Another Brick in the Wall

I haven't painted much in the last few months. Or at least, I haven't painted the kind of work I'm excited to share. 

I don't know if it's the weather (which has been unremittingly awful here in the North of England) or if it's something else, but I just haven't felt inspired by my work at all.

But after many years of drawing and painting, I know that if you wait for a bolt of inspiration to strike, you won't get much done. Creativity is much less about a magic spark and much more about just forcing yourself to work at something every day, even when you don't feel like it. 

So I have been drawing every day for a personal project that probably won't be of interest to anyone else, but is stretching me in all kinds of ways, and attending weekly life drawing sessions which are always fun and challenging.

I've also continued to work on stone wall paintings and for a while they weren't going well. But I hit my stride this week with a new series that incorporate text from a book on Bhuddism that I found in a second-hand store. In the past I've mostly used random text cut from magazines or newspapers, but I like the idea that the paintings look like one thing from a distance but mean more when you get close up. Here's one of them.

"Awakening" (watercolour, ink and collage)

And what do you know, somewhere along the way, the personal project and the life drawing classes and the stone walls and the book and something someone said to me the other day in passing, all of it came together and suddenly I had that bolt of inspiration. I know what I want to work on next and I'm excited about it.

That's why it's so important just to keep going when you're not feeling it. It would be so easy to just slump in front of the telly each night, especially when working means heading over to my studio above the garage in gale-force winds and heavy rain, but if you just ignore the voice that says you've run out of ideas, and override the fact that you don't like everything you're producing, and just keep working, something WILL come of it. It always does.

It's hard finding the time - I'm about to start another week with a full workload - but I'm keen to get started and I look forward to sharing the work with you as I go. 

In the meantime, I hope you are well and I hope you enjoy these new wall paintings :) 

"Becoming" - Ink, watercolour and collage