I didn’t paint for a whole week

This week, I didn't paint.

Not because I was stuck but because my mum came to stay for the week and, quite simply, there wasn't any time.

We saw friends. We went shopping. We visited the local gallery. We went out for lunch. In the evenings we watched films and played word games.

And for an entire week, I didn't pick up a paintbrush or make a single mark.

The timing was actually quite good. Just before Mum arrived, I'd reached a natural stopping point with a couple of paintings. I won't say I'd finished them, because I'm not entirely sure I have. I'd simply reached that familiar place where I couldn't see what else to do.

Usually, when that happens, I keep looking. I go into the studio and stare at them. I move them around. I try something and wipe it off. I take photographs and look at those instead. I think about them while I'm making dinner. Somewhere in the back of my mind is the assumption that if I just keep working at the problem, eventually I'll solve it.

So I expected to feel frustrated by a whole week away, but actually I didn't. 

In fact, something quite different happened - somewhere in amongst the lunches and shopping trips and word games, ideas started bubbling up.

Not fully formed ideas and nothing dramatic. Just little thoughts and possibilities that I probably wouldn't have noticed if I'd been standing in front of those paintings trying to force an answer out of them.

And when I finally got back into the studio this weekend, I didn't immediately return to the paintings. Instead, I got out my sketchbooks and started playing.

One thing led to another, as it often does, and I stumbled across a new way of working that I'm quite excited about. I don't know where it's going yet, but it has that feeling I love – the feeling of having opened a door and glimpsed something interesting on the other side.

And I honestly don't think I would have found it without the week away.

This has made me think about the strange way creativity works. We're so used to measuring our progress by what we've achieved - how many hours we spent in the studio, or how many pieces we finished, or how many problems we solved - so wehn we're not doping those things, it can feel as though we're not working.

But perhaps that's not true. Perhaps there are times when the most useful thing we can do is stop interfering.

Because I don't think my creative brain stopped working last week. I think it was probably doing all sorts of things while I was occupied elsewhere. It was making connections, processing what I'd already done, and maybe even letting go of ideas I'd become too attached to. 

And because I wasn't standing over those paintingds trying to force answers, my mind had space and time to wander.

I've experienced this before, of course - ideas arrive in the shower or solutions appear on a walk - but a whole week away made the effect much more obvious.

It reminded me that time away from the work isn't necessarily time lost. Sometimes the gap is part of the work.

I think this is especially hard to remember when we care deeply about what we're making. We want to keep pushing. We want to make progress. And when something isn't working, our instinct is often to try harder.

But creativity doesn't always respond particularly well to being chased.

Sometimes it needs our attention. And sometimes, apparently, it just needs us to go out for lunch :)