Tag: Creativity

On Sadness

5 Comments

The leaves on the horse chestnut trees are turning crisp and brown, curling at the edges like pieces of paper held too close to the fire. Apples weigh down the orchard boughs, the remaining plums are beginning to speckle with rot; and there is an expectation in the air, a slight chill in the morning. We are entering autumn, perhaps the most melancholy season.

For these past two weeks, I have sensed it coming. I’ve not felt like doing anything much creative, writing or painting. That isn’t to say I haven’t been busy with work and life generally – only that I’ve been slow to make headway with projects of my own.

Ordinarily, I’d be tempted to give myself a hard time about my lack of get-go, but this year I’m inclined to be a little kinder than usual. So far, 2017 has been a bumpy ride for many people I know, and sometimes it’s important, I think, to acknowledge the fact that life can feel hard; and, actually, there is no need to march on regardless, with some sort of rictus grin stuck to your face… It’s fine to slow down a little. It’s ok to be sad.

By sadness, I’m not referring to the sort of incapacitating depression that requires professional help, but to an emotion that I suspect we all too often try to brush aside in pursuit of would-be action-packed, colourful,  seemingly perfect lives. Sadness means recognising loss and failure, grief and upset, distress and longing; and realising that things could perhaps be better – but they are, sadly, what they are.

Yet, like any season, with time sadness too will pass. As Julian of Norwich put it over six hundred years ago: “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”

The leaves are turning, and soon the trees will be gold.

Colour Vision

Leave a comment

A recent visit to Falmouth Art Gallery has set me thinking about colour.

The work of two artists was on display: that of Rose Hilton, a member of the St Ives group of post- war Modernist artists, and Winifred Nicholson (1893–1981). In the gallery showing Hilton’s paintings, the bright oranges and reds of her canvases zinged around the room like improvised jazz, whereas Winifred Nicholson’s work seemed altogether gentler, a melody of muted interiors and landscapes. Yet both artists explore the relationship between colour and form.

For Winifred Nicholson, a shade of magenta pink proved key, which when combined with yellows adds luminosity. She particularly enjoyed painting flowers as, to her, they were a consistent source of colour, ‘turning light into rainbows’ and offering ‘the secret of the cosmos’.

In an age of pickled sharks and unmade beds, Winifred Nicholson’s work might perhaps appear a bit twee at first sight. But when I looked closely at her paintings, I would see each petal was a whorl of energy.

I’m drawn to the idea that a subject doesn’t have to be deep and meaningful on the surface to be saying something quite profound beneath it. And that – to paraphrase something I’m sure I read in one of Winifred’s letters on display – there is a creative freedom that comes from focusing on those colours we wish to work with, while disregarding the rest. There’s no need to cram everything in, whatever we’re making; whether it’s a novel or a painting, simplicity brings with it a certain lightness.

 

(Freesias by Sue Belfrage)