Creative Outlets in the New Normal
There is something deeply satisfying about closing down our outside spaces for winter; the final grass cuts, covering the picnic table, packing bark chippings around the baby Camelia. Even the recently refurbished Cabin is kind of novel to us in this change of season - at last we get to use our new flame effect fire puchased back in the heatwave of June and close our heavy curtains across the black panes at teatime. Not so long ago, these same windows would hang open in the blistering heat of the sun and remain so as the days cooled, allowing us to celebrate the evening birdsong of Summer.
One last job of the high season was to wood stain the Fencing/Cabin/Front Gate, needless to say it didn't quite all get done, but there was a fair attempt made. Every day since the painting day, I go through the treated Gate and I marvel at the beautiful globules of fresh rainwater; Rolling, colliding, combining their number as they travel, gathering from drip into puddle, like the silvery liquid zinc blobs of a maze puzzle, in their relentless attempts to invade our newly protected Gate.
Oh that I could paint you this picture - or indeed any picture! All I can do with this is continue to marvel, a passive onlooker to the artistic potential of this daily dose of nature, in its most simple life-giving form.
To capture it or to re-tell it visually, I could reach for the camera and take what is likely to be a poor immitation of the reality, and believe me, you will thank me for not reaching for a paintbrush to show it you that way! So the only option open to me to communicate my delicate droplets is through language - and even now I feel the intense burden that you will not fully appreciate my viscous vision as profoundly as I have. Already I am telling myself that I am definitely not up to this job... self doubt is winning the struggle, of whether I continue with this first train of thought. A thought that seemed so compulsive to me at first, but now the questioning is louder and louder in my mind, Why does it matter? Why does it need telling?
This is how painful any form of creativity can be.
Echoed down generations of Artists, Musicians, Actors, Poets, Dreamers.
And I suppose the answer is, it doesn't matter a jot and it doesn't HAVE to be retold. But then again, why not? Why not make it, dance it, write it, paint it? We need to stop being afraid, learn to enjoy exploring our successes with inevitable failures and if any of it gives us joy, relaxation and a sense of achievement, then it will have been worth every last moment of the time we have spent on it.
So if your Art Classes have paused, Choir isn't able to meet, Pottery is on hold, Sewing is all stitched up, Dance is cancelled, Book Club is all on line because the Village Hall is closed - be determined to find a way, in the new normal. Just like my rivulet of water drips will inevitably find an outlet, so must we all. Surely we owe ourselves that much?
Some of you are reading this and have a drawer or dark corner where you hide your paintings uncelebrated, unseen, unloved. Please, please, get them out again and see what might happen next. Most of the Artists you see here at our website have begun their artistic journey at their kitchen tables, alongside their 'real jobs', coping with busy lives and families alongside their innate need to create.
If you are here in the UK, email us and we will even make you a FREE Art Card from one of your artworks to prove to you that celebrating your creativity can seriously lift your spirits, even in the gloom of a global pandemic!
E: amanda@thumbnailmedia.com
If, like us, you are wintering in the Northern Hemisphere, I wish you many long, dark evenings filled with self exploration and creative pleasure.
Thank you for reading and championing independent art.
Amanda x