FIRST, SOME BACKGROUND

I decided the best way to contribute to the collective while being a creative in lockdown was to construct a 21 day drawing challenge. It was for artsy types looking for inspiration and maybe a way to make the most of lockdown life. By guiding folks through daily drawing prompts, my challenge offered to help you tap into your deeper wisdom. The challenge was called ‘Drawing Insight, Inside’. I liked it. It had a nice ring to it.

If the 365 tiny landscape painting challenge I completed last year had taught me anything, it’s that small daily pockets of painting opened up an ability to write intuitively far more effortlessly than had I jumped straight to the desire to write, skipping the painting altogether. It was as though one tap opened the other. Except this challenge was accessible to all, not just painters. All you needed was a ball point pen and the everyday objects you would find in your home.

Minimum required input. Possible high-value return.

The other thing a 365 challenge teaches you is a tenacity towards output.

Never. Stop. Making.

On day 11, instead of posting my drawing of ‘earthenware’ I posted a little card that read ‘Oh fuck it’ and stopped drawing. It felt a bit assy. Also sassy.

Sometimes the thing you have to do for you will be a disappointment for someone else.

 I explained my reasoning in the post and continued to post the daily drawing prompts on my website for anyone who had started and wanted to also finish.

For the remainder of phase one of our 21 day lockdown I did nothing creative. I didn’t return to painting. I didn’t do any drawing. No colouring. No journaling. No blog posts.

No more #isolateandcreate.

via GIPHY

I just stopped, totally overcome with compulsion and obligation. What ensued was unintentionally deepening my lockdown. I was now not only on house arrest, but I was on art arrest too. I had put myself in ‘creative lockdown’.

I then experienced the following

#isolateandselfberate
#isolateandnegate
#isolateandvegetate

Also this:

#isolateandmeditate

There was no agenda behind this. It was just the next available clarity towards an unknown horizon of feeling creative again.

Keep all your well taps trickling and you’ll have only a shallow layer of mucky water fit for breeding mosquitos at your creative disposal.

As the volume of water in your well of artistry — your creative work — begins to dwindle, the pressure reduces and with it the potency.

Instagram was one of those taps, and indeed traps, for me. It was as though there was some sort of creative suction happening. I felt compelled to pour into it.

In order to appease the pull, we begin to pour all kinds of non-relevant-to-your-true-work additives into the well.

One calls places where water escapes without truly nourishing the soil, a drain.

And what I longed to reconnect with was the feeling of creativity pushing from within.

This is the simple mastery of a creative lockdown. Close off everything and the well begins to fill again. Once full, your now abundant creative font will swell from within and pour from the taps it is meant to pour from.

So, if you’re feeling more on the scale of #isolateandcapitulate, my advice is some simple isolate…and separate, isolate and wait.

Like listening to the deep ocean’s churning, you’ll begin to hear the creative pursuits whispered to you from your depths, that strange sentient place, where the likes of whales swim.

I’m heading back into my painting studio, where I keep re-realising, I still belong and where the the deep work ends and begins.

PS: The drawing insight challenge is still something I’m proud to have created and will be available under the resources section of my website should you ever have the desire or capacity to do such a challenge. My unexpected insight on this journey is simply that you don’t have to finish or even start something just because you once did and just because it’s available.