Creativity and Collaboration

Lately I’ve been learning a new skill and I’m learning it within an online community of artists, some of whom are experts, and some, like me, are novices at the art and the craft of linocut printing. The entrepreneur behind this initiative is printmaker Suzie Devey.

I’ve had a trying year so far, I’ve been locked down, to all intents and purposes, since January. I was more tired than normal before Christmas and for the first time in 15 years, I didn’t go to my retreat in the tuscan mountains, I just couldn’t face the travel. Christmas came and went, we had a lovely but seemingly exhausting time, and then my ‘girls’ went off to stay with their other family for New Year. I didn’t have an ounce of creative spark in me - for three days I binge watched all the Christmas films and then I binge-watched a number of hoarder-next-door programmes, (which I sometimes do when I need motivation to clear up! There but for the grace of…) Then I fixed the shower room tiles, (long overdue), cleaned and tidied (some of) the house, took down the decorations on 12th Night/Befana, and then went back to work on the 6th January like everyone else. 

Then on 7th January, after my second evening class of the new year, I had a heart attack.

Now, I’m telling you this, not for sympathy, but because I think all people should know, especially women, that it didn’t happen like it does on the telly, no great dramatic pain, just a gradual unease and discomfort, and an intuitive knowlege that something wasn’t right. But I still went off to teach my evening class, finished it, packed up the car, drove myself home, and just over 2 hours later I was in James Cook Cardiac Unit having a spot of life saving surgical intervention. Please listen to your bodies people, and don’t underestimate your intuition. 

Anyway 2 months later, having gone through a brilliant NHS rehab programme, I was just dipping a toe into the notion of getting back to work, when the pandemic became increasingly inevitable. I decided to delay starting again after Easter. Then on March 23rd, lockdown was announced and I knew it was unlikely that I’d be teaching pottery this side of September. 

I think I can probably be forgiven for not exclaiming “yippee - lots of time for my own studio practice!” I barely had the energy to lift a 10k bag of clay, but it was more about the self analyis and the questioning - what am I doing? What to I want to do? What indeed CAN I do anymore? I was still in shock, and I felt/still feel incredibly lucky to be here at all. I was internally clapping for the NHS long before lockdown, I remain incredibly impressed at how efficient, knowledgeable, respectful and KIND every professional was who fixed me, looked after me, and encouraged me to get well. Thank you to all the paramedics, surgeons, nurses and every other member of staff at James Cook University Hospital, you are all, quite literally, in my heart forever. 

I knew I couldn’t carry on as I was. It’s a cliché, but these things which happen to us when we least expect them, and which are so scary, are wake up calls. Life is tenuous and precious. What do you do, when you don’t know what to do? Well, I am fortunate in that I live close to Bluebell Beck, which starts somewhere a few miles away in the Cleveland Hills, and meanders down to the river Tees. Back in January,  I started to walk there every day, very slowly to begin with, and as I walked and gained my strength and speed back, I watched the winter season shift to spring, documenting with my phone camera the small changes that I saw every day. I posted some of them on Facebook and kept in touch with people. I love walking in nature anyway, but this year, it was almost more amazing. The photography and the postings were the beginings of my creative spark returning. Bluebell Beck runs through a green belt in Acklam that has been there for a long long time. It has woods and it has meadows. It is a habitat for a myriad of wild flora and fauna. When I was a child, it marked the end of the housing estate and the begining of farmland. Now it’s a precious green stretch with seemingly endless houses on the other side of it. Last year local residents fought hard to prevent further development - thank goodness it was a successful protest. I hope the planners realise now that green space is essential to people’s health and wellbeing. 

So as I walked, observed and took pictures, I felt the spark begin to glow more into an ember. I remembered my childhood days of playing down there, having adventures, doing ‘trecks’ along the trails. I remembered my nature walks with my gran in the countryside around her village in Durham County, following the abandoned railway tracks. I remembered lying on my back in the sunshine, in a field near her house, listening to a skylark that I couldn’t actually see, as it climbed higher and higher into the blue beyond. I’m a grandmother myself now, so on days when my granddaughter walks with me, I find myself chanelling gran’s words and observations, passing on the wisdom, such as I can recall. I thought about drawing the things I was noticing. I brought back bits of bright lichen covered twigs, and pondered making natural dyes. I collected woodpidgeon feathers and considered what I might make with them. As the spring advanced, and the cold weather receded, so I spent more time in my garden too, planting seeds, cutting back the overgrowth, watching green shoots push out of the earth. More miracles, more embers glowing. But still no art. 

Then Suzie called me - she had also been walking through her local woods for her Daily Exercise, and her creative flame was burning brightly with a new idea, to print backgrounds from slices of the cut wood that she notices every day, and to invite local artists to contribute to collective prints, theme of British Woodland. She was energised and enthusiastic, she had a vision, and it was timely for me, with all my woodland imageary in my mind. I wanted to support her enthusiam, and printmaking is something I’ve dabbled around the edges of for a long time, but never got to grips with. Also - I enjoy working in collaboration with other people, I find the sharing and dialogue stimulates ideas and creative solutions.

So that’s what I’ve done, I’ve begun to get to grips with learning a new skill, I’ve now made my fourth linocut, including one as a member of our collective taking part in an international printmaking event. Suzie’s enthusiam and determination is infectious and our online artists’ group has continued to expand. ‘Positive Space’ is just that, a place where we can share our work in progress as we make it, get kind opinion and advice, support each other to be creative through a very worrying period of time where many of us felt very isolated and most of us artists fell through the net of Government support. Positive Space is just about ready to launch with a new website and a set of beautiful woodland prints which will be for sale online, and for which there are two proposed exhibitions planned in the days when lockdown is over.

There are plans afoot for sure. And thanks to creative collaboration, I’m on the road to creative recovery.