No. 9 - Synchronicity and the Artist: When the Work Begins to Dream Back
On Creative Process as a Field of Living Correspondence
Synchronicity and the Artist: When the Work Begins to Dream Back
On Creative Process as a Field of Living Correspondence
There comes a moment in the life of a work of art - be it a painting, a poem, a song, or a film - when it begins to surprise you. You are no longer steering it entirely. It begins to speak back. It makes suggestions. It resists. It opens doors you didn’t know were there.
This is not imagination in the conventional sense. It is reciprocity.
The work begins to dream back.
This moment is often subtle. You pause before adding something. The image tells you no. You make a mistake that leads to a revelation. You suddenly remember a dream that feels like part of the same story. You’re driving, and a phrase floats in that finishes the piece you’d struggled with for weeks. A song plays that sounds like what the painting wants.
This is synchronicity within the creative process - not just outer events that align with inner states, but a work of art itself becoming a locus of synchronicity.
The boundary between inner and outer becomes porous. You are not the sole author anymore. You are in relationship - with the piece, with the field, with the subtle currents that move through both.
The Work as a Being
What if your artwork isn’t just a product, but a presence? A subtle being gestating through you, with its own internal logic, mood, and telos?
Jung once wrote, “My works are my life’s compensations… my self-portraits in symbolic form.” But these portraits are not static. They evolve. They interact. And often, they precede you. The images come before the understanding. The story knows something the author doesn’t. The painting reveals a part of you you haven’t yet met.
This is not mystical romanticism. It’s a lived reality for many artists. It just doesn’t fit neatly into the language of productivity.
When Synchronicity Enters the Studio
You’re working on a collage, and a scrap of text floats to the surface that exactly names the feeling you couldn’t describe.
You photograph something, and later find a decades-old image that echoes it perfectly.
You sculpt a figure, and someone later shows you a forgotten myth that matches it symbol for symbol.
These moments don’t arise from conscious planning. They feel given. They arrive with that distinct tingle of synchronicity. The air shifts. The work shimmers.
You pause - not with control, but with awe.
The Studio as a Threshold
When we treat our creative space as a sacred site of encounter - not just with materials, but with meaning - we prepare the ground for these moments.
To make art imaginally is to assume that you are not making alone. It is to:
Enter into dialogue with what arises
Let the unexpected shape the final form
Allow the work to ask questions you haven’t answered yet
Recognize symbols not just as decorations, but as doorways
The studio becomes a kind of listening chamber. A field in which synchronicity and the soul both have room to speak.
You Become the Instrument
As this orientation deepens, you begin to live differently. The line between life and work blurs. Symbols from your art appear in your dreams. Strangers echo lines from your notebooks. Your own past shows up in the gestures of a character.
You are not manipulating material. You are tuning to something - and being tuned in return.
Synchronicity becomes less an anomaly and more an atmosphere.
The work is no longer about something. It is something.
It is alive.
When your work begins to dream back, listen with both hands.
It is no longer yours. It never really was. It is passing through you. Give it shape. Let it change you. And when synchronicity enters the studio - bow.
I just finished a piece that surprised me. Before it became a piece, it was something I was merely playing with.....an object I manipulated without too much thought, like an experiment, not knowing early on that it would eventually be an important and meaningful piece to me. When I played some more with it and added things, trying on various other objects to wed with it, it became this amazing piece that took on a life of its own that was shaped by the deep emotions I experienced of losing that kitten (when she jumped out from under my hood at the mechanics, never to be seen again). It's as if I transferred those emotions into the safe place of this art piece and lifted most of the pain off of myself. It really didn't become a conscious effort at all until the very end when the title came to me: "Her Lamentation". It's as if it needed to be created beyond my awareness of that need.
Perhaps reminiscent of the Celtic tradition of "thin places", in this instance the studio as a place of heightened awareness where deeper connections form and the work reveals itself to the artist? (looking forward to working with you at the London residency in June!).