El Duende Process Painting
Clarissa Pinkola Estés writing on “el duende” from The Creative Fire: Myths and Stories about the Cycles of Creativity
“What we're speaking of is a mystical substance, that in Spanish is called el duende, the creative function. It is the *inhale* of life, the animating engine, the creating mind, the quixotic, eccentric, many-cornered Self, with a capital S. And it's more than animation. It's a way of living—that is, following all the shapes and the curves of the lay of the land of your psyche. It juts out in just the right place to help, or to protect, or to sharpen vision.
El duende is behind the instinctual nature, behind the Self. It is the breath of the Self, the oxygenating system that supports creative life. When the leaves of the trees shake, people say, ah, el duende. This unseen force can fill people with God. It fills people with fierce words that can cut to the bone, or cut to the center of the issue, or can fill them with words that can heal, or fly like a shaman's drum.
This is the center of the psyche. It cannot be extracted or taken out like a loaf of bread, nor can it be put in as one puts food into one's mouth. It is a being that comes to roost or to visit those who make a place for it. And some of us are born with a gift of it, and others of us must chase it everywhere.
Yet, if you attempt to tie it down, it will wither. And if you set a trap for it, it will evade you. And if you use it without replenishing it, it will retreat. And if you think it costs nothing to have it, all your hair will be burned off.
It's like a wild garden that still needs the tending of nature—the pruning and the fallowness to grow. It's a natural ecology, a way of being. Duende provides the central cycle of our creative natures. And that cycle is this: one of quickening, birth, rising in energy to a zenith, and then entropy, decline, and death.
Ah, but it doesn't stop there. Then incubation. Again quickening, birth, a rising of energy to a zenith, and the beginning of entropy and decline—and then again of death. And then another incubation.”
“What we're speaking of is a mystical substance, that in Spanish is called el duende, the creative function. It is the *inhale* of life, the animating engine, the creating mind, the quixotic, eccentric, many-cornered Self, with a capital S. And it's more than animation. It's a way of living—that is, following all the shapes and the curves of the lay of the land of your psyche. It juts out in just the right place to help, or to protect, or to sharpen vision.
El duende is behind the instinctual nature, behind the Self. It is the breath of the Self, the oxygenating system that supports creative life. When the leaves of the trees shake, people say, ah, el duende. This unseen force can fill people with God. It fills people with fierce words that can cut to the bone, or cut to the center of the issue, or can fill them with words that can heal, or fly like a shaman's drum.
This is the center of the psyche. It cannot be extracted or taken out like a loaf of bread, nor can it be put in as one puts food into one's mouth. It is a being that comes to roost or to visit those who make a place for it. And some of us are born with a gift of it, and others of us must chase it everywhere.
Yet, if you attempt to tie it down, it will wither. And if you set a trap for it, it will evade you. And if you use it without replenishing it, it will retreat. And if you think it costs nothing to have it, all your hair will be burned off.
It's like a wild garden that still needs the tending of nature—the pruning and the fallowness to grow. It's a natural ecology, a way of being. Duende provides the central cycle of our creative natures. And that cycle is this: one of quickening, birth, rising in energy to a zenith, and then entropy, decline, and death.
Ah, but it doesn't stop there. Then incubation. Again quickening, birth, a rising of energy to a zenith, and the beginning of entropy and decline—and then again of death. And then another incubation.”
El Duende Process Painting (EDPP) is a method of continuously layering paint and assemblage materials onto canvas with a focus on creative flow rather than the product. EDPP was developed by my supervisor and mentor Abbe Miller, PhD, ATR-BC, LPC. I use EDPP as a cornerstone of my offerings with clients, supervisees, and in my personal art practice. The video above documents one of my EDPP canvases as it developed over two years.