The picture above was taken with an old film camera, by my dear husband 8 years ago, when my art spirit was starting to awaken after over a decade of being asleep. I was in love, both with my art-making and my future husband. How could I not be? I was getting married and finding joy in hand-crafting my own invitations, opening the door to a creative future I never dared imagine at that time.
In the following travelogue entry, I want to share something artists don’t often discuss and a personal story that’s been the shadow side of my creative practice for years: what happens when the love for your art fades. My hope is that it will help you understand the hidden life of an artist and how to navigate the stormy waters with grace and heart should this ever happen to you.
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As creatives, we often dream of being the inspired artist, creating furiously, art bursting forth like spring rivers swollen with melted snow, hurtling towards a big, grand vision. We admire how she beats in rhythm with her truest self, how she lets nothing and nobody stand in her way.
To be so focused and overflowing with passion for our art is for many of us, the ultimate creative bliss. If like me, you’ve paid attention to the artists you admire, work created in such a state is absolutely impossible to ignore.
The wonderful news is, we’ve all been there at some point in our creative lives. It’s that heart-pounding first blush of true love and it’s both euphoric and intoxicating and likely the reason we’ve chosen to walk the path of the artist. It’s certainly been that way for me.
But what we often forget is that this state of romantic overflow is not a final destination. As artists, we don’t get to arrive at the peak after a long journey up the craggy face of a mountain, look below us and sigh with contentment and achievement, knowing we’ll never need to climb it again.
Thus, quite possibly the biggest lesson I’ve learned about my creativity in recent years is this: sustaining my creative enthusiasm is the single, most important thing I can do for myself as an artist.
The alternative is just too painful. To illustrate this, I’m going to share a story of a chapter in my creative journey that I haven’t talked about openly because I was embarrassed about it for a long time.
A few years ago, at the peak of my Heirloom Invitation business, I crashed and burned.
It was so bad that I could barely finish the orders. I didn’t want to go into my studio. I didn’t want to go near my printer. I had spent years building my reputation to the point where I was receiving high end custom work and earning more than I ever thought I would, three years into starting it, but I was in serious danger of defaulting on my commissions. It was devastatingly spirit-crushing.
What happened?
I’ve since learned that I’m not the only one to go through something like this. For 3 years, my work was fueled by the excitement of a new-found passion-of creating something from nothing that allowed me to make art for amazing folks who appreciated what I did and wanted to pay me money for it.
But during that same 3 years I also forgot to rejuvenate my artist’s soul. I stopped playing. I ceased being wide-eyed and wonder-filled about the art I was making because I was too busy in production, fulfilling orders, achieving goals. By the time I realized what was happening, I had arrived on the top of the mountain and there was no way to go but down.
Fortunately, I found the help I needed to get through this episode. But for a good while after I stopped creating invitations, my close friends and family were perplexed. They wanted to know why I stopped making something so beautiful and valuable to others. They couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to have anything to do with printing paper anymore, why I was turning away order requests.
But for any artist or creative whose been through this, the experience is heartbreaking and gut-wrenching. You feel like you’re letting fans and family down. But most of all, you’re disappointed because you’ve let yourself down. You started something with a deep sincerity to see it through only to arrive at a point where you wonder if you’re just a stereotypical flaky artist.
I no longer think this way, but for a long time, this was absolutely debilitating to my creativity. There were so many start and stop projects throughout the ensuing years that I wondered if I had lost my touch.
We often think of our creative nourishment as an indulgence. As a frivolous flight of fancy, perhaps even a dreaded, ‘first world problem’. But from my own experience and the artists I’ve spoken to, this is a serious, often overlooked part of creative entrepreneurship that’s a danger to both to the art we make and our livelihood.
The wonderful news is that I re-discovered my creative joy.
I found a part of myself I lost during the three years dedicated to relentlessly seeing a dream through. I’m more excited than ever about what I’m building and making these days than ever in the last decade of creating. Ideas for projects are flowing like water and my list of what I want to make is growing everyday.
But the most important thing is that I now know I will never, ever let my artist’s soul wither away like it did before.
If I want to realize my current dream, I need to be actively fanning the flame and keeping what I do fresh and exciting. Dreams, even artistic ones are never achieved without consistent, cohesive hard work and the only way I can do that is to stay enthusiastic, to find new ways to look at what I make so that it never becomes stale or worse, a burden.
Yes I will ebb and flow in my passion, as is the natural cycle of life, but I now know how to pick myself up quickly.
Here are some rituals that have made the biggest difference for me in the past few years of searching for my lost rhythm. Incorporate them in your practice to stay creatively energized and fresh :
- Don’t stop exploring your physical world. Go on wonder walks, bring a camera or sketchbook. Schedule weekly visits to galleries and museums. This fuels your aliveness, reinvigorates your five senses and keeps your inner well of wonder continuously filled.
- Start a Heart Project just for fun and play. Keep it a secret from the world if you want. Set the intention to separate it from what you’re making right now in the studio. It allows your artist’s soul to stay challenged, experimental and playful, and in time, your relationship with your creativity will start to heal. Always be creating. Always. Even if you don’t feel like it. Find something that will light the passion again.
- Stay in tune with your inner world. Keep a journal of observations about how you see and feel about the world. Notice what makes you angry, sad or emotional so that the work you make is always relevant and meaningful to you. Never stop finding out what matters most to you.
- Find time to analyze your favorite artists and subjects. Borrow books from the library instead of spending time on Pinterest allows you to dig deeper beneath surface beauty and discover obscure information that can add richness and depth to your art and see things you might not have considered before, possibly re-kindling a lost spark.
The consistent practice of nourishing and rejuvenating our artist’ soul keeps us challenged and in love with life. It fills our creative cups and allows us to see our world ahead as heart-expanding instead of contracting.
And just like in romance and marriage, it keeps the flame of creative love burning long after the novelty wears off.
I can’t stress enough how important this is. Please share this with anyone you know who could use a little creative uplift.
If you want more nurturing ideas, I made a free little adventure-planning booklet with audio narration to help you rejuvenate your artist’s soul. It’s a practice that’s been instrumental in helping me re-discover my creative magic.
Hop on here to grab the guide.
Alternatively, check out my Deck for Wonder-Walking at the Curio Shop. I created it so that I’ll always have a tool for adventuring and replenishing my creative spirit.
