A good time for a new start and the power of following the breadcrumbs.
There’s something about the arrival of autumn that makes me feel like getting back to work. The days are cooler here at last, and that delicious but undefinable smell of a crisp, cool autumn morning is just glorious. I wish I bottle it up to smell all year.
Now the summers gone I’ve started something new. I thought, I always paint outside, by default. I’ve gotten so used to painting landscapes, it’s how I used to define myself:- “I’m a landscape painter,” I would say, and think. Until, one day, I was looking through a short course guide of art and painting courses, and one in particular caught my eye. Painting interiors, alla prima with Gemma Rose Brook. And I thought, ah! I’ve never really painted interiors, lets change the default, lets see what pops up. And I love painting all prima, I love the spontaneity of it.
Its like Elle Luna says in her wonderful book about painting and creativity:- At the crossroads of should and must; you follow all the signs and wanderings and nudges and put them together. At the time all these little nudges, random ideas and feelings don’t really make sense, until, looking back, they do. This was definitely a nudge, a funny sort of feeling that it would be good. There was another course on painting landscapes, but that’s what I always do. Creativity comes when you’re willing to try something new, you don’t know what it will lead to, you don’t know why something is calling to you. All you know is you’ve got a nudge.
Following your creativity is just like this. Its like finding breadcrumbs on your path. Other people wouldn’t notice these tiny breadcrumbs, because its not their path. But you notice them, and somehow you know the breadcrumbs are for you. It’s just a feeling. You have to pay attention to these little nudges that come out of the blue, out of the way of what you usually do and just try something different. What you end up doing might be rubbish. It might be no good at all. But something happens when you fire up different synapses, different pathways in your brain.
First of all momentum happens with when you try something new and different. I’m learning to paint faster, I’m learning to make bolder marks, I’m learning not to hesitate before I start, just to get the painting down. It’s so refreshing not to faff about and overthink painting, which I can do if I’m just painting in my studio by myself. By myself I faff and I stall and I wonder if it’s the right start or not. I make myself cups of tea. But when I have to get the painting done in 2 hours it’s all systems go, and I don’t have time to overthink it. In fact my chatter mind takes a complete breather because I don’t have time to listen to it. I have to concentrate on painting and this in itself is so refreshing.
It’s such a shot in the arm to be painting something completely new and I’ve learnt so much so quickly, I’ve had to! How to paint fast to get it done in the class, how to sketch fast, how to underpaint for effect, and how I don’t have enough brushes specifically for oil painting, even though I have enough brushes to sink a battleship in my studio already.
The next thing that happened for me is that I’m around other practising artists after painting on my own for a while and that has been so enlivening; like breathing out a big aaahhh when you find yourself in the right space at the right time. Or finding something you didn’t know was lost. So much creativity happens when you find yourself in the right space, surrounded by other people who are also creating. You can see two of my early oil paintings of interiors here, with lots more to come. They were both painted fast, in less than two hours, and you can see the resulting freshness and spontaneity that comes with the restricted time frame.
Apart from painting and writing, the other thing that’s happening here is quince jelly and crab apple jelly making. You can see the quinces and crab apples here, fresh and organic from the farmers market. They’re autumn things of beauty.
