I have suffered art block exactly three times in my life.
Basically I’m talking about spans of time where I just couldn’t create, couldn’t even force myself to push through on an art project or complete a painting.
All three of those times existed within the span of the last nine years. The flow stopped. At my core I am an artist. Take this from me and what then am I? Nothing.
This is why Artistic flow (this art blog) has been so neglected. This is why I faded from existence. Looking back through time I had single years where I produced more art than what I have done in the last nine years combined.
Looking back I have finally analyzed the causes of these long stretches of nothingness covering my usual visions which always before became art.
The first one arrived because I had debased myself and it was something I couldn’t internalize it properly within my mental framework. I have never been a “good guy,” but I have always lived in a way that allowed me to feel justified and carry myself with dignity as a human and artist.
Though I held no one else up against my personal code of conduct, I lived by it without exception. I had my code, my rules, my honor. Never had I strayed from these things, and as long as I had them I held a pride in myself. I knew myself to be true, if only to myself.
I’d been tested uncountable times.
Some things are so shiny they blind us. Some things are so addicting we are willing to sell our self esteem, even our souls for them. When hooked on heroin, for some only the heroin matters. Pride goes out the window.
Note that I am speaking metaphorically, heroin, or any other drug for that matter could not tempt me enough to even scratch at my rules.
No, instead it was something in the mind, something more than myself, a dream, a wish for something that couldn’t exist, a thing I knew corrupt and unreal, but wished so badly for that I watched myself paint over the dark cracks of it’s reality so all I would see was it’s blinding light. I wanted nothing more in life than to bath in that fantasy for eternity, but I was aware it was corrupt. It was false, and to even touch it I’d need sacrifice myself. That I did. I escaped reality into a fantasy and sacrificed the very core of myself to do so. The battle within my mind, the rationalizing I attempted, it killed my ability to create.
The second run of total art block came about a few years later.
At This point I had come to grips with not being the person I had always been before. The art had begun to flow from something new, it was from an inner wish. It was a wish that my dream, my fantasy, my pretend world where much was just based on lies I told myself over and over again became truths. In my deepest bones I knew this bright heavenly light was full of cracks and holes, many seeming unrepairable, but in my fantasy land I would make the light shine so brightly someday that the light itself would fill those cracks and holes. If this proved true my sacrifice of my honor and dignity would prove worth it. Even if in doing so I lost my view of that dream I’d have the memories of it. Fuck myself, it wasn’t about me. I had art in my mind again, but the art I wanted to make I couldn’t, and the art I could make I don’t want to make.
Not being able to make the art I wanted caused me art block. I had a mind full of art, I made sketches, I took notes, I made fantasy plans.
Enough for many gallery shows, enough to fill multiple books and emblaze my own false visons into the eyes of the whole world. I itched to do it, but art is about timing, it’s about ingredients, it’s about events, and none were in place and all were just fantasy.
Art block extreme.
I complained to those around me a lot about this at the time. I began to fail at everything, not just my art.
Looking back I see I was fighting demons during this time. I started dwelling heavily on my past, my current situation, and on my fantasy of someday remaking myself as being delusional because I was in my heart of hearts very aware it was all fake. I’d thrown my old life away, I’d thrown my pride away, I’d broken all my rules and avoided looking even at myself because I couldn’t be proud of my choices.
I started becoming very aware that I’d never dealt with all the things in my past which caused me to wish to escape reality and retreat into a make-believe world. I became very aware that I’d in large ways retreated from much of real life at that point. I failed in my duties, I failed people that counted on me, I failed myself.
I forcefully brought myself back to reality as much as i could and attempted to participate in real life again. I forced myself to make some art. I stupidly shoved away all the trauma and grief from the first half of my life which had been bubbling up to the surface. I shoved it back deep down inside where i thought it belonged. Maybe if I’d let it come into the light I’d have had clarity then, and I’d not have slipped later so far.
The biggest bout of art block was the third one. I was completely lost. Everything had turned horrible. One event after another. It was four years of the worst year ever with each year making the last seem funny in comparison. If it could go wrong it did. Four years of living hell, and it was causing all those demons of my past to bubble up and turn me so sour I alienated myself from everything and everyone.
Everything I had ever bottled up from my life and stuffed way down inside started pushing and clawing it’s way forward.
All I had left was my fantasy land, my dream world of someday, of maybe, of if only…
and then as the last of those four years came tumbling over me my fantasy world began to crumble as well. All those crack and holes in the light I’d pretended to ignore started surfacing. I looked, tried to ignore, tried to patch them, but they were showing. I began to become more anxious than I have ever been in my life. It permeated me. I saw an end, the poisons, the icky parts, the things that caused me to sell my very dignity were staring at me. Did I finally put away my make-believe? Oh no, not me, I somehow lowered myself even more, somehow debased myself even more. I didn’t know I’d even had anything left to sell off when it came to dignity, but I wanted that light so badly I’d die for it because without it I had nothing left. Reality was not a place I wanted to live any longer. Reality was were I created art out of mist. I realized I was no longer an artist.
I realized I was nothing.
With everything else I now felt obsolete. An old-school artist who stopped making art in a world where ai was destroying real art and people with iPad apps thought they were da Vinci.
May 2025. It is May 25th today to be specific. The art block is gone. It has been 100% gone since Sunday May 18th. I make a note of this for all because I am back.
That third bout of art block is over.
This year, this entire year was the crash. All of my demons, all of the undealt with trauma and grief I suppressed over the course of my life caught up to me. To be very specific, it started in the end of last year. My fantasy world began to truly crumble and the the cracks and holes in it were very obvious. I was seeing it’s reality, and my response was to grovel, to beg, to pray that I’d not lose it. I did not want reality. I did not want to deal with things.
Every month so far of 2025 has brought me heartaches, pain and loss in new and fresh ways to be piled upon the heap of the last few years. I did break. Completely. Everything had become to heavy.
All the lies I’ve told myself turned to dust. Clarity hit.
The pain was unbearable, and I wanted to end everything.
The after effects it would have left on exactly four people were the only reason I exist on this plain of existence.
I talked with God and he pointed out my greatest sin in my life. It was not just in chasing a will-o’-the-wisp into a make-believe world and painting the grime that existed their in gold and silver while neglecting my real life, responsibilities, and yes… dealing with my past.
It was that at some point I had literally elevated this illusion I had spun above God himself. I had worshipped my illusion with every once of my being and prayed not to God for the illusion to be my reality, but to the illusion itself.
When that reality hit me, I begged for forgiveness.
Again I’ll say that I have never been a “good guy,” but until this last decade I have always lived in a way that allowed me to feel justified in all my actions and carry myself with dignity as a human and artist. Part of that was that through all my actions, through all my dealings, through my most sinful moments, and my sometimes saintly offerings, I have always walked with God.
From the time I was small I have been put through many trials and tribulations where often I was completely alone in dealing with the aftermath. Where none could help me, where none would stand by me, except God.
I always try not to preach. Who would listen to a sinner such as myself?
Yet all who know me, and all who ever knew me, know I am a believer and I have never lacked faith to the point where I would not proclaim myself so. Only God has always been there for me. No other.
So my illusion had shattered and I saw in it’s place what it really was. What it had always been. What deep down I knew it to be. It came to me that all the subtle reminders, all the warnings through the years, and even the anxiety that was thrust upon me were reminders from God that he was there and wanted me to open my eyes and face the real world. He’d never left me, but I had done him a great disservice. I’d elevated something above God.
So I asked to be forgiven, and I promised to never let anything blind me so again.
It was as if a floodgate opened to me.
In the last two weeks I have drawn daily, these little sloths for one… and I have already completed two paintings, scratched out roughs for many more, and sketched the ideas for another dozen. I have written over fifty poems, and written close to two dozen songs. The art is overflowing.
Much of it is dark, much sad, much deals with the terrors of my past, the traumas left unhealed, the grief suppressed, the pain of betrayals, and the act of blinding oneself your own lies. Also there is a great sadness that looms for those who are innocent of wrong, but who must pay because of other’s selfish and poor choices. I find myself looking in the mirror and seeing myself guilty of this as well.
That is where I am, and that is what going with the flow is sometimes about.
From all outward appearances I am in the worst position of my life. I am financially ruined. I am in the poorest physical shape I’ve even been as well. I’ve alienated myself from pretty much everyone, and I am reeling with an inner pain I didn’t know a person could survive. I’ve had many physical pains, they are laughable compared to this, but I’m excited, I have my art back. I have clear eyes. I shall never shut them again. I shall never allow lies from either myself or others to take that away again.
I am for the first time in many years myself. I was a fool. I was The Fool, But I’ve laid him to rest.
The fool never won at anything anyway.
The old me, with God by his side no matter my crazy doings, and art as my path always won.
I am me. Art shall once again flow.