If there is a secret to creativity, this is it ....

I don't mind saying that I was starting to worry.

It's been months since I've felt creative. There have been stirrings in the last few weeks and even an almost-finished painting. But one painting every six months is hardly a sustainable business plan! I needed to get cracking on a whole series and it just wasn't happening. 

Recently I started working in my studio journal and reflecting about what I want next for my work, and then all of a sudden, on Friday, I finally felt ready. I had planned to spend all day in the studio but life admin messed up the morning, meaning I had 4 clear hours to work and boy did I work! I started eight paintings.

Eight!

It was as if a surge of creative energy was just buzzing through my system, and it felt SO good :)

These are two of the paintings - for some reason I didn't photograph the others, but it doesn't really matter because they will all change anyway ....

These paintings are about black contrasted with bright, saturated colours. They're about darkness lifting. They're about pattern and line contrasted with loose paint marks and scribbles. They're about hidden collage elements. These are all ideas that were brewing in my studio journal but somehow I jsut didn't feel ready to really let rip until this week.

As I was painting, I thought "I must share this in my newsletter."

And what I want to share is this ... we are always creating, even when it seems that nothing is happening. It can be so easy to despair, to feel like we have nothing to express. But our creativity never goes away. We can't stop being creative anymore than we can stop thinking.

The ideas are always germinating, but sometimes they need space and time for that process. They need us to stop pushing and worrying and stressing. They need us to accept that now is not the time. They need us to trust that we will know when the time comes. And most of all, they need us to make space for them when they do come.

They need us to tell the family to get their own dinner, or to leave the office a little earlier, or to cut back on TV, or to let some emails go unanswered. We don't live on the standard cycle that most people do - we don't work 9-5, or Monday to Friday. We work when the inspiration comes and we rest while it's taking a break.

What a glorious life we get to live!