Keeping an even keel

The steadying power of practice

Friends, I think it might be finished.

‘Moon Glow over the Sea’ 2025, 110 x 180 cm, acrylic on aluminium panel

After many, many quiet hours of work, my new painting Moon Glow over the Sea is now ‘resting’ where I can see it, on my studio wall. I need to live with it for a while before I decide for sure that it’s ready to go out into the world.

It’s the final work of a new series of paintings I’ve been working hard on since February for a group exhibition Making Waves - Breaking Ground that opens in Fife in July. I’m excited to be showing alongside some artists whose work I have long admired, such as the wonderful Susan Derges and I’ll share more details soon, for those who might be in the area.

Moon Glow over the Sea, detail

For now, I’m turning my attention to making some small works, kind of palate (and palette!) cleansers. Working on a small scale is a low-stakes way to feel my way towards new ideas. Or, indeed, to revisit old ones to see what else they have to give, because of course creativity doesn’t move in a linear way, but in loops and circles and layers.

These small paintings are where I can take chances, mess up, discover things. Also because, like a runner after a long race, it’s important to ‘warm down’ afterwards, to stretch those muscles and keep things moving gently so you don’t just seize up.

Wee works in progress…

And also because I’ve learned to lean into my ‘practice’ to see me through the boom and bust of working towards exhibitions. After a big push, it’s easy to fall into a slump. ‘Practice’ is a term used in many contexts; musical, spiritual, medical, professional. But it always means to do something, an activity that is undertaken regularly, with attentiveness and a sense of inquiry.

The repetitions of practice aren’t just dull and automatic, although even then, we can be laying down muscle memory, building the intelligence of the hands. Thinking of our creative practice as something automatic can release us from the expectations of outcome, maintaining the sheer momentum of habit to keep the wheels moving.

But practice that begins with I wonder…, that carries curiosity and attention, is a form of study.

Artist and Zen priest

Sal Randolph

considers that mostly, what we study in such practice is the self. In her recent post on practice she writes:

“Practice is like a keel—deep contact with the self helps you not be blown around by every wind. Attentively returning to yourself for a period of time every day can be like coming home.”

The practice that has been my ‘keel’ lately has been drawing. For hour after hour.

In his excellent book The Practice: Shipping Creative Work Seth Godin says that:

“Lost in our obsession with outcomes is the truth that outcomes are the results of process. Good processes, repeated over time, lead to good outcomes more often than lazy processes do.

Focussing solely on outcomes forces us to make choices that are banal, short-term or selfish. It takes our focus away from the journey and encourages us to give up too early.

The practice of choosing creativity persists. It’s a commitment to a process, not simply the next outcome on the list.”

The detailed, slow work I’ve been doing has certainly been a training in patience, inhabiting the process and trusting that the outcome will arrive out of that, rather than chasing it down.

The Life Raft Co-Creating Community

If you would like to keep choosing creativity and practice together, join our weekly creative co-working session on Zoom. It’s very simple. We just say hello at the start and say what we plan to work on and then leave our cameras on and work together in companionable silence. We start at 3pm UK time and finish around 4.30pm. Just click the link below to join us.

That’s all for this week!

Sam