Lacking Inspiration

The last few days have got away somehow - back to the story...

The Breakthrough

Even though Emily had been in the village a few months there was still that lingering sense of incompletion gnawing at her. This even though her days were now devoted to creative exploration. Even though she had rediscovered the joy of the creative process there was something that still felt, somehow, unfinished. Her explorations – sketches, experiments with clay, mixed media work – were steps in a new direction that hadn’t yet quite coalesced into something more definitive. She felt that she was on the verge of a discovery but that the next step would be somewhat indecisive. One evening Emily received a message from her agent back home – a reminder about the postponed exhibition. It was still scheduled for the next season – a promise hanging there in the air. There was no pressure. It was simply a casual enquiry about her progress. The reminder of that looming deadline hit her harder than expected. Panic overwhelmed her for the briefest of moments. What had she achieved? There was no cohesive body of work. Just fragments. Simply the pieces of the journey, but not the destination.

Still feeling a little overwhelmed Emily left the cottage and walked down to the shore. It was an unusually still day, the sea mirror flat reflecting the colours of the setting sun. As she reached the water’s edge she felt a sudden deep stillness somewhat like the quiet before the storm. Closing her eyes she took a deep breath. The cool air filled her lungs. She could feel something shifting inside, like the pieces of a jigsaw falling into place. As she reopened her eyes she felt a surge of creativity flow through her more powerfully than it had in months. She hurried back to the cottage. No hesitation. Her heart pounding. Her mind racing with images and ideas. No hesitation. No second-guessing. She knew what she had to do.

Back in the makeshift studio Looked at the largest canvas she had brought with her. It had been sitting there taunting her, teasing her, untouched, as if it was waiting for this very moment. She grabbed her brushes, then immediately put them down again. Brushes felt too precise. Too restrained for what she wanted. For what she had in her mind. She chose her largest palette and loaded it with paint. Once satisfied she took a deep breath and dipped her hands into the paint letting the cool texture, the vibrant colour, cover her fingers and palms. Emily hadn’t painted with. her hands since she was a child. This brought memories flooding back to her. Memories of freedom, of play, of pure creation. She placed her hands on the canvas smearing the paint in broad, sweeping strokes. These first motions were instinctual, raw, unplanned. Her hands seemed to move of their own accord. There was no thought of form or composition. Only the need to pour everything she had felt over the past months onto the canvas. Colours, blues, greens, reds and golds blended, merged, into one another. Colours reflecting the sea, sky, cliffs, sunrises, sunsets that surrounded her. The paint was thick, layered, textured – mirroring the clay that Marie so expertly moulded. Reflecting the earth beneath her feet, or the wind that whipped through her hair.

Now time lost all meaning. Emily worked. Hours passed unnoticed. The sun dipped below the horizon as the sky turned a deep purple. She didn’t stop to critique or analyse. She was lost in the flow of creation, something inside unlocked with every stroke of the canvas. It was almost an electric energy. This was the kind of delirium that she hadn’t felt since her earliest days of painting. The days before the critics, the collectors. The days when it was just her and the canvas. Eventually she stepped back, her hands covered in paint. The room was silent except for her laboured breathing. She felt a deep sense of release. Now she looked at the canvas that had been transformed by a chaotic, vibrant salvo of colour and texture. This was unlike anything she had created before. This was wild – yet controlled. Here was a reflection of her inner journey – messy, unpredictable, and yet undeniably her.

This painting was alive. Emily could see the layers of paint thick and tactile, full of motion, exuding emotion, calling out to be touched. It wasn’t abstract in the same way as her previous work – sterile and geometric. What was in front of her was visceral, organic. The sea. The cliffs. The village. The sunsets. The endless horizon. They were all there, but just not in any literal sense. Emily had created a map of her internal landscape, mapping the shifts, the doubts, along with the rediscovery of her own voice. She just stood there for a long time just absorbing what she had done. She felt light, almost weightless, as if a weight had been lifted from her. It seemed to her that something lodged deep inside her had been released, finally freed. She now realised that this painting was the breakthrough. Here was the culmination of her journey. This was the beginning of something new. She was no longer the artist who had arrived in the village all those months ago. She had found a new direction. This work was an indication of the way forward.

***

In the days that followed the floodgates opened. Emily’s breakthrough had released something deep within her. Now she found herself painting with a kind of reckless enthusiasm. Gone was the hesitation, the doubt, the fear of judgment, that had been holding her back. Now the approach to every canvas was a new discovery – a new step on the path she wanted to follow. Her paintings became a conversation between chaos and control, a caprice of colours and textures. These were works displayed an emotional truth, but were firmly rooted in the elements around her. The medium meant nothing now, clay was incorporated into the paint, occasionally sand from the beach was in the mix. This mixing of media gave her works a much more sculptural, tactile quality. Now each work became an extension of Emily, a reflection of her journey to rediscover both her art and herself. She no longer worried about whether the works would sell, or what the critics might think of them. She wasn’t creating for an audience, she was creating for herself. In this new found freedom there was the power that this was the type of work that she had always wanted to create. Works that didn’t neatly fit into any category. Works that adhered to no one’s expectations but her own.

Now Emily was at the point of knowing it was time to go back to Cornwall with this new found freedom/power of creation. She received another message from her agent. A message with a tone of excitement. There was a growing anticipation around her upcoming exhibition. Collectors and critics alike were all too eager to see what she had been working on during her hiatus. She read the message and laughed. For the first time Emily didn’t feel under pressure. Now she was in control. Not the collectors. Not the critics. Not the art world. She knew that she would be taking back a whole new body of work. Not just paintings, but pieces that were the narrative of her journey of rediscovery – of her transformation. Not just works of art, these were expressions of her newly discovered freedom, her defiance of old constraints, her embrace of the unknown. She began the process of packing the works ready to be sent ‘home’. As she came to the final work she couldn’t resist running her fingers over the surface, Feeling the layers of paint and textures under her fingertips she knew that this was the art she had always wanted to create. Art that was imperfect. Art that was unpredictable. Art that was deeply personal – was her. Art that came out of the beautiful, messy process of being human. For the first time in many years Emily felt whole. She had refound her voice, and was determined not to lose it again. Now was the time.