Warrior Within: How to Embrace Your Creative Rut

As artists, we have all been there. The creative rut. The most fatiguing part of being an artist and perhaps the downfall of many talented individuals who could not climb out of it. Creativity comes from many places within us all. However when a photographer's passion is absorbed by the repetition of what we specialize in, the outcome of the work becomes all too grueling to look at. So how do we get back to the love of what we do? How do we fuel once more the passion that showcases our work as new and creative?

Being in a rut for the most part, leads to extraordinary results if one can just grin and bear it until the end. The “light at the end of the tunnel” is different for us all. The reasons of why we are there, the length of time an artist may be consumed by boredom, or even how well each individual can cope with the idea of not producing the work they were once capable of.

During a discussion with Beth Claire of Lost Highway Imaging, she revealed that she had also been in the middle of a creative rut. “I wasn't even finding joy in creative sessions anymore and everything just felt... dull,” she said.

Most photographers push the idea of creative personal projects in order to stir up some new ideas. Although for Claire, even the side projects were not making the cut. That is until one day when she noticed her daughter was playing a fashion game app on her phone.

They give you an inspiration image and you design an outfit around it. She was showing it to me and was scrolling through the inspiration photos and there was a festival styled one and it hit me like a ton of bricks!

There are as many incarnations of female beauty as there are women. The beauty of a woman can be organic or superficial, ethereal or savage, authentic or artificial, raw or a meticulous masterpiece. A single image can inspire lust, joy, melancholy, envy, elation, contentment, inspiration, and beyond. I am unable to look at a woman and not see these things. Each woman holds her own particular, unique beauty and my passion is finding and capturing it.

Over the years, she has touched on many of these incarnations of female beauty. Her work prior had been on the ethereal, refined, and elegant side. This spark of creativity made her realize she hadn’t even touched on the savage, raw warrior spirit that lives inside each of us.

She stated she is inspired every day by family, friends, colleagues, and clients who face fear, survive tragedy, fight righteously, love passionately, and do so with such courage, grace, and strength. Everyday battles can feel overwhelming, even in our rather domestic modern lives. She wanted to reflect each woman’s struggle and triumph in a way she can relate to.

The makeup and props have been chosen with the intent to reflect something about her and how she relates to her world. Each shoot in the series has been inspired by something specific: a color, an animal, an emotion, or even the woman herself. “I’m doing that by stripping down my shoots to something more organic and primal, yet still feminine,” said Claire.

The idea of modern warriors has been embraced by her clients and colleagues in a way that she never imagined. Since the start of the project, she has received messages from all over the world from women who relate to the ideas of feminine power, courage, and independence.

Stories are pouring in from survivors of domestic violence, women who struggle with chronic illness, cancer patients, and those who have left abuse and addiction behind, and so many others. “It is incredibly humbling and sometimes overwhelming,” said Claire. “I am striving to put together a project that reflects as many experiences, as many struggles, and as many triumphs as I possibly can.”

The image below is of the young lady that helped inspire this series, her 11-year-old daughter Sage. I wanted to get a younger perspective on this project to see how children felt about letting go of the norm. Sage wrote: “Being dressed up like a warrior made me feel wild. I liked being less ladylike and feeling like I didn't have to follow all the rules. I loved that it made me feel free.”

Claire said that this warrior project is dedicated to every woman who takes that deep breath in the morning, gets out of bed, and faces the day and her own personal challenges head on no matter what battles she is fighting.

So perhaps the way out of the creative rut is to embrace it head on. Allow yourself to be bored with your work. Stop working so hard to come up with a new idea as that goes against the very nature of what creativity should be. It should come from within and be allowed to "hit you on the head" in some respects. In this fast-paced world, we have come to expect results immediately and are impatient when it comes to seeing that light at the end of the tunnel. Many will succumb to this and frantically start shooting all ideas and concepts that they are trying to recreate from others. Sian Beilock, psychologist and author of the book “Choke,” writes in Psychology Today that we should take a break from being chained to our desks. This break “can help us come up with new and unusual solutions.”

This project was initially to bring Claire out of her own rut, but in turn, it brought so many of her clients out as well. Clients being able to shoot in a new fashion and embracing the other side of their personalities.

While Claire says the project is still in its infancy, there are many possibilities left to explore inside this concept. She wants to work on including more diversity, more locations, and more ideas to dream up.