On keeping faith

This creative life is a marathon, not a sprint

Friends, I’ve had my head down lately, pulling long shifts in the studio. A deadline looms.

I did manage a couple of quick sea swims last week, catching a few final days of glorious sunshine and warmth. But it’s looking grey, misty and wet outside my window today.

Fog over Boardhouse Loch

This weather is wholly fitting. As you’ll know if you’re a regular reader, I’ve been working on a big painting of sea fog (or ‘haar’ as it’s known in Orkney). It will take me many more hours to finish. So far, it still looks like nothing much. I have to keep the faith, keep putting the hours in, keeping trusting it will come good in the end. Or at least, good enough.

‘Haar’ painting, first layers in, a reminder from last week

Late on Friday evening…not quite there….

One last push over the weekend, the second layer finished. Only four more to go! Maybe five?

This isn’t a complaint. This is the life I have chosen. Indeed, it’s the life I dreamed of as a 17-year-old undergraduate art student just setting out on this uncertain path. It’s a life that many might dream of; living in Orkney, fully self-employed as an artist, writer and mentor. I get to spend much of my working life painting, drawing, looking, reading, thinking and writing. It’s a life of deep satisfaction, exploration, learning and connection.

It’s true that I’ve made choices, some of which felt risky at the time, to live this kind of life.

But I am also aware of the many privileges that have allowed me to make those choices, the extraordinarily fortunate set of economic, educational, social and personal circumstances that have made this life of creativity possible. I’m aware that many would give their eye teeth to be doing what I do every day, but, through circumstances beyond their control, they just can’t.

Second layer detail…now you see why it takes so long now!

I mention this because, as an avid reader on Substack, I read many posts along the lines of “I quit my job and…” written by (mostly) women who are changing their lives, giving up careers, city homes, conventional success, financial rewards, to start, or restart, a creative life, often somewhere new, somewhere fresh and inspirational. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for it. I’m absolutely rooting for these women, cheering them along, every step of the way.

But I’m also aware of a side of the story that’s less glamorously inspirational. This side of the story recognises that not everyone is in a position to pursue their creative dreams, that care responsibilities, ill health, economic and social barriers are very real, and that events beyond our control can dictate the direction our lives take.

I’m also aware that it’s one thing to start, to make the leap. It’s quite another to keep going and to sustain this over decades. There is a distinctly undramatic, unglamorous, pragmatic side to living a creative life of real longevity. If I start counting from that first day I started at art school, I’ve been doing this work for 40 years! So, I feel I have enough skin in the game to speak with some authority here.

I can still, just about, recall the deep thrill that coursed through young-art-student-me as I thought: ‘This is what I do now. This is my work. This not my hobby.’ But the unglamorous truth is that while embarking on a creative life, at any age, is certainly thrilling, living that life, year in year out, making it your focus and priority over the long haul, takes a certain kind of steely determination. Or sheer, stubborn doggedness.

There are days you keep going because you’ve done it so long you don’t know what else you’d do now anyway, so you might as well just turn up one more day. There are weeks, months even, of keeping going because of the sheer momentum of habit. There are times when you keep at it because, to use a good, untranslatable Scots word, you’re just thrawn.

An image from that time I made an installation of clouds out of pillow stuffing (quicker than painting them!), while on a residency in Basel, Switzerland, back in 2003.

Because, I hate to break it to you, starting out is the easy bit. The thrilling, newsworthy, Instagrammable bit. The bit that gets people’s attention. But sustaining a life of creativity is a marathon, not a sprint. And just like running a marathon, there will be times when you’re tired, when you’re twenty miles in and feel like giving up, when you wondered what on earth possessed you to start in the first place, when you have to really dig deep to find the motivation to keep going.

This is why I sometimes (confession time) find these inspirational ‘I quit my job and…’ stories just a wee bit exasperating. Because quitting your job to go live on an island or the South of France to write a book or start painting is brave and good. But it’s writing the second book, the third book, the book you write after the one that doesn’t sell, that really takes courage. It’s turning up to the blank page, the empty canvas, the studio workbench, the writing desk, day after day, year after year, when nobody is checking on you or waiting for your work. That takes courage.

‘Cloud Chamber’ (detail), installation, Basel, Switzerland, 2003, made from pillow stuffing while recuperating from hospitalisation for pneumonia.

There’s a lot of magical thinking around creativity, lots of manifesting, self-helpy whatnottery. If it helps you, great. As I mentioned the other week, I’m only too happy to court the muses, daimon, or a helpful genius for assistance myself when the chips are down.

But, day to day, I lean towards a more workmanlike approach.

I lean into practice.

Practice is a word that has so many useful connotations when it comes to thinking about creative work: learning-by-doing, a steady commitment to improvement, diligence, humility, regularity, habit, valuing process over outcome. There’s no mystery to practice, no muse to court, no inner child to placate. You just turn up and do the work, again and again.

When someone makes the decision to quit their job, or to make other big changes in their life to make more space for creative, self-directed work, we rightly applaud their courage and wish them well. We feel their thrill vicariously and cheer them on.

But five years in, twenty years in? If you’re in it for the long haul, a different kind of energy is needed, something steady, pragmatic and determined. A creative life isn’t just a series of blog posts, books published, awards won, exhibitions opened, paintings sold.

It’s a life of quiet, persistent devotion to pursuing a line of inquiry that may or may not yield tangible results.

It’s a life of practice.

Poetry Chapbook Launch

I’m delighted to be helping Fife-based poet Garry Mackenzie launch his new chapbook of poems “Three Ways of Looking at the Forth” published by Clutag Press.

The poems in Three Ways are 'overtures’ to a larger, book-length work in progress, looking at the Firth of the River Forth through time, from the deep past, through the fishing boom-and-bust of the 19th and 20th centuries, to the present and future. As the wider work develops from volcanoes and glaciers, up to microplastics and nuclear power stations, darker notes accumulate, reflecting the ominous state of things in the seas today and at large in the world more generally.

The launch will include readings from the poetry, and I will be in discussion with Garry about the book. Grab your free spot here to join us this Thursday 26th September at 7pm (UK time)

Join the Life Raft Co-Working Session

If you’re in it for the long haul too, and need some focused time to work on your creative projects? Join our creative co-working session every Wednesday from 3 pm to 4.30 pm UK time. It’s very simple. We say hello, say what we’ll be working on, then leave our cameras on and work together in quiet companionship for an hour, then sign off at 4.30 with a quick check-in chat. That’s it! If you miss a session or can’t make it live, a recording will be made available to paid subscribers for two weeks after the session. You can find it in the subscriber chat HERE.

Until next week

– Sam

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