Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Art is subjective, there can be no full consensus on any aspect of it, no full agreement on what makes one form stand out more than anything else for art divides people more than unites; it is the passion and the pursuit of it that makes it breathe and in those who give it so semblance of life, their words must always be heeded if we are ever to understand the world of the creative process.
Ryan Garry’s The Creative Process: A Documentary About Art is a fascinating insight into how several of the regions artists view their disciplines, what drives that spark of passion that allows them to see beyond the empty space infront of them and to bring life to what doesn’t have a pulse, that can only be seen in the most human of perspectives, that of fulfilling imagination.
In the same way that Mary Shelley sought to understand her own thought process as she sat down and created one of the seminal books of the 19th Century, so too does Ryan Garry’s enchantingly shot film bring the thoughts of Merseyside artists to the forefront; the artist in us all that lays waiting to be stitched together via the right set of circumstances and with the flicker, the spark, of artistry. Like the modern Prometheus, the artist is inhabits every part of our being, it is just that some choose to heed the call and ignore the calls of spite of those who deride such efforts.
What Ryan Garry’s film shows is that it is the single-minded pursuit that makes art possible, that you have to be comfortable inside your own head and skin to achieve some sort of perfection, even if it is just in your own eyes, and to have to honour the drive; unlike scaling a peak, crossing an ocean or walking from Land’s End to John O’Groats, the purpose is not to say well I can conquer it because I see it, it’s to say I can’t see it yet but I have the imagination and the drive to make it appear.
Like a magician conjuring items out of thin air, the artist may be seen to appear bizarre in thought but it is the voice inside their head, guiding their hands, that makes them unique and consistently alive.
A splendid insight into the world of the artist, Ryan Garry’s film is a must see to understand the creative process that lives in us all; no matter how much we try to deny it.
Ian D. Hall