Struggles of an Artist – it has been a Year

Observing the world, being an artist. I guess that is what I always felt to be, yet I find it so difficult in our nowadays world. Was it always this way, did the artists of past struggle similar way? Not to have time to do art, just be and observe? Never ending loop of bills to be paid, responsibilities and people to be attended, moving constantly somewhere learn and do more. If only about art I wouldn’t mind but it is almost everywhere I go. In every job I do, do more, learn more, take more.

I truly struggle balance it.

Maybe it is me, as I have decided to go 2 paths not only one. I want to be an artist but as well a counsellor. Can I be both? What about the rest of the jobs I do to pay bills. Than come people into my life snatching my time. Maybe when I finish the course finally, but then I need to set my practice and again more work to do.

Sometimes I wish for day to have 48 hours and for me to have endless energy, because sometimes I am just tired. Tired to do anything, just watch a tv and rest. Should I pick up a brush in these times? Force myself to draw or paint even if there is no energy left?

I don’t know.

It feels as maybe that is exactly what I need to do.

Despite my classes twice a week I just don’t create. No video, no drawings, no paintings, no guitar. My life last year became work, studies and close people. Is that it? What about that calling within, what about it? How to fit it in? Should I go study art instead of counselling?

Maybe.

But if I would I wouldn’t become an artist in the first place, I wouldn’t face my demons who inspired me but as well were slowly destroying me. I would never make my first exhibition and I would probably struggle to this day to really start doing something with my art. My counselling practice helps me to move forward, uncover yet another layer of myself, because I need to understand, need to know.

Because everything connects to each other, us people in between each other, but as well us within ourselves.

Everything has its purpose, its place. Things connect within each other and within environment, places, seasons, areas, buildings, elements. Everything connects and this connection doesn’t let me not to move forward. Always there is this need to understand or if not understand to at least observe, capture.

Sometimes I wander what exactly am I doing? As my whole life is observing, letting go of, capturing, starting new, moving, living. I guess that’s the whole point. I don’t think that we need to pick up any career or path, we don’t need to become something, label a box where others can fit us in. We just need to live, let the life move us towards the destiny we are supposed to live. It is challenging at first. Trust the life.

But I am realising that the whole experience makes sense.

Years of inspiration exchanged for years of work and responsibilities. We can always decide to change something if it doesn’t serve us anymore. I am slowly changing again finishing one thing in order to start something else connected but different, finding always space for creativity, for art, even if that means only once a week. I need to make sure it is there that the hand practices with brush and chalk, that I process throughout visual art making, that all I do, experience and create becomes a part of the process towards the one or few final pieces. I can feel them within, but I do not know yet what they are going to be. I am getting there though and I know they will emerge one day in this life. I just can’t step off the path I stepped on few years back and I need to keep moving creative way.

Joy in Pandemic times – Scotland is getting ready for Winter

Autumn is almost gone.

Leaves from trees are slowly changing into mush-mash of wet slippery cover on the path walks and trees appear to be more and more naked. I guess I am ready for winter as well.

Tiredness is most present every day, as my body would like to tell me to slow down, reflect.

I have been very busy lately, trying to balance all present in my life. I enjoy all, but I am learning to do just as much I can in a day.

Pandemic times don´t add much.

Do you find yourself sometimes creatively drained?

I do. Days even months of not picking up the pencil. Is it for us to push through or just let it go itself? In my own experience the answer is somewhere in the middle.

My creativity heightened lately and I made myself a promise of drawing every day for one month. It is not easy task to accomplish and as I am writing this story I have already slipped few days trying to catch up now.

Have you ever heard of Ink October Challenge? I am doing it now in November. Hoping to continue on everyday quick sketches even after the challenge. That is for another story though.

As I look out of my window weather is less promising every day. Yet we had quite few beautiful days even little inversion, which I am hoping to experience again. Edinburgh covered in cloud, one suddenly felt as being in the part of Harry Potter Books or Sherlock Holmes stories.

Picking up leaves on the way home, creating fall inside of the flat. Enjoying times with friends. Experiencing that even in times as we live at now there is still a lot to see and experience. I guess we learnt to live with virus, there are restrictions present in the past half of the year and I only can conclude that this time brought a lot of positives into my life as well.

Nature become more important than ever, appreciating every new day being healthy, every meeting with friends. Being grateful for the job I have which allows me get away from not only isolation, but as well away from the fear of the virus, which many experience nowadays.

But enough of talking, let me show you little things which make life so special even in times of pandemics.

What is it you enjoy at the moment?  What makes you happy?

Oh no Christmas is coming. What to get to our loved ones?

Oh no Christmas is coming, what will I get to my family?

I barely earn for living how am I going to afford Christmas this year?´

These were my thoughts last year about this time of the year.

Christmas can be a struggle, when comes to presents for our loved ones. We want them to be useful, meaningful and personal, but sometimes we just run out of ideas. Last year I was fairly worried about Christmas, because I didn´t have much money so there was a limitation what to get them.  But I hate giving people staff they don´t need just out of giving them something. I had those experiences when I just had no idea or no money and I usually wanted to dig a hole in the sand and put my head in it when I could feel disappointment in eyes of my loved ones. Maybe it is my fault that they got used to how ´perfect´ and meaningful gifts I always try to give them.

I had to find a way how to make them happy but won´t cost me fortune or better almost nothing as I could barely afford living. Something what I will feel as I found a way how to give them something meaningful as well.

So I dived into memories of conversations we had lately.

What did they say they like or wanted?

My mum was talking about how she struggles to find inspirational pictures for her paintings. Her eye doesn´t let her watch for too long into the computer monitor and she doesn´t know where to find something nice.

There it hit me. I could make her an inspirational book with some pictures which she could draw and paint. I bought blank notepad and few magazines in the charity shop and started looking through them for some nice pictures.

Faces. Nature. Paintings.

Something she could paint and learn from.

Just sticking pictures felt empty. What could I fill it with?

Quotes.

Recently I got an ink and old-fashioned ink pen. Perfect. I can write some meaningful quotes inside and make a book out of it. Very personal book for my mum, that every time she opens it some inspiration comes out for her.

It was very enjoyable creative process, even though it took me very long time to finish it. Finding pictures, drawing some backgrounds, searching and writing quotes according to theme of the pictures…

I guess it will be better seen what I have done in visual.

So if you struggle financially or with ideas what to give to your close people, maybe this can be an inspiration.

It can be a great gift for someone creative you care about. Have a look inside this personal book and maybe it will be inspiration for your Christmas present :).

What is autumn like in Scotland?

It was sunny outside, but as soon I stepped out I knew something is different. The air was cold and had this smell which can only mean one thing.

Autumn is here.

Season which covers land in colourful blanket. Fall as they call it in English. Time when we start getting ready for winter. Summer is gone, but not quite just yet. Last bits of sunshine warm soft light early sunsets. Everything is telling me that inevitable is coming.

Winter.

This is time to enjoy and take in all what is left from warmth and light.

Autumn brought me back to life. With all news and restrictions, I felt somewhat drained and influenced more than I would like to be.

Tired.

I forced myself one day to get to see a sunset here in Edinburgh from the hill Arthur Seat. That was a day everything has changed and finally energies started moving different directions.

I threw my jacket and backpack into the grass set the tripod and filmed the sunset. Suddenly I saw inspiration again I felt as energy is moving inside my body and inspiration is rushing into my mind, into my heart.

Still tired I knew that this is turning point. As I watched the sun fall behind the Calton Hill I just wanted to stay in this moment forever.

Yet I packed all again and made my way towards trees where I left my bike waiting quietly for my arrival. Suddenly my heart skipped and I stopped in silent awww. Large ginger creature crossed my path in most gentle way as the animal can do.

´Fox, ´ crossed my mind.

In split second she was gone in the trees where my bike was waiting. I smiled and stood there for a little while longer.

Was it just a dream or did it just happen?

Many years ago when I moved to Edinburgh I used to see foxes for about a year or two. I didn´t understand it back then, thinking it is just many of them here. Which is true as well, but it was as well time when I changed everything, when I let inspiration lead me where I am supposed to go. It was a time, when I fell in love, when I understood more about life than ever before, when I heard my inner calling the loudest. Time when everything shifted.

That time is here again.

I am finding my inspiration, the feeling that this is it I just need to keep going and find the way how to take this inspiration out there. The fox was always a sign of something changing and new exiting beginnings lieng ahead, even though accompanied with possible pain of letting go of old.

I guess that is exactly time I am entering just now and am more curious then ever what does it have in its cards this time.

That was my beginning of the autumn this year. Shift from sadness to inspiration and excitement. After the day I met the fox and watched the sunset colours started appearing in the trees, leafs would dance in the wind and I would see ideas and inspiration absolutely everywhere. I went to explore the old forest were I would just experience these magical moments of connection with nature. I haven´t explored it all yet. It is going to be even more colourful now.

Come to experience autumn in Scotland with me.

Scotland – artists inspiration

Sometimes we happen to be in place we haven´t maybe even indented to be. Once a friend told me that Edinburgh or even Scotland is calling its people. I have heard so many stories of people who happened to come to Edinburgh not knowing why they came just they felt that´s the place they need to go to.

I haven´t really intended coming here it was more of an only option back then and I would probably choose completely different destination, but life made it the way that I appeared here. Slowly I have started to understand that this is a place where I am going to be for quite some time and that it will mean a lot to me.

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I often wondered why Edinburgh, why Scotland as either was a place I would ever see myself belonging. Yet it happened to be right place for my upcoming path which grew tall in my heart and became my second home. I even learned that I must have lived here before (if you believe in past lives). It feels as I have already lived a lifetime looking back to over a decade of my adult life. So many experiences and so many things shaped who I am today.

Here I found sanctuary, safe place to find my true calling but as well a lot of pain and heartbreak. Here I experienced the wildest emotional shifts to face almost every single bit of my personality bits I didn’t want to face or would of like. That is part of the journey though isn´t it? Without everything we experience we wouldn´t be who we are today.

It took me years to find confidence and understand that art is the only path I can take, only title I am comfortable with and only thing I would truly like to keep throughout my life. I can do and probably will do many other jobs but even if it´s meant to be for sake of taking out things which inspired me and they won´t go nowhere else than on this blog that is enough and I feel as I followed that inner calling.

Today I am on artistic journey.

The place where I live is full of inspiration which I just would love to take in and out for others to enjoy. In reality every place is full of inspiration and as long I can remember I could always see it everywhere. I still don´t always know how to take it out but that´s the beauty of the process.

I live in the city yet I am mostly inspired by nature. There is no option for me at the moment to live anywhere else or closer to the nature where I hear my true calling, so rather than soak myself in the pity of it, I have decided to take inspiration from where I am at. By slow baby steps I am getting closer.

Apart of painting and drawing I have started creating videos about my inspiration not only for art but to live creative life because I believe we all are artists in some way we just need to allow ourselves to see it within us.

It is only a beginning of things which inspire me here in Scotland but I tried to grasp a tiny bit. I am still learning to really understand video making and the technology I have doesn´t allow me to truly make it the way I´d like it to be, but baby steps.

Let me bring you small part of the beauty I see and was blessed to enjoy.

Herbs picking – ritual to connect with ancestors

It is summer again. Scottish summers are very different to those back in Slovakia. There is a saying here…

´People need to get used to that summer is not in July and August but in May/June and September´

This saying couldn´t be more truth.

Lately we have a lot of rain and only few days now and then happen to be sunny and warm.

I think that´s why I was lately coming back in my mind to the last summer when I visited my parents. It was over thirty degrees nice warm and sunny almost all the time. One day we have decided to go to the forest for some mushroom picking. It wasn´t the best season for doing so but it was a bit rainy before I came so maybe there was a chance for some mushrooms growing.

This article though is not going to be about our family tradition of mushroom picking but rather about another quite traditional activity in the family – herbs picking.

Street where I grew up is a quiet street where you can enter fields just around the corner. There is a meadow and little stream where flowers blossom in the spring and summer. Many of them are herbs which generations of woman in my family used to pick up and cook different kind of remedies from them.

I remember when I was a little girl for every bump I had there was a special cream which my grandma made and cured everything with.

This skill and interest certainly is something I have inherited as well. I have done some herbs picking only few times here in Scotland so last summer as we got out of the forest and there was this beautiful meadow full of flowers I couldn´t resist and persuaded my parents to stay for a while.

They say that the best time for picking herbs is sunny midday, so that day was exactly like it welcoming us to the flowery meadow.

I felt recently that creating this video would of give me opportunity to connect with these parts of myself somewhat forgotten, connect with my ancestors whose life was so much connected with nature but for some reason they just tried to forget it. There is a lot of we can find in ourselves which is going into past generations of hundreds years ago. My need for nature coming to the basics is ´the calling´of my old ancestors whose lands were possibly taken and who were forced to become someone else than who they have been for generations.

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Artists inspiration during midsummer day 2020

It is not long from midsummer day. Every year even if I forget it somehow comes to my awareness. This year wasn´t different.

I was moving flat which took a lot of my attention. Around 24st of June I started to be fulfilled with this new strange energy. It is every year around this time I feel as everything renew itself.

I moved a flat so obviously things started to be new I basically am starting over, but there was something else into it. I felt this deep connection to something inside of me.

Forgotten.

As I was looking for few things into the flat I don´t even know how suddenly I ended up on the e-shop of one talented artist. She creats these beautiful symbolic goddesses and seeing those pictures I just fell in love.

IMG_9163There was so much symbolism which just was so deeply talking to me connecting with this part of me I have forgotten about. Each goddess would represent certain aspect of mostly womanhood.

I spent hours just reading about them and connecting with this mythical symbolism.

At the end I ended up ordering few pictures after thorough consideration which ones are for me. Those pictures just created certain frame in which I finally saw myself and woman in general. I felt a wave of inspiration a hope that these little women who got such a huge responsibility to carry human’s desires and dreams, bringing them to their own self will remind me of my own path. Journey towards never ending inspiration and understanding which is deep inside of each of us.

Once again I heard calling of the nature because not only one goddess was connected to nature and wild animals. This calling is deep and different to anything I have ever experienced before.

Art (in different forms) and nature.

Only two things which made complete sense throughout my whole life. Every midsummer day directly or no directly is reminding me of this calling so strongly that is impossible not to listen.

So I created this little video about goddesses which came into my life during midsummer time of 2020. Enjoy! 🙂

 

How to boost creative process?

Recently I came across with interesting advice (precisely it was at the channel of this guy), which is ´draw the same thing every day for one year´

It felt resonating. Go have a look for the close explanation, but basically what you need to do is pick one object and draw it every day. Not only your technique will improve this way, but your brain gets used to inspirational process.

Why only one?

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Colony of Artists

Have you ever seen that kind of community where people know each other? The community which almost have a magical atmosphere full of creativity? Community where people just love to share ideas and create something together?

Maybe you are lucky enough to live in such place but for rest of us it is something seen only in movies or fairy tales. Today I was lucky enough to see such community just few streets away from me.

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Artist´s Way

I am doing Artists way again. I found the book in charity shop few years ago and I have started it but then other things came along and only thing I kept going with was journaling as I couldn´t find a time for other staff book recommend. But I have started again because I have started couching sessions which are veery helpful and the inner spark to be my authentic and creative self just started shinning again.

So I am now in 3 weeks of couching and in 3 weeks of Artists way course. There are happening many changes in my life. I have started putting my main focus on rituals which make me feel better as I am very sensitive personality (so called highly sensitive extroverted introvert) and as well on things I love and would like to move forward with.

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