04 SMOKE SIGNALS - Interpretation, Recognition & Discovery

Sometimes a signal arrives before we understand what it is asking of us. An idea drops in at exactly the right moment. A word keeps returning. A dream stays with us. A bodily feeling changes the direction of a work. A repeated sign gathers significance. An image appears in meditation. An old artwork suddenly becomes newly visible. Smoke Signals explores the many ways intuition and inner guidance can enter creative practice - and what happens after they arrive. Moving beyond a single explanation of intuition, Karen Mayo places artists including Wassily Kandinsky, Johannes Itten, Angus Martin, Paul Klee, Hilma af Klint, André Masson and Joan Miró into a wider conversation about inner necessity, inspiration, receptivity, unconscious process, artistic judgement and the movement from impulse into form. At the heart of the book is a quieter question: how do we learn to recognise what is meaningful without forcing certainty upon it? A reflective studio companion about signals, feeling, timing, discernment, self-trust and the evolving nature of knowing - for artists learning to listen more closely to what keeps returning.