Embracing Spring: Unfurling Creativity

As the earth awakens from its winter slumber, there's a tangible energy in the air – a promise of new beginnings, growth, and creativity. Springtime, with its vibrant colours and unfurling flowers, has a way of inspiring us to embrace our own creativity and explore the beauty of the world around us.

When I use techniques, including printmaking, collage, and painting, I aim to create pieces that are both visually appealing and emotionally resonant. I want the viewer to slow down, observe the world with fresh eyes, and find inspiration in the seemingly mundane.

Next week is the Spring Equinox - a momentary still point of balance in this season of renewal. In the UK it will be followed by changing the clocks for daylight saving and the joy of lighter evenings and the promise of longer days.

I have been reflecting on the equinox, the balancing point where day equals night. In symbolic art, Celtic designs have a pattern that is similar to yin and yang - the symbol of balance, light and dark, balance and harmony. The reduction to this simple intertwined union of black and white has always appealed to my artist soul.

Lately, I  have been working in black and white with a monochrome palette as I develop a new course ‘Monochrome Landscapes’. It has been comforting to find joy in the simplicity of exploring shape and line without the complexity that colour brings. I have been enjoying looking at the landscape afresh and using bold marks to define what I see.

I love colour and I love expressing in colour with multi-layered papers on a painted background, but sometimes it is overwhelming to try and envision the whole image creation, from start to finish, at once. It has been calming to seek out one part of the whole, to experiment with monochrome and to use simple processes to capture the Derbyshire landscape. 

That process starts with looking and being outside. It starts with smelling the breeze and hearing the birds. Last week I could feel the energy of the earth beneath me, smell the mustiness as it began to warm. Winter quietens the earth, spring awakes it. Before that energy rushes in, take the first tentative steps to renew your practice. Don't overcomplicate and fixate on what it is you are creating. Just make marks on paper, start a sketchbook page, allow yourself to explore. 

Find your yin yang balance as we pass through the spring equinox. Simplify your creative expression, focus on a stepping stone of process rather than the whole thing. Allow a moment of creative progress to be enough on the path of unfurling a new project. Allow the energy of the season to be a catalyst for self expression. What step will you take?