“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You are working with portraits, and portraits are of people. Here is where some of your difficulty lies. (Pause.) You should try to probe the mystery of individuality with love. You are overimmersed, presently, in the technique and the painting.

A portrait must contain a searching and a deep statement of the human condition, a reaching out toward the mystery that is another person, whether the person exists in your mind, or physical reality, or both. A portrait must contain a journey into personality, and the technique and the form will then follow naturally and spontaneously.

As you know you are apt sometimes to use a problem with technique as a substitute problem, as a way therefore of escaping from, rather than facing, certain issues concerning the nature of emotion. (Pause.

The emphasis would not necessarily (underlined) be upon technique nor detail, though it could be, but upon portraying in one portrait, if you will forgive the phrase, the agony and the ecstasy of individual existence. This is what you often avoid facing.

Look at the scenes outside your window in this light. Think of your painting as a spontaneous play of the godlike self, who paints or plays for the pure joy of doing so, without effort, without questions, and without plans. Sketch whatever comes into your head. Do not limit yourself in any way whatsoever in terms of intent as far as subject matter, medium, technique. Indulge in a spontaneous childlike game. When you feel like sketching or painting, when an idea springs into your head, try it immediately. When it does not, when an idea does not come, then walk, play with your cat, do anything you want to do.

The idea, again, art as a spontaneous play of the godlike self. Do not dictate to it. It knows more than you about the game. Now either of these techniques will serve you very well and refresh your creative energies. They are equally valid, and equally geared though in different ways, to your peculiar dilemma. Do not mix the approaches however. Plunge into one or the other wholeheartedly, and underline wholeheartedly fifty times.