So far 2020 has been all about the chat for me. I’ve not been at my desk much; in January I was getting my accounts in order for the impending tax return deadline on the 31st as well as filing and binning a lot of other paper in the micro studio* at home. The only other ‘work’ thing was planning an hour long talk for the Glasgow Society of Women Artists for February 3rd. February brought a second surprise talk as I was drafted in a week or so ago for Creative Mornings Glasgow’s February talk on the theme, ‘INVEST’ this morning. So really, mostly all I’ve done this year is talk.
With the first talk, I was so aware that I haven’t been actually ‘working’ (aside from keeping a baby happy and healthy**) for a year and that feels like a long time to be out of the creative industries loop. I took it very seriously as it had been in the diary for over a year. When I accepted it, I was a new mother and had a mewling baby on or near me almost all the time. It was easy to imagine I’d be in a completely different scenario after a whole year had passed. Well the baby would surely be two or three times the size for a start and surely slightly more independent of me. Fast-forward a year to now and I have a walking, babbling mini whirlwind of chaos on my hands.
I don’t really gives talks very often, though I actually relish them. Sure, there’s the few days of anxious planning, the locating and compiling of images for the presentation, working out if I can lend any extra depth or narrative to the content of the talk.
In the past, I used to wing it a lot.
Sure, I’d have some hand scribbled notes on a card but they were generally coded cues for a series of loosely rehearsed ideas or stories. For these 2020 talks, as ever, I got nervous, certainly exacerbated by the hiatus from creative working. So I changed my style to one of meticulous planning. Instead of sweeping together some projects I enjoyed, I chose more carefully the projects I loved the most, that could explain what I do and what I love. I tied myself to a loose theme so the talk would seem more fluid, thorough and dare I say, professional.
Looking back over this landscape of my own work, I began to see patterns; human connection, experimentation, love and care, local interest, creative expression, stories…
I saw real craft for the first time in my work. I really care about what I put out and the folk I am working with,
so although that doesn’t make a project automatically good or successful, I was starting to see that same care evident in the way I put together the talks. I also notice now how much I want to help others who deal with the same anxieties, hang ups and fears. Rather than saying “Look at all this work! Toot toot!” I’m saying, “Here’s my work and it was all hard won, but I’m happy with what I’ve done.”
I looked over the past eight or ten years in detail, poring over images, illustrations and photos – some cringe inducing – but I also revisited times of great creative output, projects I’m still proud of. What a gift, to be asked to explain the career I am still building and to really see my own (somewhat faltering progress) with some clarity. After a babymaking break, I can see them all with a little distance and with a different perspective. I finished my two talks the same way:
I have made my peace with my limitations as an illustrator.
I always wished to be better, more competent and as successful as other illustrators I see as my peers. Rather than being them, I have come to realise I am my own thing and ‘illustrator’ is just one of the myriad jobs I do. No wonder I’m not the best! Making work I enjoy is what I’d slightly lost along my way [before maternity leave]. I have all these projects behind me to build on, but I’m moving in a slightly different direction, or I hope I am. I’ve loved being a free range illustrator, but I look forward to being a free range, part time, home-grown, inspiration-fed illustrator who is forging their own path and bringing some folk along for the ride.
* Three days before giving birth in 2018, I moved out of my Barras studio and we had to schlep everything home into a windowless box room in our flat. Three weeks before I gave birth we had a basic mezzanine built in there for all our home guff and the lower section is a ‘studio’. It’s actually tiny.
** I feel most new primary caregivers / parents would consider parenting right at the beginning as a full time vocation.
