is the period when things are going into my head. I binge read, or binge watch episodes of TV shows I find stimulating and entertaining. I read blogs and have long conversations with friends. This period tapers off gradually into a short lull, a brief period when ideas are forming, projects are taking shape, I’m visualizing in my head how to go about knitting a garment or a story is taking shape in my head, characters gathering like members of a flash mob. Then there is the exhalation phase when I have this sudden outpouring of creativity, when I get enmeshed in the execution of a project or story. It begins in a rush that gradually tapers into another period of lull, and the whole cycle starts again. Over the years, I’ve recognized the feel of this cycle and I try whenever I can to just go with the flow.