A self-guided artist’s retreat may be an invitation to experience the duende. The duende has to do with passion in the arts. The duende is not the work itself but rather the release of power.
The duende requires the artist to let go of the cerebral, the need to analyze or figure out. The duende concerns the struggle of being human, the effort to abandon preconceived notions, assumptions, pride. The duende is about the heart and its deepest secrets.
The duende is different from the angel who is outside the artist and may counsel, bring ideas, and brighten the obscure. Touched by the angel, the artist encounters no blocks to making art. There is no hesitation, despair, or doubt, only a sense of balance and joy as the angel’s influence pours through the artist into the work.
The muse is also outside the artist, an unheard whisper from an unknown source that pulls the attention of the artist. The muse tickles the intelligence without enhancing the artist’s capacity for compassion and empathy.
The duende, by contrast, is an inner power, felt and experienced. Perceived at the artist’s deepest core, the duende is not creation itself, but impels the artist towards creation, towards the miracle of new life in the form of art. The duende burns up complacency and self-aggrandizement to make the artist teachable.
The artist overtaken by the duende is reshaped, reformed, and emptied of self. The artist must remove all desire to be in control and submit to the duende’s command to go beyond the comfortable and familiar and embrace the quest for truth. There are no formulas, no cookie cutter works with the duende. There is no relying on what is popular, what the market demands, what others feel the artist “should” be making. The duende insists the artist take risks, dare the unknown of the unexplored, and put aside all thoughts of pleasing an audience, winning accolades, being accepted and acceptable. The artist who wishes to be authentic must bow to the wisdom of the duende.
The duende connects with the dream self that communes in sleep with other worlds and awakens with new insights, a different approach, an unexpected phrase, a sudden recognition of something previously hidden.
The duende is about death—and resurrection.