BOOM!

I've been creating 'stuff' all my life. Some of it has been good, OK and awful: portraits, fashion designs, lettering, poetry, songwriting and essays, probably more I can't remember. I now see that the habit of creating throughout my life is what has helped me stay creative. Like consistent exercising you eventually see the muscles emerge. As I write that down it sounds absurdly obvious. But honestly that attitude will see you through. Am I a successful artist? I honestly don't think it's about that, I think it's about if you create art, you are an artist. I wish I'd kept all my work somewhere safe. I'm sure I could have used them to help me create something new and document my level of progress. Alas I didn't, but I will try to from now on because it will help to show your evolution. It can't help but do that. So this post is about asking you to keep on going. You might feel crap about your work, but show up, let it emerge and lea...

(If you have read my blog posts before today in the month of June 2011, you'll have noticed I've been putting up drawings for the 30 Days of Creativity . Today I have decided to creatively deviate and write an actual post :) ) Last weekend something clicked. On Saturday, The Fly Blog alerted me to a feature about fulfilment from The New York Times and the following particular sentence struck out to me: "Most of us are egotistical and most are self-concerned most of the time, but it’s nonetheless true that life comes to a point only in those moments when the self dissolves into some task. The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself. " Wow – I think I'd heard sentiments like that before, but it really struck a chord that day, I don't know why. And in church on Sunday, the minister assigned to direct our prayer points highlighted: "[Here in the UK] Next year, the Queen will have served the nation for SIXTY y...