Spring is the season of intention. Where New Year's resolutions get lost in the exhaustion of January, March with its slowly lengthening days is full of hope and a great time to make plans. Whilst creativity is about following your heart and letting ideas blossom freely, without structure and discipline those ideas can often blow away on the wind.
This year I am running my business with the seasons. I have broken my calendar up into four twelve week blocks with a week in between for planning. What it has enabled me to do is to create a structure for my creative plans. Whilst a year seems a long time, a quarter year seems to fit with my brain. And once I have a rough plan of my intentions for each season, I can hold a twelve week plan in my head and fine tune a week-to-week and day-to-day plan. It is not all about work either. My creativity feeds off my life so making sure I plan time for family, gardening, days out, inspiring workshops and cinema trips and holidays means I know that the inspiration will be there to feed my creativity. It is all about sowing the seeds for creative growth.
New Beginnings - limited edition print, 22cm x 54cm £120
So, what are my intentions for Spring? I have divided my week up so that Mondays and Tuesdays are creative days in the studio. Wednesday and Thursday are business and marketing days and Friday is for galleries, yoga, and finishing off tasks. I think it is important to have sacred creative time, time that you dont give away to others lightly. In my creative time I am working on a new body of work. Some of this is going to Ferrers Gallery as part of their 'Great Outdoors' exhibition that starts on March 31st. After that, in June, I will be exhibiting in Ashbourne at Opus Gallery. The work is a progression form my landscapes and is about collections and looking out.
The Orchard - limited edition print, 35cm x 55cm £150
It's easy to let all the humdrum things get in the way of creativity, and it's important to make the space to be creative, both physically creating a space in which to create, but also it is about planning, saying 'no' to things that zap your creative energy and also about removing blocks to your creativity - turn off the TV, seek out new inspiration, read, accept that creativity isn't a straight line - get on with it!
Wishing you a creative Spring.
