Making art is something I have done since I was a child. However, it is truthful to say that I have had some long periods of time where I did not regularly create my own personal art. One of these stretches of inertia happened when I taught art full-time in schools. Part of the reasoning around that hiatus was a temporary loss of confidence, as my brain was busy learning how to teach, and forgetting how to intuitively create. I was becoming consciously unconscious about how I worked in my own process.
When I began formally teaching art, I realised that breaking the process into small steps didn’t come naturally to me; doing a piece of art was something I just did without thinking about it too much. The adjustment of unlearning everything I knew was difficult, but necessary, so I could learn anew the structure and process of art making, from idea cultivation to finished product, with a view to being able to show others what to do.
Another factor that hindered my own art making was the mental and physical exhaustion I experienced after spending hours each day helping my students to find creative solutions towards realising their projects, and after they left, my energy went into cleaning the art room, grading pieces and planning for future lessons. I had nothing left to give myself in my spare time, and the thought of creating was too overwhelming to face. As an art teacher, I became burnt out and began to feel like a failure. Thankfully, my art teaching career spontaneously shifted towards additional learning needs coordination (which fed my interest in psychology), and to trauma informed practice (which gave my work a deeper purpose). The latter helped me to recognise my own personal needs for healing; instigating a deep inquiry into what I needed to move on from, what brings me joy, and what my values really are, throughout all aspects of my life.
During this time, I uncovered what had been deeply buried in my consciousness, hiding behind sleepless nights and creating a sense of loss. I was desperately missing art making. I had abandoned an essential aspect of my identity and the negative impact that had on my mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health was subtle, but had been growing nonetheless. These realisations coincided with the start of the pandemic lockdowns. Suddenly, there was all this extra time for creative exploration in my life, along with a sweeping cultural wave of obsessive ‘positive habit’ formation, which increased the pressure for me to step up artistically. I rolled with it as best I could, took out my sketchbook and paints and got to work. That is not to say that I was immediately drawing and painting every day with ease and fervour. I faced all sorts of challenging blocks within myself (and honestly, I still do). However, this was the time that I really fought for the artist in me, through tears, inertia, fear, self-doubt and imposter syndrome. I strove to find my way out of a dark period of creative stagnation, drawing by drawing, experiment by experiment. A lot of time was spent either staring at the wall or the dreaded blank page, or going through every item in the house, trying to pick a subject when nothing looked interesting or meaningful enough to me.
Nowadays, I see the potential in any form or idea. I make time for art, fitting it in as and when I can, around a mentally demanding full time job, family, friends and self-care. In a way, art making is a form of self-care, but it is also much more than that for me. It engages my thought process, my inquisitive nature, it allows for playfulness, skills development, improves my ability to plan, to be more discerning, to experiment, to be brave and notice the directions in which I want to grow. It helps me to see my next steps in life, even if I can see just one or two in front of me for the moment. I know now that by doing, I am forming the future of my creativity.
This blog is now the latest extension of my process of growth. There are parts of me believing it will be futile, inconsistent, invisible or inconsequential. However, there is another part of me that remembers that perseverance has carved out my regular art-making habit, which is now a non-negotiable for me. When my art-making schedule falters, I try not to beat myself up about it, but instead, I get back to it at the next given opportunity. So, if I just start this new blog-making process, who knows where the road will take me.
After all, ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’ – Lao Tzu
Step one ✔