Episode 20: Creativity After Crisis, New Studio & Interrupted Practice

In this episode of The Creative Couch, I respond to three thoughtful creative dilemmas from Grace, Mary Lou and Kelly, exploring creativity after crisis, returning to the studio after major life changes, chronic illness, momentum, artistic identity and the spaces we create around our work.

Grace wrote in after her seven-year-old daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes earlier this year. After months of hospital appointments, sleepless nights and constant vigilance, she has found herself returning to the studio feeling like a different person. A large woodcut she began before the diagnosis no longer feels as though it belongs to her, and she finds herself questioning her instincts and worrying more about what other people think of her work. We explore what happens when the mindset of monitoring and control follows us into the studio, the difference between play and curiosity, and whether creativity sometimes needs shelter before it needs an audience.

Mary Lou is preparing to move back to Canada after several years living and making work in Belgium. Alongside shipping containers, boxes and studio equipment, she'll also be reunited with years of older work and materials waiting in storage. She's wondering how to approach setting up a new studio and creative routine without becoming overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff surrounding her. We discuss how old work can act as research rather than clutter, why some work quietly finishes its role in our lives, and how to create a studio that supports the artist you've become rather than the artist you used to be.

Kelly lives with a chronic pain condition affecting her hand, meaning periods of painting and making are often interrupted by flare-ups and surgery. She finds herself repeatedly losing momentum and struggling to find her way back into projects after time away from the studio. We talk about the difference between a creative practice built around consistency and one built to survive interruption, the idea of grieving momentum, and how to leave a breadcrumb trail back into your work for future versions of yourself.

Also in this episode, I share a recent Loving Lately recommendation: The Daffodil Years by Helen Bain, a beautifully written fictional account of Sylvia Plath's later life in rural Devon that explores the woman behind the mythology and offers a quieter, more human portrait of one of literature's most iconic figures.

In this episode, I explore:

• What happens when a period of crisis or vigilance follows us into the studio
• The difference between play, curiosity and creative freedom
• Why creativity sometimes needs shelter before it needs an audience
• How to honour older work whilst making space for who you're becoming
• How moving countries or studios can become an opportunity for reflection and reinvention
• Why old work can be a form of research rather than simply storage
• How to create a studio that supports the artist you are now
• The difference between a creative practice built around consistency and one built to survive interruption
• Why some artists may be grieving momentum rather than losing motivation
• Practical ways to return to projects after unexpected breaks and interruptions

Each dilemma is explored with both emotional insight and practical steps you can try in your own creative life.

If you have a creative dilemma you'd like me to explore, please email me at:

thecreativecouchpod@gmail.com

If you're feeling stuck in your own creative practice and would like support, you can find out more about my creative coaching, workshops and artwork at:

www.sammarshallart.com

You can also find me on Instagram at @sammarshallart.

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Creative Couch. I'm Sam Marshall, artist and creative coach. This is a podcast for anyone navigating the ups and downs of a creative life. Each week I respond to three real creative dilemmas sent in by listeners, exploring both the emotional side of what you're experiencing and some practical ways to move forward. And from time to time, I'll also be joined by other artists to talk about their creative life, their practice, their challenges, and what keeps them going. Hello and welcome back to the Creative Couch. How are you all doing? I hope you have survived what has been in the UK quite a brutal week of heat. So I'm recording this on Monday morning. I did record it yesterday, but it all went a little bit um uh awry, let's say. Uh so I'm recording it again. Um, but when I recorded it yesterday, I was celebrating the fact that um it's much cooler. And today it's even cooler than it was yesterday. So we are on a on a nice cool streak here, and I'm very much enjoying it. Um, yeah, I really struggled last week, and I know everybody else did in the UK. It was all we were talking about was the fact that it was so, so hot. Um, I'm very lucky in here. This studio's got air conditioning, uh, which is an absolute joy. Um, so I was in here pretty much all week making loads of work, which has been brilliant. I did all my coaching sessions in here, and I was really tempted to sleep in here. I think it was Wednesday night that was the worst. I was like, right, you know what? I'm bringing a sleeping bag and I'm Marple and I are going to sleep in here. I didn't, but I was tempted. Um anyway, so thank you to everybody who has um sent in your dilemma this week. I've had a lovely bunch of dilemmas in, which has been an absolute joy. Um, as always, though, I'm hungry for more. I'm hungry for more. And I did find that some of the dilemmas had actually gone into um, oh, hang on, my watch is telling me what time it is. Um, some of my dilemmas had gone into uh my junk in my Gmail. So um I've rescued some of those out of the junk, and one of them was actually Mary Lou's dilemma, who who's uh one of the uh dilemmas that I'm answering today. But anyway, um I'm gonna start off like I always do. I say that. I've only been doing it a few weeks, and even then I forgot to do it a couple of weeks. Um, loving lately, what have I been loving lately? So I told you a couple of weeks ago, or maybe it was last week, that I was reading a book about Sylvia Plath, and um I'm going to recommend it this week. Um, I listened to it on Audible, Audible, Audio, Audible, um, which is where I listen to my um audiobooks. Audible. Should I say that again? Audible. Um anyway, yes, audible. Um so yeah, the book that I finished last week was called The Daffodil Days by Helen Bain. And it's just I just found it absolutely entrancing. It's it's basically a fictional account of Sylvia Plath's last few months in Devon with her family. And what I enjoyed about it was that it kind of moved away from the uh the tragedy around Sylvia Plath and the kind of mythology around her, and really concentrated um on her life as a mother, as a friend, as a slightly cantankerous homeowner dealing with builders and all sorts, which I can just totally relate to at the moment. And um, yeah, I mean, I'm I'm guessing what Helen did was that she went through the biographies that that um uh that are around about Sylvia Plath, and she picked out events in in these biographies, and she kind of just embellished them. So you have every single chapter was like a vignette of something that happened, obviously, and she'd kind of created a story around it. So, you know, had this wonderful chapter about Sylvia and and the bell ringers in her local village and uh the dressmaker or the the dress shop that she visited in Jagford in Devon. I mean, I just found it absolutely wonderful. Um, yeah, so I I really, really enjoyed that. And I'm halfway through um a really chunky biography on Sylvia Plath called The Red Comet, uh, which I'm really really enjoying. I've been reading it for months. It's uh I'm fascinated by her. I always have been ever since I was an English student at school. Um, yeah, I'm very, very intrigued by her. Um, and I do believe she was a far superior writer and poet than than uh Ted Hughes, but you know, let's not let's not get into that. Um anyway, so that's my that's my loving lately. Um so today, the dilemmas. I'm answering Grace's dilemma, I am answering Mary Lou's dilemma, and I am answering Kelly's dilemma. So, my friends, let's get into it. I had to do that, I've been hearing that everywhere. Let's get into it. And I thought, right, let's adopt that. Let's get into it. Okay, right, serious hat ons. I'm Marshall. Let's go with the dilemmas. Let's get into it. Sorry, stop it, stop it, Sam. Stop it, focus. Right. So um the first dilemma comes from Grace, and Grace wrote in a few weeks ago, and um with a you know, really complex heartfelt dilemma. And um I think Grace's dilemma, well, it does Grace's dilemma contained two questions, but really I think they're the same question, wearing slightly different clothes, if I'm honest. Um, Grace wrote that earlier this year her seven-year-old daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and needed emergency hospital treatment. And she writes that what followed was months of hospital appointments, sleepless nights, learning an overwhelming amount of information and adapting to a completely different way of life and caring for her child. At the same time, Grace was already deep into creating a large multi-layered woodcut print that she had designed before Christmas. And that now life has settled into a new rhythm for Grace and her family, and she's finding that the print no longer feels as though it belongs to her. She feels that it was made by a different version of herself, and she's wondering whether she should continue investing time and energy into a piece of work that no longer feels aligned with who she is now. And alongside that, she's also noticed that um she approaches her creativity differently now, where she once made work instinctively and uh for herself. She now finds herself questioning whether a piece is worth making. She's worried about what other people might think, and she's really struggling to reconnect with the trust and curiosity she once had in the studio. So I don't think Grace is asking two different questions here at all, really. I think she's asking one question in two different ways, which is how do I reconnect with trust and instinct in my creative work after months of needing certainty, uh vigilance, I guess, and control. Um, so I think that's really what I felt was underlying Grace's email, which essentially contained two questions. But I think if we boil it down, it is essentially that question. So let's look at it from the emotional point of view. I mean, obviously what Grace and her family has been through this year is enormous. You know, she's had to totally change the way that she operates, the way that you know, changing the the way she cares for her um young, young um daughter. And obviously the family have had to kind of uh uh shift and and adapt to this new way of living. And I think that your brain, obviously, Grace, has been very um uh adept at creating these changes and doing the job that it needed to do over these months. You know, you've been you've been monitoring, you've been assessing, you've been looking for information, you've been learning new information, you've been making decisions and staying alert. And you know, obviously those skills have been essential and helped keep your daughter safe and your family safe, but the problem is that those skills don't necessarily translate well into the studio, into your making of your own work, because you know, when you're in the studio, you know, we need to kind of just have the ability to kind of go with the flow, we need to kind of um you know approach it with curiosity, see what happens, allow for uncertainty and sort of to let go of control. And I think what's happened here is that um, you know, for months your brain has your well, your yeah, your brain has been uh rewarded for avoiding uncertainty and wherever possible. And you know, when you're in the studio, it does, you know, to make work that feels authentic and to feel like it's come from a place of curiosity and excitement, there does need to be a sense of um, you know, making things that don't work, having a go at this, having a go at that, and kind of not really minding if things don't work out. So I I sort of feel like you're you're not having a crisis of confidence as an artist. I think that you're almost recalibrating after months of living in emergency mode, if if that makes sense. Um and I think when I first read your email, I felt this very strongly that I do think you should continue the wood carpet. I do think that you should honour it and let it be complete. Not because I think that you know you owe it to the materials or you owe it because you know you spend a lot of time on it already, or that you, you know, you've losed a lot of paper or you've used a lot of ink. But I almost feel like it's it's almost like honouring the person you were before, the artist that you were before Christmas, um, you know, because obviously that grace hasn't disappeared, you know, that grace has just become slightly different. And I almost would would like to think about it as as helping that grace over the finish line, if that makes sense. I mean, I often I I use ways of thinking like this myself, really. I I often, if I've got lots on and I'm really feeling really overwhelmed with stuff, I'll often say, well, that's a job for future Sam. That's a job for, you know, future Sam with when when things aren't so stressful and I've got time to do it. And it helps me sort of separate, I think, and um, you know, prioritize the jobs that are essential at now. Whereas I think it's it's a little bit different. We I I'm almost asking you to honour past grace and allow that version of yourself to finish something. Um, because I felt I you know, obviously that work mattered to you at that time. So I do think it would be helpful for you to kind of wrap that up in a way um and have a sense of completion around that. Um so practically with that, I would say just work on it quietly behind the scenes. It doesn't need to take center stage, it doesn't need to be something that you you know have to video or make into content or anything like that. It could just be something that you just quietly finish in the background without any big fuss around it. You know, you just gently bring it over that finish line. Um and at the same time, I what what really struck me was that the sentence in your email where you said, you know, you're questioning whether you know your work is worth it. And I and I think as artists, we don't really know whether our work is worth it at any time, really. You know, the the drawings that have become my favourite drawings, or that the prints that have become really special to me, I didn't know that I was creating them at the time. I sort of feel like worth is is assigned afterwards. So so kind of worrying about whether it's worth it or not, I just feel like it's a redundant uh exercise or a sort of redundant question anyway. Um I think maybe um a kinder question for you at the moment, Grace, is is you know, um, am I interested to spend another hour with this? Am I interested to spend another half a day with this? Because I think that if the answer is yes, then that's enough. That's enough, really, at this point. And and another thing that I that struck me in your email was this suggestion that you felt like you should be playing more. And I think you've come from a, you know, the past few months have been really serious and quite heavy. So sort of then trying to use this word play, which almost feels a bit frivolous, um, maybe isn't the right word for you at the moment. Um, you know, maybe the word that you are looking for is something like curiosity or or experimentation or freedom, you know, so so I mean, it's nothing worse than being told to go and play. It's like my idea of hell. Go and have some fun, Sam, is my dad would say. You don't have much fun, Sam. Why don't you go and have some fun? I mean, what is fun? I mean, what do you what would be fun? And I I sort of feel like that's almost that that word play is we it has that pressure to have a play, you know. It's like what do you do? Push push ink around, you know, carve some random bits of lino. So I I think maybe rather than using the word play, I think uh replacing it with curiosity or experimentation or freedom, I think is quite a nice word. Um because I think almost, you know, curiosity is is simply uh is it worth not worth, I don't want to use that word, but you know, is it you know what would happen if I spent another hour with this? What would happen if I spent another day with this? And I I feel like maybe curiosity is a sort of gentler bridge back to the creativity that you're looking for rather than the word play ever would. Um so I you know, there's the practical kind of side to it. So, in terms of homework, I I feel like let's finish one tiny part of the wood woodcut, you know, maybe think about it, like I said before, something that you're working on in the background that you just can't gently keep chip chip chipping away at, and then hopefully, you know, over a period of months that piece will come to fruition and you can just gently lay it to bed almost. Um, you know, you don't have to attack it all in one go, just chip away at it as and when. Um, but it's almost just like having a conversation with the the grace that you were before Christmas, you know, having a dialogue um with that grace. And I think secondly, I would like you to make work that isn't for anything, really. You know, it's not for Instagram, it's not for an exhibition, it's not for sale, it's not for anything other than you just enjoying spending some time with it. Which leads me on to the third thing, which I think is probably the most important thing, and the thing that if I could advise you to do, I would advise you to do. Now, I don't know, you know, how much money your print business brings in. I don't know whether this is uh at all financially viable for you, but I almost feel like you need a time of creative privacy, you know, where you just hunker down for a while and you make the work that you feel you want to make now without having to show it to anybody, without have without you feeling like you're having to justify it, without you feeling like you're having to explain it, and you just hunker down, you close those studio doors, and you just get on with it behind the scenes. I feel like maybe that would be the best. Um sorry about that. I've got um you can hear that. I've got a uh a guy here making a plinth for my air source heat pump that's going into my um loft next week. Anyway, we'll try and try and ignore the noise. Um so yeah, so I do feel that maybe a cre a period of creative privacy might be a really good thing for you, Grace, just to kind of give you the space and the time that you need to see what happens when you allow yourself to find your way with your creativity in this new mindset with these new ideas, um, and just be curious. Um and I I finally I thought it might be interesting for you to ask yourself this question you know, what does my creativity need from me now that it didn't need from me a year ago? Because I feel that it it won't be something like more discipline or more productivity, it might be something like you know, it needs more gentleness or it needs more patience or more trust. So I think sometimes it it's quite helpful to kind of look back and look where you are now and kind of just gently do that reassessment. So I hope that's helpful, guys, because I think you know, obviously it's been a tremendously transformative few months for you and your family. And I do feel that, you know, often what happens in our real life we bring into the studio, you know. I know at the moment for me, one of my closest friends is very poorly in hospital, and you know, I am bringing that into the studio every day, and the only thing that I can do really at the moment is make very small work, work that feels um that I can, you know, small work that I can get lost in, that I actually I don't have to think too much about, but I I know that I'm making it. I because my mind is so elsewhere at the moment. A lot of my time, my my head is in in the hospital room with my friend Francis, you know, and I I I know what I'm doing at the moment, and that is just you know, doing what I can at this present point. Um, you know, you you we are we are different, you know, when we go through something quite monumental, you know, we do change as people and we do change as artists, and I think often it's just about giving us ourselves the grace, the grace to find that out and give us give go give yourself the space and the right conditions, I think, to find out who you are now, Grace, as an artist. Anyway, I hope that's helpful. Um, thank you very much for sending that dilemma in Grace. Okay, moving on to Mary Lou. So Mary Lou um writes to me, she was a student of mine on a course at the Royal Drawing School. And um, when I met Mary Mary Lou, she was in Belgium, living in Belgium, um, originally from Canada, and I think she'd been in Belgium for about five years, and she wrote in to say that um she was preparing for the move back to Canada after several years of you know living in Belgium. And alongside all the practicalities of moving countries, she's also thinking about what comes next creatively. She says her new studio will be in the basement of her home with a decent amount of space, some natural light, and access to a sink nearby. Alongside the materials and furniture she's bringing back with her, she'll also be reunited with larger work surfaces, storage units, and a significant amount of older work that has been sitting in long-term storage. And she's wondering how best to set up this new space, how to re-establish a creative routine, and how to avoid becoming overwhelmed by the sheer amount of materials, work and possibilities that will suddenly be surrounding her. So I read that and I thought, oh my goodness, you know, what's really what she's really asking here, asking here is in a way similar to Grace, really. You know, Grace has been through something transformational, as has Mary Lou. And but Mary Lou's is more about the actual physical space. You know, how do you create a studio space that supports the artist that you have become rather than simply recreating the artist that you used to be? So I think that's a really interesting space to be, and you know, one that's great to have some time to think about it. And how wonderful to have this opportunity to come back after being away for so long, and to then kind of look at the work that you were making before you left, and then have a huge new body of work that you've made since you've been away, and you know, how to kind of marry up the two. So, first of all. What I would say to you, Mary, Mary Lou, is, you know, don't rush back into this. I think the emotional side of it is, you know, you're going to be arriving back. You've got a whole new heap of memories. You've got a whole new way of living. You know, I'm sure that your time in Belgium has influenced the way that you live your life. And so I would say, you know, let yourself arrive back in your space. Let yourself really be there for a while. And you know, just gently recalibrate yourself back in your new space. And you know, you have this opportunity now to build a space that works for you now. And but it doesn't need to be immediately. You know, I think um you can really take the time to figure out the artist that you are now and what you require now, um, as opposed to what you required before. So I think this season is almost a season for you to arrive, to sort, to reflect, for gathering threads together and taking stock of you know, where you've been almost before deciding where you're going next. So practically, if I was with you on that, on that first day in your new basement, what I would be doing before, you know, getting the uh all the old work back in, I would just be going through everything that's there. I mean, I would be looking at furniture that's old and knackered that perhaps hasn't served its purpose. I would be going through all my materials, you know, old pens that have run dry. You know, I'm sure that it's gonna be going to be materials that just aren't uh usable anymore. So I would just have a practical day where you just go through everything uh that is no longer usable. Um, you know, you've probably got tools that are broken, duplicate materials perhaps that you know that you're gonna bring back and that you don't need anymore. So I would say, you know, really do get rid of anything that is not serving you practically anymore. And then I would move on to the work itself. So when you get all of your old work back, I think what would be really exciting for you to do is to the on the on the first pass, because I'm we're gonna have two passes here. So the first pass is going through it is almost like research, you know, lay everything out, have a look at it, spread it across the floor, and then sort of look at it almost as if you were looking at it as if you're an outsider, you know, seeing what themes emerge, what subjects keep reappearing, you know, what questions do you think that you've been asking yourself for many years without even realizing it? Because I can guarantee that you're going to have much more of a sense of the artist that you are now than you did five years ago when you left that space. Uh, but I'm absolutely entirely certain that some of the stuff that you were investigating five years ago, you still will be investigating now. You know, have a look at what work still feels alive, what work still feels current. So, you know, have a have a spend some time just looking at it, assessing it, almost as if you were curating something, almost as if you were trying to um, yeah, just get a feel of who you were five years ago. And then I would do the second pass, which would be the clearing and the sorting phase. And I I I use this technique a lot, and I've used it a lot with my rural drawing school students who are coming to the end of um, you know, maybe a year of learning, and they've got so much material and so much work. And I often suggest that they separate the work into um, you know, an a pile that feels active and relevant now and exciting, a pile of work that has got some legs on it, but you don't know where what those legs are, and then a pile that is to get rid of. You must get rid of it. Well, not you must, but you know, it is no longer serving its purpose, it's simply done its job and it has to go. So then you've, you know, and that can then go in the recycling pile with all the other materials that you don't need anymore. And then I would do the same with stuff that you've brought back from Belgium. I would do the same process again with the work that you've done over the past year or so with the rule drawing school. And, you know, just have that time to reflect and then to organize and then to sort and then to get rid of and then to prioritize because I do think it's really helpful before you start going into the really practical sides of how you're going to kind of get your studio back in order and start to think about shelving and all that kind of stuff. It's like let's have a look at the work, let's see where we are with the work. And then that leads me on to that whole practical question as to how you're going to kind of structure your space. So I think a better question would be rather than saying, you know, where do the shelves go? I would say, how do I now actually work? You know, now that I've got all this new experience, how do I now work? It might be before you left you were more of a painter, so there was it was more set up for painting. It might now be that you've come back and you feel like you want to spend more time printmaking. And therefore, the space that you now designed is going to be dictated by the artist you are now. You know, do you need a messy space? Do you need a clean space? You know, when you're printmaking, you're going to have to have a surface, you know, like I've got over here. You know, I've got an area there with all my um my inks laid out, and I've got a glass surface, you know. So you organize a studio uh in terms of your requirements, really. Um, you know, do you need somewhere just to sit and think? That might be really important. I mean, I'm in the process now of, you know, I've got this new studio that's being built, and I had my mate Jenny uh Gunning from Ironbridge Printmakers come down a couple of weeks ago, and she's helped me rethink the space and helped me design the space, and I can see it now, and I'm much clearer about what I want. But again, I'm not going to rush into it. I'm going to let that space evolve. I'm not going to suddenly buy loads of new furniture. I'm just going to maybe get some temporary stuff, see how it feels, get used to how the work, uh, how how I work in that space, how maybe students work in that space, and then gradually add as I go along. Um, and maybe that's something that you could do. You know, if you've got a friend who's an artist or a printmaker or somebody who has a working space, you know, get them come along, throw some ideas out. You know, so I would say just spend some time there, spend some time with your work, spend some time with all your old materials, and then do a cull, and then just gradually let the space begin to evolve as you exist in there, as you are now. So homework. This is obvious. Spend your first few weeks sorting rather than making. Secondly, use your old work as research before before you use it as storage or decoration. Um, and then thirdly, create your piles, you know. Um sorry, I just something that just came onto my mind about, you know, and I said, anyway, you know what? I'm gonna go down that path and get totally rerouted. Uh keep store for later and get rid of. And then spend your first time, spend your first month in there just being in the space, just just thinking about how you work, see how you adapt to this new space, and then gradually build the studio up from there. Okay. Thank you, Mary Lou. Lovely to hear from you, and I hope everything goes back. I hope everything goes well back in Canada. Right, moving on to Kelly finally. So Kelly uh writes that uh Kelly is a local artist. She lives uh near here in Lincolnshire, near me here in Lincolnshire, and she says that she's just returned to drawing and painting after a couple of years, after increasing health problems that have affected not only her physical health but her mental health as well. Um, she decided to build a small business around her artwork, partly because she needed income, but also because she needed something flexible to work around surgeries, flare-ups, and periods where she just couldn't work. She says that she lives with a chronic pain condition affecting her hands, and she's intentionally built parts of her business around products and processes that are physically manageable and allow her to pace herself. So her dilemma isn't really about the business, her business, because she sounds like she's got a lot of that sorted, but it is about what happens when creativity gets interrupted, because she finds herself starting projects, building momentum and reconnecting with painting and sketching, only for her health to interrupt and force her to step away for days or weeks at a time. And she finds that when she comes back, she finds it very difficult to reconnect with where she was and difficult to find motivation and difficult, and she finds it difficult to trust herself again creatively. And she's now wondering how to rebuild confidence and momentum when breaks aren't a choice but a necessity. So I think the question underneath all of this is you know, how do I build a creative practice that survives interruption rather than depending on consistency? Because if we look at the emotional layer of this, I do wonder whether Kelly has absorbed the mantra that consistency is key. And it's something that I say all the time, you know, I do encourage my creatives to be consistent because I do feel that it, you know, it's the only way, really. Um often, well, it's not the only way because I'm going to talk about, I'm going to talk about why it isn't often the only way. But it's it's a reliable way to, you know, build a practice, to build something that's sustainable. And I do wonder whether um Kelly has been kind of judging her, you know, her success on this, you know, whether she's drawing every day, whether she's you know, making every day, um, whether she's showing up every day. But the unfortunate thing is here that that that can't be true for Kelly. It sounds like she has days where that's just not possible. So consistency, building a business around consistency is probably not going to be the best way to approach um your creativity and your life, Kelly, as it is at the moment. Because I almost feel like you're grieving that momentum, you know, grieving the momentum that comes along when you get stuck in a project and there's nothing holding you back, and you're at it, and you're, you know, producing loads of work and that you're selling it. And, you know, I think that it feels to me that you know, you you you're sort of grieving that ability to be able to do that. And I think sometimes that takes time, you know, a grieving process is is complicated and long, and you sound like you're adjusting to this way of you know having an art business that isn't uh doesn't have the usual trajectory almost. Um, and I think the important thing to remember though, Kelly, is that that even though you do have periods where you aren't able to make, that doesn't mean that your creativity has stopped. You know, it's still there, it's still very much there. It's a bit like you know, if you're an athlete or you, you know, you you you you have to step away from training a bit. You you get back into training quite easily because you've got a muscle memory. So it's a bit like that, really, isn't it? You know, you you you step back into creativity and it all very quickly comes back. So I, you know, I come back to this thing as whether I've whether you've accidentally started measuring your identity as an artist by consistency. I do wonder if that's something underlying all this, you know, how many days in a row you've painted and all of that kind of stuff. Um because creativity exists everywhere, you know, it exists in you noticing it in collecting ideas of observing of thinking. So the days when you aren't actively making anything, you're still being incredibly creative, absolutely no doubt. I'm sure you're having all sorts of different ideas of what you can do when your health allows you to get back into the studio and start making things. So I think if you could just be sort of, yeah, just try and be a little gentler around that for you, you know, just try and think, you know, actually, I I don't have a uh, you know, a traditional um setup of of how I make my word because I do have these interruptions, and therefore I have to build my practice around something different, it's not based around consistency. Um, I think it's almost like building a practice that survives around interruption. I think that's probably a really good way to think about it. Um so so practically what I the first thing that came to my mind when I read your email, um Kelly, was that I feel like we need to create a deliberate re-entry point for you every time that you return to the studio after a break. Now, what do I like here? I think the hardest part isn't the actual painting or the making, it's just the beginning again, isn't it? And I think that if you've got a a sort of a re-ritual, a re-entry ritual, I think that could help you. Because I always say to people who are stumbling with things, who are really finding things difficult, I'd always say go through the back door rather than the front door. So if I've had a period of time when I've been away from the studio, I've been away from making, what I'll do is I'll just spend the whole day in here just pottering, just pottering, tidying things, give going through things, sifting through things, getting rid of stuff that doesn't work, a bit like what I just suggested for Mary Lou, you know, I'd have this process of sifting and sorting and just re-establishing myself in my space as Sam, as a person who draws and paints and draws and prints, and and just giving myself time to feel at home in the space again. So I wonder whether that could be something that you could do. You know, you've got this little ritual, you know, you make yourself a cup of tea, perhaps, you tidy your workspace, you you go through your sketchbook, you look at the work that you had done before, you've done before. So you just create that little ritual around the re-entry. And I think also I would start to encourage you to think about uh rather than thinking about you know, thought rather than thinking about um productivity and productive days and unproductive days. I think maybe what would be really helpful for you is to create almost like a traffic-like system whereby, you know, maybe green days are days that you can paint and sketch, um, you know, amber days are admin or where you can package orders, and then red days are the red days that just, you know, you you are it's a different kind of day. It's not a failed day, but it's a day where maybe what is required of you is to sit on the sofa with a book and a cup of tea, you know. So it's sort of creating like a traffic light system for monitoring your days rather than this was a productive day, this was an unproductive day. And I think also, you know, trying to separate your identity as an artist from your output as an artist, because I do think that we can get trapped into this whole idea of the more we make, the better we are, the more successful we are as artists. And often when you look back at artists, we all have different ways of working. You know, I'm somebody who can make a lot during a short period of time, and then I've had times when I've hardly made anything, you know. So, you know, some painters are painters who paint incredibly slowly. You know, you wait years for another exhibition for them, or authors, you know, you wait years before you get another novel from them. Some of them bash them out every year. We all have different paces of uh creativity. Use that in that just having a nose pope see you wandering across the field. Um, you know, you don't stop being an artist because your body needs rest. It's just not the case. So I think having having a uh, you know, trying to not put a value on yourself as an artist, you know, by by that measure of productivity and unproductivity, I think would be really helpful for you. Right, homework. I would like you to create your re-entry ritual. So whatever it is, make it repeatable. If it's a cup of tea, it's it's maybe taking the dog for a walk before you go into the studio, whatever it is, create that little ritual and make it repeatable and do it every single time that you have a break. And secondly, I would like you to leave notes for future Kelly. So I mentioned earlier that I have this future Sam way of working. I think that would be really helpful for you, Kelly. I think every single time you have a day where you're in the studio, you're making somewhere you put some notes about what worked today, what you were working on, and what you will want to do when you come back into the studio. So that if you do have an enforced break, you come back, you have clear notes as to what to get on with. Because sometimes, you know, things inevitably do take you away from you know the regular daily routine. Even people, you know, who you have got a you know a consistent practice, a bit like me, you know, I I I've always got notes hanging around, like especially with my etchings. I I produce so many etchings at a period of time and I'm constantly changing them and adapting them. And I have to put notes on do this, do that, do this. So that when I come back, I'm like, oh, okay, I know where I was with that etching. So leave notes for future Kelly at every and at the end of every future um session. And then I would like you to create your own traffic light for your creative process. So maybe the green days, the amber days, and the red days. So days that, you know, like I said before, breaking them down, you know, what do those days look like? So you're losing them as a traffic light system, so you don't have that binary, unproductive, productive. You've got uh, you know, you've got a range. And actually, the red days, even though they're days that you're not probably physically doing very much, but you're mentally doing a lot, and you can see them as periods of rest, as of recuperation, of recharging. So it's a you're reframing it into a much more positive mindset. So I hope that helps. I hope that helps. I think it's all really possible. It's just about accepting that you know your business model is looks a bit different to somebody else's business model, Kelly. And you've got these things that you have to adapt to and you have to prepare for times when you're not gonna be consistently in the studio because your body has got other plans, you know. Right. I'm much happier with that today. Uh yesterday's went a bit, I just got a bit lost and then I got distracted, and then I don't know, I just wasn't in the right mindset yesterday. So today is a different day. So, my friends, I'm gonna drag Marple up from her slumber to come and say goodbye. Come and Daddy, say goodbye. Let me say goodbye to everybody. Come and say goodbye. Oh, she's very snoozy. Here she is. Here's Brown Girl. Oh Brown Girl Beauty. So we're saying goodbye. Thank you to everybody who has liked and sent me lovely comments about the podcast. I'm so delighted you're all enjoying it. I'm loving it too. It's just a really lovely opportunity to get some lovely dilemmas in and hopefully help people along the way. So if you do have a dilemma, then please do send it in to the creative couchpod at gmail.com. And as usual, please like, subscribe, tell your friends, do what you need to do to get this podcast um up in the charts. All right, lovelies. Listen, we're sending love and we will see you next week. Right, let's turn this thing off, Marple. Let's turn it off. Record off, pause, stop recording, stop recording.