I wasn't sure what I was going to post tonight, and have been looking at some photos for inspiration. Not just for the blog - for me. Last year's rush of excitement at getting back to drawing again has died away somehow, and I find that I haven't drawn a thing since before Christmas. It's all empty. Shake the jug; nothing comes out. I tried last night and the pen felt awkward in my hand.
I wonder if there are different kinds of creative personas we wear for different times and phases of our year and our lives. The looking-outward phase, the quiet mulling stage, and the time for resting.
I'm not sure what it is at the moment. Suffice it to say, I'm captivated by the amazing artworks made by craftspeople across the millennia. Like this jug in the V&A Museum, London, carved sometime before 1500 by Islamic craftspeople from one single rock crystal. One crystal. A false move in carving, and the whole thing would shatter.
I'm amazed at the skill built in one lifetime - which is, after all - so short. We went to the gallery on the weekend, and I saw a quilt from the 1840s, metalwork, pottery, paintings, prints. My head's gently whirling-full of ideas and images and so many patterns and colours that I'm halted in place, captivated by spinning colourful dreams.
Crafting continues, but the creative part of my mind has gone elsewhere for a while. I'm enjoying finishing projects and completing already thought-out patterns, but while my hands are making things, my creative mind is developing something entirely unknown. I wonder if something new is forming and thinking, in a creative chrysalis, sometime to emerge? It might be fragile. I wonder....
5 comments:
I can't wait to see what eventually emerges from the cacoon.
Can I recommend two great reads? Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit & Lynda Barry's new book on creativity - I'm blanking on the title, but there was an amazing excerpt from it called 'Two Questions' in the 2007 Best American Comics anthology - dig that up if you can...
...or I can do a fast & dirty google, here's a copyright-troubling scan:
http://mikkelina.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/lynda-barry-two-questions/
p.s. an infamous dead nazi-sympathiser socialite is not internet stalking you - 'tis Margo.
Margo! Tea in first, milk in first? Was wondering...
Milk in first, you'll have red-headed children. Of course, milk in first assumes the civilising presence of a tea pot and leaf tea. There is always the theory that milk first preserves fine china.
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