When done well, these have a lot in common.
It’s about fitting together and communicating — with love.
A work of art that did not begin in emotion is not art.
— Paul Cezanne
In painting, the colors, lines, and shapes fit together in an intricate dance of opposition and commonality. When this goes well — sometimes more intuitively and sometimes with a lot of thoughtful work — the results evoke strong emotions.
When truly in creative mode, time disappears, there is no capacity to worry, and it becomes a liberating experience with the participants completely lost in their media.
The comparison between making art and making love becomes obvious when you think of it this way. The intricate dance while time disappears, can equally apply to art and good sex.
The word creative itself — to create and procreate.
My current procreating is in the area of paintings. Artists sometimes refer to their works of art fondly as ‘their children’. I have been known to say, “Some of these babies need to find new homes” referring to paintings after a particularly prolific painting period.
When creativity is done as an act of love, it feels like the one ingredient to make life shine. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist famous for his studies about creativity, would agree. As a child, he watched the adults in his world be devastated by World War II and began a life-long quest to define what makes a life worth living. He concluded that being able to achieve the creative state in one’s life is what makes all the difference.
Some aspects of painting might even be better than sex. I have heard artists call painting their ‘place of refreshing’. Their ‘refuge when life gets tough’. Referring to this healing aspect of creativity, some even call it their ‘sanity’. I haven’t heard anyone refer to sex that way — unless people are just too shy to say so.
Regardless, I am convinced that the best of life comes with a sense of making love.
When you are creative in any area in your life, from friendships to baking a pie, the results, including many awkward stumbles along the way, will feel like making love.
If they don’t, some choices need to be made. Is this an area of your life that is not suited to you, or is it one that needs more practice and play, to be making love there? Life is too short not to be made with lots of love.
Good painting and good sex have a lot in common. At their best, they are both about making love.
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