How to make art when Life Gets Complicated

How to make art when life gets complicated

What do you do when life gets complicated and you don’t feel like making art? Here are some ways I’ve pushed through complicated situations to make meaningful art.   I hope you find them helpful.

Closing Business

A few years back I closed my business.  To save on further expenses we filled our home with stuff emptied out of the three storey historic bank housing my former business.  The clutter was almost overwhelming.  I felt that creating art would not be a part of my life anytime soon.

Rental Repair and personal loss

Furthermore, during the day I repaired extensive damage to our rental property. Then, in the evenings I returned home to sort through all the material and equipment from the business.  Consequently, I battled exhaustion. Additionally, I mourned the recent loss of my  mother as well.  I certainly had a lot on my mind but didn’t really want to sacrifice art.

I wanted to make art

I looked for a way to make art in the small studio I had forged in the living room  around of all the stacks of stuff from the business.

When life gets complicated-simplify

Aware of my often impossibly high expectations, I  had to find a way forward that was as stress-free as possible.

My Challenges

The main challenges I faced were fatigue, budget, space, and time. I met these challenges in the following ways: 

Fatigue

Accordingly, to avoid the pressure I often felt when creating narrative realistic work, I worked with circles, squares, and lines.  I didn’t have to contemplate story or meaning.  I could simply make art.

I chose to create ‘Can Blue Come out to Play’. It was a continuation of an earlier series, ‘Can Red Come Out to Play’. Therefore, I simply had to continue similarly to what I had created months earlier.

Furthermore, with primary colours, red, blue and yellow, I wouldn’t worry about mixing colours. 

Budget

Money was tight. Therefore, I limited myself to the materials I had on hand and able to find in the middle of all that stuff stacked around. Consequently, I used Inktense and watercolour paper. Additionally, marks made with pigment ink pens would finish the works.

Space

Supports were stapled to a backboard fashioned from a reclaimed wooden cabinet door. Because they were compact, I could easily stack and safely store my work. This was really important for creating in the middle of the stacks from the business.

I really loved the results, mostly.  It felt good to be creating art once again, even in the middle of a mess.

Time 

My final challenge was time. Because art was important to me, I scheduled it as an appointment in my diary: evenings a few dedicated times a week.

How to get back to creating when life gets complicated

1. Determine what you can do within your boundaries.
2. Make a list of your challenges.
3. Find simple ways to meet them and work on them a little every day.
4. Write down your challenges on paper followed by simple solutions you come up with.

Kickstart your creativity

If you don’t know what to create when life gets complicated, then  kick-start your creativity by basing new works based on you’ve already made.  If you want to go a complete new direction, begin creating with simple geometric shapes. 

If you’re feeling overwhelmed

If all this sounds like too much, simply do one thing each day. For example:

Day 1 – Choose the support you’ll use, that is, the paper canvas or wood that you will create on. Get out the support and prepare it for use, if needed.

Day 2 – Choose your medium from art supplies you already own. If you don’t own any, everyone has graphite pencils, ink pens, or crayons. Start with those.

Day 3 – Start creating.  If you don’t know what to do, do what I did and use basic geometric shapes.

Just do a little, then celebrate

Remember, take the pressure off yourself, when life gets complicated.  Nothing is a mistake except to do nothing. The point is to at the minimum do one thing. If you don’t like how things turn out, it’s not a disaster. The win is–you are making art once again!

Find a way to celebrate your victory every time.  Mine was really simple.  I stepped up to the mirror and gave myself a high-five.  (Then I wiped off the finger prints).  Then lather, rinse and repeat!

Conclusion

By persistently making these steps, when life gets complicated, you’ll soon have an interesting collection of works of your own.  Most importantly, you will be making art again.

I invite you to watch the video on my YouTube channel by clicking here. 

These rules proved to be useful once again last year when we had to pull up and restore the floors in the older part of our home. Consequently, this brought on a lot of chaos. Click here to read ‘When life gets in the way of creating art’.