mundyewalsh I was chatting to a person who came to our second creative group meet up this week and she said that creative work was not so much about the creating but the response within the work to you, “It has to speak back to me”.
The art you make isn’t a one-way street. I knew this but as a person who makes rather than draws, let’s say, it never really struck me how much my work speaks to me. Perhaps I didn’t acknowledged that the joy of creation is in fact your creation speaking back to you, saying ‘look what we created’ rather than you saying ‘look what I created.’
I hadn’t ever articulated it in that way but now that I have heard this phrase, I can’t stop thinking about how true it is. For example, the relationship I have with colour and how when I place two together, they immediately speak to me, in a negative or positive way: their input vital to whatever I need to create. In fact, I would go so far as to say, I couldn’t do what I do without the creation’s collaboration.
I have seen what my creative work can do for other people, the joy they find in the shapes I create and the colours I use, and in a well made piece, the medium in which you create speaks both ways, both to you and them.
Writers will often say that readers will interpret their works in ways that they never expected, the words they laid down will be reassembled by the reader. I find this fascinating.
“I’m not imposing myself on the medium; we’re having a conversation. Sometimes it resists, sometimes it surprises me.” – Antoni Tàpies
Creative work isn’t so much you exploring different media but the interaction between you and the medium. That is where the joy lies, this interchange, for all of us.
Next week I’m off to Italy for a few weeks so this diary may take on an Italian flair as I visit family and explore some of the nearby cultural events.
I lived in Florence for seven years where I arranged events for writers and met so many interesting people, some of which still live there. This time I hope to see the Tracy Emin exhibition in Palazzo Strozzi, visit a thermal pool or two, listen to some live music and, of course, eat some delicious food. I hope to come back brimming with ideas and more than likely, a new hoard of stationery.
A presto!
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