A few thoughts:
1) Your still lifes are old fashioned. That IS their charm to me. The fact they are incredibly well crafted shows that you care. These photographss are not just some quick and crappy imitation, but a true exploration of this genre. I think you should embrace it.
2) This goes back to a critique I had in college of Art majors. As an Architecture student, I was instilled with a level of rigour and craft that they did not enforce at the Art department. I always felt it a to see so many Art students spending all their energy trying to be new and different but because of a lack of care, the result was a bunch of badly made crappy work.
3) “I feel I lack that certain creativity that allows me to come up with something original something clean and new” To be doubly clear – you have the clean part down pat. So the hard part for you seems to be “original” and “new”. (For me it would all three items!)
4) I think one way to get to “original/new” is to push past the focusing on the pretty composition and interrogate what you are trying to say about the world of things around us. What is your stance on things? How do you say it within the constraints of a classical still life? Do you say it subtly (a flower and crib)? Or do you say it brashly (a dildo and diaper)?
5) Or more specific to image above. Its clear from the image you had chosen items from and books about the the American West, (with a nuance towards Native American artifacts). How would you shape this still life to actually say something about it? Yes, they are just objects, but don’t just take them at face value. You could explore the “appropriation of misused objects” – a jug shaped to hold a light bulb, a rock and skull used as paint canvases – there is a certain level of absurdity to that! Or explore cultural appropriation, an englishman talking about America, a blanket that seems to have never been used to warm someone up, the portraits of aged weatherworn other people. Or if want to go neutrally abstract, the idea of old and new – the weather worn jug versus the seemingly never actually used jug, the old atlases and the new hat.
6) A potentially fruitful avenue forward would be to take the composition beyond a collection of themed objects, to a collection of objects selected around an idea. Go up a level in abstraction and start pushing the ideas. For example, if your idea is American West – how about throwing some artifacts of the modern west, such as a Macbook (designed in Cupertino) and a toy Truck? If it’s cultural appropriation of native americans, how about a DVD of Dances with wolves and a Redskins jersey? If it’s about ancient artifacts, why not throw in some modern artifacts that already seem dated – the old 386 desktop collecting dust in your garage and a Thriller LP.
7) American expansion (how about modern empire)? American exceptionalism (what’s the human cost)? Nostalgia (old and modern)? Otherness of different cultures (how are we strange)?
8) I know this can seem to be a horrific navel gazing approach, but I don’t think it has to be. Play with it in an iterative way, take multiple stabs that build upon each other. From example above –
Step 1: Start with your photo above.
Step 2: Then explore the American West by adding a Apple Macintosh and Toy Truck.
Step 3: Then turn on the Mac, and have the monitor show a still image of Dances with Wolves and the toy truck positioned to look like its about to be swallowed by a horse.
Step 4: Then ….
Let each step inform the next iteration, either due to different shades of nuance to theme that you are exploring (in this case, different ways to juxtapose the old and modern American West) or the new compositional possibilities due to the new elements inserted into the still life (the computer screen can be used to display other images otherwise not possible to include in a still life).
9) I am a huge proponent for your espoused never-stop-moving approach “So ill keep nibbling away hoping one day lightning will strike and I’ll get that aha moment!” But I also believe that any endeavor involves periods of expansion and contraction. Sometimes you have to “just do it!” But sometimes I think one should take a breather and analyze what has already been produced. Print out a full series to date (such as the still lifes, dancers, or beach portraits), pin them all up on a wall and step back. I’m serious, get yourself all the way across the room so the wall looks like a page of contact sheets. Look at the totality of the whole series and interrogate yourself. Are there threads of commonality there? See if your unconscious has pushing you in a particular direction. And now having seen your unconscious, maybe push that direction to 11 (or actively decide to fight and go in a different direction)
10) Like I said at the top, I’m skeptical that something “new” can just “pop out” of nothing. It isn’t the blank sheet that is new and original; it’s the collection of marks on the sheet that creates the drawing. More accurately, its the collected sequence of making a mark and then another and another … pushing and prodding, building upon previous creations that lead you down a path.
11) I love your work. The craft is impeccable. I have much respect for the wide variety that you explore (still lifes, street, portrait) – and all well done to boot! Don’t lose sight of the path you’ve already travelled.
12) Enjoy the process.