Letter from the Editor

A child sitting alone with paper and crayons, simultaneously creating and finding an image, is busily engaged in bringing their psychic life into being, according to Winnicott (1971). I am nodding as I write this because I think I know what he is referring to … but I am also not so sure. I know that psychoanalysis and creativity share the search for new forms. And that it feels right to say that, through making, we learn something about the world and ourselves. But there is also a sense of mystery about how this comes about, leading even Winnicott to state that the child “must be allowed to communicate a succession of ideas, thoughts, impulses, sensations that are not linked except in some way that is neurological or physiological and perhaps beyond detection” (p. 55).

Mystery is a part of self-creation. Maybe because it occurs in the body and beyond the reach of language, or perhaps because it's not how we typically think about change. Yet, we do know something about the circumstances that bring about the creation of a mind. I recently visited a ceramicist whose house and studio were overflowing with his work. He showed me one piece he kept in a special area in his house and described how the surface of the piece, the colors and the quality of the glaze, came together to create something special and unique. He sighed: “I think it's why I keep making so many, to get that to happen again.” This is the mystery in the process of making that cannot be completely controlled. For the ceramicist, the mystery motivates him to keep creating, which is another way of saying that it brings him to life.

As a painter, I wrestle with a similar dilemma — how to keep the work feeling fresh, direct, and alive. Searching for new forms in my work starts in my body as I negotiate with the materials at hand. This might be cuing into the smell of oils and solvents and the tactile difference between wet and dry, tuning into the rhythm of my attention, noticing how colors affect my mood, or s