The Blackbird Sings

Isolation and Being an Artist

I'm sure that what I'm about to say will resonate with many people: Being an artist can sometimes be one of the most isolating and lonely careers you could choose.

I think the same is true for anyone who works from home in a solitary way; not just artists. But as I am an artist I'll speak from an artist's perspective, although hopefully what I'm going to say will apply to many people out there.

{Photo of Aldeburgh beach on the Suffolk coast, taken by Leon during our holiday in February.}

I think that artists (or illustrators, writers, musicians...) actually need more time alone than other people. I know I do. To actually get things done I need to have a fairly solitary life. In fact, there's nothing I enjoy more than closing the door to my studio - shutting out the world (and other people!) - propping up my iPad on the desk and finding a great documentary, film, or even some music to listen to/watch while I immerse myself in painting. It's my creative world, and I love it. If I'm going through a difficult time personally, it helps to calm any anxiety I may feel, and when I'm really concentrating on a piece of work, the rest of the world dissolves away. I've often wondered what I'd do if I didn't have art in my life, and the truth is I can't even really imagine it. This may sound odd to the non-creatives out there, but I feel incredibly lucky; like I've been given a gift in life. I don't mean a gift in the sense it is often used in this context (meaning "talent") but rather, having the ability - and more importantly, the desire - to create art has made my life infinitely better. As the years go by and I travel further along this path, I'm finding I appreciate everything more. I notice small things I know I would never have noticed before I began practising art every day. And the reason I know this is because I didn't notice them before.

I'm sure this has been said a gazillion times before, but art really does help you to see the beauty in nature, and in life. I get such pleasure from looking at or using a well-designed object, for example. I notice wonderful textures and colour combinations while I'm out walking, and I'm much more sensitive to subtle changes in light, taste, or scent. It sounds like an exaggeration, but I promise it isn't. Everything becomes richer. And I think it's because, at first, art opened my eyes...and then everything else followed. Because to create art successfully, you need to be able to feel as well as see. It heightens every sense, and I wouldn't trade that for anything. If you offered me £10,000,000 right now, but in order to accept it I had to give away the feeling art gives me, I can honestly say I wouldn't take you up on the offer.

I feel fortunate to be able to do something I love passionately every day. But it's true that it can be a very solitary life at times. I think to be an artist you have to love your own company; and luckily, I do! The time flies by each day because I'm so absorbed in my work. But there are times I long for company while I work; that feeling of having work colleagues around who you can stop to have a drink with, a joke and a laugh, bounce ideas off, or who can offer a sympathetic ear and some good advice when things aren't going as planned. If you're anything like me, being alone when you have problems is not a good option. I have the ability to obsess about and over-analyse a problem to a ridiculous degree. I need other people around to offer a more balanced view of whatever it is that is bothering me before I go into a downward spiral! This could be solved by sharing studio space with other artists, I suppose. It's a really nice idea but it's not always an option due to location or expense. Many of us work alone in a studio in our house for practical reasons.

I'll be honest with you: I can get so caught up in work and deadlines that I don't take enough time off for myself, and I also feel I sometimes neglect friendships. And it's becoming very obvious to me that this has to change, and so I'm changing. It's so important to take the time to meet up with friends, and also to try to build a supportive, creative community around you. While time alone is essential, so is time with others. The balance between the two is a necessity for physical and emotional good health.

I'd love to hear your personal experiences of dealing with isolation, or anything you did to ensure you had more time with others. Did you start a group, organise meet-ups, share a studio space, attend any creative classes, and so on? I'd be interested to know how it went!

There's a lot more I could write about this subject, but this is already a long blog post, so well done for making it this far! Thanks for reading. :)

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Gratitude

I may not be a mother, or a wife - I don't yet, and may never, have a family of my own (sometimes I feel a little sad about that and at other times I'm not sure if that type of life is really for me anyway) and I don't have much in the way of family around me any more.

Sometimes that's hard, and sometimes I can feel a bit lonely. But then I look at what I do have.

I have a growing network of wonderful, kind, like-minded, and talented friends and colleagues here in England, a sweet and loving boyfriend, and his family and friends in Paris and the United States. These are all people who care about me, and who I care a great deal about; people who have helped me to become who I am today, who seem to accept and love me for who I am, and who make me feel worthy of being loved. I'm sure we've all had our share of people in our lives who have made us feel the opposite way, so I always feel so grateful for that.

{Patterned Landscape 4, a new 7x5" painting on paper I added to the shop a couple of days ago - now sold.}

Life isn't always easy, is it? We have difficulties and sadness, separation and upset, worries about this and that, large and small. But everyday, no matter how I feel, the one thing I always try to remember is how grateful I am for what I do have. So thank you to everyone out there who supports me in every way (and that includes the people who follow my blog, leave encouraging comments, or buy my work). I am - and always will be - grateful for you all. I can only hope that I give something worthwhile back to you. And every day I'm working on that too.

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Do you know what? 2013 hasn't been the easiest of New Years for Leon and I so far. On January 1st, we heard the very sad news that one of his close friends, the writer Simon Lane, had sadly died between Christmas and New Year. Leon has also been ill himself since December 27th. He had a strange cold virus with swollen glands before I arrived in Paris on the 18th, but seemed to get over it. However, on the evening of 27th, he came down with a fever and a very painful gland on the left side of his neck, which swelled over the following days and became enormous - we're talking tennis-ball-size kind of enormous - and he was also exhausted, had aching joints and so on. To cut a (very) long story short, we are now at the stage where, two weeks later - with a misdiagnosis, countless trips to various doctors, clinics and specialists, a course of antibiotics, and finally a definitive diagnosis of an infected lymph node stemming from a virus - he now has to go into hospital tomorrow to be put on an antibiotic IV drip for a few days to cure this thing once and for all. We're really sad about this, but glad he'll be getting some proper treatment. So I will be all alone in the apartment for a few days, but I'm going to try to immerse myself in my work and hope the time goes by quickly.

Unsurprisingly, with all of this going on, I haven't been able to complete much work over the past couple of weeks, but I do have a few new watercolour paintings to show you. Two of these have already sold (the bird was a commission), but Night Rain is currently available in the shop. I also have an exciting new year-long project for 2013 lined up - I'll tell you more about it in the next post. I'm looking forward to sharing details about that!

Night Rain

© Natasha Newton 2012

Available here. (Update: SOLD)

Imaginary Star Chart 4

© Natasha Newton 2013

SOLD

Akemi Bird (Meaning: 'Bright Beauty')

© Natasha Newton 2012

SOLD

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Trying to be something...

I have a feeling that this is going to be one of those blog posts where I'll type, delete, type, delete, type, delete. Always wary of putting "too much of myself out there" on the internet, but at the same time wanting to connect with people and share my thoughts and difficulties in the hope that it will help not only myself, but others too.

Let me start by saying that there are some people out there who think that becoming an artist (as a career) is an "easy option". I suppose they're partly right. After all, I wake up every morning excited by the day ahead unlike so many other people who wake up with a sense of dread, knowing they have to spend the next nine hours in a job they hate, quite possibly working with people they don't like and wouldn't choose to be around. I know all about that - I've been there and done that, for several years in fact. I'm fortunately now able to do the work I love every day, work which seems to please others too, and I hope also makes their world a little brighter or more inspiring. It seems to, judging by the comments and emails I receive on a daily basis, and for those I am very grateful.

Nest Number Six

Acrylic on deep-edge canvas. 20x20"

© Natasha Newton 2012

It can often be quite a lonely job, but I'm gradually building a circle of friends and colleagues, both online and in real life, who are kind, supportive, wonderful people, which really helps. Being an artist can be isolating, and as I travel along this road I'm beginning to realise the importance - actually, the necessity - of having people who support and encourage you along the way, and in turn who you can also support and encourage too. Artists need that, because it takes a lot of self-belief to choose art as a career - you have to have a huge amount of faith in yourself and your ability, and you absolutely have to be able to carry on when things are tough, as they invariably will be from time to time. Even if you love what you do, and you're good at it, it takes a will of iron to survive (and thrive) in this business. Income is unstable (it can sway from being fantastic to terrible and back again in the course of a couple of months), there are no paid holidays or set hours, or any of the other perks that come with certain jobs, jobs where you are employed by someone else rather than by yourself.

I believe somewhat in fate. I believe that certain people came into my life at a time when I needed them the most. I believe that if these people had been in my life from a younger age, I would probably be further along the road, or would have achieved more, than I have at the point I'm at today. But I can't look back at what should have or might have been, I can only look forward and be grateful that these people found me at all (or maybe I found them?). I try to show people how grateful or appreciative I am. I'm not someone who takes things for granted. A lot has happened in my life (as in everyone's), a lot that you don't know about and some things that you do, but it's made me into a person who is thankful for the smallest of things, and someone who doesn't take anything for granted, be it health, wealth, relationships, and so on.

Every time someone wants to own a piece of my work, I feel like the luckiest girl alive. Because there was a time at the beginning, when I was just starting out and possibly for a few years after that, when becoming an artist seemed like an unattainable dream. I don't want to go into huge detail about that time today - I think I've probably covered it to a lesser or greater extent in other blog posts throughout the years - but to say I had to have a confidence and belief in myself and my work when everything seemed to be against me is perhaps an understatement. But when things were difficult, I just put my head down and ploughed on. I was stubborn. I held on to the fact that this was what I wanted, and that anything is possible in life if you work hard enough for it.

I still hope that's true. I hope it's true because I put my heart and soul into my art these days, sacrificing many other things in life along the way. I'm trying to make a better (stable) future for myself, and my boyfriend. He's doing his part and I'm doing mine. I don't talk about my relationship with Leon very often in public, or in any depth. Some things are private and should remain that way. I share little snippets of our life together here and there, but unless you know us personally, you probably don't know the dynamic of our relationship, just how much we're there to support and love one another despite spending quite a lot of time apart at the moment, or how devoted we are. If devoted isn't too unfashionable a word in 2012. But devoted I am, and I have every reason to believe that he is too. It's something we tell each other all the time - part of the "not taking anything for granted" I spoke of earlier. We've been through a lot together, and we still are.

My current dreams are simple - well, they seem simple but at the same time they will take a lot of work to attain and I can only hope that good fortune smiles on me while I work hard trying to attain them. I could tell you what they are - those closest to me already know what they are - but let's just say that I'm trying to build a life. A good life. At the moment, things aren't easy. Leon is in France and I am in England (most of the time). This summer has been hard because, after seeing quite a lot of each other for the first few months of this year, we've been apart for most of the summer and we're not scheduled to see each other again until next month. My workload has not allowed for a lot of travel this summer, and Leon has also been somewhat stuck in France after his trip to Suffolk to spend time here in June. But we have lots of great times planned for the autumn, when the work for my solo show is out of the way and I'm free to spend prolonged periods of time in Paris again. This situation is deserving of a blog post of its own! But I don't have the time or inclination for that right now.

Sometimes I look at other people and feel envious. Not necessarily (in fact, hardly ever) for material things, but the life they have. It's so easy to look at others and think, "What a great life they have, they have *** and *** (fill in the blanks!), and I don't have *** and ***, what am I doing wrong, why does it seem so easy for them but not for me?". But here's the thing. It wasn't necessarily easy for them. No-one knows what somebody else has been through to get to where they are. Even the people with seemingly great lives may have had a tough time getting there, or maybe they're still having a tough time. In my circle of friends and acquaintances, I now know a small handful of millionaires. I'm willing to bet that even these fortunate people, with their wealth and their families, also feel as if they still haven't achieved what they'd like to. There's probably still some emptiness there, or perhaps a longing for something they feel they will never be able to attain.

I try to think about this in moments of doubt, perhaps when I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself or I'm worried about the future. In the meantime, I'm just going to carry on doing what I do, hoping that I will be able to build the life I want and need, hoping that a little bit of luck will come my way to supplement the hard work, and that one day I can really be something, as a person and as an artist.

*

 

[The painting featured above is the latest from the Nest Series, and the first completed piece for my solo show at Snape Maltings Gallery, opening on Saturday 20th October 2012.]