An Artist's Date

It’s easy to loose yourself in the shuffle. Everything needs tending, holding, shaping, moulding. Children, a home, a partner, a career, dinner to nourish your young one’s bodies, activities to nourish their souls. All those innumerable things we must do to So you tend and tend and tend until your own soul becomes listless, wilting on the vine. 

As an artist, my soul cries out for creative time, for quiet, for reflection, for finding and seeing beauty, for sharing that with outers. 

I had a long fallow period, post-covid, post-evacuation, post establishing ourselves in a new country. I was feeling spent, feeling like I wasn’t being a good artist, nor a present mother, nor a supportive wife. 

So, I decided to nourish myself, feed my creativity, and take care of my inner being.

Have you read the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron? I recommend it. The work first came to my consciousness years ago, and has periodically circled back, nudging me to try to make time for myself, to commit to one thing, to nourish my inner life. Most recently I’ve been urged along by Laura Aziz , (especially her Instagram) who is a great champion of The Artist’s Way.

For the past month or so, each morning, without fail, I do morning pages. I write, stream of consciousness in a simple lined notebook. I write trivial and trite nonsense. I write about my worries. I write about stupid stuff I hate. I write about my delight in watching the sun come over the mountains. I write in a way that is not at all “writerly”. I write until sometimes, I might have an insight about what’s driving me, what I need, what I want, what I can change.

After weeks of writing, I came to me that I really needed to make time to photograph creativity, create work for me that gets somehow to that golden and slightly melancholiac feeling I want to express.

So took myself on an Artist’s Date. This is another of Julia Cameron’s main principals. Making time to feed your creative self. I committed to doing it, to going out, to photographing for myself.

I made these, and I’m happy. It’s not so much about the resulting product, but the feeling I was able to achieve, the excitement, the hope, the pride in making something.