Sailing Through Blank Canvas Gridlock
A Lesson in Reality: Creativity Blocks & Unfinished Business

By Chris Dunmire, Work-in-Progress

When’s the last time you gridlocked with a blank canvas? Not a painter? Don't need to be. We all face blank canvases (and creativity blocks) sooner or later in our creative work through a/an:

• blank page
• white screen
• new entry
• open plan
• unpopulated template
• compiling bulleted lists
• silence (even the golden kind)

With our endless, ongoing opportunities to create, Blank Canvas Gridlock (BCG) is bound to naturally occur under these conditions:

1. The immediate desire or need to create something out of nothing.
2. The absence of a concept or starting point.
3. Fear of ________ (anything — fill in the blank).

I hit BCG last fall when I decided, last-minute, to enroll in a “Collage for Fun” workshop. It met three times for three hours over three weeks. A stitch in time.

I figured the informal, process-oriented group would be low-pressure and full of creative spontaneity and easy cutting and pasting. I just needed to bring my own blank canvas to work on. Sounds easy, don't it? ...

[Hi, Chris here. I've interrupted this blog to admit that I just can't see my way through to finishing this story in a way that satisfies me. I've been writing this piece on and off since the fall, initially enthusiastic while working in tandem with my collage. Once the collage was finished (the work-in-progress sailboat above), I gave it away, and out the door with it went my creative juice for chronicling the cut-and-pasted story I had in mind to accompany it on its voyage.

Well, I could tell you how it took nearly a week for me (to find the courage) to touch the canvas with paint; or about how I accidentally tore it in two places from experimenting with an unconventional background technique in my garage; or how I recycled my Nit Wits #36 sail boat artwork into the collage; or how I chose a metaphoric theme for my piece foreshadowing the ups and downs of menopause; or how some adhesives should never be touched with human hands; but the truth is I've lost my mojo for writing about this experience.

Lucky for you this is an ironic demonstration of how different kinds of BCG's can affect creative work, nesting easily within the same project until it turns into one big Russian Matryoshka doll. Before I get stuck inside the little teeny tiny one six levels deep, I'm going to sail into the sunset on this one.

If you need closure, feel to write your own ending, using my article as a prompt. Pick up after my "Sounds easy, don't it?" Funny — it's not always as easy as it sounds. And it's not always easy to make "fun" collages or write lightly about your experiences either. But hey, lots of stories have alternate endings. This happens to be one of mine.] •

© 2011 Chris Dunmire. All rights reserved.