The Irony of Nurturing Your Creative Spirit

The Universe fucks with me. Let’s face it, it fucks with us all and whether you view it as toying with you, a test or synchronicity, sometimes you just have to zoom out and laugh.

If you’re with me on this creative journey you’ll likely know that I write from my own experience and somehow, just somehow I keep being reminded that my weird musings and life lessons seem to relate to your experiences too.

After another hugely successful Woodford Folk festival with sellout Luv Ya Vulva workshops again (this time four!) and amazing feedback about my art in the festival shop, I have yet again been reminded that this work will not leave me.

I was also fortunate to share my work and the workshops on the Good Morning Woodfordia show at Bob’s bar one morning with the gorgeous Fiona Scott-Norman and Corrine Grant. For some reason I wasn’t even nervous that there was about 300 people in the crowd!

Seeing the benefits first hand from all the wonderful attendees of the workshops and the generous appreciation for what I do, I’m elated to start writing and painting again!

I’m back on the pussy train biatches, woo woo! 

After a massive tangent in my career, painting commercially for art fairs, doing art admin and sidelining my book and vulva art, I’d said last year that enough is enough. Closing down all the business related bells and whistles to my so called ‘art business’.

It was a necessary shift from trying to operate under business models that don’t work for artists and I stopped working with people on the burnout train. 

I have enough of a challenge keeping up with my own ideas, to also try and keep up with people addicted to being busy.

I have been bored. I have been resting - a readily underestimated phase in a creative’s life!

And as it usually goes, when I’m on the edge of falling asleep I start cooking up cool shit. 

Just as I stepped back and had taken a birds eye view on my life and began to get super clear, shit starts amping up again and opportunities come my way. 

I’m not complaining!

It tests me to stay clear and be discerning about who I work with. My capacity has been really limited due to the ages and stages of my body creeping in and I’ve had to be brutal with my boundaries. Mainly, boundaries with myself about how much money I am prepared to invest in collabs, art prints etc and as my partner reflected ‘the math isn’t mathing babe’ when I wanted to print more Listen to Your Pussy t-shirts for the festival again (because they sold out last year) but my profit margin was next to nothing. 

Note to self: I don’t have to execute every idea that pops into my head. Trust me when I say a LOT gets binned. And not because it isn’t a rad idea. Purely because I don’t have the time or resources to test it… yet. 

I’m no longer blinded by the sheer doing, the lists, nor do I derive gratification from ticking things off anymore. I’m reminded why I want any of this… for more time at home in my garden, for picnics with Shaun, availability for my son, maintaining harmony and organisation in our little home, more flexibility to go on writing and painting retreats, and to own chickens!

The irony is that the more I prioritise these things, not my art, accepting these values are non-negotiable parts of my day, the more creative I become.

I have stopped trying to quantify my art practice. Instead of having a ‘business’ I have a profession.

I know how to rest again, pottering in my garden and not feeling guilty or it being a form of procrastination, and genuinely prioritising a simple fucking life with health and home at the helm, I also feel more balanced than I have in a long time!

The Test: to not mix my drinks (interesting metaphor for someone who’s been sober for seven years lol!). Not mix the dopamine highs of productivity with my creativity.

Recently I was reminded how bad my addiction to lists was. Having had enough time away from them I could see it now. I actually had a moment when I was really into my new facial massage (my jaw is super tight and I was digging the pain of loosening the tension, I’m a masochist I know). The endorphins and the feeling of genuine pleasure in the experience struck me. 

I had not put this facial massage on a list, yet I was doing it. Enjoying it. Not the hit from achieving, but real pleasure from experiencing.

Even self care can actually just be a dopamine hit from ticking another box on your list, not actually caring for yourself.

At that moment I was prioritising the feeling not the doing.

So yeah, I have a website again. I’m also showing up more consistently to email you guys, write these blogs and work on projects. BUT, it is at my own pace. Woven around part time jobs - yes I do other things like teaching, life modelling and even cleaning to take the pressure off my art having to pay the bills! My priorities of cooking healthy meals, exercise and down time are top of my values along with resourcing ourselves and food security, not to prepare for an apocalypse but for even more freedom to do art and express ourselves.

I know I am an artist and know in my bones that I don’t have to fucking prove it to anyone. Least of all YOU who have already shown your encouragement by being here. So thank you! 

Three of my take aways from these reflections;

• everything takes longer than I think it will (instagram reels). Accept it and still start.

• life doesn’t get in the way - art and work get in the way of life. Health and home come first.

• Be instrumental. Rather than identity focused (Evy Poumpouras)

I’m no longer denying that I really need these connections and conversations to keep going. I’m not just doing this work and sticking a hydrophone up my vagina for shits and giggles (well, I am a bit). It is the impact I’m driven by the most. 

I’m always reminded by this quote that one of my uni supervisors shared with me;

“Great art accumulates relevance and meaning as it moves beyond the control of its creators: weak art decides in advance what the piece is about”

Peggy Phelan

So the dance continues. Doing art for me and for you. Neither is superficial unless I get stuck in one and not remember the other. Like balancing life and art. As long as I do a little bit often toward both myself and my work, I don’t end up falling in a heap and resenting everything and everyone. 

Here’s to inviting a time of balance and sustainability in your life too. Where nothing is a race, and the slow deliberate nature of things is celebrated. 

If you’d like to also stay in the loop with when I have stuff on because I don’t always put it here in blog form, please do jump on the newsletter list. Don’t fret I don’t spam people every week, it’s just for workshop and art updates.

Keep creating,

Zo x

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