Daily Creative

Brisbane collage from Friday 07 June. Click on the image to read the poem on Instagram.

Another week has gone by and I wonder what I have done all week. I look through my photos to write about my activities and realise I haven’t taken any pictures of things I have done. What did I do with my time?

Fortunately I have my daily collages which record the day’s events or musings and I can track back through the week. Oh yes on Friday I went to Brisbane for a dayy of art and inspiration. I was going for an artist friend’s exhibition and spent the afternoon before her opening at the Queensland Gallery of Art catching the rest of the Australian Pacific Triennial before it closes. I know this because I have the bits of paper and maps from these shows which are in my collage.

What else happened during the wee? I know each day I walk on the beach, cook, eat meals, wash dishes and sleep. Surely there is more. Oh yes on another day we had wild surf and there was no room to walk on the beach. I wrote about that with the little three line poem I write with each blog post based on the haiku structure of 5 -7-5 syllables. I probably wouldn’t have remembered this happened by the image, I needed the text to accompany it.

I’m writing about this today in my blog because it is part of my daily art practice. Some days it is the only art I do. But I turn up to my studio bench, grab an envelope, tear paper and stick it down and the day’s events replay through my mind. Time stretches into my hands as I engage with my materials -paper bits and pieces sourced from the letterbox, the shopping catalogue, the old book I am repurposing into art.

I find this practice soothing and validating. It makes sense of my life and reminds me to keep going on days when I really don’t feel like it. I have committed to this practice for 8 years now, missing a year and a half after the intensity of university studies, but then returning to it again because I wanted a record of my days, I wanted a creative practice I could learn from, I could engage with, that took only five minutes of my day.

I believe in the power of creativity as a transformational tool. I believe that art can reveal yourself to yourself, can connect you to the greater spiritual world, can be a solace in troubled times. That’s why I continue to do it, day in, day out. Art makes sense of my personal world and because of this, I can navigate the greater world outside. Every day.

Collage 05-06-2019. Click on the image to read the poem on Instagram.