This post is about the ebbs and flows of art making.

I rotate through times of productivity and quieter more reflective times. Passages of dynamism and periods of downtime. Times when I’m making complete artworks and times when I’m searching, seeking, preparing…

Creativity ebbs and flows

Sometimes in my art-making there are times when everything feels easy and falls into place and I’m highly productive and then there are times of pause when I’m searching for the next thing... I have learnt that all these states are transient, no season is permanent and perhaps it is just the nature of creativity, it ebbs and flows.

Ideas need time and space to develop and grow. There are times when I am planting seeds unsure if they will become anything and times when my art making bears so much fruit that it feels abundant, verdant and productive.

In any fallow phase there is a need to enrich and prepare the soil, a winter of sorts, where things are slower to take root. I now know that after every Winter there comes a Spring,

The space inbetween things

In art composition there is a concept called negative space or inter-space, where the space in-between and around the subject is as important to the whole as the subject itself, the emptiness is as important as the fullness.

It strikes me that this is often true in the cycles of my art making, the space in-between is important. I can only harvest ideas once I have given them some space to grow.

Artist’s are gardeners

I like this quote from Joan Miró the renowned Spanish artist. He said:

“ I work like a Gardener or a winemaker. Things come slowly. My vocabulary of forms, for example, I didn’t discover it all at once. It formed itself almost in spite of me.” Joan Miró 1958

Seasons of creativity

I find it so helpful to just acknowledge the different seasons that my creativity passes through, to know that some seasons are for planting seeds and some seasons are for growing ideas, whilst at other times I will harvest them.

The fertile void

The analogy of an artist as a gardener is a powerful one, it helps me to see the bigger picture, to get a wider perspective. There is a cyclical nature to creating, to know that seeds that are planted today may take a good while to fully flourish and grow and some may never grow…

Not every season of your creativity will feel abundant, but this doesn’t mean it should be neglected, creating a garden can be a long, yet magical endeavour and the same can be true in art making… it must be nurtured and nourished.

There is a concept in Gestalt Therapy called the Fertile Void which I find really interesting when applied to art making. The space, the pause, the gap in-between things can also be a fertile and powerful place, a place of growth, magic, possibility and potential…