Embrace your imagination!
The last couple of months have seen zero action on the website and conversely, inspired the title of this blog. I made a batch of three figurines in the autumn but couldn't decide how to finish them because rather than just try things out I felt I had to get it right first time. Not the way to encourage your own ideas - I ended up sick of looking at them but got there in the end.
Actually, I've been totally unmotivated to do much of anything at all. Perhaps it was winter doldrums plus the longing to have some clear space for a change (I just hate the clutter which comes from living and working in one room). Feeling physically and mentally boxed in also confounded my attempts to work out how I'll transport my work and display materials to where it can be sold when I have no car. My lack of solutions caused a paralysis of thought and action. So I'm going to worry about the logistics when I need to! You can snuff out your ideas before they have a chance to see daylight if you spend too much considering potential problems to solve. If you're an artist of any kind, it's your creativity that powers you so feed it and the inspiration (and help) to sell it will come when you're really ready to do it. If you're not ready, don't force it.
Importantly, I've recognised that my love of collecting new media was not reflected in what I was actually doing. I love the dance sculpture but I'd recently been ooohing over stunning how-to videos for customising training shoes and then bought some books on vibrant watercolours, abstract landscapes, really polished looking paper mache projects, beading, mixed media with clay...and watercolour/coloured pencil techniques. So many wonderful things to try yet I wasn't doing any of them. So, lately I've been making some paper pulp bowls (with a ton of ideas for decorating them), planning how to use aluminium mesh to do some abstract-y things and bought a watercolour pad to play with my new pencils. I always loved drawing when I was a child yet hardly do it nowadays.
I had a spell of making hand made books a few years ago, I once learned to make my own clothes (all hand sewn), did huge embroidery projects and when I had my own house, redecorated and themed all the rooms three times in the ten years I lived there. And made a great looking fire surround from the remains of my old garden shed. While there is a logic to specialising in one area, there is a real joy in stumbling on new things to try and in figuring out new ways to use old materials and that's when I'm at my happiest. If you're like that too, let your creativity have full rein (doesn't make you a 'butterfly') and the ideas will just keep coming. If you stifle it you'll likely end up either with so called 'creative block' or just plain miserable. It's just more fun to diversify!
