Artists live on the edge between expertise and non-expertise...practicing 'beginner's mind' where the naïve questions fuelled by curiosity can unveil deep assumptions and open up the field of perception. Beginner's mind is very effective in revealing possible blind spots or biases.

Artists engage their full sensory field, integrating multiple levels of processing (mental, body sensorial) to make sense of the whole and being alert to detecting weak but significant signals.

Complex systems are defined by their constant dynamic, in negotiating and adapting to internal and external tensions. They can be between competing (but equally valid) values or perspectives.

Artists leverage these tensions at the heart of its practice, inviting the observers' own inquiry. 

The creative and artistic experience leads us to welcoming those opportunities to go out of our comfort zone. Discomfort is a source of insight, self reflection, challenging what our biases and habits might be hiding from us.

Art's evolutionary purpose is in its power of honing and expanding our senses, and creating new layers of abstraction.

Abstraction is at the core of how human's understand their environment and make choices.

​

Art can provide a unique visual or sensual representation (in combination with analogy, symbolism, metaphors) as compared to intellectual or verbal descriptions. 

Related to the practice of 'beginner's mind' is the separation from one's ego - not to disown it, but as a dynamic of opening oneself up as a channel, and later reintegrate ego. Many artists related to their works in the 2nd person, creating a dialogue where the artist feels that the creativity came from something beyond them.

Accessing deep time - - Sense of timelessness... Kairos and Chronos
    - Sense of the ongoing infinite future

The central practice of wasting time, and unproductive time.

John Berger's quote here is probably all that needs to be said: "Art is a constant process of error correction".

While deductive ('de-' = from) reasoning always follows necessarily from general or universal premises and inductive ('in-' = to) thinking forms a generalization based on what is known or observed, abductive ('ab-' = away) thinking is an inference of understanding from a collection of observations.    

There is a visceral sensation of having to suspend expectations and control. Not-knowing is a faculty or muscle that can be developed.

​

With patience and a willingness to play, moving in non-linear ways, accidents turn into synchronicities and can be only understood retrospectively. 

Artists are unique in their capacity to work from a place where the future already exists. They take leaps that are not constrained by the present.

The creative process engages all senses, and therefore reveals the relationships and tensions between the emotional, the rational; the intuitive, the logical; the spontaneous, the planned. Each step in the creative process therefore invites us to be aware of our constructs. The rational, the logical, the planned - as "constructs" - are all under scrutiny from their opposites.