There is a kind of attention that isn’t effort. It’s the state you enter when you’re wholly engaged in making something, when the thinking mind steps back and the hands know what to do. Contemplative practice has a name for it: mindfulness. Not the app-version, but actual present-moment awareness. Full contact with what is happening right now.
This is why I started Homebody Creations, a space where creative work and inner life occupy the same room.
Fluid art taught me this most directly. I was working on a painting recently with a clear intention. The paint had other ideas. I watched it move in a direction I hadn’t planned and had a choice: resist, or pay attention to where it was actually going and join it there.
I joined it. What emerged wasn’t what I intended, and it was equally good. Because it came from presence, not control.
This is what the philosophy of Wu Wei is about: moving with the nature of things rather than against them. When we force outcomes, we work against the grain of life. When we pay attention to what is actually happening and find our place within it, we stop struggling and start participating.
Fluid art gives you this feedback in real time. The paint doesn’t lie.
If you’ve enjoyed following along here, I hope you’ll come with me. Homebody Creations is where most of my writing will live from now on, exploring the creative process as a path toward a more purposeful and awake life.
Jan💕
Some of the fluid art pieces I’ve been creating!
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