Category: Blog

Much of the pressure and resistance we feel in creative practice comes from approaching things from a linear perspective as opposed to a cyclic one. So often, we expect to appear at the page, hash out a brief plan and get to work.

From here, we presume that level of intensity of both our attention and our output will build progressively as though following a straight, upward line on a graph, reaching its crescendo before we place the pencil down.

In reality, though, it’s almost impossible to produce quality work within this dynamic, simply because quality action requires equal periods of quality inaction– and it’s the inaction or the downtime that we often don’t allow for.

In a culture that values pushing, overcoming and constant activity, it’s a real mindset shift to allow yourself intentional moments of rest and reset, both away from your creative practice and within it.

The natural world around us does not move forward, forward, forward. She expands and contracts, fluidly and continuously. Each state of being allows for and promotes the other.

These days, my creative experience spins before me in cycles. I see the moments of intensity, of following my interests and curiosity.

I see the intentional engagement as I learn something new or pick my ways through the parts that I find challenging.

I see flatter moments of sustained progress as we tinker with things that we know.

And in between, I remind myself to allow for spaciousness (isn’t that such a lovely word?).

A contraction, a return to neutral. Back to the compost from which all things grow.

Cycles, not straight lines.

Onwards.

xx Jane

 

Last night, I was invited to share my thoughts about creativity at a hub in my hometown that’s called Stitch Kitchen. Part of their ethos is to inspire and build community through creative practices, while reducing textile waste and its impact on our environment. When I read that I thought what better thing could I support?

This week they are selling huge swathes of fabric as part of a fundraiser (they are a non-profit) and despite having zero skills in the sewing department myself, I found myself frolicking around the vats of material, running my fingers over a piece of linen with cherries on it (who doesn’t love cherries?), and remarking about the possibilities of a tiny swatch cutout that was the only piece I found with birds as though I was chief designer at my own House of Couture.

My friend, Kylie, and her mum, Lorna, were there also, delicious creatures that they are, who were graceful receptacles for my terrible jokes which always seem to emerge when I am out in public. We met at an art workshop a little while back where we bonded over enthusiastic art experimentation and giggle snorts and they have been one of my people ever since.

We need places for congregation these days, don’t we? Most of my local friends that I have now I have met through art, joined in spaces where we have come together for shared making and shared creating.

At the start of my talk, I spoke about how we need to seek things out more and more that have us moving at a human pace. It seems ridiculous to point that out. But so much of what we are doing is the opposite; where information is coming at us and output is required of us that is more than a human body can assimilate or handle.

Art, craft, writing, working with our hands, puts us back in right relationship with ourselves. Back at pace with our own humanity.

Working, creating, doing things at human pace.

Thank you Fiona and Stitch Kitchen for having me. It’s a lot of energy to maintain the space that you have and offer and I, for one, am grateful that you do.

And what’s more, I was gifted with an elephant, which, along with birds, is my number one sign of a successful experience. A picture of him making himself at home amongst the books and daffodils.

I think he’ll be very happy.

 

I’m interested in the stories we arrived with. The words and ideas that are lodged in the clay of our bones. How creativity can facilitate belonging. All these topics swill around the whitewash of my brain.

I have written previously about the idea of creative lineage, positioning through my words, in part, our ancestry as a straight line, but I realised just this morning that my words have been all wrong. That the way I reference things will need to change.

This morning, when I started drawing, I understood:

We aren’t born of direct lines, of mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers, and all that extend beyond that.

If you trace ancestry in the traditional way, it may appear that way at first, but fairly soon your page will become messy and you’ll start to wonder if we aren’t, in fact, family trees but root systems, some known, some not, all drawing from and returning to the compost of possibility, the seed bank from which everything sprouts and grows.

That there is, in fact, no traceable start points or endings to our existence or belonging.

If we think of ancestry not as a straight line backwards, instead of the spirals and loops that they are, we realise we have emerged in response to a cyclic generosity, held in endless spirals of retreat and return.

Why is this important and not just another play on words?

Because there is no room for kinship within lineage. The idea of lineage itself beds itself in patriarchal beginnings, arising from quests for continued ownership and control.

Kinship, instead, creates belonging, extends its arms well beyond the human.

And what’s more, it is a liberation.

What if there was no lineage of success, or trauma, or joy, or sorrow, but instead a mass, a heap, a fertile dirt from which everything is free to grow?

I have noticed where I have imposed linear thinking, linear words on an earthly existence that is anything but a straight line. Everything that is real around us and within us moves in cycles. The days, the seasons, the planets.

We did, at one point in time, understand that we do not own the land. We belong to it. This is our true inheritance. Perhaps if we let go of the idea of lineage, belonging is easier than we think.

I know drawing for me is about kinship. My birds don’t belong to me, but it delights me to think that I belong to them.

 

Who cares? It’s an always-relevant question, and like so many relevant questions, it’s meaning very much depends on tone and context.

Who cares? As in, here I am in my silk pyjamas, leaning back on a velvet recliner, gesturing dismissively to the universe who has dared, in this moment we are imagining, to speak against us, only to abruptly change the subject and ask if anyone wants champagne.

And then there’s the Who cares? Which is the one that the one I’m referring to. Which can also be expressed as Who does care? And then worse still, why don’t they care? A conversation that opens a hole in the earth we find ourselves falling into that leaves us in despair.

We wonder where, in this crazy mixed-up world, all the care has gone.

How to proceed when we feel the world has lost her cares? At least for me, I think it starts by continuing to explore our own.

At first your cares might be like finding a kitten that’s been abandoned. They are clever, small and deft and like to hide under the couch. You have to coax your cares out, make them believe that you are someone its worth their while to trust in.

It may well be to find your care again you have to close your eyes, reach out your hands and grope around to find them.

The first thing you’ll hit is probably anxiety but keep going; you know that that’s not it (on this, you’ll need to trust me).

You might accidentally wrap your fingers round despair; just untwine them and release her.

Soon enough (they hang around in groups) you’ll get to anger, and maybe even hopelessness and at this point you realise that the thing that you must do is carry on.

Because what you’ll find, if you really dedicate yourself to this exploration, beyond all those emotions, if you just reach far enough, is the flicker of curiosity, a glint of something not at all the same.

And when you see her, not matter how obscure or pointless or non-sensical she may appear to you, you must tether yourself to her like a string to a kite and allow yourself to be carried.

Curiosity is the antidote to everything we’ve mentioned, the secret elixir that can open us back up.

So, when you find your curiosity (and remember, you might have to seek her out, approach her with a certain dedication) and you tend to her most gently, you’ll find your way back to your care.

It seems to me that care and curiosity have always lived close by.

Which is when I remind myself: that care is not an observation but an action, and the only care I am in control of is, in fact, mine.

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about pressure and our relationship to it. It seems we’ve come to think of it as a bad thing, but I’m not sure that’s the case at all.

Someone mentioned to me the other day when we were chatting about a project that was important to them that they “weren’t putting any pressure on themselves” and that sentence stopped me in my tracks.

I understood what they meant- they didn’t want this thing that they loved to become another whip cracking monstrosity in their day- but in the same breath, not putting any pressure on yourself is the ultimate wild card, and potentially, a recipe for not getting things done.

When I think about drawing and writing and midwifing things into the being that sit outside what the world around me expects or asks, I do put a considerable amount of pressure on myself to make them real.

That pressure is the force behind my decision making; the things I say yes or no to that might potentially gobble up the time I could otherwise be spending on what it is I want to make.

That pressure communicates to me its value; that this is something important to me, something that the future me really wants to get done.

That pressure is what helps me sit through the gnarly parts where things feel unclear and unformed and my brain is little more than creative spaghetti.

Pressure is never a conversation of all or nothing. And it’s always present regardless; it’s behind whatever it is we deem to be important. But not as something to be avoided. As something to be embraced.

I wonder if not putting pressure on yourself to put energy into something that you love is just fear in a disguise. Not always, but sometimes. It’s always good to question.

I woke up this morning to the words, “These are the first birds I’ve drawn since I was 10 years old and I’m 67” and I saw a page full of Silvereyes and Wrens and Blue Tits, and it stretched my smile as wide as the Pacific.

We have developed some funny notions around creativity and art that are crippling and boring and make our world more black and white than colour so there’s little that delights me more than seeing the rampant swirling of pencils hinting to the possibility of a mind allowing itself to be unleashed.

Something that’s important to remember:

We always have the right of return. We can begin again at any time.

Just because you stopped or got put off or life became life-ey doesn’t mean that you don’t get the change just to begin again.

Everything is waiting for you. The widest point is the one between you and the start.

A principle I work to when it comes to navigating this wild and vast world (and to prove my point, 500,000,000 birds were migrating across the US just last night. Vast and wild I tell you!) is allowing yourself to be new.

Letting yourself be new means that allow yourself to meet the page or the pencils or the *insert whatever the thing you want to do is here*  and see what happens.

You don’t go in with preconceived ideas. You don’t entertain good or bad or right or wrong. You allow yourself to be a creative explorer, open to what shows us, allowing yourself to be guided outside of a mind that is doing its best to convince you that things need to be a certain way.

Let yourself be new. Who knows, you might find yourself in a position where ten minutes ago, the paper was white and now a whole flock of birds are living on your page.

Onwards.

xx Jane

Here’s something you are no doubt already aware of: It’s easy not to be creative.

It’s easy to not to write or draw or do the thing that you are called to do. We are surrounded by so many stories of creative yearning and lack that we bond together in conversation over what we would rather be doing, over our constant lack of time.

It can all get rather boring.

We constantly and persistently argue against our own happiness and what’s more, we are very good at it.

I don’t have any magic solution for finding you more time, other than to say, I know what it’s like to be busy. I feel the strain of it constantly,

But I also know what it’s like to not make time for the things that I love (in my case drawing and writing) and I can tell you, it makes you miserable.

And with this in mind, I wonder if the biggest piece to making time for what you love is not time at all but trust. We have to trust that our ideas are worth valuing. That the things that sparks our curiosity mean something.

I remember talking to my friend on the phone and when she asked me what I was doing, I told her I was drawing lots of birds.

I said to her, I don’t know where it’s going or exactly where it’s leading, but I have to trust that the kind of love that I feel, and the desire to do it means something. That it doesn’t exist for nothing.

I really feel that to be true of all our art. You have to trust that it means something. And once you truly believe that, you will start to find the time.

I do not mean this flippantly. I understand that many of us are exhausted and truly pressed for time.

Which means, we have to let go of what the ideal looks like- big blocks of times, oceans of days laid out before you- and start to snatch creative moments in minute blocks.

I want to remind you that your curiosities, you desires and your creative yearnings exist for a reason. And that as a consequence, do whatever you can to find the time.

Do it like your life depends on it. Because I’m of the opinion that it actually does.

xx Jane

If you fancy drawing birds, Winging It starts next week! It’s designed to be completed in less than an afternoon, or if you want to space it out, half an hour a week for 4 weeks! We’ll draw all kinds of birds; from reference, life and imagination.

Come play with me! You can learn all about it here.

I’m a little late this morning because I’ve made it my mission to draw a bird for you every day, and I went off piste as they might say.

I got flamboyant in the evening and decided to play around with watercolour and then got experimental with some gouache (neither of which I am experienced with but then isn’t that the joy of it?) and then went back in with my favourite black ink pen and then, after staring a bit longer, had a play around with pencil.

I’m not sure he’s quite finished, but in any case, I present to you with Exhibit A: My Carrion Crow.

I will tell you though something completely devious that is the underlying pulse of why I love to draw my birds. A story to illustrate my dark secrets:

This morning, I continued with my crow in a Co-Creating Session we have as part of the Creating Wild Membership (I describe it as a big kitchen table session where we all meet up and chatter and work on whatever it is we wish).

I was talking about my crow and that started a conversation about Ravens and the question was asked, do you have Raven’s in New Zealand?

At first I said yes, and then no, and then you know, I’m not quite sure, and so I looked it up and learned that we used to have two endemic Ravens to Aotearoa New Zealand that went extinct in the 1600’s.

And then I learned from my lovely friend Brigid, who is also in the group, that Raven’s are protected where she is in California but they are slightly problematic because they are thriving on human settlement where other Birds of Prey are not (which leads not only to problems with the Birds of Prey themselves, but the things that they take care of).

And you see, this is how it works. When we pay attention to something, we inevitably become curious. Curiosity leads to discovery and discovery leads both to wonder and to learning.

And then- this is the part where we need the drum roll- wonder inevitably leads to care. We understand what requires our voices, our hands and our protection.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is my big secret; the motor behind everything.

Opening our eyes to the world through art is a way of offering it our protection. A portal, if you will, where we can not only share our fascinations and our loves, but to fuel our actions that lead to better care.

Art as gentle activism. I’m all in.

xx Jane

Next week, my bird drawing course, Winging It, is opening! We will explore ways to draw birds from reference, from life and as illustration. It will be luscious and inspiring (I mean, birds!) and well worth your time. Pinky promise.

You can check out Winging It here.

 

On the weekend, I took the littlest of my small ones to the Ecosanctuary near us for hot chocolate, but my ulterior motive of course was to admire all the birds. Right near the entrance doors, just to the left as you walk through, is a rather ramshackle bookshelf. On it are the remains of donated and discarded books that you can purchase by donation. I look at them like old forgotten friends.

I have bought three vintage bird books there now to date, all slightly torn but full of hundreds of coloured illustrations. I ogle them with the same love I imagine they were created with.

This last visit, I picked up a book with a dated looking photo on the cover, and pictures of a similar quality inside. I thought of putting this one back- it struck me as a little boring- but then I started reading and realized I was most definitely wrong. The descriptions were amazing, and I began to also understand the quality of the photos within the context of the time, without zoom lenses and fast shutter speeds and digital possibilities.

The way that the author, M F Soper, talked about feeding habits and nests (amongst a host of other things) came from the wisdom of someone who spent a lot of time outside simply observing:

“One of the most striking things about a Pigeon chick is that it seldom if ever demands food. Despite many hours at a nest, I have never seen a squab demanding food and have never seen one fed. A friend of mine, hoping to obtain a movie sequence of the feeding act, spent days and days at the nest yet only saw it once.”

In another book I read recently, The Place of Tides, the author laments the loss of childhood time spent outside observing. On the outer Arctic isles of Norway, where the book is set, the inhabitants of the island consider observing an action as worthy as any other.

How else are you supposed to learn the comings and goings of the place you are a part of if you do not take the time to simply watch?

I often feel this pull, this desire to observe without time limits. How many of us can do that now, and if we do, without the guilt that we should be more productive or there’s something else we need to do? I would guess the answer is not many.

The messaging we are fed about what’s important and a good use of our hours is insidious.

When I started drawing birds, it was a reclamation of time as much as anything else. I desire to get closer to what was real, the snuggle up to the immediacy of the ground outside my door in a way that would allow me to know it better. And what’s more, it really worked.

Drawing is a kind of alchemy that I never appreciated when I was caught up in the idea that art was for other people, or that my drawing was not good. If you can let go of that, it’s amazing what comes through. How you can get to know thigns in ways you never knew them before. It’s the best kind of everyday magic.

In a week’s time, my bird drawing course, Winging It, opens- the early bird offer is available now! To take a pencil in your hand and pay attention is a wild and beautiful act- I’d love to share that with you if you are at all curious (and especially if you have the desire but are convinced it’s not for you- proving yourself wrong there is part of the fun!)

You can check out Winging It here

xx Jane

 

A little while back, I began creating what I came to call my Book of Allies, a ritual magicked into existence to sustain me through a difficult time.

The practice works like this: each morning when I wake up, I hop skip my way around the usual temptations that call out from the confines of my phone. Instead, I take out my sketchbook with the soft blue cover, my favourite black ink pen and start to draw. I would draw whatever or whomever comes to mind, intuitively, instinctively.

At first, I was worried that no-one or nothing would arrive, that I would sit blank paged and equally blank of mind– but they always did. And always the birds.

Pen in hand, I watched my allies find me, arriving in fine lines of changing grip and pressure, amidst a myriad of tensions and uncertainties, each stroke alerting me to an undercurrent of mood or feeling that would have otherwise passed me by. As I grew their images on the page, the anxious parts of me became diminished.

My Book of Allies could equally be called my Book of A Thousand Tiny Exhalations.

Truth be known, I’m obsessed with drawing birds. I can give you a million explanations and no explanation at all as to why that is the case. But what I can tell you is that choosing to focus my attention on beauty, on my birds, pulled me out of my anxious brain and grew the part of me where new ideas were free to find me.

A place that would have remained hidden had I kept trying to find solutions in the same part of my brain that was creating the problems.

When I feel that anxious part of me rise up, I know that I will always feel better by turning to my sketchbook. It untangles the knots in my brain that pull my insides into tightness and at the end of my drawing, I am different.

I think this is where the gold is. Not in the good or bad, right or wrong, but in the fact that as part of any creative process, you come out changed.

xx Jane

In just over a week, Winging It is opening. I’ll share my love of drawing and illustrating birds, but perhaps more importantly, offer a start point to a creative practice that I have found to be life changing. I’d love for you to be a part of it! You can learn all about it here: www.janepike.com/winging-it