The Groove Issue 129 - 3 Ways to Help You Live in the Present
3 WAYS TO HELP YOU LIVE IN THE PRESENT
The one thing I’m always looking to give you when writing these issues is a timeless look at the practice of remarkable artists whose habits and attitudes can be emulated in any field.
In that sense, I’m always looking at the past. But I’m always thinking about the future too: how to predict it, how to be ahead. You know what’s hard for me and for a lot of people? To be grounded in the present.
One of the greatest American abstract artists who helped define the movement in the 1950s and beyond, Ellsworth Kelly, was profoundly connected to the here and now in ways that are worth revisiting, especially in our frantic, modern lives.
Create With the Now in Mind
Ellsworth Kelly in New York.
“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the now the primary focus of your life,” wrote Eckart Tolle in The Power of Now.
While this premise is so simple, it is profoundly accurate. We live with constant chattering minds that are either trying to change or relive the past or are anxious about the future, instead of grounding ourselves in the here and now.
Ellsworth Kelly believed that art should be experienced directly and without interpretation. Through his unique style of abstraction marked by the use of geometric shapes, bright colors, and the interplay between positive and negative space, he wanted to convey the importance of simplicity, clarity, and purity in art. He sought to create works that had a direct and visceral impact on the viewer.
In many different interviews, he expressed ideas of keeping his work in the present: “I think what we all want from art is a sense of fixity, a sense of opposing the chaos of daily living."
He believed that by stripping away all extraneous detail, he could reveal the essential qualities of these elements and create works that were both beautiful and powerful.
Imagine for a second if you could free your mind to do your job without the prejudices of the past and the uncertainties of the future. What could be created from that space?
Spend Time in Nature
Ellsworth Kelly’s retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1996.
As someone who lives in the insanely wonderful but chaotic city that is New York, going into nature seems hard to do at times. (Although paradoxically, there are great man-made pockets of nature like Central Park.)
Spending time in nature in full contemplation is not only anchoring but humbling. When we see what has been created around us, why trees and flowers and oceans just “are”, things take on a different perspective.
Kelly was inspired by his surroundings. He lived in Paris and in New York but he always said he needed quiet time to observe nature. In 1970 he moved to Spencertown, a hamlet upstate where he spent the rest of his life until his death in 2015.
He revered nature and used it consistently as a source of inspiration and to live in the moment.“I feel this earth is enough. It's so fantastic. Look up at the sun. It's millions of years old and still to be millions more. And there are all the spaces we can never see.”
When the pace of your life seems to be pulling you in a million different directions, try to spend time in silence and in nature. It does wonders to calm a brain that’s projecting forward or dissecting the past all the time.
Have a Routine
Ellsworth Kelly, Spectrum V, 1969, oil on canvas.
People think routines are boring, when in fact having clear and distinct parameters is the best way to get the work done while also nurturing creative thinking.
Kelly woke up early and liked to practice yoga (talk about grounding practices) or to take walks in nature. He was always in his studio by 8:30 or 9:00 am even until his 90s, when he had to move around with an oxygen tube because inhaling turpentine for 60 years had caused damage to his lungs.
Your days don’t have to be rigid, but routines are safeguards for the mind and the soul. As humans, we need stability, and we can choose to do some things outside of our routines every day, not instead of having one.
Ellsworth Kelly, Austin, 2015, artist-designed building with installation of colored glass windows, black and white marble panels, and redwood totem.
Life-affirming routines don’t have to be boring. More than 1000 paintings, several hundred sculptures and drawings, collages, photographs and blueprints for architectural projects like the chapel Kelly donated to the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, prove this.
His thinking and working routine eventually brought him to the realization that by stripping away all extraneous detail, he could reveal the essential qualities of the elements he saw in nature or in architecture and create works that were both beautiful and powerful.
This fragmentation was also the gateway for his greatest contribution to art history: his shaped canvases. Kelly was one of the first artists to experiment with non-rectangular shapes, which allowed him to create more dynamic and visually interesting compositions.
In his words, "My painting is not about what is seen. It is about what is known forever in the mind."
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HOW CREATIVITY RULES THE WORLD
Last weekend, the most important business book awards in the United States, Axiom Book Awards, announced that my book had won the gold medal in the Entrepreneurship/Small Business Category.
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TEDX TALK
Have you already watched my TEDx Talk: “NFTs, Graffiti and Sedition: How Artists Invent The Future”?
I share three lessons I have learned from artists that always work for anyone in their careers. Watch it here.