Creative Block

Argh!!

I can still sit down and create at the moment but my muse is gone! I feel no direction or ideas coming to me at all.

Where has she gone!? Probably off galavanting somewhere on a well deserved holiday.

I stumbled across an article where Leunig talks about the muse:

"Even after all these years of making a living as a creative person, Leunig finds the muse is not a constant. "It is a bit lost and found, but you know it will come back, it's your friend.
Friend, maybe, yet the process of creating is never simple. "You have this idea, intellectually, in your mind. And try to make it and it's terrible and you try to fix it and it only gets worse and you are looking at this terrible thing.
However, it is intensely cathartic, as "the ego is stripped away, because it cannot get any worse. Stay with the disillusionment... in this moment you will find your inner child, and learn to play."
Source.

Remedy? I'm going to try cleaning my studio, and I'm thinking about doing a gallery hop. (This is coming up.) I'm also wondering whether a walk out in the wilderness will do me good. I'm also digging out my copy of Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert to try and add some creative spark back to where it should be.

Sigh!

Cleaning the studio would be good; I can hardly move in here. I think that it's time for my sewing machines to move out. Sorry husband! They are going to encroach on another room :)

Otherwise, I hope you like this painting that I made whilst I was in my inspired mode. It's now available as a print in the shop.

This work came about because I have recently been interested in looking at old paintings and interiors from the 1800's. The gilt frames, the opulence, textures and detail in the fancy houses. The walls. The doors! I loved watching the new version of Cinderella for drinking up the scenery; and more recently Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell. I read the brick of a book and now have one more episode of that series to watch. (And I'm so sad about that!) That show is to the eyes what a smorgasbord of food is to the tastebuds.

So, maybe all this imagery is floating around in my head waiting to sort itself out on the shelves inside my mind and settle into a way that I can grasp the ideas in a meaningful & practical way and utilise them in my art. Perhaps. Maybe that's what's happening.

Or maybe my muse has taken off to whisper some ideas into someone else's subconscious.

I just hope she comes back soon.

Jules.