Make Play a Habit!
The following article was published in the JAN/FEB 2025 issue of the Visual Artists Ireland News Sheet
If you're feeling creatively blocked, there’s a high chance that what’s missing from your artistic practice is play. Sure, you could argue that all art-making is a form of play, but what sets play apart from more targeted creative production is the intention behind it. Are you creating out of urgency, driven by deadlines, or purely for the joy of exploration?
The art world tends to strip play from the creative process by steering artists towards a results-driven mindset. We’re pressured to articulate our ideas before they fully form, whether for funding applications or when pitching to potential partners. This focus on delivering outcomes can make the process feel heavy. Most of us have experienced putting together a proposal that seemed logical on paper, only to feel completely daunted by the task of realizing it afterward! This is because top-down thinking is a skewed approach to creativity. True artistic innovation, like all imaginative play, thrives on bottom-up processes, where ideas take shape organically as you work.
In a system geared towards outcome-focused work, what’s required is an intentional mindset shift. Think of play as an essential habit for artists. Play isn’t a break from ‘real’ work, it’s an integral part of the creative process that can spark new insights and ultimately lead to a more compelling practice. Here are some ways you can cultivate more playfulness in your work:
Habit 1: Curate your Space
Play, by its very nature, draws us out of our everyday state of consciousness. Picture a tennis court, a stage, or a magic circle—each of these settings invites distinct conditions for play and exploration that shift us into new states of consciousness. This concept can be applied to your studio space, even if it’s just a desk. Transform it into a playground for your imagination by decluttering and curating it with only the most potent and inspiring images, materials, and objects. The goal is to be able to glance idly around your space and spark spontaneous, lateral connections in your mind. By priming your imagination in this way, you create the ideal conditions for play to begin!
Habit 2: Creative Warm-ups
Just as musicians practice scales before a performance and dancers warm up with stretches, visual artists also benefit from preparatory exercises. Expecting to dive straight into your best work without first loosening up is unrealistic. If you have the luxury of a full studio day, starting with creative warm-ups is essential. Depending on your practice this might look like blind contour drawings, notebook collages, a digital animation, or any creative exercise of your choosing. The key is to keep it low-stakes, enjoyable and judgment-free.
Try not to allow perfectionism to creep into this process. If you’re familiar with The Artist’s Way, you know about “The Morning Pages”—a practice of unfiltered writing that serves to clear mental clutter. Creative warm-ups function similarly, clearing mental blocks and preparing you for deeper creative work. Don’t underestimate the power of this simple habit. Studies have shown that activities involving manual dexterity help reduce stress and stimulate brain regions linked to problem-solving and creativity. So engaging in creative warm-ups can easily snowball into a full day of productive flow!
Habit 3: Creative Constraints
Every game operates with a set of rules that, rather than limiting freedom, create a framework that channels the energy and facilitates flow and innovation. The same principle applies to your art practice: too many choices can lead to decision paralysis, but self-imposed constraints can sharpen your focus.
Let’s say you’re stuck on a work in progress, can you playfully challenge yourself to using a maximum of two specific tools, materials, or colors? Another effective constraint is to work in series, exploring slight variations in each piece. This approach engenders more fluidity by taking the pressure off the outcome of a singular work. Whatever the constraint, limitations can actually push through inertia by forcing you to use your ingenuity and consider new solutions. So get creative about inventing new rules!
Habit 4: Incorporate Chance
Another great tool, if you find yourself stuck, are techniques that inject chance into your process. Surrealist-inspired games like William S. Burroughs' Cut-Up Technique, involve physically cutting and rearranging text to generate new meanings. The same approach can be applied to images. Similarly, Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies cards provide cryptic prompts to break through creative blocks. Marina Abramović’s instruction cards work in a similar vein.
A resource I often recommend to visual artists is The Choreographer’s Handbook by Jonathan Burrows. This book brims with methods for remixing and reconfiguring your material. Sometimes, I’ll simply open it to a random page and see what synchronicities unfold from there. All these strategies introduce randomness and disrupt conventional thinking, allowing spontaneous connections to surface that lead to surprising breakthroughs.
The goal of these playful habits is to enable you to release control and reconnect with what feels alive and pleasurable in your practice- a clear indicator of where the treasure lies. When you trust your intuition and lean into what genuinely excites you, instead of contorting yourself into rigid mental frameworks, you transform your practice into an imaginative realm of discovery.
