I’m not liking any of my art at the moment, and that’s a good thing.

It’s good, because it means I have been making art as a process, rather than a final product. I’ve been experimenting and being sloppy. Just putting anything on paper and watching with detached curiosity how I react to these strange clunky drawings.. That said, sometimes later on I see some value in something I have made and actually end up liking it a lot.

I have so little energy that I tend to create in short bursts, and this stops me from overthinking. My inner critic is upstaged by a migraine or just the feeling of deep exhaustion. Whilst chronic illness is no walk in the park, it does tend to whittle away at the superfluous fluff of life. Yes, Ms Perfect begone, you meant well but I have no bandwidth for you now.

It’s easy to fall into the feeling of being somehow ‘blocked’ as an artist when you are not making art that seems ‘good’ in your own eyes. Positive thoughts or kind and generous words from friends does not always assuage the lonely experience of frustration and discouragement.

My theory with artist block is that our footprints in the world are unavoidably tangled with our unconscious, and often discouragement points to something deeper going on. I believe creativity is so very important. Dostoyevsky says in his book, “The Idiot”, “Beauty will save the world”…what an intense and weighty statement. Art, I believe, is a homage to any and every kind of beauty. In our world of industrialisation, capitalism, patriarchy, greed, chaos and deep suffering, beauty and our response to it in the form of art- provides a healing salve.

So it’s no wonder then, that we put such pressure on ourselves as artists- even the label feels a bit lofty. If I say I am an artist I have just labeled myself as something I really don’t think I can live up to. But what’s the alternative? I need to find a way to sit with both the importance in creating art and the expendable quality of it. Like, it’s just paint on canvas. It’s just words strung together. It’s just something you may have put on your mum’s fridge when you were a child. It’s pretty ordinary. It’s also alchemical magic and wonder. Both. That’s probably where the magic is located- in the collision of something so ordinary with the ineffable. We are drawing pictures of God. We are responding to a mysterious reality- one that we may have caught a mere fleeting glimpse, a reality that we were previously unaware of. We sit still just long enough for it to make us gasp, and to have our imaginations filled with a story so vast that we only hear and see little snippets. And the storyteller is not us. We notice something lovely or fascinating we didn’t see before. So, we respond, and in the process, complete the alchemical reaction by creating something from our unique perspective.

I often think of the creative process as akin to dreaming. Ineffable images and symbols come bubbling to the surface, and our only job is to make a little bit of sense to them. This is why it’s often not until we view something we have made later on that we see some of the meaning, or the themes that our unconscious wants to bring to the surface. And yet to really find the sense of satisfaction in making art, I must also take on the attitude:”This is just another painting for the fridge”. No good can come from being overly self-conscious. We end up editing all the interesting stuff out. Probably one of the most crucial tasks we have artists is to be as authentically ourselves as we can be. Crinkles, quirks and all.

We might indeed be saying something important, in our art. But, the unchecked wisdom that comes from the unassuming childlike parts of us are perhaps most precious.

I love this encouragement:

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

Dr Seuss

….A good one for your fridge