Autumn creative soup

“The world needs who you were meant to be” Anon

This month’s posts have been about looking back at the year to see what you have achieved, and looking forward to question what you will take forwards on your path. This post is about standing still in the moment and asking what roots you in the season. How can you lean in to that? How can now be the best place to be? Now in this time, this place, this body, this mind-space? How can you still your soul so it opens up the spaciousness for you to create authentically?

The life you want to grow into, will ask you to gather and reclaim ingredients you may have lost along the way.

Your voice, 

your truth, 

your choice, 

your bravery, 

your boundaries and your care. 

Learn to recognise these things, 

to find them and gather them from your heart and belly. 

With these ingredients of inner power held strongly in your being, you can grow towards a life more attuned with your heart.

~ Brigit Anna McNeill

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This led me to thinking what are my autumn ingredients?

Autumn isn’t autumn until I have collected conkers, until the scarves come out. Autumn needs hot chocolate and thick soups. Autumn sees me wearing a hat and in my unheated studio with a hot water bottle up my jumper!

Autumn is about taking stock of my achievements and trying to finish projects before year end. Autumn is about a palette of reds, auburns and golds - painting them, wearing them.

What makes autumn for you? What make your art yours? How can you lean in to that? Stop trying to be anybody else, or thinking of something that worked years ago, or what you fantasise about creating. Be in the moment with your art, in the current season of your life. Until you slow into the now you can’t still yourself to see and be inspired.

My courses are about helping you take footsteps forwards to authentic creative expression, about finding your flow and building confidence. You can check them out at helenhallows.com

As a follow up to reading this post, ask yourself, what are the recipes of your art - what are the ingredients for your autumn creative soup? Will it be paint and brush and canvas? Will it be sketchbook and ink and dip-pen? You could write yourself some recipe cards so that you can pick one out when you’re not sure how to progress.