The spice of life!

This week I was reminded of the importance of varying my days.

Since I found a good doggy day care for Riley, I’ve been very disciplined. As soon as he trots off happily with his ‘taxi’ driver (daycare owner, Dave), I make a coffee and head to my studio. Usually, except for a quick lunch break, I stay there until he comes back at about 5pm.

I don’t take a walk. I don’t see friends. I usually don’t even take phone calls. This is my painting time and I use it well.

But this past week, things changed. Spring finally arrived in the UK and we were gifted with some truly glorious weather. On Monday, I spent all morning with friends at a local garden center, buying some plants, and having lunch in the sun. I only painted for a few hours in the afternoon.

On Wednesday, I spent a happy morning weeding and planting, and then took the time to wander around my property, enjoying the Spring blossoms and noting jobs to be done. Again, I only painted for about an hour.

Then again on Friday I took time out to have coffee with a friend and to tick off some necessary life admin tasks.

I thought I would fee guilty about not using my time effectively, but I can’t tell you how refreshing the week has been. The variety really sparked my creativity and, despite the limited studio hours, I finished this painting …

Well, I say "finished," but I never consider anything finished until the whole series is developed. That’s when I can look at them as a whole and see what needs changing. (Even now I can see that the left lens of dad's sunglasses is wrong and needs adjusting!)

But it's finished for now, and this painting perhaps comes the closest to what I want to achieve with these works.

It seems to contain a balance between the figures being there and not there; alive and yet not alive; present but distant.

I love that the children are looking out at us with a direct gaze and I am quite happy with the level of disruption and the blend of drawing and painting. I’ll never be completely happy with anything I make because I can always see where I am falling short, but I am relatively satisfied that this is the best I can do for now.

So, despite my frequent breaks this week, I managed to really move my work forward. Or maybe, that's actually BECAUSE of the frequent breaks. Perhaps by injecting more variety into my week, I gave myself just the spark I needed.

I’m taking a break from teaching this year - there will be no Find Your Joy in 2026 - and I think I’m still finding my work-life balance. Having to spend less time on developing course materials has meant I have had more studio time, but perhaps I have taken that a little too seriously. Maybe I can be just as productive while also taking time out for other pleasures.

Of course, writing that out it sounds ridiculous, but this is the downside of having drive and ambition. You forget that there are other ways to enjoy yourself … and more importantly, you forget that less can be more when it comes to time in the studio!

So if you're like me, maybe try shaking things up by walking away from your art and doing something completely different. Especially when the sun is shining :)

“I’d like to have a go”

Someone posted this comment on Instagram about the painting I shared above.

She said she loved the unfinished rawness and fancied “having a go” herself. Now I love inspiring other people and I have no problem with people taking my ideas and running with them - that’s what artists do.

But the phrase “I’d like to have a go” always makes me pause, because it hints at a way of thinking that can lead to problems.

It suggests a feeling that this is easy. That somehow now you've seen someone else put in years of work to develop a unique, personal way of working, it's possible to simply lift that wholesale and repeat it for yourself.

Of course, it's not. Thousands of hours and a lot of knowledge have gone into building my skills as a painter and my unique approach to expression. It's just not possible to replicate that for yourself without also putting in thousands of hours, and if you're willing to spend all that time it would be much better to spend it finding your own path.

This, I believe, is why so many people give up on their art before they have even really got started. They are looking for easy ways to do something that is actually bloody hard work!

So what do we do when we see someone's work and are inspired to 'have a go.' I think we need to first analyse what we are responding to ... is it the colours, the way of drawing, the variations in paint application, or the feelings engendered?

And once we know what we love, we can set up little experiments for ourselves, where we 'steal' those things to make new work. BUT - and this is the important part - we must understand that our experiments will likely fail. Our work won't look like the work we admire - it will feel stilted and wrong. That's OK - we are experimenting and anything goes.

So we must keep going, trying different approaches. As we do this, we will start ti find our own answers, our own ways of working. Things will start to look a little better. Then we;'ll try something else and something else and soon, we are far away from the art that originally inspired us. We are making something unique and personal to us - and there is no better feeing than that.