I don't know what to DO!

I always listen to Nick Wilton's Art2Life podcast, but this week it was especially useful for me. Nick talked about being away from his studio and how he gets back into his work when he returns to the studio.

I have been away from my art for a while now - first there was Christmas, then I went away for 10 days, and almost as soon as I came back, I had company staying at my house. Now when I go back into that space and look at what's on the wall, I almost don't recognise it. I certainly don't feel like I made it.

This is exactly the feeling Nick described. You can find his podcast HERE.

The two main takeaways for me were:

1) spend some time thinking (and not actually making anything).

2) just play with no intention to make anything good.

These are things I know, and have known for years, and yet I constantly forget. I guess we all need reminding sometimes. 

So let me break these two down and explain how I'm tackling them.

1) Spend some time thinking (and not actually making anything).

The most recent class in Art Tribe is all about writing a creative brief for yourself. This is my way of thinking about my work and where it wants to go next. In the class, I share how I review my past work looking for the things that really resonate with me. I go through a two-stage process to identify the most exciting pieces and then I usually print these out and write about them in my studio journal. I analyse what I loved and why, and I jot down my thoughts about what might come next.

I also do a deep dive into other peoples' art, checking in with myself to see what's changed.

2) Just play, with no intention to make anything good. 

I don't enjoy long phases without creating, so I have to keep busy. That's where sketchbooks come in. I can create anything in my books, and no-one ever has to see it. Sometimes I use books to explore ideas, but when I'm in limbo with my work, I don't necessarily have ideas. That's when I just play with paint or collage materials. I have no goals in mind. I'm not trying to make anything nice. I'm just playing. This means I can have ugly pages, or pages with only one paint mark, or pages where I just paint stripes. I can do anything.

Because paint and glue need time to dry, I often work on multiple books at once - or sometimes I work on loose paper which I later stick in the book.

Sometimes these experiments lead me somewhere, but often they don't. They are simply a way to grease the wheels of my creativity and keep everything moving.

It's totally normal for us to feel out of touch with our artwork after a period away from it. It makes perfect sense. But it isn't a problem - or at least not as big of a problem as we might assume. It's normal and it's fixable.

If you're feeling this way, try my two strategies and see if they help (and don't forget to check out Nick's podcast for his thoughts on all this).