Getting lost

Or a strange new world

Coming back from visiting a work client in a village some half hour from home, I found the road I needed to take closed. I turned off the sat nav and turned around, taking roads at random with a rough idea of the direction I needed to go. First time I made some wrong choices and ended back at the road closed sign. I set off again making new choices.

Devon is wonderful. In a matter of a few miles you can go from wide open rolling vistas to tunnel like wooded roads to moss strewn woodlands that should be filled with hobbits.

I saw so many inspiring vistas on my fumbling trip home and each offered a seed for creativity. The thing with creativity is 90% of it happens in your head, unseen, most of the time. Unlikely connections are nade and lead you off down a rabbit hole where eventually something else, something new, is born.

Everything I saw on that journey is stored away in my brain. At some point I will see or hear or read something else that may come together with those memories and create a picture, a poem, a story or something else, sonething new.

As I sit here writing this it's raining hard outside, the goats gave gone off to huddle in the dry of the barn, the pigs have piled into their little wooden house and there's a xatcasleep on the Armchair across from me. All the human beings are out somewhere and all I can here is the rain and the wind through the trees.

I've had very little time or energy to be visibly creative over the last few weeks. I started a new job that, sadly, hasn't worked out for all kinds of reasons, but which was mentally and emotionally quite draining and I'm left contemplating my next move. I've got a lino print I'm working on that I realise needs further thought. A fantasy novel about art and solutude and emotional cowardice that had ground to a halt for lack of a villain, an idea for a seriesof paintings that I think would make ideal cards or prints (but requires me to go out and make sketches and take photos for reference) Some cartooning on the go and the material and information to make a mini me atop motion figure. I'm not entirely sure where to start.

Part of this is probably prompted by the realisation I hit 60 next Year. It feels like I've passed the half way mark and am on the return journey. Time us running out. I'm hoping 60 will be inspirational like 50 was rather than horrifying and depressing like my 40th. I have a better idea of the direction of my journey now so it feels more positive. It all comes back to making best use of time.

Anyway. I'm going to go make something.

Go make art

Pete