Lynda Barry and innate creativity
By Kerry McPherson
“We know that athletes, musicians and actors all have to practice, rehearse, and repeat things until it gets into the body, the ‘muscle memory.’ But for some reason, writers and visual artists think they have to be inspired before they make something. Not suspecting the physical act of writing or drawing is what brings that inspiration. Worrying about its worth and value to others before it exists can keep us immobilized forever. Any picture we make or story we write cannot demonstrate its worth until we draw or write it. The answer can’t come to us any other way.”
—Lynda Barry
I have been drawn to the curious mind and profound ideas of writer, cartoonist, and teacher Lynda Barry, who believes that an energy is captured in a drawing during the experience of making it. Barry describes seeing an “aliveness” in drawings that most people would consider “bad” or childish. The people who create these images are people who stopped drawing a long time ago.
Once someone is taught how to draw, says Barry, their images lose this aliveness. Many artists spend the rest of their careers trying to get it back. Barry found that she was unable to copy most of the images that were drawn by her students who “didn’t know how” to draw. That surprised her because Barry is a good copier.
Personally, I believe that the energy that is transferred from something we call art can touch a place in viewers that can excite them and make them want to create.
For her class called What It Is, Barry studied where images come from, hoping to help her students who had stopped drawing a long time ago tap into their innate creativity. In class she had them draw seemingly simple things, like a car or Batman. While the students were drawing, they were having an experience. There was a lot of involuntary laughter in the room because the students were not just drawing but telling a story. These stories unfold the moment they make their way to the paper. If the person doesn’t stop themselves, they have no problem discovering the story.
Barry calls the lines in drawings created this way “live wires” because an aliveness is captured in them that gets transferred to the viewer. “It’s not alive in the way that you or I are alive…but it’s alive in the way the ocean is alive and is able to transport us,” Barry says.
In the end, most of the drawings looked like they had been drawn by a little kid. When Barry asked the students to stand up and look at each others’ drawings, there was instantly a terror in the room.
“All we did was draw a car but the room feels like it’s on fire,” she says. “Why?”
When Barry asked the students draw a second image, there was so much shame in the new drawings that the students wanted to destroy their pictures―to get rid of them immediately.
“Instead of liking or disliking, we need to learn to pay attention to things as they are,” says Barry. Liking and disliking are blinders that keep us from our experience.
In my opinion, we should apply that non-judgmental attitude to both our own work and to others’ work. I think that everybody can write fiction, just like everybody can draw. But our critical eye or voice that judges what comes out of us prevents us from doing so.
At some point, someone―or even ourselves―told us that we couldn’t do it. Or that it was bad. And we believed it. We held onto that thought even though it wasn’t true.
When we were kids we didn’t have any problems “playing” and making up stories. Writing or drawing as an adult is the same thing. It’s about having an experience and going on a journey with your imagination. Maybe it’s not going to be a masterpiece, but that’s not what the endeavor is about. It’s about the experience. When you’re done, you can just walk away and go play in the other room. You work doesn’t need to be judged. It can just be.
I wonder whether short stories written by someone who stopped writing fiction a long time ago would have the same aliveness as the drawings that Barry describes. There’s a good chance they wouldn’t just because of the difference in the medium. But it seems that a certain energy would be captured by opening ourselves up to a place we’ve been disconnected from for so long.
What do you think? If you have experiences to share about making art that is alive, rather than good or bad, email them to Nancy Woods for possible publication in a future issue of Kickstart.