What have I learned in 2023?
How consistency brings momentum which brings joy, freedom and play
This year I have learned about how being more consistently committed to my creative practice gives me more enjoyment, liberty and inspiration to experiment. And I have learned this the hard way, by initially not managing to do it, so I feel it’s a lesson that will stick.
In January I set some goals for 2023. One of these was to improve the quality of my work and I decided the way to do that was commit to more time doing the creative work. I started tracking the amount of time I spend in my studio alongside my inventory of finished work. I have tracked finished work since 2020 so I am in the position of being able to compare years in terms of output. As well as making consistent time for my creative practice and I wanted to work on my embryonic art business. On reflection I’d say that I have been successful in my creative practice goal and only partially successful in my business time commitment. Or perhaps another perspective is that my goals have taken longer to achieve than I expected, so I am only partially there in achieving them at this point in time.
So what helped and what got in the way of my meeting my goals? The first obstacle was a competing priority, a personal life thing that at the time seemed more important but over time turned out not to be. For a few months I prioritised that over my art goals. Eventually I realised that wasn’t working for me and I changed my priorities and re-committed to my creative process goal. The result is that over the last 4 months of 2023 my studio time is sitting at just over 30 hours a month. That’s on top of my day job, but feels like its something that’s manageable and enjoyable to keep doing over the medium to long term. Go me!
Now I am looking at my business goals again with 2024 in mind and I’m aiming to slightly reduce my creative practice time per month for three or more months so I ring fence time that time for art business. Then I will assess how that’s working for me. I know the time commitment is doable already. Creative practice always first though because without it none of the art business stuff is worth doing.
So how has my commitment to my creative practice given me freedom? Well, in return for turning up regularly, no matter how I’m feeling, and doing a certain amount of time in my studio I have built up a momentum in my creative work. What is interesting is I’m having more ideas and I’m experimenting a lot more. I feel free to mess up induvial paintings and learn from mistakes, to take tangents that might be dead ends. I had thought I’d make more of one thing or finish series faster but instead I’m doing a couple of different ideas in parallel that may or may not be related. I don’t know yet. As well as painting my intimate landscapes I’ve been playing with collage and mono prints. I didn’t get these new techniques to do what I wanted in terms of a particular idea but they are fun techniques that I may take further. Or maybe not. Its brought the joy of play fully back into my practice.
Another thing I have noticed via doing my annual reflections over the last 3-4 years is that the dark winter months are fertile ground for my experimentation with new little ideas, materials and techniques. I prefer the more abstract side of picture making in winter too. This is not a time for big but for lots of ideas to mess around with.
Finally, an announcement for 2024: from next month I am going to email my newsletter mailing list when these blogs are posted so you can read in your inbox if you have signed up. You can do that here. I also message that list about paintings for sale and exhibitions.
Do you review your year and if so what have you learned in 2023? I’d love to hear about it.