Incubation is the process of incubating, which is, maintaining conditions favorable for promoting development. Most often, this refers to the incubating of eggs laid by a mother bird or hen. In the creative process, however, it means fostering conditions favorable to the development of the fine art product.
Two of the definitions of fine art are:
(1) Creative art, especially visual art, whose products are to be appreciated primarily or solely for their imaginative, aesthetic, or intellectual content;
(2) An activity requiring great skill or accomplishment.
Clearly, the hatching of baby birds and the process of painting, printmaking or photography are fine art. Both require a great deal of skill, patience, and perseverance, with hope that the unseen product will become visible at some time in the future, yielding a degree of aesthetic satisfaction and enjoyment.
During the incubation period, I am often unaware of what triggers the contemplation of the details of a piece I have not yet begun, such as, the size of the work, the medium to be used, or the color palette. However, as the project begins to take shape in my mind, images are collected, and details written on my phone, in a notebook, or on a coffee shop napkin. Some ideas are later used; many are discarded.
As James Taylor suggests, “It can takes days, or weeks, or months or sometimes even years . . . you’ll think about writing about a book or piece of music, and you’re writing about it and you just leave it to the side for a while, and then you come back to it. Now the interesting thing about the incubation stage is that to a certain extent it is not really under your control how long that stage will take.”
I think the important part of this stage of the creative process is found in the definition of incubation: maintaining conditions favorable to promoting development. It’s interesting to note that the origin of the word comes from the Latin, incubare, and means to lie or recline on. And, this part of the process may literally mean taking time out from daily activities to find that place of peace and tranquility, and allowing yourself time to meditate, to ponder, to muse—to pray.
“Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?” from the Book of Job