Revisiting the Creative Desert and Artistic Isolation

 Back in 2018 when I had just moved to Arizona I hadn't realized how isolated I would be as an artist and wrote a post about it.  Here I am 6 years later and nothing has changed.  Having to pull from within yourself creative ideas without the distractions and constant validation or feedback of an art community and friends is definitely a challenge. I wasn’t even sure I could continue to be creative, which I now know was an unfounded fear.  I’ve come to value the isolation as it gives me,  as artist Anna Farley says; “ an opportunity to distil what concerns me and what I want to make and do” 

I have been directed towards more illustrative work with black and white folk art style.

Collecting Bluebells in the Forest 

I seem to use these whimsical drawings as a vehicle to share stories with my grandchildren. One day when I was 6 I wandered into a copse of trees in the small mining village we lived in the North of England called, Hetton-le-Hole, and before me was a carpet of bluebells. It was so magical and beautiful that to this day I can still see and sense the peace and magic of it.   It was like it was some private chapel , absolute silence save the sound of bees, and birds and the soft rustle of leaves.     

  

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the yes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my propositions. And some see no nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself” - William Blake.