Well, my week has been good as I have been able to organise my time to be a better balance between what I am still able to do for work, and being creative. I have managed to be in my studio (a large garden shed!) and to begin to work on a sculpture, something I have not been able to do for some considerable time. Just sketching ideas, thinking about how I would turn those sketches into a 3D reality, is all very valuable when it comes to moving your mind away from the concerns and worries around you.
You don’t have to be a sculptor to be creative – making a cake, watching a movie, writing a journal, reading a book – all these and much more can stimulate the creative part of your brain and give it some exercise. The brain is an amazing organ and needs to be active, and that is why creativity is so valuable, as it gives the brain exercise and, if you are using that creative part of make something new, it is celebrating our human skills and abilities to the maximum. We may not get something perfect out of every attempt, but we learn and try again perhaps, or move on to something else that has been inspired by our previous work.
I have been continuing to note my “bright spots” each day, and have stretched my doodling and drawing on to Post It notes – those brilliant little squares which I am using now as tiny notebooks on which you can draw or write – and I go through them at the end of the week and choose the ones I like best – though they may not be particularly interesting or artistic in themselves – but they mean special things to me. I now keep these and am turning them into a collage on a large sheet of paper, which I have blu-tacked on to the door. I can add to these, change them, discard ones that no longer seem relevant (because everything does change) – and being able to throw away thoughts and ideas that are no longer helpful or supportive, is liberating and can sometimes feel like you are freeing up space in your head to allow new and positive things to come in and flourish.
To follow on from my previous idea about an exhibition, I think a Post It exhibition, with multi-coloured Post Its and a mass of ideas, notes and pictures would be a fantastic achievement – so let’s start putting that together now! We can build on it over the weeks ahead and make a unique record of these extraordinary times.
Last weekend, I had a wet and muddy walk through Wilverley Inclosure, where the colours of moss caught my eye and became the “bright spots” for that morning. There are so many different shades of green, from the zingy bright lime colours to the heavy, rich dark greens. My photos, of beeches with pools of bright green at their base, show that variety. The dark green, smooth-barked tree looked as if it was wearing a tight-fitting emerald green velvet coat, and I would have gone over to stroke it just to see how it felt, and to breathe in the scent had it not been for the muddy puddles between my side of the track and where that particular tree stood! It was a delight, though, just to stand in the beech woods, listening to bird song and rain dripping onto the carpet of bronze leaves – and just to have that moment.
Annie