Where do you think your ideas come from? I'm genuinely curious on your theories. Do they come from someplace outside of ourselves? Or is the imagination just a bunch of random firing neurons that we assign meaning? Are artists genius subconscious mathematicians or is there a stream of ideas that we need to funnel a tap through?
It's very interesting to me that you can teach someone technique, but you can't teach them to do anything with said technique. You can teach someone to be a photo realistic painter, but can you teach them to tap into ideas and make art with those skills? I don't think you can. This seems like a pretty simple problem; can't figure out what to paint about? Paint about your life. But, there is so much more to the process of inspiration that can complicate the process.
Self consciousness and generality/conformity are the #1 art killers. Being afraid of your voice and trying to imitate someone else's is a problem I see frequently within my own acting and painting. This problem is also something I recognize around me in my peers and classmates. Trying to put faith into a higher power with my and "trusting the process" has been really useful to me to fight against self consciousness. The idea that I am not in control helps me a lot. But, is this idea true, or is it just a trick? is there really a higher power out there that I can allow to speak through me, or is the idea of one enough to get me to stop thinking and taking action in painting?
If there is a higher power, how do we know for certain? I don't know if there is a way to tell if dreams are real, if meditation connects you to a network of ideas, or if DMT is a portal to another dimension. False confidence might be just as helpful as religious faith.
Are these questions worth asking, or should we just get back to making art?