Many of these things

When I started making pieces, way back when, I didn’t really know where I was going or about things like ‘brand’.  I told everyone this is what I planned, sort of, job wise and went headlong into it (Impulsive? *Facepalms* Unprepared? Absolutely. That’s another story). There was a sense I had of wanting to learn so much, wanting to try everything.  I would make a thing. Then get bored and begin again, something new, something different.  AKA as ‘bright shiny object syndrome’. (Betcha didn’t know it had a name did you?)

All my experimentation was part of a daily basis of asking myself “what’s next? what’s next?”.  Partly, because I had myself convinced that if I kept on trying different things that I would find my thing, (I wrote a bit about this in a post a couple of months back).

The other part of this is curiosity.  So is isn’t just a case of what’s next, It was also, “what’s around the corner?”.  I love to explore new places, new things and am good at pushing forward.  If I go walking I am often thinking “yes the view is nice, also “ooh what’s that over in the horizon?”, forgetting that I might have to walk ten miles back home in the dark because I want to take a quick look at what’s out there, next.

Over time, I was struggling to think coherently in the midst of all the techniques I wanted to try and all the stories I wanted to tell. In essence, I felt far from where I wanted to be.

Is it such a bad thing?

Is there anything wrong with wanting to try everything when it come to your craft?  If you do it half arsed – you still get something out of it.  Even if it is just to say “Ugh I hate that, never going to  make it and/or that again”.  And obviously, in order to learn you have to try.  Try this and try that, try again.

What do I know?

A lovely person and a customer emailed me to say about work being contemporary vs traditional and how she placed my work.  It was a real moment of clarity. Creating, for me,  is caught up with the emotional.  Most of anything I make is from a feeling I want to convey.  Usually, two emotions ~

1. serious
2. playful

(That pretty much sums up my emotional range (Just joking, I can do #3. hangry too.)

Seriously, (see, there I go again) it is and I (hopefully) am more nuanced than that but these emerge over and over again it seems.  They really are the two things I really know about my work practice.

Everything else, I am still learning.

The end.

Wait. There is a bit more and again I have touched on this in the post on creativity.  I guess is to do with brand identity(?)  (I dislike the word ‘brand’ it seems so very corporate-ty*.

My work is narrative. Stories are important (to me).   I need to feel I am creating something with a before and after.

I set myself (some) rules of making and that actually those constraints free me up to be more creative.  Like an essay heading – you can be as creative as you like as long as it leads back to the point, eventually.

With the above thought in mind I have set myself the woodland as a stage.  There should be plenty of stories, and flora and fauna, to keep me going for probably the rest of time(?).  The foreseeable anyhow. Definitely retirement.

I remain curious though and this can both lead me awry (where the above rules apply.) and also push me on. Stylistically, I reign myself in with techniques as much as possible (and repeatedly).

Over time I will probably choose which way I want to go, which feeling I want to follow.

I love enameling, even though it challenges me to my very core.  The 3d pieces seem so natural and arrive in my mind often as pictures formed.  I would like to think they tie together? Winding branches on a tree. A quirky family.

I feel I am compelled to make. So rather than brand identity, perhaps, for now, we can say just identity.

*Did you see what I did there?  So uncomfortable with the ‘C’ word I made it into a word that isn’t even in the dictionary.

And you?

What things drives you to be creative?

Do you have rules to work by?  (If so, why or why not?)

Just one the last thing…(honest)

p.s This month I am in Landscape magazine (April 2020).  For anyone interested in finding out more about the way I work you can find a link to it here.

Really The End.