How I keep unblocking deeper creative layers and with that: joy!
I created a tiny creative studio at the top floor of the house
It’s now three months since I moved into the former warehouse, and as the first months were about grounding in my new phase, slowly but surely I now start to feel a little more space to let new breaths of creative fresh air in. As my home office/atelier is not ready yet, I created a tiny creative studio at the top floor of the house. In the hallway between the two rooms sits a little no man’s land. In this lost space the desk that one of my dear friends gave me (as I did not have a lot of furniture after the nomad phase), fitted as if it was meant for this spot.
“Creativity is a moving and alive place in ourselves with many depths to explore”
Creativity asks for aliveness
As a multi-creative and creative mentor I’m so fascinated by this phenomenon as creativity is part of all of us. It’s not just about drawing, writing or ceramics for example, it’s also about new ideas or projects. About connecting dots. About creating something new: a book, a painting, a project… Or even a child. Creativity as I experience it, has many layers. My creativity provides me a living for more than twenty years already, but I still come across creative blockages as I try something new or want to create from a deeper place in myself. It’s not something that is just flowing or not flowing, it’s a moving and alive place in ourselves with many depths to explore.
“Who are we to have so much fun in life, the dark voice in my head keeps telling me”
Amazing ceramics workshop I did last week with Katharina Ceramics. So grounding to work with clay.
Creativity with a view: a few days at one of the Dutch Wadden Sea Islands (Vlieland)
We don’t need much space for our creativity!
The voices of our blockages
For me my writing flows freely, but my painting and illustrating not so much in the last years of my nomadic phase. It’s what I long for deeply, but there is so much joy and aliveness there, that it’s unconsciously scary for me. Who are we to have so much fun in life, the dark voice in my head keeps telling me. What if I even make money with something that gives me so much pleasure as illustrating? The voices of our blockages rarely make sense, but still they are there as a little whispers we picked up somewhere in our past and internalized in some way or form. As I unblocked many of my creative layers already, I know that the only way is to just go through it.
“I shut the thoughts and start drawing intuitively for 20 minutes without stopping”
My precious mini atelier
It’s early in the morning and I sit at my desk in the small no man’s land mini atelier. As my former warehouse is among the higher ones in the street, the view through the window oversees many rooftops. I light some candles and the sky is treating me with deep orange hues as the sun starts to come up. I put a large paper roll (that I bought in the famous Swedish warehouse) and all my paint, pencils and colored markers out there on the table. I doubt a little… Where do I start? I shut the thoughts and start drawing intuitively for 20 minutes without stopping.
“I not only feel more joyful in my creativity, but also in my life as I’m looser and more vibrant than before”
That childlike joy!
The voices I encounter are not friendly and even dark: it’s not beautiful, it’s not perfect and many more I just put aside every time they pop up. The next day I do it again. And the next again. I move through layers, something is opening. After days and days of intuitive drawing and painting the flood is unstoppable. I draw from a deeper place then before. And there it is: the childlike joy that is so needed for any creative project. I not only feel more joyful in my creativity, but also in my life as I’m looser and more vibrant than before.
For me my creativity is the place where I always find myself, no matter how difficult life gets sometimes. It’s the place where my wild heart speaks and my soul is always listening.