My creativity seems to be hibernating, perhaps it's the cold and darkness; I always find my self wanting to curl into a dark warm nest at this time of year. I should love to write a long and entertaining post about the importance of giving yourself creative time off, but I'm too busy curling up by the fire and reading 'Wintersmith' by Terry Pratchett! This is one of my favourite books by one of my favourite authors, and like all books I love, I can read it again and again and find more and more depth and meaning each time I read it.
Yes, time to sit and dream, poke the slumbering fire and read good books is vital to replenishing creativity. I have always found fire to be restorative and nurturing, and never more so than in the deep dark of winter. Here in the North of Scotland there seems to be an awful lot of dark - the sun doesn't manage to climb above the southern hills till after 8:00 in the morning and it's away back down again by 3:30
It's New Year's Eve and the sun has gone down and the wind is blowing colder now, my little white Christmas lights are reflecting in the windows as the last of the light drains out of the day. I like to spend some time on New Year's Eve musing about the past year and weighing up my progress against what I hoped it would be. The tally isn't too bad this year, I have been pushing myself to grow and learn, trying to leave behind the patterns I have grown out of (or should have grown out of but haven't!) and learning new tricks as I'm definitely not an old dog yet! As an artist one of the big challenges is organisation and orderliness, and although chaos runs rampant around me on my desk, I do at least know where most things actually are! I am gradually training myself into putting things back where they belong once I have finished with them - it makes life SO MUCH EASIER if tools and materials have a place to belong and are to be found in that place! I think that is my biggest New Year's Resolution - try and be tidy, put things away! If there is too much chaos in my life I find it clogs my creativity, my joy and my motivation. It takes less time than one would think to put shoes away as you take them off, or put the pens back in their pot once you have finished drawing.... Yes I may wear them or use them tomorrow - or I may not! Either way it's better now if they are where they belong.
My favourite walk is just two minutes' stride from my studio
Another resolution - I am going to spend some time outside EVERY DAY. Even if it's only 10 minutes, I need daylight and fresh air as much as I need to breathe. Some times I get so involved with creativity that I forget to stop and go for a little walk, rest my eyes on the green distances and MOVE! BREATHE! I need to look after my physical self - as I ask such a lot of my body it's only fair to be a good owner. And after all, you only get one, it's a precious resource. I have had a habit of ignoring it as much as possible and far more than is sensible - injuring my hands by continuing a job until it's finished even though I have wrenched something badly; crouching over my work table with my nose 6 inches from what I am doing for so long that I can barely stand up once I have finished 3 or 4 hours later; forgetting to drink any water for a day or two then wondering why I have a head ache... Yes this year I need to learn to take care of my body or it will clap out on my well before I have finished with it! There are just so many interesting things to do that I want to keep my body in as good a working order as I can for as long as I can. I am aware that I want to learn and do more things than I can possibly fit into one life time as it is! This is such a wonderful world and there are so many exciting things to learn!
Now I am going to go and stoke the fire, mull some home made elderberry wine and fish out some bees wax to do an intriguing old bit of fortune telling with! At Midnight we will open all the doors to let the Old Year out and the New Year in - and so we will welcome 2012. I wish you a beautiful New Year yourself, and may it be a blessed and wondrous year for the whole world.
This is Craig Valley - Home - and I hope to re-visit this, my favourite place in the whole world in 2012
This is going to be a long and meandering thought journey, I can feel it coming on! Follow if you will!
All the things in this picture are hand made, except perhaps the knife, and even that is vintage. I use these things, and others like them, every day and I want to tell you what it is about them that makes them enrich my life and why I love them and feel that hand made is important.
In the photo is a collection of rather humble things that I snapped one morning, just because I liked the light and the random composition, as I was sitting down to breakfast. The table was my great Grandmother's, the knife my Grandmothers, the mug was one I bought new from a local potter and the rush mats I made my self some years ago with rushes I gathered from a lovely lochan that I lived near. The plate and pot I found on one of my regular hunts through a charity shop, a surprisingly good hunting ground for hand made.
What made me suddenly want to write about them was (prosaically) making a cup of herb tea - as I reached out and took down my lovely mug, a sudden jolt of delight went through me at the shape and texture of it in my hand, a small reminder from my senses of just how much joy it gives me to use this perfect (to me) mug. Why? Just why does the shape of this mug please my hands so? Is it because someone else made it with loving careful hands and joy in the making? I can picture to myself the meditative concentration of Brian the potter as his big hands flowed the clay from unresponsive inert lump into graceful and somehow living form. He has a very grounded and peaceful way of being and that is somehow embodied in his pottery. I never usually think about who made this mug, so that is only a tiny facet of the joy it gives me.
If I think about my great Granny's table it's a very different story - I have no idea who made it, not a clue! It's a wonky old thing, there are cracks in the top, scars all over, the top even comes right off if you try to lift the table up; but I love it. It has been scrubbed so often that the grain of the wood is weathered into ribs and the knots are polished shiny smooth. I think it's the years of continuity and history that make me love this table - there is something special in knowing that my Mum sat here as a child visiting her grandma, and my Grandmother before her grew up eating every meal at it. I too was pulled up to this table in my high chair when I was little, and perhaps, if I am lucky, my own daughter will sit at it one day...
key
I think it's time to stop rambling on now so I will leave you with a little hand made music from the wonderful Dougie MacLean.
Time has slipped by and it's two weeks since I last wrote a post. Today's felting tip is going to be very brief as I have to prepare for a workshop and my internet connection at home has been too sketchy for writing. The wind plays havoc with our phone line and the last week or two have been WILD. It feels strange to only be able to connect with the on-line world at work.
When building a picture from a limited palette, blending the colours you do have into as many different combinations as possible gives more depth and interest than you would expect.
Using two, three or even four colours at a time adds depth to the colours and therefore the whole piece.
