'Creative Meltdown'

Sunday afternoon, I finally had a few hours to be creative. Yesterday, a creative friend gave me some off-cuts of her paste paper to play with, until I get a chance to make some myself. I am keen to try this technique for my paper mosaic work, after being inspired by the work of Lorrie Abdo Grainger.

I sat and looked at the paper strips but could not get in a creative mood. It may have been that it felt wrong to use someone else’s work in pieces I intended to make for sale, or, it may be that after my initial experiments at coating paper mosaic pieces with resin, my heart was not really in it. Or was it just the humid Summer heat here?

I had what I can only describe as a ‘creative meltdown’ - I could not concentrate on anything, my head was just spinning. One minute I was going back to Friendly Plastic. Then it was resin. Should I try polymer clay? Or go back to doing paintings? Then a rethink about paper mosaics. Just round and round in circles! I think this was just the culmination of what had been a growing feeling of depression at having to start from scratch again, building a creative reputation. Since emigrating to New Zealand, I have been trying to find suitable sales venues and attracting a client following (this had taken many, many years to do in the UK) – and now I did not even know what medium I wanted to work with!

In the end, I decided it was just not meant to be a creative day, so I went for a long walk on the beach and tried to clear my head. When I thought everything through, I came to the conclusion that I really wanted to continue with my Art-Brooches. As for what to make them out of - well, maybe I should not get that hung up about it. I always seem to be trying different media, so why not make the brooches out of different media – they don’t all have to be the same, I can just use whatever inspires me. Problem sorted!