Lots of people tell me they aren't creative, that they cant even draw a stick figure, whenever i hear this i feel sad for them that they lost their way, that they have somehow forgotten or been wounded and rather than embrace their creativity they embraced fear and denial of the creative spirit that i truly KNOW with all my being that lives within us ALL.
I feel it's my job, armed with this knowledge to remind EVERYONE that they are creative - Like an evangelical creative renegade lol.
You may think "oh that's easy for you to say Faerie, you are an Artist."
But it hasn't always been this way, I haven't always been able to act on this creative drive within, i haven't always easily expressed my creativity, embraced it or followed it and in fact sometimes i still doubt it all but i have learnt that that is all part of the creative journey - it's just that; a Journey full of all the twists and turns and highs and lows of our life's journey and our creativity is a mirror for us should be choose to look within.
You may have already read some of my 30 Days of Scarborough posts.We are in the middle of moving house and changing up our lives, the house looks like it has been invaded by BoxTrolls :D Last night whilst packing up the kitchen i found this wooden spoon
I made this in 2007 perhaps and sadly it was the first thing i had created in a long time, and the first time i had ever made something proclaiming a sort of witchiness to be displayed in the home. I look back and remember my reluctance to even pop it up in the kitchen - what if someone saw it, what would they say? You see not only was my creative expression squished into the cupboard, so was my spiritual expression squashed in there too and somehow i had jammed the door so i couldn't even open it even though i desperately wanted to, it scared the shit out of me.
I look back on this memory as i lovingly pack up my spoon, all faded and worn from the sunlight that streams into our kitchen and i give thanks to the girl who persisted, the part of me that was larger than my fear.
For years i tried to work through the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
It asked for daily writing, artist dates and creative reflection and i would always begin so earnestly only to flunk out midway through, each year i would try again and each year i would just not be able to commit.
I have been creating since i can remember. My earliest memories are of crayola crayons and textas my favourite colour was electric blue. I coloured in and drew pictures of everything and wrote stories and made shit out of plasticine every flipping day, Art was my favourite subject at school, i loved all the smells and colours and textures so much, the smoosh of paint, the sparkle of glitter the rustle of tissue papers, the squishing of clay, i made and made and made and made. I was never the greatest, i never won any art awards or certificates or competitions or anything like that but the drive to create was extreme to say the least.
I came from a practical and somewhat pessimistic family who encouraged my art but only as a hobby, "You can't make a living as an artist till your dead," my very well meaning grandfather would tell me, so when dumb adults would ask me "what do you want to be when you grow up" i would appease them with anything creative that i could think of - a writer, an actress, a fashion designer a graphic designer, but really in my heart of hearts i knew all i really wanted to be was an artist but its hard to hold onto that dream when all the guidance around you is steering you away.
In my last years of high school i chose Art and Drama as my main subjects of focus and i loved them both dearly. I drew faeries everyday but apparently 'universities don't like faeries" one portfolio advisor told me. This thankfully only fuelled my faerie defiance even more - i loved faeries so much and painting and drawing them gave me great joy, but apparently i was supposed to have grown out of fairies buy then - huh? Must have lost that memo! I got labeled mad and crazy and a freak and bla bla bla because i not only drew faeries but i believed in them sooo very much, they weren't going away just because everyone else said they should, my teenager rebellion is maybe to thank for their stubborn refusal to be let go of. Thank goodness!
I studied at TAFE art schools straight out of high school, but i kept seeing everyone else so skilfully execute finished paintings and i judged myself harshly in comparison. I felt like i was still a finger painter. At the time i was 18 and living with my then boyfriend who was a fabulous realist painter, his work was amazing and all his colours so lifelike, i didn't measure up next to him with all my fuchsias, lime greens and violets. Another university representative came in and again remarked that a certain Arts university didn't like faeries - I think i yelled at him that i didn't give a shit about what his university liked to the roaring applause of my fellow creative comrades, they got me, faeries and all.
I went to another art school in the city the following year and was told during my first painting session that 'Painting was dead" - What!?! Why the hell are we majoring in painting then?? And why on earth do i desire to paint so strongly if its dead? Heaven forbid i include a faerie in anything and so it all got more squished away a little bit more and more each year, smothered by the bullcrap of the art scene, the very space where creative expression 'should' have been nurtured, embraced and fed as if it were a garden of little seedlings, instead i felt like a whipper snipper or blower vac or some other noisy shite garden tool had come along and trampled us.
My creative desire must be stubborn i think, rather than pull out and go study something 'practical' i kept following my creative path and went to university to study a Bachelor of Visual Arts, in retrospect i should have ran for the hills or any where far far away from Art at Uni for all the good it did me and my desire to paint.
I longed to learn the skills of the masters to create the images in my head there on a freshly stretched canvas but alas it was all just critical analysis and an over emphasis on theory over practical application. Yes we were expected to paint but no one was showing us how to paint. We had to already know that somehow, as if painting and creating happens via osmosis? No wonder people think they aren't creative if they don't get it the first time. No one was there to even show us. Instead we had to come up with concepts and develop a series of works around these concepts to then sit around and critique - fecking what the!
I changed my major from Painting to Textiles in my final year which was advised as madness (but i've have lived through that diagnosis before quite fine thank you very much!) In the Textiles studios i found my home amongst lecturers who did actually share skills and techniques and i learnt about plant based sculptures, felting, dying, printmaking, bookmaking, basket weaving and all the other myriad of fibrous techniques i now love and like to share. Faeries were still out of the question, in fact by then in 2005 they were so locked away i don't think i could have expressed them even if i wanted to :( I did delve into women's mysteries though, i created my first spirit dolls and a series of prayer flags based on memories and magik... and the further i walked down that pretty lane of course i would eventually stumble on a fae being lurking about!
Through out all this time in tertiary arts education i had no creative practise of my own, my art was so constipated it wasn't even funny, my journals and creative life was so starved and so thin.
The following year after graduation i returned to do a Graduate diploma in Education - Go be an Arts Teacher in schools - a practical normal job, even though i longed for costume and set design and animation at WAAPA i alas took the easy or maybe harder in the long term route and followed practicality over my heart.
Straight away after graduation i worked as a full time Arts Specialist in highschools around the Perth metropolitan area, i had to fill my hours with a few other classes like English - gah, classrooms are hard! But i loved the art rooms and again i was overcome by the love of the squoosh of paint, the rustle of tissue, the squish of clay, the sparkles of glitter and i LOVED sharing my overwhelming enthusiasm for creativity with my students, i began creating my own art to accompany the students, i spent time during lunches and after school finishing demonstration pieces and feeding my hungry creative heart, gods she was starving... slowly, slowly i began to paint again, and by the end of my first year of teaching i even created my first commission that i swapped for a tin of vintage buttons because heaven forbid i value myself just a little bit more - remember "you cant make money as an artist" - that lie was still strongly attached within.
Its hard to write all this, to share all this poop, all this shame and squashedness, its hard to delve back into my archives and relive that starved girl, she is a shadow of who i am now though and i have finally unjammed the cupboard door and let it all tumble out.
Julia Cameron's book The Artist Way was a definite key. Bravely being able to declare myself as an artist was a huge celebration moment.
I had an art space carved out at home and i began to make sure i had a cup of tea in a pretty cup and saucer in there everyday. Just sitting in my art room brings my heart great happiness and eventually being surrounded by all that colour and creative potential had me longing for the next moment i could create time to create.
By 2010 with the Artist label firmly attached i dared to believe that i may very well be enough and leaped into a part time teaching position as a Senior Art Instructor at an Arts Therapy Centre so i could make time to grow my creative dreams. At this time my spiritual practise blossomed too, which i now realise makes perfect sense because they go hand in hand, they are me, they just are. They are my truth and be damned if i ever squash any 'strange' part of me again.
My husband says my use of glitter is subversive, i think my use of pink may be too. I delight in all the people who poo-pooed pink, faeries, glitter, painting, heart felt expression, magik and mystery as i smoosh it all over my canvases. Every moment spent painting is now a cherished moment of triumph over my whole flipping past.
I see now now power and determination.
I see now the parts that are wounded and the parts that still carry the wounding of not good enough, freak or poverty
I acknowledge these parts and welcome them into my giant arty party and as they enter my creative space they dissolve and transform into my glitter filled delights.
Not a day goes by any more when i'm not creative or connecting to my fae friends and for this my mental health has never been better.
I have a long way to go, but im only in my early 30's so i still have a long way to live too and its all connected, part and parcel, it's all a journey, a big flipping creative beautiful mess and i'm so glad i stuck around like a stubborn old gnome!
Thanks for tuning in and reading all the way to the end, that was a big one!!!
Brightest blessings
You are Loved <3
I feel it's my job, armed with this knowledge to remind EVERYONE that they are creative - Like an evangelical creative renegade lol.
You may think "oh that's easy for you to say Faerie, you are an Artist."
But it hasn't always been this way, I haven't always been able to act on this creative drive within, i haven't always easily expressed my creativity, embraced it or followed it and in fact sometimes i still doubt it all but i have learnt that that is all part of the creative journey - it's just that; a Journey full of all the twists and turns and highs and lows of our life's journey and our creativity is a mirror for us should be choose to look within.
 |
| Magik Mirrors of Boscastle Witchcraft Museum |
You may have already read some of my 30 Days of Scarborough posts.We are in the middle of moving house and changing up our lives, the house looks like it has been invaded by BoxTrolls :D Last night whilst packing up the kitchen i found this wooden spoon
I made this in 2007 perhaps and sadly it was the first thing i had created in a long time, and the first time i had ever made something proclaiming a sort of witchiness to be displayed in the home. I look back and remember my reluctance to even pop it up in the kitchen - what if someone saw it, what would they say? You see not only was my creative expression squished into the cupboard, so was my spiritual expression squashed in there too and somehow i had jammed the door so i couldn't even open it even though i desperately wanted to, it scared the shit out of me.
I look back on this memory as i lovingly pack up my spoon, all faded and worn from the sunlight that streams into our kitchen and i give thanks to the girl who persisted, the part of me that was larger than my fear.
For years i tried to work through the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
It asked for daily writing, artist dates and creative reflection and i would always begin so earnestly only to flunk out midway through, each year i would try again and each year i would just not be able to commit.
I have been creating since i can remember. My earliest memories are of crayola crayons and textas my favourite colour was electric blue. I coloured in and drew pictures of everything and wrote stories and made shit out of plasticine every flipping day, Art was my favourite subject at school, i loved all the smells and colours and textures so much, the smoosh of paint, the sparkle of glitter the rustle of tissue papers, the squishing of clay, i made and made and made and made. I was never the greatest, i never won any art awards or certificates or competitions or anything like that but the drive to create was extreme to say the least.
 |
| Vegemite Face! |
I came from a practical and somewhat pessimistic family who encouraged my art but only as a hobby, "You can't make a living as an artist till your dead," my very well meaning grandfather would tell me, so when dumb adults would ask me "what do you want to be when you grow up" i would appease them with anything creative that i could think of - a writer, an actress, a fashion designer a graphic designer, but really in my heart of hearts i knew all i really wanted to be was an artist but its hard to hold onto that dream when all the guidance around you is steering you away.
In my last years of high school i chose Art and Drama as my main subjects of focus and i loved them both dearly. I drew faeries everyday but apparently 'universities don't like faeries" one portfolio advisor told me. This thankfully only fuelled my faerie defiance even more - i loved faeries so much and painting and drawing them gave me great joy, but apparently i was supposed to have grown out of fairies buy then - huh? Must have lost that memo! I got labeled mad and crazy and a freak and bla bla bla because i not only drew faeries but i believed in them sooo very much, they weren't going away just because everyone else said they should, my teenager rebellion is maybe to thank for their stubborn refusal to be let go of. Thank goodness!
I studied at TAFE art schools straight out of high school, but i kept seeing everyone else so skilfully execute finished paintings and i judged myself harshly in comparison. I felt like i was still a finger painter. At the time i was 18 and living with my then boyfriend who was a fabulous realist painter, his work was amazing and all his colours so lifelike, i didn't measure up next to him with all my fuchsias, lime greens and violets. Another university representative came in and again remarked that a certain Arts university didn't like faeries - I think i yelled at him that i didn't give a shit about what his university liked to the roaring applause of my fellow creative comrades, they got me, faeries and all.
I went to another art school in the city the following year and was told during my first painting session that 'Painting was dead" - What!?! Why the hell are we majoring in painting then?? And why on earth do i desire to paint so strongly if its dead? Heaven forbid i include a faerie in anything and so it all got more squished away a little bit more and more each year, smothered by the bullcrap of the art scene, the very space where creative expression 'should' have been nurtured, embraced and fed as if it were a garden of little seedlings, instead i felt like a whipper snipper or blower vac or some other noisy shite garden tool had come along and trampled us.
My creative desire must be stubborn i think, rather than pull out and go study something 'practical' i kept following my creative path and went to university to study a Bachelor of Visual Arts, in retrospect i should have ran for the hills or any where far far away from Art at Uni for all the good it did me and my desire to paint.
I longed to learn the skills of the masters to create the images in my head there on a freshly stretched canvas but alas it was all just critical analysis and an over emphasis on theory over practical application. Yes we were expected to paint but no one was showing us how to paint. We had to already know that somehow, as if painting and creating happens via osmosis? No wonder people think they aren't creative if they don't get it the first time. No one was there to even show us. Instead we had to come up with concepts and develop a series of works around these concepts to then sit around and critique - fecking what the!
I changed my major from Painting to Textiles in my final year which was advised as madness (but i've have lived through that diagnosis before quite fine thank you very much!) In the Textiles studios i found my home amongst lecturers who did actually share skills and techniques and i learnt about plant based sculptures, felting, dying, printmaking, bookmaking, basket weaving and all the other myriad of fibrous techniques i now love and like to share. Faeries were still out of the question, in fact by then in 2005 they were so locked away i don't think i could have expressed them even if i wanted to :( I did delve into women's mysteries though, i created my first spirit dolls and a series of prayer flags based on memories and magik... and the further i walked down that pretty lane of course i would eventually stumble on a fae being lurking about!
Through out all this time in tertiary arts education i had no creative practise of my own, my art was so constipated it wasn't even funny, my journals and creative life was so starved and so thin.
The following year after graduation i returned to do a Graduate diploma in Education - Go be an Arts Teacher in schools - a practical normal job, even though i longed for costume and set design and animation at WAAPA i alas took the easy or maybe harder in the long term route and followed practicality over my heart.
Straight away after graduation i worked as a full time Arts Specialist in highschools around the Perth metropolitan area, i had to fill my hours with a few other classes like English - gah, classrooms are hard! But i loved the art rooms and again i was overcome by the love of the squoosh of paint, the rustle of tissue, the squish of clay, the sparkles of glitter and i LOVED sharing my overwhelming enthusiasm for creativity with my students, i began creating my own art to accompany the students, i spent time during lunches and after school finishing demonstration pieces and feeding my hungry creative heart, gods she was starving... slowly, slowly i began to paint again, and by the end of my first year of teaching i even created my first commission that i swapped for a tin of vintage buttons because heaven forbid i value myself just a little bit more - remember "you cant make money as an artist" - that lie was still strongly attached within.
 |
| She's Like A Rainbow - 2008 Acrylic on Recycled Canvas |
Its hard to write all this, to share all this poop, all this shame and squashedness, its hard to delve back into my archives and relive that starved girl, she is a shadow of who i am now though and i have finally unjammed the cupboard door and let it all tumble out.
Julia Cameron's book The Artist Way was a definite key. Bravely being able to declare myself as an artist was a huge celebration moment.
I had an art space carved out at home and i began to make sure i had a cup of tea in a pretty cup and saucer in there everyday. Just sitting in my art room brings my heart great happiness and eventually being surrounded by all that colour and creative potential had me longing for the next moment i could create time to create.
By 2010 with the Artist label firmly attached i dared to believe that i may very well be enough and leaped into a part time teaching position as a Senior Art Instructor at an Arts Therapy Centre so i could make time to grow my creative dreams. At this time my spiritual practise blossomed too, which i now realise makes perfect sense because they go hand in hand, they are me, they just are. They are my truth and be damned if i ever squash any 'strange' part of me again.
My husband says my use of glitter is subversive, i think my use of pink may be too. I delight in all the people who poo-pooed pink, faeries, glitter, painting, heart felt expression, magik and mystery as i smoosh it all over my canvases. Every moment spent painting is now a cherished moment of triumph over my whole flipping past.
I see now now power and determination.
I see now the parts that are wounded and the parts that still carry the wounding of not good enough, freak or poverty
I acknowledge these parts and welcome them into my giant arty party and as they enter my creative space they dissolve and transform into my glitter filled delights.
Not a day goes by any more when i'm not creative or connecting to my fae friends and for this my mental health has never been better.
I have a long way to go, but im only in my early 30's so i still have a long way to live too and its all connected, part and parcel, it's all a journey, a big flipping creative beautiful mess and i'm so glad i stuck around like a stubborn old gnome!
 |
| Brian Froud's Oddly Familiar Gnome <3 |
Thanks for tuning in and reading all the way to the end, that was a big one!!!
Brightest blessings
You are Loved <3
Awwwe! little Faerie Sarah looks so cute! <3
ReplyDelete<3 tee hee thanks Matt
ReplyDelete