Point Zero: Creativity Without Limits

A guide to breaking through creative blocks to discover the emotional and spiritual rewards of spontaneous art.

In Life, Paint and Passion, creativity expert Michele Cassou showed readers how to discover the magic of intuitive expression. For many of us it is difficult just to let go and create something. Cassou shows us that once we engage in the artistic process it is quite possible to gain access to a powerful spiritual reserve within us. In Point Zero, Cassou takes the process further by providing an original method of inquiry that can be utilized in the face of doubt, conflict, and lack of inspiration. Through stories of her work with dozens of students, she shows the reader how to overcome creative difficulties of all kinds.

In the creative quest, Cassou teaches us, we must slay three dragons: The Dragon of Product fights the artist's spontaneity; the Dragon of Control bars the door to the unknown and the truly mysterious; and the Dragon of Meaning fights intuition and creativity by demanding interpretation and resolution with every move. Cassou arms us with a clear method for creating specific questions relevant to the situation of the moment, questions which are designed to dissolve barriers to creativity. She shows us how we can come face-to-face with the energy that creates our blocks, and then to use this encounter to return to Point Zero, the ground from which pure creation springs. In this place of infinite possibility, art becomes not a means to an end but a place which we may inhabit and in which we can explore our true selves and the mysteries of our lives.

At first glance, Cassou's approach to overcoming creative blocks seems simple--she counsels students to ask themselves key questions to land them at what she terms "Point Zero," or the seat of creativity. But in all her real-life examples, none of the students know what to ask. One student in her painting workshop painted a spaceship, but didn't know what to do next. According to Cassou's diagnosis, his self-judgment and desire for control had closed the door to inspiration. After some prodding, he finally asked: "What would I paint if it was really okay for me to not be in control?" Like magic, he was "instantly energized" to paint large dark insects crawling around the ship. Cassou documents similar breakthroughs in almost every chapter, as she outlines the "Creative Quest" and the "dragons" that block the way: the Dragon of Product emphasizes the outcome, but not the process of creation; the Dragon of Control avoids risk, fearing the unknown; the Dragon of Meaning wants to analyze every step of the process, preferring reason to feeling. Cassou distrusts thinking, proposing that if one decides what to paint, one is "artificially simulating emotions." Only intuition unleashes creativity, she says. But Cassou doesn't offer specific guidance (e.g., exercises) for formulating the questions that lead to Point Zero. And while she asserts that the Point Zero method is applicable to any activity, here she focuses solely on painting. Her New Age prose will further limit this book's readership to the converted. 16 pages of color illus.

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