blocking, freeing, working...

I'm still thinking about Jim's question about what's better - a considered response, or one from the gut. That's one that needs to percolate for a while...

Meanwhile, I was struck by something Kathleen said on her FB site, about avoiding the creative aspects of our selves by 'getting on' and being busy. This interested me because this morning the following thought wandered into my mind (curiously, or not, a little after a dream about someone in my past making me eat the brightly coloured sweater a friend gave me when I was at art college - mmmm....). The thought was: 'I became an academic so that I could go on avoiding trying to work out how to be a painter'.

Here I am. I've resigned from my post. I've hung up my thinkpic jobs for the summer. I'm well. And, for some reason or other, I'm afraid. Not doing it. Wandering about, doing all sorts of things. Except drawing, or painting.

Someone told me yesterday about a comment on the radio in relation to creativity - that you have to work hard to be creative. That creativity isn't this thing that (in many people's imagination) 'just happens'. You know, that fantasy about the muse, that idea that people who think they aren't creative, but of course are, often seem to have about creative people 'just doing it'. I'm not creative, they say, I can't just create stuff, like X can.

But creative people don't just create stuff either. They work. And, also, they know how to take stuff and prism it. In our last Artist's Way group, someone commented on what a wonderful sense of colour a member of the group had.  How do you do it, we said? How do you know how to put these exquisite colours together? She looked amazed. I just look outside, she said, at the garden....