What is your creative style?

At the end of a year it is a good time to take stock of where you are with your creativity. It is a chance to reflect and see what you are proud of. I am self critical so it can be difficult to set aside the critical voices that only note the faults. My head kicks in and I have to try not to micro manage my creative path, with a voice that is full of ‘do nots and should nots’.

When I make a cup of tea and get out my sketchbooks, when I look at the year’s art and making with an open heart, I see myself more clearly. I see the purpose and achievements more clearly. When I look at the work with the same curiosity that led me to create it I can begin to curate it.

It’s been a year where I struggled in my personal life and felt stunted creatively. But I still carried on making art. I found expression in sketchbooks, building pages that I shared in my ‘Summer Sketchbook Retreat’ and ‘Nourishing Sketchbook’ online courses.

As the year closes I am finding a re-kindling of joy in the landscape and the colours of nature but asking myself how to interpret these without falling back into established ways of working - wanting to seek out the fresh and new but reach a strong conclusion.

Creative output loops and wavers. It is a dance, not a march towards ‘success’.

When I work in a sketchbook, some pages work, some do not. A page that ‘works’ can be simple gestural lines, a palette of colours or a more developed attention to layering pattern, shape, colour and texture. I don’t expect all the pages to have substance, or meaning. Some are part of the process, others are a springboard to a series of work.

When I make artwork, not all pieces are a success, not all make it from blank page to paint, collage and stitch. Some end up propped behind a door, some in the bin, some chopped up to make cards! I do not expect them all to work and there has to be self -forgiveness in letting some go.

It is the same for the phases of your creative journey. Some work and you feel confident in them and find flow towards building a body of work that feels true to your intentions.

On the flip side there are stages that you regret, like a 1980’s perm!! It may have felt brilliant at the time but on reflection was probably best avoided.

To have a creative voice, a style, you need to make a lot of work. You need to build skills and make mistakes. There is no steady path with signs along the way that say ‘This is the way’, ‘it’s all good’. You need to lean into the discomfort of not knowing if this is part of a bigger picture of creative confidence, or that this one will end up in the bin! It is only with hindsight you can see what works. For me this is usually through an emotional response, did I enjoy making it?

Make the art, spend the time, grow your creativity with curiosity and then spend time reflecting on what it is that makes a piece a success. Listen to your intuition.

Make the art.