I’ve been getting lots of emailed questions from students and I put a call out on Instagram for questions recently and wanted to answer some of them here, as they are excellent questions! Don’t hesitate to hit me up with a question too.
One of these questions was ‘What was your journey to find your creative calling?’.
It’s still going to be honest, my creative journey is a work in progress. But I feel like it called me from when I was very young in the traditional sense. I adored art classes and most afternoons after school did craft and art classes, painting and pottery. Then in high school writing I loved, but I lost my love for art, mostly due to the teachers I had in school. On finishing high school, I fumbled around in a degree at university that I quit to travel Europe, and returned to study interior architecture. That’s when I began to understand creativity on a much deeper level. I had some utterly brilliant teachers, mentors who I worked with weekly, and I studied graphic design at night, photography on the weekends and also started working with a furniture designer and learned more about product and furniture design. I started my first creative business as a creative, doing graphics and product design aged 21 whilst still completing my courses. And I simply never stopped creating.
I see creativity as a state of approaching the world with curiosity, eyes wide and heart open. It’s not just about putting ink to paper and brush to canvas. It’s how we put food on a plate, curate a dinner party, dress each day, explore the world. It’s how we fill ourselves up and empty ourselves out.
Creativity is about risk, it’s about making mistakes, it’s very much about dealing with our own ego and shadow. It’s about being comfortable with uncertainty, and not knowing if what you’re creating is actually working. It’s about being terrified of the outcome but continuing anyway. Creativity is about bravery.
So I work with creativity every day on every level possible. The beautiful thing about it is, the more you use your creativity, the more it flows. I see it like a river. And my job is to keep that flow going, even though my ego is constantly trying to build dams.
Sent with love,
Jac x