Once upon a time

When I was a young child, I must have painted. I just can’t remember what.

As an older child at primary school, I once painted a thatched-roof hut with an animal print motif, set somewhere ‘rural’ in Africa. It was an art class project and for a child who grew up in the city, it seemed like the idyllic and appropriate thing to paint. I remember being pleased with that work.

Last year, it occurred to me, that over three or maybe close to four decades later,? I had not attempted to produce any sort of art on canvas since those school days. No good reason. I just grew into a ‘don’t / can’t paint person’. So I went on a mini mission to ‘simply find somewhere to paint’. The quest was helped by the collision of a few ideas and events. I had met Isabel Pearce of Cambridge Art Cube months earlier at a CamCreatives CIC meetup so I decided to look up what was happening at her studio. Fortunately, there was a Painting with Oil and Cold Wax workshop with Peter Corr and I promptly signed up.?

Big hurrah - I painted, once again! What you can do with a great teacher taking you through a process step-by-step is amazing. I also enjoyed it immensely because I was there to be a curious child at work and nothing more. The act of painting was the big reward, and I have to say, I think the outcome was decent considering the student’s experience!

It's often tricky exploring a long-forgotten or unexplored creative activity with a full-time job on the go. That’s why I am a big fan of short creative projects where you get the satisfaction of working on something from start to finish. I find that it helps counterbalance the feeling of ‘unproductivity’ and ‘abstractness’ that can creep in from working on long-spanning document-based assignments involving many meetings, evaluations, revisions, approvals, etc. Having an immersive bookended experience is something we start to miss when working in complex knowledge-based environments so getting both physical and creative can be just the antidote we need.

Is there something creative that you made once upon a time that you are curious to do again? And do you think being able to say “I made this” will be a positive catalyst for your professional work?