Art Inspiration: How to Overcome Darkness & Prosper, PT 2

Photo caption: Dark times come to everyone. For some artists, making art can be a way out of the darkness. Image courtesy of Elli Milan. 

Recently, Milan Art Institute founder Elli Milan created a podcast with two Mastery Program graduates, Jake Dunn and Miranda Gamel, to talk about how they overcome darkness in their lives. In yesterday’s post, we covered Jake’s story. Today, we look at how Miranda deals with the challenges in her life.

Here are a few of the strategies that Miranda uses to get her thinking back on track and to push the darkness out of her life.

1. She makes a gratitude list. In recent years, New Year’s craft items have included both gratitude journals and gratitude jars. It turns out that Miranda finds that writing down what she’s grateful for has a great impact on her thinking. 
   Miranda regularly makes lists of the things she’s grateful for. These lists help to remind her that even if she doesn’t always get everything she wants, she has still accomplished a lot and has a lot to be proud of.

2. Miranda likes to journal. She says that writing down what she’s thinking helps to clarify her thoughts. The journal helps her identify how she feels. Once she pinpoints that, she asks herself why she feels a certain way and when did it start? Doing this allows her to remove herself from the situation and ultimately to look at it with new eyes. 
3. She paints, of course. A single painting, which Miranda ultimately wound up calling Metamorphosis, changed her life. By making that one painting, she realized she could paint and that painting was what she wanted to do. It turns out that her art inspiration was art itself. 
   This is something that we advocate for a lot in our programs at Milan Art Institute. You often find inspiration to paint by painting a lot and by always having something to paint. By painting a lot, you get good at painting, which in turn, makes you feel good about yourself.

Listen to the whole podcast with Elli, Jake and Miranda on SoundCloud. 

Here Is Some More Art Inspiration for You!

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